Blog

Monuments and Reconciliation

With the election of Rutherford B. Hayes by a one vote margin in the Electoral College, the Compromise of 1877 ended the era of Reconstruction in the minds of the people.  As Southern States were re-admitted into the Union, Federal troops stood down or returned to the North.  From about 1885 to 1924, before and after the 50th Anniversary of…
Cliff Page
December 6, 2017
Review Posts

Gettysburg Rebels

A review of Gettysburg Rebels: Five Native Sons Who Came Home To Fight As Confederate Soldiers, by Tom McMillan, Regnery, 2017. In 1912, the renowned publisher of books on The War for Sothern Independence, Neale Publishing Company of New York, released Fighting by Southern Federals, written by Charles C. Anderson. He argued that more than 600,000 Southerners fought for the…
Bill Potter
December 5, 2017
Blog

Through a Lens Darkly

There is an old saying in the theater that when one is acting the part of a butler in a play, the actor tends to regard it as a play about butlers.  This manner of observing personages and events, both past and present is, of course, a sad fact of life within many levels of modern society.  All too often,…
John Marquardt
December 4, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 99

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, November 27-December 1, 2017. Topics: the War, slavery, secession, war crimes, Southern literature, political correctness. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-99
Brion McClanahan
December 2, 2017
Blog

Kansas University Honoring War Criminals?

After the rousing success of Kansas University’s redesigned football uniforms in honor of Jennison’s Jay-hawkers of 1861, a competing Kansas university also recently unveiled a special-edition football uniform in commemoration of the atrocities of that bloody time. Planned for an upcoming series of games, the uniform features blue pants with yellow stripe and bloodied saber, and a blue jersey styled…
Lewis Liberman
December 1, 2017
Blog

“No Other Gods Before Me.”

From its port side northern Kentucky’s foremost tourist attraction looks exactly like a real vessel, a big one, with a ramp fitted along it to take on animals and supplies.  From bow to stern it is 510 feet long, about as long as a modern missile frigate, and the designers have gone to great lengths to make the structure appear…
Jerry Salyer
November 30, 2017
Blog

Cane Fighting

For five days in May, 1856, Charles Sumner delivered a speech entitled The Crime Against Kansas. For those five days, he continuously slandered South Carolina and its senator, Pierce Butler. Regarding South Carolina, Sumner stated: “If we glance at special achievements, it will be difficult to find anything in the history of South Carolina which presents so much of heroic…
Michael Martin
November 29, 2017
Review Posts

Pickett’s Charge — The Last Attack at Gettysburg

A review of Pickett’s Charge – The Last Attack at Gettysburg by Earl J. Hess (UNC Press, 2001). When I was still on active duty with the U.S. Army, the true “Gettysburg” book was Professor Coddington’s The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (1968). But his book was about the entire battle and command and not the attack. Hess mentions several others,…
John C. Whatley
November 28, 2017
Blog

Slavery and the War

The recent apoplexy over White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly’s comments about Robert E. Lee and the Civil War have revealed on ongoing problem in the thinking of many Americans when it comes to history and politics in general – the inability to see any issue or event in anything but the most oversimplified terms.  In the particular context of the…
Michael Armstrong
November 27, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 98

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 13-17, 2017. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern culture, Robert E. Lee, secession, John C. Calhoun, the Deep North https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-98
Brion McClanahan
November 18, 2017
Blog

Calhoun’s Meaning that “Slavery is a Positive Good”?

John C. Calhoun–valedictorian of his class at Yale, Vice President, Secretary of War, and Senator–was one of the greatest statesmen America has produced. Margaret Coit wrote a favorable biography of him in 1950 that won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1959, a Senate committee, headed by John Kennedy, ranked him among the five greatest senators in American history. Calhoun wrote one…
Donald Livingston
November 17, 2017
Blog

The Extreme Northern Position

If you listen to the modern historical profession, Southern secession in 1861 represented "treason." David Blight, Professor History at Yale University, has made this belief the part of the core of his attack on Confederate symbols. If we should not take them down because they represent "white supremacy," then they should be removed because Southerners were "traitors." Traitors to whom…
Brion McClanahan
November 16, 2017
Review Posts

James Madison: Son of Virginia

A Review  James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation by Jeff Broadwater (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Speaking at the celebration of the completion of the restoration of Montpelier, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “Montpelier restored is certainly beautiful but is in no sense the most fitting memorial to James Madison. If you’re looking…
Joe Wolverton
November 14, 2017
Blog

Is the South Celtic?

There is a popular theme embraced by many that the uniqueness of Southern culture is explained by its “Celtic” origins in opposition to the “Anglo-Saxon” foundations of the North.  This thesis has been expressed strongly in such works as Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, Jim Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, and James…
Clyde Wilson
November 13, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 97

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 6-10 2017. Topics: Reconstruction, Jewish Confederates, Southern weather, Southern literature, Southern culture. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-97
Brion McClanahan
November 11, 2017
Blog

A Little Change in the Weather

We hear endless accounts today concerning the dire effects of global climate change, as well as the horrific devastation caused by the recent hurricanes that have mainly struck the Southern states. However, if one studies the five billion years of Earth’s climatic history, it should soon become evident that climate change has been an ongoing cyclical occurrence during the latter…
John Marquardt
November 10, 2017
Blog

Jewish Confederates

The Jewish people have endured much throughout their long history, yet have always continued to hold on to their religious and cultural identity. Finding a safe harbor from persecution was perhaps the main justification for the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Yet before this monumental event, amidst the often tumultuous sea of the diaspora, there did briefly…
Jonathan Harris
November 9, 2017
Blog

A Changing Reconstruction Narrative

  Those who have read his Count of Monte Cristo can readily appreciate the wisdom of Alexander Dumas who wrote, “The difference between treason and patriotism is a matter of dates.” Similarly, Civil War era historical interpretations are a matter of dates. Consider the example of President Ulysses Grant.  While the many corruption scandals during his presidency cannot be denied, modern biographers and…
Philip Leigh
November 8, 2017
Review Posts

Southern Tales of Glory and Woe

A review of A New England Romance: And Other Southern Stories by Randall Ivey (Shotwell Press, 2016). Randall Ivey’s book of Southern stories will make you laugh, cry and nod your head in recognition of delightful characters you feel you have known forever, or at least most of your life. This is especially true if you are lucky enough to…
Patricia Woods
November 7, 2017
Blog

An Expired Narrative

Portraying a furtive agenda as a benevolent endeavor has occurred frequently throughout our history. Unscrupulous politicians have been able to hoodwink the public because it takes a while for their fraudulence to be discovered; Sometimes decades. The Reconstruction of Southern states is a classic example of this phenomenon. There were rational, well-thought out strategies put forth for re-admitting Southern states…
Gail Jarvis
November 6, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 96

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 30 - Nov 3, 2017 Topics: Southern religion, Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Southern Humor, Southern Founding, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-96
Brion McClanahan
November 4, 2017
Blog

A Note on Southern Humor

William Faulkner said much about Southern writing when he called Henry James "the nicest old lady lever met.” He indicated, of course, the sense of humor that the region has always had. And he indicated his disregard for the kind of psychological drama that identifies the target of his joke. If James liked to have a character weep seriously over…
Bill Koon
November 3, 2017
Blog

Citizen Lee

At the time of his death, was Robert E. Lee a man without a country? No, the Gray Fox of the Confederacy was not like the naval officer in Edward Everett Hale's novel who cursed his country. Lee’s country, before and after the War Between the States, was the United States of America, a republic he served with valor and…
William Freehoff
November 2, 2017
Blog

The Fighting Gamecock: Thomas Sumter

Thomas Sumter in his encounters with the Indian na­tions enters the pages of recorded history. He had prob­ably been present at the fall of Fort Duquesne and in the campaign across the Ohio River and had learned some­thing of the red man during this early service. In any case, he was chosen to accompany Lieutenant Henry Timberlake to treat with…
M.E. Bradford
November 1, 2017
Review Posts

Lincoln vs. Davis

A review of Brian R. Dirck, Lincoln and Davis: Imagining America, 1809-1865 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2001). Mr. Dirck’s comparative analysis of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis promises much.  Friendly reviewers have found his work “intellectual history at its most stimulating,” or “psychologically sophisticated.”  Alas, I confess that I do not see it.  To be fair to Mr.…
John Devanny
October 31, 2017
Blog

The Antebellum South in the Reformation Tradition

On October 31, while many parents whisk their little ones from house to house in the pursuit of temporal tasty treats, a large portion of Christendom will be observing the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, a movement which arguably changed the very course of Western Civilization up through the present. Many Protestant denominations, seminaries, churches, and para-church organizations are…
Jonathan Harris
October 30, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 95

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 23-27, 2017. Topics: Abraham Lincoln, the United States Constitution, Slavery, Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-95
Brion McClanahan
October 28, 2017
Blog

The Evil South

Not to be outdone by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s brilliant idea for a new post-Game of Thrones show exploring the drama and high-stakes tension of an alternate America where slavery still exists (which can be read here and here), Keltag Hagrinax and J.X. Parnohack of the hit series Shame of Crones also recently unveiled details of their new show at the Galactic Imperium News…
Lewis Liberman
October 27, 2017
Blog

Slavery and the Confederacy

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected…
Kirkpatrick Sale
October 26, 2017
Blog

The Invention of the Appalachian Hillbilly

In our politically correct culture where even the mildest criticism of a societal group can earn someone the label of racist, it remains open season on rural America.  When Barack Obama famously spoke of rural Pennyslvanians in 2008 as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them" and are prone to "anti-immigrant…
Michael Armstrong
October 25, 2017
Review Posts

Shredding the Constitution to Save the Union

A review of Liberty & Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism by Timothy S. Huebner (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016). Timothy S. Huebner’s new synthetic account of the Civil War and Reconstruction melds military history, political history, constitutional history, and black history in telling the tale of the most popular subject in American history. Published by one…
Kevin R.C. Gutzman
October 24, 2017
Blog

