Blog

Tar Heel’s Revenge

  An article by a Canadian historian in a recent issue of the North Carolina Historical Review lays to rest an old canard—the charge that during the War for Southern Independence North Carolina soldiers were notable for desertion. After an exhaustive study of all available records, Professor Richard Reid concluded that it simply is not so. North Carolina had more…
Clyde Wilson
January 4, 2017
Review Posts

J. Evetts Haley and the Mind of the South

American historians often write of a contrast between the South, a closed reactionary society, and the West, free and open and characteristically American. The dichotomy thus presented is a false one. The West is the South. That is, to the extent that the West is a theatre for heroic action, rather than just a place to start a new business,…
Guy Story Brown
January 3, 2017
Blog

See ya–Signed C.S.A.

A fellow by the name of Marcus Ruiz Evans was on Fox’s Tucker Carlson program recently. He offered his stance on secession vis-à-vis California’s consideration. His position stood apropos for the Golden Bears because the Supreme Court in its Texas vs White decision of 1869 had offered a loophole bearing on the people’s consent to secede. This bears, of course,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 2, 2017
Blog

The Year in Review

Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina told a friend in 1980 that, "I'm bound to confess that President Carter has instilled some foreboding in prospect to the outcome of the election....As I interpret his campaign sermon, President Carter said states' rights had become as obscene as any four-letter word, and Ronald Reagan had proved his unfitness for the presidency by telling…
Brion McClanahan
December 30, 2016
Blog

When the South Was America 1607-1861

Dr. Donald Livingston on "When the South Was America, 1607-1861" at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School on "The Southern Tradition and the Renewal of America," June 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW4M46JXXzE
Donald Livingston
December 27, 2016
Blog

Stereotyping the South Up North

The 1861-65 war destroyed the American South’s economic, legal, political and social systems, and afterward ruled the region with proconsuls dispatched from Washington. From this aftermath of war came the invented view of the desolated South – a section known in antebellum times for providing the majority of presidents and exemplary political thinkers — as an uncouth and backward region…
Bernard Thuersam
December 22, 2016
Review Posts

The Conversation Club of Charleston

This essay was presented at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School.   When I was young I used to read a lot of books about archaeology—the study of ancient lost worlds and civilizations. I never got to study archaeology, but I became an archivist, and I suppose my job is a little like field archaeology—except that I work indoors, in air-conditioned…
Karen Stokes
December 21, 2016
Blog

I Am So Old I Can Remember When….

—there was no television; and then when there was one station on two hours a day. —newspapers were locally owned, had lots of locally written literate material, and even had intelligent independent commentary on the editorial page. —a male American seen carrying an umbrella would have been ridiculed and probably beat up. —most people had not been up in an…
Clyde Wilson
December 20, 2016
Review Posts

Kaitlin of Christmas

The true story of a girl’s human love embracing the Christ-calling in each of us You arrived the first evening of Spring And never left, not once - You cooked and loved and overflowed With cookies and pizza and gingerbread The Seasons of every year We sometimes didn't know you and Sometimes wondered where you were even Though standing side…
Vito Mussomeli
December 19, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 52

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, 2016 in Review Topics: Conferences, Political Correctness, Southern Tradition, Donald Trump, Secession, Nullification https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-52
Brion McClanahan
December 17, 2016
Blog

Richard Taylor

General Richard Taylor was only son of President Zachary Taylor. His father and mother were natives of Virginia, and his grand father, also a Virginian, commanded a brigade of Virginia troops in the battle of Brandywine. The hereditary residence of the family was in Orange county, Virginia. President Taylor's eldest daughter married Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, the late President of the…
Dabney H. Maury
December 16, 2016
Blog

A Southern Saint

William Porcher DuBose of South Carolina is not well known today, but in the early 20th century, he achieved fame in America and abroad as an Episcopal theologian and author. He was born in Winnsboro, S.C., in 1836, and his father, a wealthy, well-educated planter, saw to it that his intellectually gifted son received a fine education. After attending schools…
Karen Stokes
December 15, 2016
Blog

Harvard Confederates

A review of Crimson Confederates: Harvard Men Who Fought for the South, By Helen P. Trimpi, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 380 pp. Someone, perhaps it was Thomas Carlyle, wrote that “History is the essence of innumerable biographies.” While that description does not cover all the duty of historianship, it is true in an important sense. History that becomes too…
Clyde Wilson
December 14, 2016
Review Posts

Death of Kin

“Family’s getting scarce,” Cousin Jeanette says As Uncle Wallace, her daddy, lies In hospital bed in Union Lashed with tubes that keep him fed. Wallace has outlived all siblings save one, Uncle Autry, “Aut,” father of two sons And one daughter; he fascinated us Younguns with missing thumb. Before them we’ve lost Uncles Russell, Doug, And Hub and Aint Bertie.…
Randall Ivey
December 13, 2016
Blog

Southern Culture: Food

Food is one of the more tangible and recognizable elements of Southern culture and one that is worth exploring. It serves as a bridge between the tables of the Old South and the New. It was once said that Virginians dined, Yankees just ate. This was due in large part to the old Cavalier practice of multi-course meals that could…
Brion McClanahan
December 13, 2016
Blog

They Came From the East

 It is generally thought that when the earliest Homo sapiens arrived on the scene in Africa and Asia less than a hundred-thousand years ago, all of North and South America was devoid of human habitation.  Most in the scientific community also contend that it was no more than twenty to thirty-thousand years ago, as the glaciers from the last Ice Age…
John Marquardt
December 9, 2016
Blog

Liberal and Conservative

The terms “liberal” and “conservative” were usable signs in a society in which the state was governed by politics. They are of little use the in 21st century United States because “politics” no longer plays any significant role in governance. In a dynamic and free republican society, citizens of similar ideas, values, and interests, and even inherited allegiances and inclinations,…
Clyde Wilson
December 8, 2016
Blog

Grant Never Faced Stonewall Jackson

Grant’s relentless and costly attacks on General Lee in Virginia earned him the title of “Butcher” among his own troops and was kept in command by Lincoln who was unbothered by the vast casualty numbers amassed by Grant. He quickly saw that following the Radicals after his master’s assassination was the proper path, and he was rewarded with election to…
Bernard Thuersam
December 7, 2016
Blog

“Rational People” Now Want Secession

 According to Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, secession is now being advocated by "rational people, not the fringe."This is an insult to all rational people.Rational people for generations have supported secession, including every scholar at the Abbeville Institute. But now that idiot Leftists in California, Oregon, and Washington are for it, somehow secession has become "rational."I think George Washington, Thomas…
Brion McClanahan
December 7, 2016
Review Posts

A Miscarriage of Justice

"Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway in 1775. Wise words from the wisest of America’s Founders, yet ninety years later the very government that Franklin helped create disregarded his wisdom, fell prey to those very passions, and trampled the constitutional rights of its own citizens in order to help quench what seemed an…
Ryan Walters
December 5, 2016
Blog

Censoring Jefferson to Safeguard Ignorance

This piece was originally published in the UVA Cavalier Daily.At the risk of offending 469 UVA faculty colleagues and students who protest President Sullivan’s practice of quoting UVA founder Thomas Jefferson “in light of Jefferson’s owning of slaves and other racist views” (“Professors ask Sullivan to stop quoting Jefferson,” Cavalier Daily, Nov. 13), I would submit another Jefferson quote: “This institution…
Robert F. Turner
December 2, 2016
Blog

Save Federalism, Save the Electoral College

Discussing immigration and sanctuary cities, Bill O'Reilly began speaking of the coming clash of two "sovereignties", the States individually and the national government, but never got to finish his sentence. Speaker Gingrich interrupted to say, "there is one sovereignty" in America and that's the national government. "The Civil War settled the sovereignty question." Unfortunately, the Speaker is correct. We need…
Vito Mussomeli
December 1, 2016
Blog

More of the Way We Are Now

Show me a nasty feminist and I will show you a little girl with a disappointing father.The Transportation Safety Administration confiscated my two-inch cigar cutter at the airport the other day. An acquaintance got on the plane with his pocket-knife. It’s all part of the vital global war on terror.Congress has just voted $8 billion for “improved port security.” Contractors…
Clyde Wilson
November 30, 2016
Blog

Home Free

One of my favorite authors, James Everett Kibler, has the consummate perception of localism; the single thing that I believe even Yankees have, though many act as if they don’t understand its basic concept. Fact is, many Southerners have lost its influence as many have left home to rally ‘round the cable-news actors and Washingtonian legerdemain handymen.I read Our Fathers’…
Paul H. Yarbrough
November 29, 2016
Blog

Trump Wins–Secession Back in Style

 Only days after Donald Trump’s victory there were already calls for secession arising from liberal controlled states of California and Oregon. While such calls may be an over-reaction, it does help to make a point that has been urged from the very beginning of our original Republic of Republics.Patrick Henry warned the people of Virginia about the dangers of entering…
James Ronald Kennedy
November 22, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 51

The week in review at the Abbeville Institute, November 14-18, 2016. Topics: 2016 presidential election, the Electoral College, Donald Trump, populism, secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-51
Brion McClanahan
November 19, 2016
Blog

Why the Electoral College?