A Black Advocate for Confederate Monuments

Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article about eighty-eight year old Nelson Winbush who is a Florida black man and proponent of Confederate monuments. His grandfather, Louis Napoleon Nelson, was a Tennessee slave who followed his master and sons into the Confederate military. Initially Louis was a cook but later became a rifleman and a chaplain under the command of cavalry leader Nathan…
Philip Leigh
October 23, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 94

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 16-20, 2017 Topics: The War, Political Correctness, Nat Turner, Federalism, Abraham Lincoln, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-94
Brion McClanahan
October 21, 2017
Blog

American History Textbooks vs. Reality

Donald Trump made the following statement at a recent rally in Phoenix, Arizona on August 22: “In the proud tradition of America's great leaders, from George Washington -- please, don't take his statue down, please. PLEASE! Does anybody want George Washington's statue? No. Is that sad? To Lincoln, to Teddy Roosevelt, I see they want to take Teddy Roosevelt's down,…
Michael Martin
October 20, 2017
Blog

Nat Turner: Terrorist

As the old cliché goes, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” The phrase has been around forever, it seems, and sometimes it can be true, I suppose. There are always exceptions to every rule. But most of the time, a terrorist is simply a terrorist, a person who uses extreme violence and fear to achieve a political or…
Ryan Walters
October 18, 2017
Review Posts

“A Real Personage-And Not an Odd Name Merely…”

A Review of States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, by Walter Brian Cisco, Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1991. “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”-Psalm 90:12 (KJV) Of all types of literature, I enjoy reading biographies.  As a man, I profit from biographies of men whose…
Barry Kay
October 17, 2017
Blog

Russia vs. the Confederacy

Russian-American relations over the past two and a half centuries, like the weather in Alaska, the land Russia sold to the United States in 1867 for ten dollars a square mile, have blown from very warm to extremely frigid; but its balmiest period by far was during the War Between the States. In stark contrast to America’s sixteen-year hiatus in…
John Marquardt
October 16, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 93

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 9-13. 2017. Topics: Political Correctness, Yankees, the War, War Crimes, Confederate Monuments, Nullification https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-93
Brion McClanahan
October 14, 2017
Blog

A People Without Honor

Back in my days as a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, I and some fellow graduate students were involved tangentially, very tangentially, in the great Confederate flag debate in Columbia, SC.  During the 1990s the  Confederate flag flew over the capitol in Columbia, SC.  Various civil rights groups began to snipe at the flag, viewing it as…
John Devanny
October 13, 2017
Blog

States and Cities Saying “No” to the Feds

What was amazing about watching two dozen states and several hundred cities defy Donald Trump’s decision to take the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement was that so little was made of it. It represented open defiance of the national government and a commitment to follow the principles of a treaty that our elected leader has specifically rebuked. I…
Kirkpatrick Sale
October 12, 2017
Blog

Why Were Confederate Monuments Built?

In the wake of the current controversy over Confederate monuments, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has created a timeline that has made its way around the worldwide web like wildfire.  It purports to show that two spikes in the building of the monuments coincide with occurences of racially-charged historical eras, such as the rise of the Ku Klux Klan…
Michael Armstrong
October 11, 2017
Review Posts

A Legion of Devils

A review of Karen Stokes, A Legion of Devils: Sherman in South Carolina (Shotwell Press, 2017). Many of us have read about the horrendous things William Tecumseh Sherman did as he and his "bummers" marched through Georgia, things a lot of us would rather not have read about. However, if we are to properly understand our history we are often compelled…
Al Benson
October 10, 2017
Blog

En Brer Fox, He Lay Low

Another Southern city with a rich history has fallen into the wallow of political pus. Who knows who represents the final word on the subject, although when it comes to these miscreants, these political poltroons, it is difficult to rummage through the dung of their dogmatic house to reveal any one germ. Now Memphis’ Orepheum Theatre Group has banned Gone…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 9, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 92

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 2-6, 2017 Topics: Political Correctness, Cultural Marxism, Confederate symbols, secession, Braxton Bragg https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-92
Brion McClanahan
October 8, 2017
Blog

Eliminating Dixie Means Eliminating America

A few years ago Stephen Fry, English actor, writer, and comic, hosted a televised tour of America, traveling from location to location in a London cab. His junket into the “Deep South” was introduced this way: “For years, I've been intrigued and bewitched by what seems to be America's most charactable region. A place of cotton, courtesy, Gospel music, mint…
Gail Jarvis
October 5, 2017
Blog

The Winds of Change

This isn’t 1990. The Winds of Change have stopped blowing.  When the Soviets present a more docile response to self determination than a “western democracy,” the situation is bad. How painful is it to pine for the days of passive Soviet resistance to secession? Images and videos of the jack-booted thugs bulldozing their way through crowds of peaceful voters (including firemen…
Brion McClanahan
October 4, 2017
Review Posts

Braxton Bragg

A review of Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess, University of North Carolina Press, 2016. In Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy, prolific Civil War historian Earl J. Hess attempts the near impossible task of resurrecting the reputation of one of the Civil War’s most disparaged generals. Many contemporaries and…
Jason Stewart
October 3, 2017
Blog

The New War on the South’s Patrimony

In the news late today, on a nice summery afternoon in early September, I saw live on television a crane removing the large statue of General Robert E. Lee from a park in Dallas. I had to switch channels immediately because I was so upset and fed up with these imbecile journalists bleating the left-wing party line about the nobility…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
October 2, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 91

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 25-29, 2017 Topics: the War, Politically Correct History, Reconstruction, Andrew Jackson, Radical Republicans https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-91
Brion McClanahan
September 30, 2017
Blog

The Radical Republicans: The Antifa of 1865

"Anybody who would trash Lee and laud Lincoln is either stupid as a post or just plain evil," said a sage reader. This applies in spades to anyone who would laud the Radical Republicans of 1865, as one TV GOP blonde has recently, and asininely, done. The Radical Republicans, if you can believe it, considered Abraham Lincoln a moderate (a…
Ilana Mercer
September 29, 2017
Blog

On Tour at The Hermitage

On Labor Day, I visited The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s Nashville manor. As a Tennessee native, going to The Hermitage was always a goal of mine – even though for various reasons I had never been able to do so before. With a candid demeanor, I paid my $20 dollars and entered the intro museum. For reasons expressed in my book,…
Dave Benner
September 28, 2017
Blog

Hollywood Before the “Hate Confederate” Movement

From the beginnings to rather recent times, sympathetic portrayals of Confederates have been a mainstay of America cinema.  An astounding number of major stars without any Southern background have had no objection to favourably portraying Confederates (and other Southerners).  It might be noted that two of the major figures of early American film, D.W. Griffith and Will Rogers, were the…
Clyde Wilson
September 27, 2017
Review Posts

Southern Reconstruction

A review of Southern Reconstruction by Philip Leigh (Westholme, 2017). Confronting the establishment narrative about any historical topic can be a perilous endeavor. There are several that present such large minefields that most historians dare not attempt to cross, among them the “Civil War,” Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement. Bucking the accepted version of events in any of those…
Brion McClanahan
September 26, 2017
Blog

American Sovereignty and “Unconditional Loyalty”

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free: Beginning of Jefferson's Statue for Religious Freedom, passed by the Virginia Legislature in 1786 I With one intro line Jefferson explains the core of human liberty. Our minds, a composite of intellect and heart that defines us as human, are forever free to choose what to believe, where to inquire, who to…
Vito Mussomeli
September 25, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 90

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 18-22, 2017 Topics: Culture war, Alexander Hamilton, American constitutions, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-90
Brion McClanahan
September 24, 2017
Blog

What’s Happened to the Southern Heartland?

With roots in urban America, the libertarian New Class, which staffs so many of today’s influential think tanks, is disinclined to view the troubles in rural America as a real crisis. This group tends to view a farm as simply another unit of production that, if inefficient, should wither away without public concern—indeed no more deserving of concern than the…
Anthony Harrigan
September 22, 2017
Blog

Terrorism, Chivalry, and “The Great Compromise”

It is unsurprising that one of the antifa groups that have been making the news lately identifies itself with John Brown, the revolutionary abolitionist who was hanged shortly after leading an attack upon Harper’s Ferry in 1859.  Brown’s career embodies the progressive fixation with being on the ostensibly “right” side of history, and as the attempted massacre of Republican senators…
Jerry Salyer
September 21, 2017
Review Posts

How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America

A review of How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America by Brion McClanahan, Regnery History, 2017. A thinking American must choose between Hamilton and Jefferson, whose contrary visions of the future were contested in the first days of the Constitution. If you are happy with big government, big banks, big business, big military, and judicial dictatorship, then you have Alexander Hamilton…
Clyde Wilson
September 19, 2017
Blog

Comparing Constitutions

Southern leaders had few complaints with the old Constitution under which they had lived. The heart of the conflict, they felt, was that the intent of the written law had been subverted by Northern sectionalists. Three major areas of conflict were over protective tariffs, the settlement of common territories, and the right to be secure in one’s property. Although tariffs…
James David Altman
September 18, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 89

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, September 11-15, 2017 Topics: Southern symbols, political correctness, Southern literature, the War, James Madison https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-89
Brion McClanahan
September 16, 2017
Blog

Yankee Rush

Lee Sam and Abner were settin’ on the porch drinking ice-tea one day when the Yankee from Boston come running his Toyota Prius up the road to the house. He stopped, and as it was July and hadn’t rained in a month, the dust kinda poured over his car when he stopped. He got out a coughing and fussing and…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 15, 2017
Blog

Madisonian Liberal

In 2015, Todd Horwitz posted an article on on the Ron Paul-sponsored website Voices of Liberty aimed at restoring the definition of liberal. Horwitz explained: “Today’s liberals are not liberal at all. They are elitists, communists, and socialists that believe that they should dictate how people live. The true liberals are conservatives that try to restore the country to the…
Joe Wolverton
September 14, 2017
Blog

Slavery and the War

To assert the dogma that slavery caused the war of the 1860s sanctifies the North, vilifies the South, glorifies the Blacks, and mythologizes the war. This dogma has been thrown out there as an unchallenged “given” for a hundred and fifty years to put the South on the guilty defensive and keep her there, but it all collapses with one…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
September 13, 2017
Review Posts

That Old Black Magic

A review of Fred Chappell, Familiars, LSU Press, 2014. The cat, the felis silverstrus catus, both wild and domesticated, has exercised a considerable fascination for the creative artist throughout the thousands of years of Western and non-Western civilization.  One need only peruse art and history books containing sculptures of the animal originating in Byzantium and Egypt, among other ancient locales,…
Randall Ivey
September 12, 2017
Blog

A Monumental Folly

The gentle wave of what had been termed “monumania” that rolled over the South and parts of the North during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries was one which saw the dedication of numerous monuments in memory of the Confederacy and its heroes. That long dormant wave has now suddenly turned into a manic tsunami dedicated to the tearing…
John Marquardt
September 11, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 88

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 4-8, 2017 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, Battle of Fredericksburg, Republican and Democrat Parties https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-88
Brion McClanahan
September 9, 2017
Blog

Understanding the War on Monuments

Agitation, Abstraction, Disruption, Distraction… These words are the most primal reasons that southern, and arguably mainstream American, history is under attack throughout the country. On August 16, 2017, I attended a protest to remove the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston, South Carolina. While I was at this protest, I gained a lot of insight on how these “protestors” think…
Michael Martin
September 8, 2017
Blog

Lincoln or Lee? What Would Hitler Say?

"Some crazy person just compared President Abraham Lincoln to Hitler. Yes, this just happened on CNN and Brooke Baldwin's reaction was perfect." So scribbled one Ricky Davila on Social Media (Twitter). Indeed, an elderly Southern gentleman had ventured that President Lincoln, not General Lee, murdered civilians, a point even a Court historian and a Lincoln idolater like Doris Kearns Goodwin…
Ilana Mercer
September 7, 2017
Blog

AHA Revisionism

On 28 August 2017, the American Historical Association (AHA) issued a “Statement on Confederate Monuments” that presumed to speak for the entire American historical profession on the issue of whether these monuments should remain or if they should be removed from public spaces. Unfortunately this “statement” is little more than historical establishment claptrap disguised as highbrow intellectual discourse—par for the…
Brion McClanahan
September 6, 2017
Review Posts

The Brave Samaritan

  A Review of The Angel of Marye’s Heights, by Les Carroll, Columbia, SC: Palmetto Bookworks, 1994. The famed G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”  No quote better sums up the actions of one brave Confederate soldier on the field…
Barry Kay
September 5, 2017
Blog

Party Truths

Recent years have seen a new revisionist theme emerge in the history of America’s two principal, modern-day political parties – the Democrats and Republicans. In the new debate, two questions have emerged: Did the two parties switch platforms at any point in history? And did the Democrats, with its longtime Southern stronghold, always have a monopoly on racism and white…
Ryan Walters
September 4, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 87

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 28 - Sep 1, 2017. Topics: United States Constitution, nullification, slavery, United States Presidents, Political Correctness, Lost Cause https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-87
Brion McClanahan
September 2, 2017
Blog

August 2017 Top Ten

The top ten articles for August 2017: 1. Why The War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 2. Defending the Confederacy by Ryan Walters 3. The Real Robert E. Lee by James Rutledge Roesch 4. A Monumental Spin by H.V. Traywick, Jr. 5. What Confederate Monument Critics May Not Know by Philip Leigh 6. We Long to Be Free!…
Brion McClanahan
September 2, 2017
Blog

If You Think So, Say So

This is the gravestone of my great-great-great grandfather, Benjamin Parks Middleton, located in the Bethel Baptist Church cemetery between the towns of Hazelhurst and Georgetown in Copiah County, Mississippi. He was a farmer from that area and, to my knowledge, was not a slave-owner. Benjamin served as a private in the 6th Mississippi infantry unit of the Confederate States Army…
Houston Middleton
September 1, 2017
Blog

10 Objections to Nullification–Refuted

Nullification, also known as State interposition, is controversial because it challenges the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation. The argument behind nullification is that the States—as parties to the compact that created the federal government—have a right to interpret the Constitution and veto acts where the federal government exceeds its delegated power. Genuine nullification involves a State’s declaration of unconstitutionality…
Zachary Garris
August 31, 2017
Blog

American Presidents, Slavery, and the Confederacy

The current pogrom against Southern history and symbols ignores the influence the South and the institution of slavery had on most American presidents. American history would not be the same without it. If the current goal is to purge any reminder of slavery and the Confederacy from the public sphere, then nearly every American president would have to be withdrawn…
Clyde Wilson
August 30, 2017
Review Posts

Reconsidering Luther Martin

A review of Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet, The Life of Luther Martin, by Bill Kauffman, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008 "Happiness is preferable to the Splendour of a national Government"  Luther Martin to the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787, Kauffman at 41 This book takes no prisoners. Nor does it gloss the favored actors. It sides with Martin's stance at the…
Vito Mussomeli
August 29, 2017
Blog

Imagine if the British Won?

Let us imagine for a moment that the French army and fleet were not present at Yorktown to augment Washington’s army, and that the British prevailed in their war to suppress the rebellion of their subjects populating the American colonies below Canada. As the victorious redcoats swarmed through those colonies they arrested and imprisoned rebel leadership including Jefferson, Washington, Franklin,…
Bernard Thuersam
August 28, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 86

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 21-25, 2017. Topics: Southern symbols, Robert E. Lee, Nullification, Confederate law, Confederate Constitution. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-86
Brion McClanahan
August 26, 2017
Blog

“Furl That Banner”

During the past few decades, there has been an ever-growing sentiment throughout the Unites Sates to erase from the public mind, if not from American history itself, all vestiges of the Confederate States of America, and in particular, all memorials dedicated to the heroes, leaders and symbols of the Lost Cause. Following the senseless murder of a number of African-American…
John Marquardt
August 24, 2017
Blog

Confederate Case Law: The Rule of Law, Not of Men

The mark of an advanced civilization is the rule of law, with the highest being the rule of law that protects life, liberty and property. Based upon this standard, the Confederate States of America embodied an advanced Christian civilization. Accepting this truism goes a long way in understanding why the Confederacy has been demonized to the point of eradicating it…
Marshall DeRosa
August 23, 2017
Review Posts

Nullification

A review of Nullification: Reclaiming the Consent of the Governed by Clyde Wilson, Shotwell Press, 2016. As a young conservative, I came across ideas like nullification and states’ rights, during my studies. But they were always passed over, as if they didn’t mean anything anymore. When I read Robert Bork’s excellent book on Originalism, I never saw his unquestioned and…
Christopher McDonald
August 22, 2017
Blog

Robert E. Lee Would Have Fought the Nazis

The events in Charlottesville, Virginia that transpired this past weekend (11 Aug to 13 Aug) were the product of very misguided and miseducated adherents of the Nazi ideology and white supremacism who sought to voice their disapproval of the proposed removal of a statue to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It is almost rote to assume that what Lee, as…
Robert McReynolds
August 21, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 85

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 14-18, 2017. Topics: Southern symbols, Southern history, Slavery, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-85
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2017
Blog

Lyon Gardiner Tyler and Southern History

Delivered at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. The attack on the so-called “lost cause” myth in American history is nothing new. Beginning in the 1950s and 60s, historians like Kenneth Stampp began a concerted effort to undermine the dominant historical interpretation of the War, namely that the War and Reconstruction had been stains on American history, that the War…
Brion McClanahan
August 18, 2017
Blog

Is 19th Century Slavery Harming 21st Century Black Americans?

Today's Americans are not nearly as gullible as the Leftist establishment seems to think. Also, its hard to believe that these starry-eyed ideologues think they can remove all obstacles that they have decided stand in the way of the “purification” of America. They cleverly created ambiguous and questionable encumbrances that can be interpreted in whatever way is necessary to justify…
Gail Jarvis
August 17, 2017
Blog

A Monumental Spin

It takes men of worth to recognize worth in men. – Thomas Carlyle Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. – Hannah Arendt Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain to leave an equal baseness. – Tennyson The mob attacks on Confederate monuments remind me of the “useful idiots” and “rent-a-thugs” who are happily condoned, if…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
August 16, 2017
Review Posts

A Series of “What Ifs”

Review of Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 by Nelson D. Lankford. (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2008): 308 pages. Few people, whether northerners or Southerners know the details and decision making processes that led to Abraham Lincoln’s attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter and thus the Confederate decision to fire on the fort to prevent that aggression.…
Jason Korbel
August 15, 2017
Blog

The New Guns of Honor?

Most of the world knows of the Hollywood Celebrity “Martin Sheen,” (born and baptized Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez). Much of the world knows that he portrayed General Robert E. Lee in the film “Gettysburg.” I am even on record mildly complimenting his performance. Of course, nobody today can possible represent Lee, but I thought Sheen did better than Robert Duvall…
Clyde Wilson
August 14, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 84

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 7-11, 2017. Topics: Agrarianism, populism, John C. Calhoun, William L. Yancey, political minorities, secession, Southern identity, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-84
Brion McClanahan
August 13, 2017
Blog

Lincoln, Crony Capitalism, and Populism

Lincoln’s War established a permanent, centralized regime of crony capitalism for the formerly federal U.S. In the centralized U.S., real power is in the hands of big business and big banks that use government to protect and increase their own private profit and wealth. Lincoln implemented Henry Clay’s “American Plan”, without giving it a name. At the time, however, free…
Norman Black
August 11, 2017
Blog

Calhoun the Marxist?

Neo-conservatives can’t seem to make up their mind about the Confederacy. They all agree that the Confederacy represented everything evil about early America (which places them squarely in league with their intellectual brothers on the Left) but why they hate it presents the real conundrum. It borders on schizophrenia. Neo-conservative historian Victor Davis Hanson, for example, often rails against the…
Brion McClanahan
August 10, 2017
Blog

Archie Who?