For the second time in the last 16 years it seems that we have a new President who did not win the national popular vote, although there are those who contend that once all the votes are counted, Trump could very well come out on top. But whether that’s the case or not the discussions have begun, especially by Democrats,…
Ryan Walters
November 18, 2016
Blog

The Media’s Failed “Southern Strategy”

Source: Washington Post After its usual clichéd arguments weren't lessening Trump's momentum, the mainstream media tried to associate his supporters with its negative caricature of Southerners. The mainstream media has had success in this "Southern strategy" in the past, so it thought it could smear Donald Trump by associating him with its version of a maleovent South. But this time it…
Gail Jarvis
November 17, 2016
Review Posts

Up at the Forks of the Creek: In Search of American Populism

Editor's note: With the rise of "populism" around the world, we should revisit the history and origins of American populism. In "Populism" we are confronted with a term that raises so many different connotations in different minds that we well may wonder if the term is usable at all. It is not quite as bad, in this respect, as democracy—a…
Clyde Wilson
November 16, 2016
Blog

Cherry Picking James Madison

Legal “scholar” Akil Reed Amar made waves recently by arguing that a single comment from James Madison proves that the Electoral College had an intrinsic pro-slavery bent and was designed to perpetuate the institution. According to Amar, Madison suggested that Virginia’s stature would be hindered by a national popular vote for president, an idea proposed in the Philadelphia Convention by…
Dave Benner
November 15, 2016
Blog

Rebel Redux

Rumblings of open rebellion were in the air . . . a certain group within the state had felt for some time that their state’s wealth and resources were being unfairly used by the federal government to subsidize other areas of the nation.  Moreover, it was deemed that the social values of these other areas were in direct conflict with…
John Marquardt
November 14, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 50

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, November 7-11 2016 Topics: Secession, the Southern tradition, Southern history, William T. Sherman https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-50
Brion McClanahan
November 13, 2016
Blog

Why No Southern Nationalism?

In the Partisan's last issue, I raised the question of why the United States has not been troubled in this century by regional nationalisms of the sort that are currently disturbing most other industrialized countries. In particular, I asked, why has there not been a serious version of Southern nationalism? Answering my own question, I suggested that (1) the outcome…
John Shelton Reed
November 11, 2016
Blog

#Calexit

Donald Trump won and California wants to secede. Mises Institute President Jeff Deist tweeted during the election: "look for the Dems to discover the virtues of secession, nullification, and states rights." It didn't take long for leftists to realize the value of secession. Within hours of Trump's stunning victory (a victory yours truly predicted as early as February this year),…
Brion McClanahan
November 10, 2016
Blog

Sherman’s March

The History Channel’s recent presentation of "Sherman’s March" has been rightly drawing a lot of criticism from those of us who care about such things. In theory, historical events should become clearer as time passes and the controversies they involved grow less heated. But that is not the case in regard to the War to Prevent Southern Independence—because the myth…
Clyde Wilson
November 9, 2016
Review Posts

The Legacy of Francis Butler Simkins

A biographer defined Francis Butler Simkins as "one of the most interesting intellectual forces of his generation." As a scholar who questioned conventional thinking he "helped lay the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, when these momentous events of the 1950s and 1960s challenged the traditional order in the American South, Simkins discovered much...that he believed should be conserved…
Grady McWhiney
November 8, 2016
Blog

Supping with Norman Lear

Editor's note: Norman Lear's People for the American Way recently made a lot of noise about Donald Trump's "hate speech." Not much has changed in twenty years. This piece was originally published in in First Quarter, 1995 issue of Southern Partisan magazine. The Associated Press reports that 17 groups, all combatants in the "culture war," have come together and agreed…
Thomas Landess
November 7, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 49

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 31 - Nov 4 2016 Topics: Southern literature, William Faulkner, Abraham Lincoln, John C. Calhoun, Southern humor https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-49
Brion McClanahan
November 5, 2016
Blog

October Top Ten

Our top ten pieces for October 2016. If you have not read them yet, you should. If you have, read 'em again. 1. Why The War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 2. John C. Calhoun: Anti-Imperialist by Clyde Wilson 3. Ortho-Dixie: Orthodox Christianity and Southern Identity by Stephen Borthwick 4. It Probably Won't End Well by Paul Yarbrough…
Brion McClanahan
November 5, 2016
Blog

Lewis Grizzard: A Personal Remembrance

Much has been written about Lewis Grizzard by those who knew him better in his productive years. This is about Lewis when the world was young and some thoughts about the last mile. I first met him in 1964 when we were both wannabe writers, the sons of highly decorated World War II veterans who grew up in towns just…
Rick Cartledge
November 4, 2016
Blog

The Oregon Question

But I oppose war, not simply on the patriotic ground of a citizen looking to the freedom and prosperity of his own country, but on still broader grounds, as a friend of improvement, civilization and progress. Viewed in reference to them, at no period has it ever been so desirable to preserve the general peace which now blesses the world.…
John C. Calhoun
November 3, 2016
Blog

Jacobin Yankees

Martin Scorcese, in an interview, candidly described his new film, "Gangs of New York," as an "opera." He had been asked whether the events portrayed were true to history. I took his reply to mean that the events of the movie were selected and organized for dramatic emphasis and were not to be taken as literal factual record. And, indeed,…
Clyde Wilson
November 2, 2016
Blog

The Other William C. Falkner

The date was Tuesday, November 5th . . . the year was 1889 . . . federal and local elections were being held in twenty states throughout America.  In addition to the elections in Virginia that day, the newly launched steamer “New York” was setting out on her trial run from Norfolk.  Further south, after winning a seat in the…
John Marquardt
November 1, 2016
Review Posts

A Plinth of Night

Every night he watched them, this strange trio, the two men and the woman (that is what it looked like, a woman, that is what it appeared to be in the darkness), make their way by foot along the side of the highway and go over the railroad tracks and disappear to goodness knew where.  Then, maybe an hour or…
Randall Ivey
October 31, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 48

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, October 24-28, 2016 Topics: The Southern Tradition, the War for Southern Independence, Jack Hinson, Southern Literature, Abraham Lincoln, Southern Music, Charlie Daniels https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-48
Brion McClanahan
October 29, 2016
Blog

Charlie Daniels and the CDB

Charlie Daniels turns 80 today. He is still producing top quality music and is still an iconic symbol of the South and the Southern musical tradition. Most people are familiar with his hits--"The South's Gonna Do It Again," "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," and "Long Haired Country Boy"--but these tunes are a conspicuous though minimal part of a career that spans five…
Brion McClanahan
October 28, 2016
Blog

An Agrarian-Style Economic Self Defense Plan

This essay was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. It occurred to me today that one of the nice things about not having much money is that I don’t have to worry about loosing it in the stock market. But I realize full well that a falling stock market and an overall failing economy will take its toll on me…
Herrick Kimball
October 27, 2016
Blog

Lincoln Follies

A few of us now decrepit pre-Reagan “conservatives” can remember the brief flicker of hope of saving the republic that we had around 1980. Around about that time we were heartened by the founding of the Washington Times, which, it was thought, might become an effective foe of the mainstream media—despite its connection with the vile Moonie cult. Like everything…
Clyde Wilson
October 26, 2016
Review Posts

Monument Avenue: A Debate

O let his stone frown roll Applaud the silvery horse’s scuttle Forget where granite hooves dwell- It’s decreed, friends, ancient sorrows shan’t tell! Forget a fallen slandered father? What scary idle sings the dead man our children? Besiege the bewhiskered one blushing for us- Our grim story-teller too not like us? It’s amnesiacs down the obedient horsemen As memories into…
Mark Mantel
October 25, 2016
Blog

Jack Hinson’s One Man War

Jack Hinson’s One-Man War by Tom C. McKenney; ISBN: 978-1-58980-640-5, Pelican, January 27, 2009, 400 pages. Beheading his sons and impaling their heads on the gateposts of his home – these were the acts of the Yankee liberators of northern Tennessee that somehow upset the ungrateful Jack Hinson in the autumn of 1862. Jack Hinson was not a firebrand or…
Terry Hulsey
October 24, 2016
Blog

Podcast Episode 47

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 17-21, 2016. Topics: Republican Party, Southern Political Tradition, Jefferson, Conservatism, George W. Bush, Southern Religion https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-47
Brion McClanahan
October 23, 2016
Blog

Claude Kitchin

This piece was originally published at the North Carolina History Project and is reprinted by permission. Claude Kitchin represented North Carolina in the U.S. House during the early 20th century and served as Speaker of the House during the First World War. Though he was a Democrat, he is remembered for risking his political career to oppose President Woodrow Wilson…
Richard M. Gamble
October 21, 2016
Blog

Ortho Dixie: Orthodox Christianity and Southern Identity

Anyone who has grown up in the melting pot of immigrant religiosity of the industrial northeast has a very specific vision of Southern religiosity – evangelical, provincial, low-church, and rabidly anti-Catholic, among other things. Even growing up in a household sympathetic to the South, I had plenty of condescending ignorance about the way Southrons practiced their religion. Grab a Bible,…
Stephen Borthwick
October 20, 2016
Blog

Goodbye, George

An American president can wreck his country and blow up the world, but he cannot recreate either of them. ---Chilton Williamson A recent book on the George W. Bush presidency is called A Tragic Legacy. But tragedy suggests the fall of something high and noble. There never has been anything high and noble about Bush. His career began as low…
Clyde Wilson
October 19, 2016
Review Posts

Jeffersonian Conservatism

What is true conservatism?  That question, more than anything else, is the argument raging in the Republican Party today – one side fully represented in the party’s establishment wing, while the other resides in the hearts of true patriots at the grassroots, those who carry the American Revolution’s sacred fire of liberty. Yet most true conservatives may not realize that…
Ryan Walters
October 18, 2016
Blog

It Probably Won’t End Well

Kurt Schlichter wrote an interesting article on Town Hall recently entitled Liberal Attempts to Silence Dissenters Will Not End Well. I thoroughly enjoyed (and agreed with) it. There was a place for comments at the bottom and I toyed with the thought of inserting my comment which would have entailed or encapsulated the words of Lord Acton and/or Robert E.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 17, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 46

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 10-14, 2016 Topics: Independence, Secession, the Southern Tradition, American Politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-46
Brion McClanahan
October 15, 2016
Blog

Southern Humor

If I may strain a point and introduce among my "Southern Humorists" a man who evinced this vein solely through his conversation, I will make mention of the late Bishop Richard Wilmer, a native of Virginia, though Bishop of Alabama. His vein of wit and humor was fully equal to that of Sidney Smith, and I have frequently regretted that…
Mary Washington
October 14, 2016
Blog

Nullification vs. Secession?

On the 21st of this June, Americans celebrated the 228th anniversary of the nation’s Constitution, making it the world’s oldest existing governing body of laws. It was then that our founding fathers met in their effort to form a union more perfect than the one under which the thirteen sovereign states had been operating since 1781, the original Articles of…
John Marquardt
October 13, 2016
Blog

Review: Reinventing the South: Versions of a Literary Region, by Mark Royden Winchell

Chronicle’s most distinguished contributing editor, can be relied upon, always, to tell it like it is. He is doing just that when he writes in a  blurb to Reinventing the South:“these essays are splendidly written—mercifully free of contemporary critical jargon and easily accessible to the good and serious reader.”  And he amplifies this description of Professor Winchell's work with “high intelligence…
Clyde Wilson
October 12, 2016
Review Posts

A Farewell Performance of “The Twins”

Omitting minor points of difference, it may be said that “the difference between the old Democrat and Whig parties” was the same as that which separated the schools of Jefferson and Hamilton. The old Democratic party stood for Free Trade, for equal and exact justice to all without Special Privileges to any, for a strict construction of the Constitution, for…
Thomas E. Watson
October 11, 2016
Blog

Reestablishing the Family Economy: A Biblical Imperative Part 3

Reprinted from The Deliberate Agrarian. Part I and Part II Back in August of last year my oldest son was telling me about the Duck Dynasty television show. He said he would like to read Phil Robertson’s book, Happy, Happy, Happy, and suggested that I could get him a copy for Christmas. I said I might do that, and ordered…
Herrick Kimball
October 10, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 45

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, October 3-7 2016. Topics: Reconciliation, Republican Party, Political Correctness, Agrarianism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-45
Brion McClanahan
October 8, 2016
Blog

Arlington–A Milestone in History

By Dr. Simon Baruch From The New York Sun: Amid the silent heroes who rest in honored graves on beautiful Arlington's historic summit was enacted on November 12, 1912, a scene the grandeur of which will illumine the pages of history for all time, modest though it seem among contemporary events. On that day was laid the foundation of a…
Simon Baruch
October 7, 2016
Review Posts

Two Aristocracies

Editor's note: This piece was originally printed as an unsigned piece in DeBow's Review in 1866. The author had already recognized that the deal struck between Midwestern farmers and Northeastern merchants would in short order ruin agriculture and by default a more Jeffersonian economy in the "farm belt" of America. His call for Southern and Midwestern farmers to unite against…
Abbeville Institute
October 5, 2016
Blog

If This Be Treason….

The polls show that 33 per cent of the public still gives Dubya Bush a favourable approval rating.  Who could these people be? Some of them, no doubt, are well-meaning dupes in the early stages of Alzheimers. But there is a hard core of latent fascism out there. Though they deviously misuse the idea to slander opposition, leftists are not…
Clyde Wilson
October 4, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 44

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 26-30, 2016 Topics: The Republican Party, American Empire, Nationalism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-44
Brion McClanahan
October 3, 2016
Blog

Reestablishing the Family Economy: A Biblical Imperative Part 2

Reprinted from The Deliberate Agrarian. We are not called to be slaves. In My Previous Blog Post I wrote about the family economy and posted Returning To The Family Economy, a chapter from a book I wrote in 2005. My premise is, as the title of this essay states, that a family economy is the biblical imperative. An “imperative” is an essential or urgent…
Herrick Kimball
October 3, 2016
Blog

September Top Ten

The top ten for September 2016. 1. Decentralization for Humanity's Sake by Brion McClanahan 2. Secession Without Civil War by Philip Leigh 3. The South as an Independent Nation by William Cawthon 4. Rethinking the War for the 21st Century by Clyde Wilson 5. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by James Rutledge Roesch 6. Deep Down…
Brion McClanahan
October 1, 2016
Blog

Up, Maybe, From Liberalism

When I was active in College Democrats at my small state college, in the early 2000s, we didn’t quite fancy ourselves revolutionaries. Middle class origins were universal; collared shirts were frequent; raised fists were nonexistent. Many of our meetings and events were, like so much else in college, little more than excuses to drink beer. We didn’t aspire to bring…
R.M. Stangler
September 30, 2016
Blog

Union Leagues

The Union League is one of the most cryptic of Civil War and Reconstruction era topics even though it was a wellspring of tyranny. Together with the Loyal League identical twin, Southern chapters prompted the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to evolve from an obscure social club into a violent anti-Republican, and therefore anti-black, vigilante group. The first Union Leagues lodges were formed in…
Philip Leigh
September 29, 2016
Blog

Allegiances

William Faulkner of Mississippi was the greatest writer produced by the United States in the 20th century.  His craft was fiction, but like any great writer he was a better historian and  philosopher  than  most  who  wear  those  labels .  I  was  reminded  of a nonfiction piece of Faulkner’s recently when the hoopla erupted about some of the pampered and…
Clyde Wilson
September 28, 2016
Review Posts

The Stupid Empire

Reprinted from brionmcclanahan.com As the first leg of the American invasion force rolled through Iraq in 2003, Sergeant Brad Colbert of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps leaned out the window of his Humvee and urged the Iraqi people to “vote Republican.” This moment was captured by the embedded reporter, Evan Wright, and made famous in…
Brion McClanahan
September 27, 2016
Blog

No Confederacy, No Republicans, But a Pale Horse

The Republican party is no more republican then the Democratic party is democratic. Both are oligarchies promoting their namesakes as if those in charge (power) have the interests of the people firmly in their hearts (with their pocketbooks in their hands). They are both corrupt, though the Democrats have taken fraud and debasement to levels (down) not seen since Thaddeus…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 26, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 43

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Sept 19-23, 2016 Topics: Charles Carroll, James Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Statesmanship, Agrarianism, Decentralization, George Washington https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-43
Brion McClanahan
September 24, 2016
Blog

Washington’s Rye

Every student of history knows at least a brief sketch of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, but most people don't realize that Alexander Hamilton's excise tax on distilled spirits hit George Washington in the wallet as well, albeit years after the rebellion. He owned the largest distillery in Northern Virginia from 1797-1799 and shipped hundreds of gallons of moonshine to Alexandria during the…
Brion McClanahan
September 23, 2016
Review Posts

John C. Calhoun: Anti-Imperialist

The mission of the Abbeville Institute, to redeem what is worthwhile in the Southern tradition, is an embattled one. The dominant powers in American discourse today have succeeded in confining the South to a dark little corner of story labeled “Slavery and Treason.” This is already governing the public sphere of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Such an approach not only…
Clyde Wilson
September 22, 2016
Review Posts