The shots keep coming.  Now Archie Manning, who once was from Mississippi but moved away to play football, has determined, in his opinion, that Mississippi’s flag need to be changed.  Archie, in the eyes of most, has forgotten who brought him to the dance. Sadly, that dance partner bled and suffered for so many, not only in Mississippi, but in…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 9, 2017
Review Posts

William Lowndes Yancey

A review of William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War. by Eric H. Walther. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2006. William Lowndes Yancey was described as the Patrick Henry of the Confederacy.  Eric Walther’s biography of follows the evolution of a staunch unionist to the orator of secession.  Yancey was the son of a Navy war hero.  The…
Jonathan White
August 8, 2017
Blog

Rich Hours

Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. False River —For Olivia Pass, and for Patric It’s wide, impressive, but it’s false—really an oxbow lake, formed when the Mississippi, on its own, changed its course, three hundred years ago or so, chopping off a loop, leaving to the west a “Pointe Coupée”— an “island” and a flowing C.  Farther north…
Catharine Savage Brosman
August 7, 2017
Blog

July 2017 Top Ten

1. Why Vicksburg Canceled the Fourth of July – For a Generation by Karen Stokes 2. Bust Hell Wide Open by James Rutledge Roesch 3. You Are Deplorable by Clyde Wilson 4. The Origins of the Neo-Marxist Attack on the South by Norman Black 5. General Lee Figured It Out by Fred Reed 6. "Free People of Color" in Dixie…
Brion McClanahan
August 6, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 83

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 31- August 4, 2017 Topics: Secession, Political Correctness, the Jeffersonian political tradition, Confederate monuments. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-83
Brion McClanahan
August 5, 2017
Blog

What Confederate Monument Critics May Not Know

In 1958 a nearly forgotten thirty-four year old Texas author named William Humphrey debuted his first novel, Home From the Hill, to widespread praise. Legendary director Vincente Minnelli released a film version only two years later. Both the book and the movie are highly rated by Amazon customers. The novel begins as follows: Early one morning last September the men squatting on the Northeast corner…
Philip Leigh
August 4, 2017
Blog

Red States for California Secession

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has given the green light for CalExit proponents to begin collecting signatures for a California secession ballot initiative in the 2018 general election. This is good news. California is the logical place to begin having a conversation about secession, and every red state American should be actively supporting the proposal. As California goes, so goes…
Brion McClanahan
August 3, 2017
Blog

We Long to be Free!

An Address given on the Occasion of the Observance of Confederate Flag Day Raleigh, North Carolina | 03 March 2017 SEVEN SCORE AND SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new union, freely chosen and legally adopted by eleven Southern States with the consent of the people, and expressed through their chosen delegates in solemn assembly;…
Paul C. Graham
August 2, 2017
Review Posts

The Yankee Problem in American History

A review of Clyde Wilson, The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma (Shotwell Press, 2016). The Yankee Problem An American Dilemma by Clyde Wilson consists of 12 sections, four of which involve book reviews (half of them devoted to biographies of the Beecher family or the family of John Adams), four of which directly address the devilish nature of that New…
Charles Steiner
August 1, 2017
Blog

“The Unshaken Rock:” The Jeffersonian Tradition in America

Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. When historians discuss reasons for Southern secession, as if the South needed to produce one, perhaps the most important, and sometimes neglected, motive was the protection of the Jeffersonian tradition, essentially the right to self-government.  What was this Jeffersonian tradition or ideal? It is our lost political heritage of limited government and…
Ryan Walters
July 31, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 82

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 24-28, 2017. Topics: Southern identity, nullification, the New South https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-82
Brion McClanahan
July 30, 2017
Blog

New South Voices of the Southern Tradition

Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. As scholars dedicated to exploring what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition, we are most often drawn to the antebellum South and the early federal period, the days when Jeffersonian federalism and political economy reigned supreme and Southern statesmen were regarded as the best in the land. We still fight…
Brion McClanahan
July 28, 2017
Blog

Madisonian Nullification

This article will restore necessary context to the word "nullification” as used by James Madison in an 1834 letter called “Notes on Nullification.” First, we have to put Madison’s role in the formulation of the concept of nullification into some context of its own. As indispensable as he was to the development of our Constitution, James Madison is not the…
Joe Wolverton
July 27, 2017
Review Posts

Go Figure: Progressive Academics Misinterpret Southern Identity

A Review of The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of its People, by Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Reviewed by Michael Potts. Progressive ideology dominates academia, and political science is no exception. Professors Cooper and Knotts, political scientists from Western Carolina University…
Michael Potts
July 25, 2017
Blog

You Are Deplorable

Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. You are deplorable. It is worse than that.  If you are Southern or interested in the South you are the most deplorable of all the deplorables.  There is no place for you among the enlightened and virtuous people of 21st Century America. But perhaps there is a certain advantage to being an…
Clyde Wilson
July 24, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 81

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 17-21, 2017 Topics: Southern Literature, Southern Art, Political Correctness, Southern Identity https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-81
Brion McClanahan
July 22, 2017
Blog

The Origins of the Neo-Marxist Attack on the South

On July 5th, the Abbeville Institute published an article entitled “Southern Identity and the Southern Tradition” by John Devanny. Mr. Devanny noted that Marxism is involved in attacks on southern culture and heritage and wrote that many of them were “the inheritors of a secular Puritan legacy and the disciples of cultural Marxism who began to dominate the academy in…
Norman Black
July 21, 2017
Blog

Poe’s War of the Literati

Edgar Allan Poe secured a permanent place among world authors as father of the short story, creator of the detective story, and/poetic genius. While he has an international reputation, Poe consciously identified himself as a Southern writer. Poe may not often come to mind as a Southern writer because he did not write about the South the way Simms or,…
Harry Lee Poe
July 20, 2017
Blog

Leave the Monuments Alone: An Artistic Perspective

This essay was originally printed in the comments section of the Apollo Magazine article "Dismantling America's Monuments to White Supremacy" by Kristen Teen. The removal and desecration of images of enemies of the state was an accepted part of Roman political life, a formal public dishonour named as damnatio memoriae, and the destruction of built and material culture of a…
Juliette Peers
July 19, 2017
Review Posts

Preserving the Good

A Review of Catharine Savage Brosman, Southwestern Women Writers and the Vision of Goodness, McFarland Press, 2016. The term “man of letters” has fallen largely into desuetude over the last few decades, and for good reason. Very few such entities exist nowadays on the literary landscape either in this country or elsewhere. One is more apt to come across a…
Randall Ivey
July 18, 2017
Blog

A Poetry Sampler

Editor's note: Three recent poetry submissions, the first two by Walt Garlington, the third by Stephen Borthwick. The Patriarch’s Clan The patriarch’s clan By the lake is gathered To honor again Their common father: The matriarch with Her circle of friends, Cousins, with new wives' and husbands' And newer children, The bond of kinship Strengthened in their meeting. Traditions are…
Abbeville Institute
July 17, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 80

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 10-14 2017 Topics: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Richard B. Russell, the New South, Confederate symbols, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-80
Brion McClanahan
July 15, 2017
Blog

A Rebel Born

Foreword for A Rebel Born: A Defense of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General, American Legend, by Lochlainn Seabrook, Sea Raven Press, 2010. There is a story that a year or two after the great American war of 1861–1865, a visiting Englishman asked Gen. R.E. Lee, “Who is the greatest soldier produced by the war?” It is reported that Lee without…
Clyde Wilson
July 13, 2017
Blog

Reconsidering Richard B. Russell

There was a time both before and after the War when the South dominated the United States Congress. In the antebellum period, James Madison, John C. Calhoun, John Randolph of Roanoke, and Henry Clay placed their mark on congressional debates, and several other Southerners ranked among the best statesmen of the era. But most Americans, even those in the South, don't realize that by the mid-twentieth century, Southerners…
Brion McClanahan
July 12, 2017
Review Posts

Bust Hell Wide Open

A review of Bust Hell Wide Open: the Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., Regnery History, 2016. Writing a biography about Nathan Bedford Forrest – a man recognized by no less than General Robert E. Lee and General William T. Sherman as “the most remarkable man produced by the Civil War on either side” – is…
James Rutledge Roesch
July 11, 2017
Blog

Carpetbagging Southern History

A common technique of Liberal ideologues is to change the meanings of words to suit their agendas. So “illegal aliens” become “undocumented immigrants” and “adolescent criminals” become “justice-involved youths.” We're witnessing a version of this phenomenon with the “contextualizing” of Confederate monuments. Realizing that the eradication of Confederate memorials was not receiving the widespread public support they expected, hostile progressives…
Gail Jarvis
July 10, 2017
Blog

June 2017 Top Ten

The top ten for June 2017. Read 'em again. 1. Why Does the Left Really Despise the Confederacy? by Ryan Walters 2. The War Between the States: Who were the Nazis? by Clyde Wilson 3. New Orleans Mayor Hypes His Cultural Cleansing by Gail Jarvis 4. The Real Reason Confederate Symbols are Attacked by Tom Landess 5. The Ad Too…
Brion McClanahan
July 9, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 79

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 3-7, 2017 Topics: the Southern tradition, Southern history, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-79
Brion McClanahan
July 8, 2017
Blog

General Lee Figured It Out

This piece was originally printed at Fred On Everything. “The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.” Robert E. Lee The man was perceptive. Amalgamation of the states under a central government has led to exactly the effects…
Fred Reed
July 7, 2017
Blog

The Absurdity of Racial Correctness Exposed

This article was originally printed at Townhall.com A couple of days ago, a friend of mine from Alabama shared on his Facebook wall an article from Alabama Political Reporter by a Mr. Josh Moon. The title is, “An Apology for White People.” Moon, a white man, writes that “white people in Alabama (and other states too, I presume)…like to pretend a lot…
Jack Kerwick
July 6, 2017
Blog

Southern Identity and the Southern Tradition

In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay in the archipelago of enlightenment.  There are some cracks in this edifice of Yankee bigotry, but when political and cultural wars become heated, the edifice is trotted out once more…
John Devanny
July 5, 2017
Review Posts

John Crowe Ransom’s Last Stand

“The modern man has lost his sense of vocation.” “A Statement of Principles,” I’ll Take My Stand “One wonders what the authors of our Constitution would have thought of that category, ‘permanently unemployable.’”  –Wendell Berry A Review of Land!: The Case For an Agrarian Economy by John Crowe Ransom, Edited by Jason Peters, Introduction by Jay T. Collier University of…
Alan Cornett
July 4, 2017
Blog