James Jackson of Georgia: Unknown Patriot Founder

Published in honor of James Jackson's birthday, September 21. Delivered in Savannah, in February, 1806, by the Author of this work. IT is announced to us, that on the 19th day of the last month, departed this life, at the City of Washington, after a long and painful illness, Major General James Jackson, one of our Senators in the Congress…
Thomas U.P. Charlton
September 21, 2016
Blog

Reestablishing a Family Economy: A Biblical Imperative, Part I

This essay was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. In my previous blog post I mentioned Allan C. Carlson’s soon-to-be-published book, The Natural Family Where It Belongs: New Agrarian Essays, and Generations With Vision, a ministry that is working to bring about the reformation of strong Christian families by casting a vision for the establishment of vibrant family economies. The…
Herrick Kimball
September 20, 2016
Review Posts

The Last of the Romans

This essay was originally published at The Imaginative Conservative and is published here in honor of Carroll's birthday, September 19. The last of the American signers of the Declaration of Independence to pass from this world, Charles Carroll of Carroll was also one of the most formally educated of the American founders. Living seventeen years in France and England, Carroll…
Bradley J. Birzer
September 19, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 42

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 12-16, 2016. Topics: Secession, War for Southern Independence, Southern culture, Southern literature, Southern music. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-42
Brion McClanahan
September 17, 2016
Blog

Deep Down in the South

The late 1970s represented the heyday of popular Southern music. Southern rock and "outlaw country" dominated the airwaves. It was chic to say "ya'll," even in Boston, and with the election of Jimmy Carter, it really seemed the "South was gonna' do it again." It wouldn't last. During an interview at Capricorn Studios in Macon, GA one afternoon, Charlie Daniels spit into his cup and…
Brion McClanahan
September 16, 2016
Blog

A Faithful, Southern Fisherman

I was a faithful, Southern fisherman even in New England exile. "Oh, these small mouth bass are fine," I'd tell them, "but when I was a kid back home in Tennessee," blah, blah, blah. "Heck, we'd have won that War if our boys weren't off fishing all the time." I told tales of smiling Southern bass jumping into the boat…
Ted Roberts
September 15, 2016
Review Posts

Rethinking the War for the 21st Century

(13th Annual Gettysburg Banquet of the J.E.B. Stuart Camp, SCV, Philadelphia) ****How Should 21st Century Americans Think about the War for Southern Independence? **** We human beings are peculiar creatures, half angel and half animal, as someone has said. Alone among creatures we have a consciousness of ourselves, of our situation, and of our movement through time. We have language,…
Clyde Wilson
September 14, 2016
Review Posts

Not Quite a Poem

It is not quite a poem though it would be had it a master worthy of its impulse. It is but at the hand of an apprentice a bit of prose yet with a lilt which would transcend its mundane form and become a goodly song, born of a memory of Grandma Peters’ declaration that the fall was “the thin…
Robert M. Peters
September 13, 2016
Blog

The Great Divide–And Secession?

Of all the phenomena the 2016 election year has demonstrated, none is greater than the proof that this nation is deeply and probably irretrievably split into two political camps with very, very little in common. It is more than blue states and red states, it goes deeper: it is truth, jobs, security, and intelligence on one side and lies, coddling…
Kirkpatrick Sale
September 12, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 41

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 5-9, 2016 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition, Agrarians, Decentralization, Southern politics, Confederate Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-41
Brion McClanahan
September 11, 2016
Blog

Decentralization For Humanity’s Sake

The Roman historian Titus Livius once called Rome “the greatest nation in the world.”  He wrote those words in a time of moral and political decline, and Livy was hoping by outlining the greatness of the once proud republic, the Roman people would arrest the decline and embrace the principles that had made Rome great.  Livy argued that without understanding…
Brion McClanahan
September 9, 2016
Blog

Essential Reading: The Confederate Constitution of 1861

This review was first printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1995. Marshall DeRosa: The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry into American Constitutionalism (University of Missouri Press, 1991). Let there be no doubt, my friends. Marshall DeRosa addresses a serious and important issue. He claims the struggle for American independence was renewed and, in a sense, reached a peak during…
Robert Martin Schaefer
September 8, 2016
Blog

Call Me Simple with Strange Words for Strange Days

Call me simple... But I don’t understand: Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem. Why the government spends billions on education and the population gets dumber and dumber. Why the government spends billions on “intelligence” and defense but could not prevent 9/11. Why pointless filthy language has taken over in popular…
Clyde Wilson
September 7, 2016
Review Posts

Choosing Southernness: Southern With an Italian Accent

Late in August 1965, a young boy not yet eight-years-old stood with his father on the field at Gettysburg near the spot where Pickett's men formed in the woods. The boy's father was not a learned man and had an uncertain grasp of the events that took place on that ground more than a century before. "Which side were we…
Mark G. Malvasi
September 6, 2016
Blog

Freedom and More Freedom

Several years ago a friend of mine, head of the Education Department at a Southern university, came reeling back from a visit to New York City schools, eyes glazed. It seems that she had seen two things while on her trip that still haunted her memory. First she discovered teachers up there who were actually conducting their classes from cages…
Thomas Landess
September 5, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 40

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 29- Sep 2, 2016. Topics: Secession, Slavery, Southern Politics, the War for Southern Independence https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-40
Brion McClanahan
September 3, 2016
Blog

Secession Without Civil War

Since most modern historians agree that the South seceded to protect slavery they often conclude that the Civil War was "all about" slavery. The inference, however, overlooks the possibility that the Southern states could have been allowed to depart in peace. Within the lifetimes of most readers, for example, the Soviet Union peacefully disintegrated into its constituent countries as did…
Philip Leigh
September 2, 2016
Review Posts

The South as an Independent Nation

This article was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine in 1997. "Being a Southerner is a spiritual condition, like being a Catholic or Jew." So wrote Richard Weaver in his essay "The South and the American Union" in The Lasting South (1957). The South's experience during the war for its independence, he added, only confirmed this separateness of spirit and…
William Cawthon
September 1, 2016
Blog

August Top Ten

The top ten articles for August 2016: 1. Debunking the Debunking: Gary Ross and His "Myths of the Civil War" by Ryan Walters 2. American Culture: Massachusetts or Virginia by Clyde Wilson 3. NASCAR's Slow Ride to Nowhere by Mike Tuggle 4. Was the Civil War About Slavery? by Dave Benner 5. Reflections of a Ghost: An Agrarian View After…
Brion McClanahan
September 1, 2016
Blog

More Deja Vu, circa the George W. Bush Years

Twenty-three Republican Senators joined a large majority of Democrats to vote for the Bush bill to amnesty millions of present and future illegal aliens. The bill passed the Senate 62–36. The Republican Senators supporting amnesty and future immigration increases were from Maine (2), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio (2), Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona,…
Clyde Wilson
August 31, 2016
Review Posts

Who Won the Webster-Hayne Debate of 1830?

The dominant historical opinion of the famous debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Young Hayne of South Carolina which took place in the United States Senate in 1830 has long been that Webster defeated Hayne both as an orator and a statesman. According to the legend, Webster managed in the course of the debate to isolate the South,…
H. A. Scott Trask
August 30, 2016
Blog

Slavery in Pennsylvania

Indentured servitude is one of the more neglected elements of American labor history. Most historians gloss over the subject in route to African slavery. This is largely due to the impact of long standing issues of race in America, but Southerners understood Northern complicity in the institution of African slavery and often pointed to Northern hypocrisy in regard to the…
Brion McClanahan
August 29, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 39

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 22-26, 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern Tradition, I'll Take My Stand, Federalism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-39
Brion McClanahan
August 28, 2016
Blog

From Monument to Cenotaph

In 1896 at the Reunion of United Confederate Veterans in New Orleans, Gen. Steven Dill Lee, the Commander of organization delivered his famous ‘charge’ speech where he laid out the goals of the UDC and the SCV, and also the goals for the surviving veterans. The first item on his list was the erection of public monuments to the Confederate…
Lunelle McCallister
August 26, 2016
Blog

South of New York with Charley and Me

Southerners (and there are many who still proudly spell that with a capital “S” even if positioned in the middle of a sentence; we don’t simply think we are that because we live farther south of Canada than the masses in New York et al.) remain steadfast when in a fight, sometimes to the point of leading, like the great…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 25, 2016
Blog

Filmlog: Three for the Resistance

World War II has provided a vast amount of material for cinema in Europe, America, and Japan. Some if this is superb. Much of it is hokey entertainment and propaganda. We perhaps did not realise how hokey until the horrors of D-Day were portrayed in Saving Private Ryan. That useful dose of realism deserves to be set off against Stephen…
Clyde Wilson
August 24, 2016
Review Posts

Reflections of a Ghost: An Agrarian View After Fifty Years

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
August 23, 2016
Blog

Confederate Memorial Hall and Jack Daniels

In 1935 the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) constructed Confederate Memorial Hall as a residence for girls at Nashville's Peabody College. Originally residents who were descendants of Confederate veterans and agreed to become teachers were granted free room and board. The school and dormitory were acquired by Vanderbilt University in 1979. Earlier this month university chancellor, Nicholas Zeppos, announced…
Philip Leigh
August 22, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 38

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Aug. 15-19, 2016. Topics: Political correctness, NASCAR, Southern culture, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-38
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2016
Blog

NASCAR’s Slow Ride to Nowhere

The thrill is gone, and the numbers prove it. After decades of phenomenal growth, NASCAR’s popularity has hit the wall. At Bristol Motor Speedway a couple of years ago, Jeff Gordon told reporters he couldn’t believe the rows of empty seats. Where were the cheering fans who normally packed the stands and infield? Attendance is down at NASCAR races, and no…
Mike C. Tuggle
August 19, 2016
Blog

The Art of Ugliness, Part I

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published at The Fleming Foundation. This piece appeared  in the second issue (1980) of the Southern Partisan, which Clyde Wilson and I (along with John Shelton Reed, Sam Francis, and Chris Kopff) had created.  I have corrected a number of errors--including the quotation from the film version of Gone with the Wind--made several small  verbal…
Thomas Fleming
August 18, 2016
Blog

Your Future as a Terrorist

The Homeland Security apparatus has garnered quite a bit of attention lately for a paper that identified anti-abortionists, anti-immigrationists, and war veterans as terrorist suspects. (I thought “profiling” was forbidden, but in that matter, as so often these days, it would seem that some people are more equal than others.) Some Republican politicians are playing at outrage and demanding an…
Clyde Wilson
August 17, 2016
Review Posts

Truth in the Pit of Political Correctness

Last week’s vote (June 2016) to repudiate the Battle Flag by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) caught me by surprise and left me in shock. I have long considered our denomination to be socially conservative, prudent, and wise to stay out of issues that do not directly impact the mission of our church. I am a deacon but more importantly on…
Ben Thompson
August 16, 2016
Blog

David Duke Does Not Represent Conservative Louisiana

The perennial champion of racial division and hatred has, unfortunately, returned to Louisiana politics. Duke’s return will be a boon to his race-hustling counterparts on the left. The likes of Al Sharpton and the Southern Poverty Law Center are no doubt already preparing their mailing list to solicit millions of dollars to fight racism in Dixie. And Duke, one can…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 15, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 37

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 8-12, 2016. Topics: Gary Ross, Myths of the "Civil War," Secession, the New South, Reconstruction, Southern Economy, Thomas Jefferson, the First Amendment https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-37
Brion McClanahan
August 13, 2016
Blog

Jefferson’s True Wall of Separation

The United States Constitution does not contain the words “separation of church and state,” nor does it require the general government to purge all religious influence from public institutions. To the contrary of modern conceptions, the document does not require that elected officials abstain from making decisions based on religious proclivities, nor does it call for government to intervene to…
Dave Benner
August 12, 2016
Blog

The Vanishing Republic of Our Fathers

The New South is one of the more misunderstood periods in American history. The contemporary narrative generally describes the period and its leaders as dense political hacks riding the coattails of Northern business elites. They were "wannabe" statesmen whose political ideology was singularly tied to race. This perspective is clouded by present conditions and our own short-sighted infatuation with racial politics. Historians…
Brion McClanahan
August 11, 2016
Review Posts

A Southern Political Economy vs. American State Capitalism

General Lee was a soldier and leader of men, not a politician. Although several of his decisions as soldier had an important political impact in American history, he seldom discussed such matters. An exception is his correspondence with the British historian Acton shortly after the war. Acton had spent a long career studying how constitutional liberty had gradually developed as…
Clyde Wilson
August 10, 2016
Blog

Rats and Republicans

Never knew for sure where the expression came from that my grandmother voiced to my brother and me from time to time, “You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” but whether or not it was original with her, that probably wasn’t vital to her concern; only the intent to make a point for her grandsons. I’d like…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 9, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 36

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 1-5, 2016 Topics: War for Southern Independence, Southern Culture, Abraham Lincoln, United States Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-36
Brion McClanahan
August 6, 2016
Blog

The Inside War

Editor's Note: This article was originally published at The Southern Literary Review and is an interview with author Robert J. Ernst by Allen Mendenhall covering Ernst's book, The Inside War. APM: Thanks for taking the time to sit down for this interview, Bob. Your novel The Inside War is about an Appalachian mountain family during the Civil War. How long…
Allen Mendenhall
August 5, 2016
Blog

The Compact Fact

Mainstream historians are both an incestuous and snarky bunch. They latch on to trends--fads really--and pull those trends like mules lugging a heavy cart to market (where they hope to sell books to their tens of fans). In time, the mules give out, but unlike the mule, these historians never realize they are whipped.  They hire more mules like them…
Brion McClanahan
August 4, 2016
Review Posts

American Culture: Massachusetts or Virginia

Delivered at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. A Frenchman has observed that the qualities of a culture may be identified by two characteristics--- its manners and its cuisine. If that is so, then we can safely say that the United States, except for the South, has no culture at all. Aside from the South the only American contributions to…
Clyde Wilson
August 3, 2016
Blog

The Unionist Davis vs. The Radical Lincoln

Jefferson Davis was the conservative who tried vainly to save the Union in the face of Republican attempts to pit North against South, and force the South to seek a more perfect union without the North. The greatest ironies of that era was Rhode Island being the slave trading center of North America by 1750; Yankee inventor Eli Whitney making…
Bernard Thuersam
August 2, 2016
Review Posts

The Tariff and Other Tales from Alabama

My friends, there is one issue before you, and to all sensible men but one issue, and but two sides to that issue. The slavery question is but one of the symbols of that issue; the commercial question is but one of the symbols of that issue; the Union question is but one of those symbols; the only issue before…
James Rutledge Roesch
August 1, 2016
Blog

July Top Ten

The Top Ten for July 2016. Read 'em again. 1. The Free State of Jones: History or Hollywood? by Ryan Walters 2. Understanding the Battle Hymn of the Republic by Howard Ray White 3. Why Vicksburg Canceled the Fourth of July – For a Generation by Karen Stokes 4. Rethinking the Declaration of Independence by Brion McClanahan 5. Nathan Bedford…
Brion McClanahan
August 1, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 35

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 11-15 and July 25-29, 2016 Topics: The Free State of Jones, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Southern politics, agrarianism, secession, slavery https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-35
Brion McClanahan
July 31, 2016
Blog

Booker Washington’s Bucket

Post Civil War racial adjustment was a problem Southerner whites didn’t want to face and Northerner whites declined to share. When the war started 40% of the Confederacy’s population was black whereas it was only 1% in the free Northern states. Even a century later blacks represented only 2% of the population of Massachusetts, which was the birthplace of abolitionism.…
Philip Leigh
July 29, 2016
Blog

New England Bound

New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren; ISBN: 978-0871406729, W.W.Norton, June 7, 2016, 368 pages. Squanto the Indian came out of the woods in the spring of 1621, and taught the Pilgrims how to raise the crops of the New World, thereby saving their lives. What is wrong with this picture? The story is true,…
Terry Hulsey
July 28, 2016
Blog

Shakespeare and the Earl of Oxford

Perceptive and insightful people have known through the centuries that William Shakespeare could not possibly have written the plays and sonnets that had been attributed to him, beginning with certain suspicious posthumous folios. That uneducated hayseed from the North Country about whom very little is known! And, for Heaven's sake, an actor to boot! Impossible! There must be a mystery…
Clyde Wilson
July 27, 2016
Review Posts

Are Southerners Different?

This essay appeared in the 1984 winter issue of Southern Partisan magazine. In the best of all possible worlds, President Reagan, George Will, William Buckley and I—conservatives all—or so it would appear—should be able to sit down over glasses of sour mash and find ourselves in such sweet agreement on the range of problems facing the world and the humankind…
John William Corrington
July 26, 2016
Blog

Do Motives Matter?