“It is history that teaches us to hope”

Malcolm X wrote that “History is a weapon.” He was right, and no topic encompasses this truth more than the War of Northern Aggression. And the most practical way we rebels can advance in this post-modern war being waged against the South is simply education. Sounds cliche, right? But how can we expect anyone who doesn’t have a clue about our past, its people and their divergent ancestry,…
Dissident Mama
July 3, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 78

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 26-30, 2017 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern literature, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-78
Brion McClanahan
July 1, 2017
Blog

“Free People of Color” in Dixie

This article is the abbreviated address that I made at the Upcountry Literary Festival 2017, at the University of South Carolina, in Union South, Carolina. Some people come for the land down under (Australia). I come from the land where old times are not forgotten. I started my presentation by singing the old spiritual entitled, Wade in the Water, God’s…
Barbara Marthal
June 30, 2017
Blog

Dixie-cide

Modern progressives are just as evil in their bloodlust against the South as were William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan. Today's leftists may not yet be waging the shock-and-awe total warfare that the Union generals inflicted upon Southern civilians (whites and blacks alike) and their dwellings, businesses, churches, infrastructure, and food supply, but their aim is still the same: to…
Dissident Mama
June 29, 2017
Blog

Re-Humanizing Johnny Reb

“…You said he's a Confederate general. They're the bad guys. And he's probably racist… We're going to raise our kids here. I don't want some Confederate General ghost teaching them his racism…” Yep… a “bad guy”… a “racist”… a boogeyman… That’s what Hollywood, mainstream media and a large part of American society and politics think of your Confederate ancestor. This…
Travis Archie
June 28, 2017
Review Posts

A Breach in the Wall

A Review of: Look Homeward by David Herbert Donald, Little, Brown, 1987. When David Herbert Donald recalls his youthful reaction to Look Homeward, Angel, he describes a magic that many of us felt upon encountering Thomas Wolfe as adolescents: "I was convinced-without any just cause-that I too was misunderstood by my family and unappreciated in my community, and, like Eugene,…
Loxley Nichols
June 27, 2017
Blog

The AP Gets It Wrong…Again

In a recent column for the Associated Press, entitled “Old South monument backers embrace Confederate Catechism”, writer Jay Reeves opines that that those of us who seek to remember the Confederacy and Southern culture are reading from a different history book than the rest of the “nation”. He acknowledges that “indeed they are”, and then references the “decades old” Confederate…
Carl Jones
June 26, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 77

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 19-23, 2017 Topics: Southern Symbols, Political Correctness, Andrew Lytle, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-77
Brion McClanahan
June 24, 2017
Blog

Is the Confederacy Obsolete?

This article was originally published in Southern Partisan magazine in 1994. The past—what we believe happened and what we think it means—can be a very slippery customer. Even the recent past can be elusive. In the early 1950s, when I was a student at Johns Hopkins, C. Vann Woodward gave an amusing but provocative talk called "Can We Believe Our…
Ludwell H. Johnson
June 23, 2017
Blog

The Real Reason Confederate Symbols are Attacked

This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan Magazine in 1994. By the 1970s, all vestiges of legal discrimination in the South had been eliminated. Indeed, affirmative action programs, minority entitlements, and special considerations in the marketplace have given blacks a solid place at the table of mainstream American life. A new black middle class, driven by the work ethic and…
Thomas Landess
June 22, 2017
Blog

The Ad Too Hot to Print—Progressive Censorship in Action

The promise of “Freedom of the Press” becomes meaningless when large national “Progressive/Liberal” conglomerates maintain a virtual monopoly on access to newsprint within a given geographical area. Their virtual monopoly provides them with the opportunity to highlight the words and actions of their fellow Progressives while denying those who were slandered or attacked the opportunity to respond. The Nazi Minister…
James Ronald Kennedy
June 21, 2017
Review Posts

Understanding Andrew Lytle

A Review of The Southern Vision of Andrew Lytle, by Mark Lucas, Louisiana State University Press, 1987. Andrew Lytle's writings comprise a rich and diverse tapestry whose outlines are difficult to bring together. The critic who tackles this varying body of material must become conversant in history, political philosophy, military biography, and literary criticism. Lytle has been feted for achievements…
Benjamin Alexander
June 20, 2017
Blog

Why Does the Left Really Despise the Confederacy?

The South and its history are currently under assault, the most aggressive and far-reaching that we have ever seen, at least up to this point.  The monuments are gone in New Orleans and seem to be headed for extinction in Virginia and Maryland too.  And of course the flag is always under attack and that campaign is growing by the…
Ryan Walters
June 19, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 76

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 12-16, 2017 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern symbols, the War, Southern culture, Southern economics, the FED https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-76
Brion McClanahan
June 17, 2017
Blog

Yankee Finance Capitalism Part III: The Creature from Jekyll Island

The endurance of the system of Jeffersonian finance based upon the Independent Treasury system was remarkable given the post war transformation of the United States from an agrarian country to an industrial one.  Tariff rates had increased, large subsidies were being awarded to the railroads, and the federal government drifted slowly but inexorably toward imperialism.  The last major Jeffersonian edifice,…
John Devanny
June 16, 2017
Blog

The Forgotten History of the Confederate Flag

The Confederate battle flag is, as John Coski of the Museum of the Confederacy titled his book on the subject, “America’s most embattled emblem.” Recent polls show that Americans are split down the middle on the flag: half view it as a symbol of heritage, half as a symbol of hatred (and an overwhelming majority are against tearing it down…
James Rutledge Roesch
June 15, 2017
Blog

The War Between the States: Who were the Nazis?

Anyone who has been paying attention has heard many times the assertion that the flag of the Southern Confederacy is equivalent to the banner of the Nazi German Reich.  That this idea should gain any credit at all is a sign of how debased American public discourse has become by ignorance, deceit, and hatred. To make an obvious point:  The…
Clyde Wilson
June 14, 2017
Review Posts

Poor but Proud

A review of J. Wayne Flynt, Dixie's Forgotten People: The South's Poor Whites. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1979. Professor Flynt, the author of this volume, concentrates on the economic condition and the cultural life of poor white South­erners, but does not fail to mention some of the vices of the American majority, especially the attempt, often unsuccessful, to…
Michael Jordan
June 13, 2017
Blog

Should Stanford University Change Its Name?

Was California Governor and Senator Leland Stanford—founder of Stanford University—sufficiently racist to justify dropping his name from the university and destroying all publicly displayed memorials to him? Consider Stanford’s remarks in his acceptance speech as the Republican Party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1859: he  cause in which we are engaged is one of the greatest in which any can labor. It…
Philip Leigh
June 12, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 75

The week in review at the Abbeville Institute, June 5-9, 2017. Topics: Cultural Marxism, Confederate symbols, Southern history, Jeffersonian economy, Southern culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-75
Brion McClanahan
June 11, 2017
Blog

Yankee Finance Capitalism Part II: The Jeffersonian Triumph

“The revenue of the state is the state.” Edmund Burke The rise of the modern nation state in the 1600s was founded upon monarchies securing independent sources of revenue to pay for the royal armies that secured their dynasties.  Jacques Colbert, Louis XIV’s minister of finance, designed a system of state monopolies, internal free trade districts, tariffs and internal taxes…
John Devanny
June 9, 2017
Blog

New Orleans Mayor Hypes His Cultural Cleansing

Political correctness didn't succeed as well as the Left had hoped it would because PC conflicts with the concept “two sides to every story.” National media only presents the side that bolsters its socio/poltical agenda, and it seems to think its opinions are widely accepted. But polls indicate that the public's trust in media has sunk to one of its…
Gail Jarvis
June 8, 2017
Review Posts

Music from the Lake

A review of Music from the Lake and Other Essays by Catharine Savage Brosman (Chronicles Press, 2017). Catharine Savage Brosman is a treasure of Southern literature.  Although much of her work shows her solid Colorado Rocky Mountain upbringing, somehow I do not think she will mind being placed in Southern literature.  Most of her career was spent in New Orleans…
Clyde Wilson
June 7, 2017
Blog

The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act and the Political Market

The political market, as the economic market, has the demand and supply dynamic. Interest groups make demands and the politicians provide the supply. In the case of Confederate memorials, interest groups demand Confederate memorials be dismantled in the public interest; the politicians supply the dismantling. The political market responds to strongest political forces. The strength of interest groups in the…
Marshall DeRosa
June 6, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 74

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 29-June 2, 2017 Topics: Confederate symbols, Political Correctness, The War, secession, Southern economics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-74
Brion McClanahan
June 3, 2017
Blog

Yankee Finance Capitalism Made Simple

Part One: Definitions and Origins Money is a great mystery.  In my years of teaching economics courses and economic history nothing so confuses students, and their elders, as the subject of money.  Or rather I should say the subject of money and currency.  Some of this confusion is a result of the failure of economists to agree on standard definitions…
John Devanny
June 2, 2017
Blog

Blame Abraham Lincoln for Confederate Monuments

George Orwell, in his dystopian novel 1984, wrote that “Ignorance is strength.” Big Brother thrives on it – whether in a totalitarian regime or in a pure democracy. In his government schools it would be easy and politically profitable for Big Brother to teach ignorance with flash cards. Take for example the “Civil War,” one of the defining events of…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
June 1, 2017
Blog

“Contextualizing” History

Statement about the “slavery the sole cause of the war” plaque affixed to the Confederate soldier monument in Gainesville, Florida. I have been asked to comment on the recent fad of “contextualizing” historic monuments as it relates to the Confederate soldiers’ memorial at Gainesville. What I have seen of the proposed plaque amounts, it seems to me, to an attempt…
Clyde Wilson
May 31, 2017
Review Posts

Hank Williams and the Elusive Redneck

A review of George William Koon, Hank Williams: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 1983. Like it or not, the most lasting symbol of the South is the Redneck. My eight-year-old son thinks General Lee is a car; many of my students don't know in what century the War Between the States was fought, although they are quick to tell me that…
Warren Leamon
May 30, 2017
Blog

The Confederate Origins of Memorial Day

Many Americans will pause today to honor the men and women who have given their lives in the United States armed forces. What most probably don't know is that this holiday originated in the South after the War for Southern Independence. It was originally called "Decoration Day." Don't tell the social justice warriors. The monuments that these modern day Leninists believe…
Brion McClanahan
May 29, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 73

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 22-26, 2017 Topics: Republican Party, Political Correctness, Southern Culture, Southern Economics, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-73
Brion McClanahan
May 27, 2017
Blog

Was the South Poor Before the War?