A friend of mine is translating a book on Lincoln written by Karl Marx. Her first installment was a refutation by Marx of the European press’s contention that the assault by the North on the South was not about slavery, but about economic and political power. Of course, one cannot divorce the issue of slavery from either consideration but Marx…
Valerie Protopapas
July 25, 2016
Blog

Southern Baptists and the Flag

It appears that the abstractions of the Enlightenment have over the last five-hundred years been read into Scripture and into the theologies of most of the Christian confessions as eisegesis and read back out as exegesis, thereby becoming the metaphysical touchstone of modern and post-modern Christianity. This certainly seems to be the case of the most recent statements by Pope…
Robert M. Peters
July 15, 2016
Blog

Culture War

Transcend yourself and join in the universal struggle to bring about the self-transcendence of all men! –Karl Marx Culture, as the term is used in America in our times, covers a vast territory with ill-defined frontiers. There is primitive culture (flint spearheads, animal and human sacrifice). There is high culture (Shakespeare, Michelangelo). There is, or used to be, folk culture…
Clyde Wilson
July 14, 2016
Blog

Nathan Bedford Forrest

This essay was published as a new introduction for Lytle's Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company and is published here in honor of Forrest's birthday, July 13. This is a young man's book. To have anything more to say about a book you did fifty odd years ago brings you hard up against the matter of time. The young author…
Andrew Nelson Lytle
July 13, 2016
Review Posts

The Free State of Jones: History or Hollywood?

Hollywood has struck again with another “Civil War” movie that, unsurprisingly as it may seem, does not do justice to the real Southland or the Confederacy.  The latest episode is an epic by director Gary Ross, “Free State of Jones,” starring Matthew McConaughey as the film’s hero, Newt Knight. “Free State of Jones” tells the story of a Knight-led rebellion…
Ryan Walters
July 12, 2016
Blog

The Louisiana “Hippeaux”

In America, there are a lot of places you can go that will make you feel like you’re in a foreign country.  Certain areas of Miami, Phoenix, or San Francisco immediately come to mind, and you might feel like you need a passport to go there.  However, I firmly believe that when I travel to some parts of Louisiana, I…
Tom Daniel
July 11, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 34

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 4-8, 2016. Topics: American War for Independence, Transcendentalism, War for Southern Independence, Thomas Jefferson, United States Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-34
Brion McClanahan
July 9, 2016
Blog

Musings of a Southern Antifederalist on the Presidential Election

The one consolation of the Antifederalist persuasion is telling everyone you meet “I told you so.”  Granted, this does not go down well in most circles, be they progressive, socialist, conservative, neo-conservative, constitutionalist, et al.  At best, some of these folk will agree that the Antifederalists were correct about the consolidation of power in the federal government, the excesses of…
John Devanny
July 8, 2016
Blog

A Book for a Southerner’s Bookshelf

Recently a commencement speaker exhorted graduating students to "be on the right side of history." The commencement speaker used the phrase 'be on the right side of history' to mean actively supporting social trends that are currently in fashion. But 'the right side of history' also implies that there are right and wrong sides of history. Indeed there are different…
Gail Jarvis
July 7, 2016
Blog

Through European Eyes

This essay was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine, 1985. Historians have long misinterpreted the responses of Europeans to the events of the American War Between the States. One of the earli­est cases in point was Karl Marx, who considered himself a scientific historian and a knowledgeable commentator on the great American Crisis. Writing on December 12, 1862, about the…
Paul Gottfried
July 6, 2016
Review Posts

Transcendentalism: The New England Heresy

In 1855 Putnam's Monthly carried an article by the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson describing an African village. The vil­lagers, according to Higginson, were "active, commercial geniuses," who enjoyed "a remarkable language, and an even more remarkable recollection of proverbs." In fact, they resembled New Englanders. They were mechanically inventive and commercially fruitful. Their advanced culture was described by Higginson in…
Otto Scott
July 5, 2016
Blog

American Counter-Revolution

A Review of The American Counter Revolution: A Retreat From Liberty, 1783-1800, by Larry E. Tise, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1999, 634 pages. A good historian ought to make it clear where he is coming from rather than assume an impossible Olympian objectivity. Then, if he has handled his evidence honestly, he has fulfilled the demands of his craft—whether or…
Clyde Wilson
July 4, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 33

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 27 - July 1, 2016. Topics: Brexit, Nullification, Southern Culture, Boxing https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-33
Brion McClanahan
July 2, 2016
Blog

The South: Land of Heavyweight Boxing Champions

The South in the twentieth century has embraced any number of northern athletic imports and made them her own. Arguably, the South has produced the premier basketball player in Michael Jordan, the top baseball player in Ty Cobb, and the greatest football player in Jim Brown. Boxing, however, is not a sport that one associates with Southern bred champions. The…
John Devanny
July 1, 2016
Blog

June Top 10

The ten best for June 2016.  Read 'em again. 1. Oh Say Can You See...Another One Bites the Dust by David McCallister 2. How (and Why) to Dress Like a (Southern) Conservative, Part I by Dan E. Phillips 3. Who Will Be Our Monuments Men? by Lunelle McCallister 4. The Theology of Secession by M.E. Bradford 5. Jefferson Davis: A…
Brion McClanahan
July 1, 2016
Review Posts

Instant Grits and Plastic Wrapped Crackers: Southern Culture and Regional Development

This essay was originally published in Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The American South: Portrait of a Culture, 1979, 27-37. In 1928, an unusually far-sighted southerner named Broadus Mitchell pondered the implications of the South's impending modernization, wondering "whether these great industrial developments will banish the personality of the South ... or whether the old spirit will actuate the new performance." "Will…
John Shelton Reed
June 30, 2016
Blog

Q&A on Nullification and Interposition

Q: What can I read that can give me a serious overview of the true impact of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 on South Carolina? A: I think the question of the impact of the protective tariff on South Carolina is the wrong question to ask. It is something of a diversionary tactic, for reasons I will try to…
Clyde Wilson
June 29, 2016
Blog

Brexit: Dividing the Indivisible

REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth In his first Inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln explained his moral justification for invading the Southern States. Plainly, he said, “the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.” He reasoned that if a State can lawfully secede from the Union, so can a part of that part and a part of that part, on down to one…
Donald Livingston
June 28, 2016
Blog

The Brits Believe in Secession After All

As I spend some wonderful time with family in my home state of Alaska, I watched with intrigue as the UK appears to have decided to exit from the European Union. I am an Alaskan by birth and a U.S. citizen, and now reside in Tennessee. So, my perspective or stake in the UK’s decision is not rooted in how…
Bradley G. Green
June 27, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 32

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 20-24, 2016 Topics: Nullification, United States Constitution, Religion, Political Correctness, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-32
Brion McClanahan
June 25, 2016
Blog

Wikipedia Book Burning

Editor's note: Mr. Leigh has published a new book titled The Confederacy at Flood Tide.  A sample chapter is available here. I once attempted to correct a Wikipedia article by citing Robert Selph Henry’s 1938 The Story of Reconstruction. The change was automatically rejected by software explaining the book was an unacceptable source. Next, I changed the article’s mistake by…
Philip Leigh
June 24, 2016
Blog

More Secession Theology: Thomas Smyth of Charleston

Lately there has been mention of Dr. Thomas Smyth in two Abbeville Institute blog and review posts, namely, “The Theology of Secession” by M. E. Bradford, and “What Lincoln's Election Meant to the South” by Bradley J. Birzer. Having written about this Charleston clergyman in an upcoming book, I thought our readers might be interested in learning a little more…
Karen Stokes
June 23, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXVI

In fact, capitalists have no objection to federal meddling.  They just want it to be such meddling as puts money in their pockets. Nothing more.  Ever.--Fred Reed The market is wonderful, but it is not everything.--Clyde Wilson Order is the first need of the soul.--Russell Kirk I am for peace:  but when I speak, they are for war.--Psalms 120:7 The…
Clyde Wilson
June 22, 2016
Review Posts

Is Pluralism Enough?

Fr John Strickland, reflecting on the Renaissance of Western Europe, wrote, . . . For Burckhardt, the Renaissance (for the first time a distinct period in history) became the moment of cultural liberation, the breakthrough into the modern age of humanism, individualism, and secularism.  . . . At the heart of this breakthrough was the Renaissance’s reflection on the human…
Walt Garlington
June 21, 2016
Blog

Nullification to Save the Constitution

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from an 1833 4th of July Oration delivered by Henry L. Pinckney and is available in its entirety at The James McClellan Library.  This feature of our website contains over 100 primary documents on State's Rights and federalism compiled by one of the founding members of the Abbeville Institute. ....But why is it that…
Henry Laurens Pinckney
June 20, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 31

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 13-17, 2016 Topics: Southern Religion, Calvin Coolidge, Political Correctness, Thomas Jefferson, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-31
Brion McClanahan
June 18, 2016
Review Posts

My Son, Get Wisdom, Get Understanding

Address delivered to the graduates of the South Carolina College, December 1821. Gentlemen, YOU are now about to quit the precincts of the College, and to enter upon the commerce of the world. Your education is supposed to be finished; in reality it is about to commence. The roads that lead to knowledge useful and ornamental, have been pointed out…
Thomas Cooper
June 17, 2016
Blog

What Lincoln’s Election Meant to South Carolina

This essay was originally published at TheImagninativeConservative.org and is republished here by permission. The finest of gentlemen founded South Carolina, informants assured the famous London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, upon his arrival in Charleston in April, 1861. “It was established not by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the North the standard of Torquemada, and breathed…
Bradley J. Birzer
June 16, 2016
Blog

Why They Hate Jefferson

A Review of The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800, by Conor Cruise O'Brien, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 367 pages. What a marathon of Jefferson-bashing we have had in the last few years. This book by the "global statesman" O'Brien follows several other critical biographies, all of which have been highlighted in the fashionable reviews.…
Clyde Wilson
June 15, 2016
Review Posts

The Theology of Secession

At the very deepest level there is a central truth about the War Between the States which is now, even by the best of Southerners, almost never mentioned, although their forefathers had once spoken of its importance continuously. Indeed, they put emphasis upon it long after the War was over. From 1850 until 1912, this explanatory assumption was a commonplace…
M.E. Bradford
June 14, 2016
Blog

Silent Cal and the War

Calvin Coolidge is one of the more maligned presidents in American history. I rank him as one of the best in my 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America.  Coolidge should be commended for his executive restraint and homespun honesty, two character traits that have escaped the modern American executive.  He was a throwback to the nineteenth century when the president…
Brion McClanahan
June 13, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 30

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 6-10, 2016 Topics: Political Correctness, Nullification, Southern culture, Southern dress https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-30
Brion McClanahan
June 11, 2016
Blog

Who Will Be Our Monuments Men?

The 2014 movie “Monuments Men” exposed a little known aspect of the horrors of Hitler’s Aryan supremacist totalitarian regime – the looting of priceless historical treasures and cultural purge of peoples he viewed as inferior. In the years leading up to American involvement in WWII, art historians around the world were in an uproar, concerned about systematic theft and destruction…
Lunelle McCallister
June 10, 2016
Blog

How (and Why) to Dress Like a (Southern) Conservative, Part I

I probably should not admit this due to certain… ummm… shall we say… stereotypes, but since I was a young adult, I have had a particular interest in fashion. For the record, I am married with six children. Probably reflecting my underlying conservative disposition, however, I was always more concerned with the “rules” of fashion, such as they were in…
Dan E. Phillips
June 9, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXV

These Haters seem to want to destroy anything and anyone they can tie to slavery. . . . Let’s bulldoze the Washington monument and the Jefferson Memorial.--Henry Eversole I just don’t understand why people would choose to go the Washington & Lee and then complain about Lee.--Jason Moyer It is a flaw of the deeply self-interested men of the world…
Clyde Wilson
June 8, 2016
Blog

The South Carolina Doctrine

Sir, South Carolina has not gone one step further than Mr. Jefferson himself was disposed to go in relation to the present subject of our present complaints; not a step further than the statesmen from New England were disposed to go under similar circumstances; no further than the senator from Massachusetts himself once considered as within "the limits of a…
Robert Y. Hayne
June 7, 2016
Blog

Oh Say Can You See…Another One Bites the Dust….

Will the beloved author of our national anthem, Francis Scott Key, soon join Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, and Robert E. Lee as a demonized whipping-boy of the culture-war? Once the "Resolution of Hate" only inspired Confederophobes, but has now been expanded to an Anti-American icon industry, sweeping all in its path of cultural destruction. They started…
David McCallister
June 6, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 29

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 30-June 3, 2016 Topics: Patrick Henry, Political Correctness, Secession, the United States Constitution, John Randolph of Roanoke, Jefferson Davis https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-29
Brion McClanahan
June 4, 2016
Review Posts

Jefferson Davis: A Judicial Estimate

This piece is published in honor of Davis's birthday, June 3. With unaffected distrust of my ability to meet the demands of such a great hour as this, I rejoice to be again on the beautiful campus of my alma mater, and have the opportunity of bringing a message to the young men of my country. And as this commencement…
Charles Betts Galloway
June 3, 2016
Review Posts

A Character Sketch: John Randolph of Roanoke

Editor's Note: This piece is, at times, harsh in its assessment of Randolph's character and motives, but the anecdotes and language make it a fun read.  Randolph was eccentric, perhaps the greatest orator Virginia ever produced.  That is saying much.  He was a one man army against unconstitutional federal overreach, and as the author, Frederick William Thomas, notes spent much…
Frederick William Thomas
June 2, 2016
Blog

May Top Ten

Our top ten articles for May.  Read 'em again. 1. Hampton Roads: A Twist in the Lincoln Myth by Dave Benner 2. Erasing Southern History, Step by Step by Alphonse-Louis Vinh 3. Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic by Paul C. Graham 4. "Don't Leave Me Here to Bleed to Death!" by Karen Stokes 5. Is "White Supremacy" an Exclusively "Southern" Ideology?…
Brion McClanahan
June 2, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXIV

A pioneer creates a new country from foresight, courage, and hard work.  An immigrant takes advantage of what the pioneer has created.   I suppose now we really are “a nation of immigrants.”--Clyde Wilson The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists . . . .--Alexis de…
Clyde Wilson
June 1, 2016
Blog

Long Live the Flags of Dixie!

This piece was originally printed at AntoniusAquinas.com. On May 19, the House of Reprehensibles passed a proposal that would essentially ban the display of Confederate flags from national cemeteries.  The amendment was added to a Veteran Affairs spending bill. Not surprisingly, House Speaker Paul Ryan allowed the measure to be voted upon in hopes of not disrupting the appropriations process. …
Antonius Aquinas
May 31, 2016
Review Posts

The Battle in Virginia Over the Constitution

This essay is reprinted in honor of Patrick Henry's birthday, May 29, from Moses Coit Tyler's Patrick Henry. The great convention at Philadelphia, after a session of four months, came to the end of its noble labors on the 17th of September, 1787. Washington, who had been not merely its presiding officer but its presiding genius, then hastened back to…
Moses Coit Tyler
May 30, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 28

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 23-27, 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, agrariansim, the Southern tradition, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-28
Brion McClanahan
May 28, 2016
Review Posts

Our American Cultural Revolution

Delivered April 16, 2016 as The 2016 Murray N. Rothbard Memorial Lecture at the Mises Institute, Auburn, AL. As the person who has been asked to deliver this year’s Murray N. Rothbard address, it seems appropriate to relate my remarks to the person being honored. Although the observations that follow may not have come directly from Murray, he and my…
Paul Gottfried
May 27, 2016
Blog

Southern Reparations Have Already Been Paid

As the Sesquicentennial of Reconstruction progresses and the popular press debates whether slavery merits reparations, few students of the era realize that Southerners have already paid a form of reparations; if not for slavery, then as a penalty for the war. As the table below illustrates, for at least twenty-five years after the war three items represented more than half…
Philip Leigh
May 26, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXIII

I am not a Catholic, but I just have to admire all of this Pope’s meticulously photographed and internationally broadcast acts of humility.--Conservative Pundit Do you think the Civil Rights Act would have passed in 1964 if most Northerners had thought that it would apply to them and not just to the South?--Clyde Wilson The Massachusetts Kennedys are better than…
Clyde Wilson
May 25, 2016
Review Posts

Agrarianism and Cultural Renewal

This essay was originally printed at The Imaginative Conservative. Among the contributions to I’ll Take My Stand, Allen Tate’s “Remarks on the Southern Religion” is usually interpreted as the most acerbic, immoderate, and unusual essay in the collection. All too often the essay is read as an apologia for violence or an eccentric defense of tradition. In fact, Tate–like his…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
May 24, 2016
Blog

Southern Family

What makes the South, the South?  Most modern Americans would say football and grits sprinkled with a bit of country music and NASCAR. These clichés hold true for many Southerners today, but what made the South before the commercialization of the American economy was a commitment to land, family, and God.  It was both a temporal and a spiritual understanding…
Brion McClanahan
May 23, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 27

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 16-20, 2016. Topics: Abraham Lincoln, War for Southern Independence, Political Correctness, Progressivism, Southern History, Southern Literature, Southern Culture, the United States Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-27
Brion McClanahan
May 21, 2016
Blog

Betrayed by Yankees Perverting the Constitution

Originally published at Circa1865.com. The presidential messages of Jefferson Davis were filled with assertions of the South’s legal right to secede and form a more perfect union, and determine its own form of government to the letter of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Not losing sight of this, even in early 1865, one Confederate congressman stated that “This is a war…
Bernard Thuersam
May 20, 2016
Blog

Thomas Jefferson vs. Paul Krugman, Alan Greenspan, et. al.