This essay was written in 1982 under the direction of Emory Thomas at the University of Georgia and was originally titled, "The Affluent Section: The South on the Eve of the War Between the States." "Once upon a time we all knew that the antebellum South was poor", asserted Harold D. Woodman in the 1975 issue of Agricultural History.  He was…
William Cawthon
May 26, 2017
Blog

Sanctuary City Mayor Trashes An AMERICAN Hero, Robert E. Lee

This piece was originally published at Townhall.com. Mayor Mike Signer—who had declared his intention to make Charlottesville, Virginia, the "capital of the resistance" to President Trump and a sanctuary city "to protect immigrants and refugees"—is refusing to protect a symbol saluting one of America's greatest men. Yes, Robert E. Lee was a great American. If Signer knew the first thing…
Ilana Mercer
May 25, 2017
Blog

Radical Republican Selective Racial Equality

Most modern historians give the post Civil War Republican Party a free pass on racism. They generally presume that the Party’s demand for black suffrage and civil rights in the South was motivated by the intrinsic morality of racial equality and pejoratively contrast it with the violent resistance such policies sometimes encountered from the region’s whites. Earlier historians, however, more often…
Philip Leigh
May 24, 2017
Blog

Fired in Washington

The Left is wringing its hands and talking about impeachment because of the Comey firing, but it has a very short memory--its hands resemble Lady MacBeth's- dripping with the blood of Republicans they have savaged in unceremonious firings over the years. Some of the very people crying buckets of tears for the insensitive way Comey was fired have treated Republicans with utter contempt.…
Christina Jeffrey
May 23, 2017
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Mary Fahl sang the beautiful song, “Going Home,” for the movie Gods and Generals. Such lyrics and tune that reached into my Southern psyche as to remind me of what the fight was all about. They say there's a place where dreams have all gone They never said where but I think I know It's miles through the night just…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 22, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 72

The week in review at the Abbeville Institute, May 15-19, 2017. Topics: Southern culture, the Southern tradition, PC attacks on the South, the Southern founding, republicanism. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-72
Brion McClanahan
May 21, 2017
Blog

Virginia’s Lost Counties

You can stand on the station platform at Harpers Ferry and see three States, two battlefields, two rivers and a panorama of natural scenery which the Kiwanis Club calls "the Little Switzerland of America" and which Thomas Jefferson said was "one of the most stupendous scenes in nature...worth a voyage across the Atlantic." Where the chasm yawns beneath and Shenandoah…
Holmes Alexander
May 19, 2017
Blog

A Virtuous Man

Most people probably associate cattle drives with the last century, and the wild West, but out here in Spottswood, in the Shenandoah Valley, there's a man who'll tell you different, and he'll tell you first hand. "Back in the 20's we drove 'em in spring, up in the mountains, thirty miles beyond Monterey — right through the streets of Monterey…
Franklin Debrot
May 18, 2017
Review Posts

A Better Guide Than Reason

A Review of M.E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. 1979. The world's largest, most ancient, and most exemplary republic observed its bicentennial not long ago. One would expect such an occasion to be a time of rededication and renewal, of restoration and recovery. Instead, we had a value-free official celebration that was expensive, dull,…
Clyde Wilson
May 17, 2017
Blog

Be Proud You’re a Rebel

I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America (CSA) from April 1861 to April 1865. Pictured above is the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the city’s famous Monument Avenue. The grand cobblestone street is also adorned with statues of generals J.E.B. Stuart and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Confederate president…
Dissident Mama
May 16, 2017
Blog

The South is America’s Hope

Count Herman Keyserling (1880-1946) was born in Estonia and married the granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck. He was an aristocrat who interested himself in philosophy and the natural sciences; Keyserling deeply believed that gifted individuals were born to rule. The South is America’s Hope “Count Herman Keyserling, philosopher and psychologist, world traveler and author, writes in the November Atlantic Monthly…
Bernard Thuersam
May 15, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 71

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 8-12 2017 Topics: Donald Trump, the War, Southern history, Southern literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-71
Brion McClanahan
May 13, 2017
Review Posts

Bledsoe on St. Elmo

Editor's note: This was originally published in Bledsoe's Southern Review in 1867 and is presented here in honor of Augusta J. Evans's birthday, May 8. St. Elmo. A Novel. By Augusta J. Evans. Carleton, New York. 1867. In the conscientious discharge of our duty as reviewers, we have read this novel from beginning to end, and as attentively as human…
Albert Taylor Bledsoe
May 12, 2017
Blog

Trump on Jackson

Historians and pundits came out in droves decrying President Trump’s recent claim that Andrew Jackson could have negotiated a peaceful resolution to the Civil War.  Infusing their alarm was Trump’s clumsy chronology connecting Jackson to the Civil War and his optimism that the war could have been averted. This is what Trump said: …Had Andrew Jackson been a little later,…
Samuel C. Smith
May 11, 2017
Blog

Why the Southern Tradition is Winning

The title of this piece may seem odd in light of recent events in New Orleans and the mass hysteria over all things Confederate since June 2015. Monuments have come down, flags have been furled, and streets have been renamed. While these are certainly loses, they are mere skirmishes in a wider cultural war that the Left is losing. They…
Brion McClanahan
May 10, 2017
Blog

April 2017 Top Ten

The Top 10 Articles for April 2017: 1. New Orleans: A People Without a Past Have No Future by Boyd Cathey 2. Confederate Monuments by H. V. Traywick, Jr. 3. What Was Lost 150 Years Ago by Boyd Cathey 4. Why Flannery O'Connor Never Liked Yankees by Michael Jordan 5. The Soul of the Southern Tradition by William Gill 6.…
Brion McClanahan
May 10, 2017
Blog

Reconsidering Trump’s “Faux Pas”

Despite nearly universal scolding in the mainstream media, President Trump’s suggestion that a compromise similar to the one Andrew Jackson arranged during the 1832 South Carolina nullification crisis might have prevented the Civil War merits analysis for four reasons. First, those pundits accusing Trump of not realizing that Jackson was deceased before the Civil War began either did not understand that…
Philip Leigh
May 9, 2017
Blog

High Tech Hunley

As the slow process of excavating the marvel continues, more and more revelations are coming to light about the technical sophistication of the H.L. Hunley, the world's first successful submarine. This prompted a U.S. government historian to declare, according to the newspapers, that the discoveries are surprising and that "we" will have to revise our ideas about Confederate technical backwardness.…
Clyde Wilson
May 8, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 70

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 1-5, 2017. Topics: Southern culture, Southern literature, Political Correctness, Southern history. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-70
Brion McClanahan
May 6, 2017
Blog

New Orleans is Ground Zero

The social justice jihad to eliminate “white supremacy” was spawned by the successful eradication of Confederate memorabilia. Americans were not overly concerned about the disparagement of Confederate heroes but when the disparagement was turned against the Founding Fathers and Western Civilization in general, they began to take notice. The public finally realized they weren't witnessing isolated incidents but a well-coordinated…
Gail Jarvis
May 5, 2017
Blog

Where Will the Attacks End?

Confederate Flag Day Address Oakwood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia March 4,2017 I had the honor of delivering the keynote address in 1994 at the Last Capitol of the Confederacy in Danville when we dedicated the monument to the Third National Flag. Much has changed since. Enemies of traditional culture have succeeded in removing that monument. The City Council of Charlottesville recently…
Patrick McSweeney
May 4, 2017
Review Posts

Understanding Faulkner

A Review of: On the Prejudices, Predilections, and Firm Beliefs of William Faulkner. By Cleanth Brooks. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. 162 pp. When I think of the state of literary criticism in the academy today, I think of a New Yorker cartoon someone has put up in the liberal arts coffee lounge at Clemson. It shows…
Mark Royden Winchell
May 3, 2017
Blog

Trump as Historian

In a recent interview on Sirius XM, President Trump, now completely enthralled by Andrew Jackson, made a couple of interesting remarks about the War of Northern Aggression, specifically theorizing that if Andrew Jackson were President in 1861 there would have been no war.  Trump’s reasoning?  One could presume because Jackson had averted war in 1832 during the nullification crisis. What…
Ryan Walters
May 2, 2017
Blog

Wendell Berry: More Than a Southern Thoreau

It was pure brag on young Henry Thoreau's part to say that he had gone to Walden Pond in order "to front only the essential facts of life," to take a Spartanlike stance against its demands on us, to cut a broad swath and shave close. In point of fact, Thoreau went to Walden to write the book later published…
Thomas McDonnell
May 1, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 69

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 24-28, 2017 Topics: Northern myths, Confederate symbols, political correctness, the founding period https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-69
Brion McClanahan
April 29, 2017
Blog

The Nabob as Antifederalist: Benjamin Harrison of Virginia

Benjamin Harrison the Signer was born at Berkely (later called Harrison's Landing) in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the son of Benjamin Harrison and Anne Carter Harrison, daughter of Robert 'King' Carter of Corotoman. After education at the College of William and Mary this Benjamin in 1749 became the fifth in a line of planter/politicians of the same name…
M.E. Bradford
April 28, 2017
Blog

The Latest 18th Century Fake News

The "fake news" pejorative has become commonplace in modern public discourse, so much so that social media outlets have taken it upon themselves to "police" so-called "fake news" stories and warn people about their dangers. This was largely due to the supposed impact "fake news" had on Trump supporters in 2016. To these self-appointed gatekeepers of truth, honesty, and the…
Brion McClanahan
April 27, 2017
Review Posts

The Imperial Penman

A Review of The Imperial Presidency, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973. 504 pages. The title gives us a fleeting but instructive glimpse at the curious rhetorical operations which flourish in this as in Mr. Schlesinger's other writings. "Imperial" from the pen of a historian and linked with "Presidency." disposes the reader to expect a carefully…
Clyde Wilson
April 26, 2017
Blog

Why Flannery O’Connor Never Liked Yankees

YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In Southern States the word is unknown. (seeDAMYANK.) Ambrose Bierce, THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY (1906). Bierce's definition of the Yankee is a bit outdated. No doubt some Southerners still refer to Northerners, especially New Yorkers and New Englanders, as Damyanks, but no one can say…
Michael Jordan
April 24, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 68

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 17-21, 2017. Topics: Southern culture, Western Civilization, Southern tradition, Southern intellectual history, agrarianism. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-68
Brion McClanahan
April 22, 2017
Blog

The Search for Life After Pac Man

I have made a discovery. There does, indeed, exist a place where nobody wants to leave. It is possible to breathe there without worrying about what you are inhaling. This place is not infested with joggers or 300-pound shoulder-strap radios, and when you're driving along and meet another car or truck on the road, that other driver is very likely…
Harry Hope
April 21, 2017
Review Posts

Reflections of a Ghost

Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the, symposium I'll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive vice-president of the University of Illinois, and myself, a writer and reader of fiction. I don't presume to speak either for Warren or Lanier, and I don't know how to…
Andrew Nelson Lytle
April 20, 2017
Blog

The Mind of the Old South

A review of All Clever Men, Who Make Their Own Way: Critical Discourse in the Old South, edited with an introduction by Michael O'Brien. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. 1982. 456 pages. The intellectual history of the South is yet to be written. This assertion bootlegs two assumptions that do not go unchallenged. The first is that there is something…
Clyde Wilson
April 19, 2017
Blog

The South and Her People

Originally published at www.circa1865.com The conservative and noble Christian civilization of the South described below has all but vanished as the New South of industrial capitalism, materialism and commercial vulgarity supplanted it. Remarks of J.C.C. Black, at the Unveiling of the Benjamin H. Hill Statue, Atlanta, Georgia, May 1, 1886 (excerpt): “As to us, was not prompted by hatred of…
Bernard Thuersam
April 18, 2017
Blog

The Soul of the Southern Tradition

I was born in the North. Nonetheless, I have instructed my attorney, a most honorable Virginian, that when I die he is to see to it that I am buried in that national cemetery at Gettysburg as close as he can possibly get me to the high water mark of the Confederacy. These instructions are based on conviction—the firm conviction…
William Gill
April 17, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 67

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 10-14, 2017 Topics: Southern history, Thomas Jefferson, Political Correctness, Southern symbols, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-67
Brion McClanahan
April 15, 2017
Blog

The Hard Hand of War

A Review of Joseph W. Danielson, War's Desolating Scourage: The Union's Occupation of North Alabama, University Press of Kansas, 2012; Charles A. Misulia, Columbus Georgia 1865: The Last True Battle of the Civil War, The University of Alabama Press, 2010. On Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865, Union forces under the command of General James Harrison Wilson attacked, captured, and sacked…
Brion McClanahan
April 14, 2017
Blog

Jefferson New and Improved

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. — THOMAS JEFFERSON A Review of In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Noble E. Cunningham. Jr., Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. 414 pages. With the exception of the driven and depressed Lincoln, no major figure in American history is in…
Clyde Wilson
April 12, 2017
Review Posts

Tolerating the South’s Past

The Age of Enlightenment represented the Middle Ages as a Gothic night—an interlude of ignorance and superstition when men were enveloped in a cowl, oblivious to the wonders of knowledge, and concerned only with escape from the miseries of this world and of hell. Voltaire said that Dante was considered a great poet because no one read him, that a…
Francis Butler Simkins
April 11, 2017
Blog

Confederate Monuments

The latest Crusade of the Progressives and other Politically Correct to remove all Confederate monuments from the face of the earth reminds me of a recent article by one Patricia Sullivan from the Washington Post concerning the Confederate statue in Alexandria, Virginia, and the Alexandria City Council’s unanimous vote to relocate it. The article also noted that others spoke with…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
April 10, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 66

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 3-7, 2017 Topics: Southern political principles, the Republican Party, Secession, the United States Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-66
Brion McClanahan
April 8, 2017
Blog

Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans

When you read about the worst cities in the United States you’ll find that they all share a common characteristic: each has been under Democratic leadership for decades. Most of you have read horror stories about some of these cities; Detroit, Cleveland, Birmingham, St. Louis, and New Orleans. In many ways, the deterioration of these cities is a microcosm of…
Gail Jarvis
April 7, 2017
Blog

Republican Death Wish

As readers of this column well know, I have never really trusted the Republican Party. Even in 1962, when I first worked actively for a Republican candidate (the late Bill Workman), I saw the arrogance of the Party leadership—its love of money and power, its fine contempt for grassroots beliefs and sensibilities. Over the years I have come to understand…
Thomas Landess
April 6, 2017
Blog

Is it 1982 Again?

Those who still think of conservatives as people who clip coupons are badly out of date. Among other things, such a stereotype betrays a lamentable ignorance of the Rockford Institute and its publications. Associated with Rockford College in Illinois, the Rockford Institute is dedicated to the proposition that moral and intellectual integrity are as important to the welfare of American…
Clyde Wilson
April 5, 2017
Review Posts

A Question of Sovereignty

Although the nation recently recognized the 150th anniversary of the end of the War of Northern Aggression, we are still plagued with questions about the legality of secession, issues and inquiries that unfortunately may never end. In exchanges on social media over the years, I have argued our principles as passionately as anyone can, while kindly, but at times very…
Ryan Walters
April 4, 2017
Blog

On Liberty

Andy Jackson's famous toast, "The Union—it must and shall be preserved," is still recorded in most high school U.S. history books. Calhoun's once equally famous reply, "Next to our liberties, most dear," has slipped out of many recent editions. Like most of the South, Calhoun was on the losing side of the liberty versus union debate. After the Second War…
Thomas Fleming
April 3, 2017
Blog

March Top Ten

Our top ten for March 2017: 1. The South's Gonna Do It Again by Tom Fleming 2. God, Gallup, and the Episcopalians by Cleanth Brooks 3. Southern Heritage Then and Now by Clyde Wilson 4. The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln by Tom Landess 5. A Disease of the Public Mind by Tom DiLorenzo 6. Jefferson and Slavery by Dave…
Brion McClanahan
April 3, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 65

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 27-31 2017 Topics: Yankees, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-65
Brion McClanahan
April 1, 2017
Blog

Why Lee? Why Acton?

A prevailing notion throughout the grand land of America is that the constant brouhaha down South among many of us regarding monuments and flags and statues is much ado. . .so forth and so on. . . and that neo confederates (so-called) are living in the past. While not calling myself a neo-confederate (paleo) I certainly live for the past.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 31, 2017
Blog

Yankee Foreign Policy and the Cold War

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is rattling his sabers and threatening war against the United States. He blew up an American aircraft carrier in one propaganda video and has goaded the Trump administration in several other statements, ostensibly to create the image of manly firmness to his people. Obviously, high profile assassinations and executions along with staged videos showing Jong-un…
Brion McClanahan
March 30, 2017
Blog

A Disease of the Public Mind

Historian and novelist Thomas Fleming is the author of more than fifty books, including two very good revisionist histories of the two world wars: The New Dealers’ War, and The Illusion of Victory in World War I. He has authored biographies of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and has written extensively about the founding generation, including his best-selling book, Liberty!…
Thomas DiLorenzo
March 29, 2017
Review Posts

Maryland’s Confederate Sisterhood

“If you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace.  If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall know what to do, when you reduce the question to…
J.L. Bennett
March 28, 2017
Blog

Jefferson and Slavery

Every so often, contemporary opponents of the Jeffersonian tradition make the argument that the legacy of the “Sage of Monticello” has been tainted by patent hypocrisy. The barrage of attacks Jefferson levied against slavery, they suggest, should be discounted on the grounds that he was a slave owner himself. Beyond this, some go as far as to claim that all…
Dave Benner
March 27, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 64

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 20-24, 2017. Topics: Thomas Jefferson, Southern culture, Southern heritage, Southern history, Bernard Baruch, Southern literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-64
Brion McClanahan
March 25, 2017
Blog

Bernard Baruch: Son of the South

On the morning of July 5, 1880, Colonel E.B.C. Cash and Colonel William M. Shannon faced each other with pistols near Du Bose's bridge in Darlington County, S,C. At a word of command, Shannon fired quickly, splashing the muddy ground at the feet of his adversary. Colonel Cash, an experienced duelist with a sinister reputation, coolly took aim and fired.…
Charles Goolsby
March 24, 2017
Blog

Manly Wade Wellman: The Voice of the Mountains

Manly Wade Wellman never penned an autobiography, despite the fact he published 500 stories and articles, won the World Fantasy Award and Edgar Allan Poe Award, and even edged out William Faulkner to win the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award in 1946. Yet, in one of his most famous short stories, Wellman did reveal how he must have seen himself…
Mike C. Tuggle
March 23, 2017
Blog

Southern Heritage Then and Now

Order of the Southern Cross Banquet, Sons of Confederate Veterans National Reunion, Asheville, North Carolina, August 1, 2003 As the direct descendant of a private in the 42nd North Carolina and a sergeant in the 20th North Carolina, I am honoured to talk to a group descended from notable officers in our War of Independence--or the War to Prevent Southern…
Clyde Wilson
March 22, 2017
Review Posts

The Shining Spirits

Why the South Will Survive, by Fifteen Southerners. Edited by Clyde N. Wilson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1981. As a naturalized Southerner (born in the North but educated in the South) it is a delight to discover this hard intellectual diamond among the soft dunghills of contemporary American publishing. The fifteen separate essays contained in this work deserve…
Jeffrey St. John
March 21, 2017
Blog

Jefferson the Man

Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America. Kevin R. C. Gutzman (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2017). The challenge a historian faces when writing about Thomas Jefferson is which Jefferson does one choose?  The choices of “Jeffersons” include: Jefferson the radical, Jefferson the democrat, Jefferson the philosophe, Jefferson the scientist, Jefferson the statesman, and Jefferson the planter, just…
John Devanny
March 20, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 63

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 13-17, 2017 Topics: Southern culture, John C. Calhoun, the American presidency, Robert Lewis Dabney https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-63
Brion McClanahan
March 18, 2017
Blog

Coit’s Calhoun

Want to learn about one of the greatest statesmen that the United States has ever produced?  Then get hold of John C. Calhoun: American Portrait by Margaret Coit. When this beautifully-written book received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1951, it was generally agreed that Coit had redeemed Calhoun as a major and admirable, even heroic, figure in American history.  Even…
Clyde Wilson
March 17, 2017
Blog

Heil to the Chief

A Review of: The American Presidency: An Intellectual History by Forrest McDonald Kansas, 1994. Since the surrender at Appomattox, the South has been virtually excluded from two of the three branches of the national government. We can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Southerners who have been appointed to the Supreme Court or elected to the…
James McClellan
March 16, 2017
Blog

The South’s Gonna Do It Again

A few days ago I ran into an old friend, an historian, who started in on the Partisan. "I've lived all my life in the South," he grumbled, "but I don't see what makes Southern life so wonderful that you and your friends want to impose it on the rest of the country." I did my best to reassure him…
Thomas Fleming
March 15, 2017
Review Posts

A Deep Devotion to the Constitution

According to the modern historical establishment, John C. Calhoun is the ultimate American villain. These esteemed historians think lofty assessments from previous decades failed to account for his glaring inconsistencies in regard to federal power, his advocacy for American imperialism, or his well-known defense of slavery and racism. Historians may have been critical of Calhoun's advancement of the "positive good"…
Brion McClanahan
March 14, 2017
Blog

The Timely Wisdom of Robert Lewis Dabney

Many of the destructive ideas and “isms” of our century in America had their roots in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a number of Southern writers and clergymen recognized their nature and warned against them. Among these men was Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) of Virginia, one of the South’s great Presbyterian thinkers.  He was the author of a number…
Karen Stokes
March 13, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 62

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 6-10, 2017. Topics: Southern culture, Southern religion, Southern language. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-62
Brion McClanahan
March 11, 2017
Blog

H.L. Mencken and the South

Mencken's "Sahara of the Bozart" is one of the most famous essays of 20th century American let­ters. Since its appearance in 1919, the essay has become widely regarded as Mencken's "slur on the South," as his acid-laced repudiation of Southern culture (indeed his assertion that the South had no culture). "The Sahara of the Bozart" is a bit more complex…
Guy Story Brown
March 10, 2017
Blog

Russell Kirk’s Southern Sensibilities: A Celebration

. .the South—alone among the civilized communities of the nine­teenth century—had hardihood sufficient for an appeal to arms against the iron new order which, a vague instinct whispered to Southerners, was inimical to the sort of humanity they knew." —Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind Certainly those south of the Mason-Dixon line expect little by way of understanding from non-natives, especially…
Alan Cornett
March 9, 2017
Blog

The Bonus Bill Veto and the Southern Tradition

On March 3, 1817, President James Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill of 1817 – a plan that called for the federal construction of various roads, bridges, and canals throughout the country. In a letter to Congress, the president explained his rationale. Out of all historical writings on constitutional interpretation, I believe it stands today as one of the most important.…
Dave Benner
March 8, 2017
Review Posts

God, Gallup, and the Episcopalians

The rejection of the old Prayer Book was something like the demolition of a historic building. For over four centuries it has been regarded as a monument of great prose. It has influenced the English language with memorable images and phrasing. Only the King James trans­lation of the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare have affected our language so…
Cleanth Brooks
March 7, 2017
Blog

Films from the South

Like it or not, movies are the main art form of our time, the story-telling medium that reaches the largest audience and captures the attention of us all, high and low, wise and foolish. It is also true that movies, like literature and architecture, reflect something of the soul of the particular nation that produces them. If so, we indeed…
Clyde Wilson
March 6, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 61

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 27- Mar 3, 2017 Topics: Southern culture, Southern literature, North over South, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-61
Brion McClanahan
March 4, 2017
Blog

The Sense of “Southernizing”

For as long as people have been writing about Southern character—and that's getting to be a pretty long time now—they've been inclined to mention Southern individualism. From Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Mar­quis de Chastellux to Charlie Daniels' "Long-haired Coun­try Boy," Southerners have been inclined to mention or exemplify this trait themselves. W.J. Cash has probably discussed it most thoroughly,…
John Shelton Reed
March 3, 2017
Blog

New England Against America

The Fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, we repeat, of genius, and that of no common order. Had he been even a Yankee, this genius would have been rendered immediately manifest to his countrymen, but unhappily (perhaps) he was a Southerner His book, therefore, depended entirely upon its own intrinsic value and resources, but with these it made its way…
Clyde Wilson
March 2, 2017
Review Posts

A Pilgrim’s Progress: Nathaniel Hawthorne Reconsidered

At first glance, Nathaniel Hawthorne seems the quintessential Yankee, one not at all likely to be claimed or adopted by Southerners. His great, great, great grandfather, William Hathorne, came to America with John Winthrop's company in 1630. William and his son John were Puritans; they are conspicuous in history books as great persecutors of Quakers and witches. The second Hathorne…
Michael Jordan
March 1, 2017
Blog

February Top Ten

The top ten articles for February 2017: 1. Attack on Robert E. Lee is an Assault on American History Itself by Allan Brownfield 2. Presidents Quiz by Clyde Wilson 3. Washington vs. Lincoln by Brion McClanahan 4. Why the South Fought by Sheldon Vanuaken 5. Union or Else by Karen Stokes 6. The Black Confederate and the Teddy Bear by…
Brion McClanahan
March 1, 2017
Blog

Era of the Sow’s Ear

A Review of My Silk Purse and Yours: The Publishing Scene and American Literary Art by George Garrett, University of Missouri Press, 1992 My Silk Purse is a collection of 36 of George Garrett's essays and re­views, largely on the American publishing and literary scene. The essays are rather tightly a unit, having an underlying philosophy which provides the measure…
James Everett Kibler
February 28, 2017
Blog

Let the Bear Flag Go

A large portion of California wants to secede. That’s a good thing. American conservatives should not only applaud the move, they should be doing everything possible to help them find the door. Image a world without Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Diane Feinstein, or Kamala Harris; where Democrats would not start the presidential election cycle with nearly one quarter of the…
Brion McClanahan
February 27, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 60

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 20-24, 2017 Topics: American War for Independence, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Secession, Nullification https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-60
Brion McClanahan
February 25, 2017
Blog

Southern Nullification and the Stamp Act

Every so often, a candid examination of current events makes famous incidents in American history altogether relevant again. In my mind no incident demonstrates this more than the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765. Few episodes in American history have so effectively proved how to confront and end the enactment of malignant and unconstitutional laws. In 1765, the standard American position…
Dave Benner
February 24, 2017
Review Posts

The American President: From Cincinnatus to Caesar

The great body of the nation has no real interest in party. — James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat, 1838 The American presidency offers many fascinating questions for historical exploration. And by historical exploration I do not mean the all-too-common form of pseudohistory that puts the presidential office at the center of our expe­rience as a people. That scenario in…
Clyde Wilson
February 23, 2017
Blog

Washington vs. Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln and George Washington stare silently at one another across the reflecting pool on the National Mall in Washington D.C., their paths inextricably linked by the historians who consider both to be the greatest presidents in American history. One is a monument, a testament to the man and his influence on American history, the other a memorial to the…
Brion McClanahan
February 22, 2017
Blog

Explaining Trump to the Brits

Of the four Christmas cards I received from the UK this past December, three of them had the same request:  explain the Trump phenomenon. This is my reply: America has had a bloodless revolution.  It remains to be seen what will really happen once the New People take over Washington.  No doubt much can (and maybe will) go wrong, but…
Joscelyn Dunlop
February 21, 2017
Blog

Finding the Swamp Fox

John Oller, The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution (Da Capo Press, 2016) Francis Marion is better remembered today than he used to be. There was a time, however, when, outside of his native South Carolina, hardly anyone without a good knowledge of the Southern theatre of the American Revolution would have heard of him. And there…
Jeff Rogers
February 20, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 59

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 13-17 2017. Topics: Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, John C. Calhoun, William T. Sherman, Political Correctness, Southern Sports https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-59
Brion McClanahan
February 19, 2017
Blog

Union or Else

In 1864, General William T. Sherman wrote to a fellow Union officer that the “false political doctrine that any and every people have a right to self-government” was the cause of the war that had been raging in America since 1861. The general was forgetting, or ignoring, that this very “doctrine” had led the American colonists to declare their independence…
Karen Stokes
February 17, 2017
Blog

The Burning of Atlanta

I don’t watch sports as I once did. Growing up down South some of my fondest memories were of the World Series, and the radio connection through Al Helfer, Red Barber or Mel Allen. I can still hear those voices. I know there are fewer and fewer of us who recall those moments, but those still around recognize my sentiments.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
February 16, 2017
Blog

Yale’s Folly

By H. Lee Cheek, Jr. and Sean Busick The effort to rename Calhoun College at Yale University has won the day.  After initially deciding not to rename Calhoun College last year, a special presidentially-appointed taskforce recommended the renaming, guided by set of new renaming criteria.  Unfortunately, Calhoun College is no more. Of course, colleges and universities have the option to…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
February 15, 2017
Blog

Attack on Robert E. Lee is an Assault on American History Itself

Early in February, the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia voted 3-2 to remove a bronze equestrian monument to Robert E. Lee that stands in a downtown park named in his honor. Vice Mayor Wes Belamy, the council's only African American member, led the effort to remove the statue. In the end, this vote may be largely symbolic. Those opposed to…
Allan Brownfield
February 14, 2017