This post was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. Paul Krugman is a popular guy these days. The American economist was awarded a Nobel prize in Economics this year. In a recent interview I heard Krugman say that no one person is responsible for America’s current financial crisis. But, he said former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan certainly deserves a…
Herrick Kimball
May 19, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXII

I believe that the American South, the last bastion of Christianity in the West, will have a special role in the final chapter of history.--Anne Wilson Smith I just may take a tomahawk to the next person who tells me this is a nation of immigrants.  I want them to have the authentic experience. --Alice Teller Fact is, we NEED immigrants…
Clyde Wilson
May 18, 2016
Review Posts

Southern Voices

Southern Voices: Poems by William H. Holcombe, M. D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1872. We hail this volume as a beautiful presage of the future of the South in the department of poetry In saying that it is worthy of the author, who, for several years past, has been a brilliant star in the literary firmament of the…
Albert Taylor Bledsoe
May 17, 2016
Blog

Hampton Roads: A Twist in the Lincoln Myth

According to the standard narrative maintained by the North, Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation brought about a new moral aim that justified a particularly bloody conflict. The act is often described as a device that would usher in a new age where angelic Northerners suddenly abandoned their racist past in favor of a fair, more equitable course for enslaved men. From…
Dave Benner
May 16, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 26

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 9-13 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, Progressivism, Southern History, Confederate History, Secession, the United States Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-26
Brion McClanahan
May 14, 2016
Blog

The Imperial and Momentary We

This piece was originally published in Chronicles Magazine, October 2012. “O Fame, O Fame! Many a man ere this Of no account hast thou set up on high.” —Boethius “It is a kind of baby talk, a puerile and wind­blown gibberish. . . . In content it is a vacuum.” —H.L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding’s speeches Americans are a…
Clyde Wilson
May 13, 2016
Blog

A Christian Defense of the South

It is said that the more things change, the more they stays the same. This has proven more than a mere cliche in the aftermath of the horrifying events in Charleston, SC last year. When racial animosity failed to materialize in the wake of the shootings at a predominantly African-American Church, Progressive political elements made the call to eliminate Southern…
Thomas Bryant
May 12, 2016
Blog

“Don’t Leave Me Here to Bleed to Death!”

The most recent issue of Hallowed Ground, a publication of the Civil War Trust, features an 1863 photograph of several Confederate soldiers laid out in shallow graves—casualties of the fighting at Gettysburg. This picture is like many of the grim photographs of the war dead, but what makes it unusual is that one of the soldiers has been identified. Two…
Karen Stokes
May 11, 2016
Review Posts

Remember Us

Delivered May 6, 2016 in Columbia, SC. Archibald MacLeish was a 20th century poet, author and three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote the following about the lost soldier: We were young. We have died. Remember us. We have done what we could but until It is finished it is not done. We have given our lives but until…
Herbert Chambers
May 10, 2016
Blog

Defend to the Death

When I was young, there was a very famous and much articulated saying, to wit: “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!” Everyone—or at least everyone who was rational, moral and decently educated—knew that this was the creed of a free society in general and “America” in particular.…
Valerie Protopapas
May 9, 2016
Review Posts

Women of the Southern Confederacy

Editor's Note: A Mother's Day special dedicated to all Southern wives and mothers, this piece was originally published in 1877 in Bledsoe's The Southern Review. It is strange how we undervalue the historical interest of contemporaneous events, and how careless most persons are of preserving any record of the most stirring incidents that mark their own pathway through life. While…
Albert Taylor Bledsoe
May 8, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 25

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 2-6 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, Northern hypocrisy, Southern history, Southern culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-25
Brion McClanahan
May 7, 2016
Blog

Secession of the Heart

A dear friend of mine, a Harp like myself but born and raised in the Deep North, repeated to me for the umpteenth time one of the most persistent of all Southern stereotypes, the duplicitous Southerner. This type is all smiles and sweetness, until the proper time comes to lower the boom. As my friend put it, “No, we are…
John Devanny
May 6, 2016
Blog

Erasing Southern Culture and History, Step by Step

Throughout the entire South, our Confederate Southern heritage is under massive attack. This time, it's not just Yankee invaders who are doing this under a new Reconstruction; it's being reinforced as well by influential Southern liberals who hate the traditional South. There's a line that can't be crossed. Jesus gave us an injunction to love our enemies, but this doesn't…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
May 5, 2016
Blog

Shades of John Brown

Southerners who honour their Confederate forebears have often been admonished:  “Get over it.  You lost!”    The admonishers often do not follow their own advice.  As a modest but earnest  advocate  of Southern heritage, I  have quite often been threatened, usually anonymously, with harm to my person and a renewal of the  extermination campaign against my people.  I once received from…
Clyde Wilson
May 4, 2016
Review Posts

Is “White Supremacy” an Exclusively “Southern” Ideology?

“We abhor the doctrine of the "Types of Mankind;" first, because it is at war with scripture, which teaches us that the whole human race is descended from a common parentage; and, secondly, because it encourages and incites brutal masters to treat negroes, not as weak, ignorant and dependent brethren, but as wicked beasts, without the pale of humanity. The…
Brion McClanahan
May 3, 2016
Blog

“Contextualizing” American History

Few, if any, currently prominent historians voice unqualified objection to the destruction of Confederate monuments. The most tolerant among them instead suggest that the memorials should remain, but with new explanatory inscriptions offering “context”—a code word that simplifies to: South=Bad, North=Good. Consider, for example, the contextual marker that might be added to Liberty Hall, former home of Confederate Vice President…
Philip Leigh
May 2, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 24

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 23-29, 2016. Topics: The PC attack on the South, Andrew Jackson, secession, Confederaphobia https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-24
Brion McClanahan
May 1, 2016
Blog

April Top Ten

The top ten articles for April 2016: 1. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by James Rutledge Roesch 2. Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic by Paul C. Graham 3. Why the War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 4. The Cause of Jackson is the Cause of Us All by James Rutledge Roesch 5. Lies My Teacher…
Brion McClanahan
May 1, 2016
Blog

A Brave New World

Friedich Nietzsche's statement: "There are no facts, only interpretations" is essentially true about social sciences and social issues. But, although historians' views of the past are interpretations, they are based on serious research into sources of evidence that are felt to be reliable. Similarly, in legal proceedings, the burden of proof is on the accuser, who must present a preponderance…
Gail Jarvis
April 29, 2016
Blog

Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic

Institutionalized Hate and Fear A student at Framingham State University (FSU), located 20 miles outside of Boston, was “traumatized” when a Confederate flag sticker was seen on another student’s laptop computer. This “bias incident” was quickly reported to FSU’s “Bias Protocol and Response Team” (BP&RT) who quickly responded to the complaint. FSU’s “chief diversity and inclusion officer,” Sean Huddleston, responded…
Paul C. Graham
April 28, 2016
Clyde Wilson Library

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXI

Moving from arrogance to masochism,  Europeans  have  endeavoured to chase away their old feelings of ethnocentrism , all the while flattering similar sentiments in other races and cultures.   Great efforts have been made to break the course and  coherence  of  time in order to stop Europeans from finding their likeness  in images of their ancestors, to strip them of their…
Clyde Wilson
April 27, 2016
Review Posts

The Cause of Jackson is the Cause of Us All

Old Hickory has been chopped off the front of the twenty-dollar bill. Andrew Jackson will still appear on the back of the bill, but Harriet Tubman (freed slave, conductor on the mostly mythical Underground Railroad, and Union spy) will now appear on the front. Jackson was a famous war hero and a feared duelist, but he finally met his match…
James Rutledge Roesch
April 26, 2016
Blog

Texas Secession?

It may not get anywhere at all, but there are a number of people in Texas trying to get the official state Republican Party to debate the issue of secession at the party convention on May 12-14. The movement got started by the Texas Nationalist Movement, a group that's been around for more than a decade, involved mostly in trying…
Kirkpatrick Sale
April 25, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 23

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 18-22, 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, U.S. Grant, Reconstruction, the Confederate Constitution, Southern medicine and science. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-23
Brion McClanahan
April 23, 2016
Blog

Healing the Wounds of War

Over the years, countless thousands the New Yorkers have passed by monuments in their city that were dedicated to two eminent physicians who were related by marriage, but there is little doubt that few of them, until recently at least, had ever realized that the statues were erected in memory of former Southerners. The two men of medicine were Dr.…
John Marquardt
April 22, 2016
Blog

Backwards in a Sideways World

This article was originally printed at Tony Woodlief's website, Sand in the Gears. When I was twelve, we were evicted from our house in Florida, a consequence either of Reaganomics or our failure to pay rent for three months, depending on whose story you wanted to believe. We faced a long, hungry drive back to North Carolina. A neighbor, also…
Tony Woodlief
April 21, 2016
Blog

New From Southern Pens, Part 4

A new contribution to Southern literature from one or both of the Kennedy brothers, authors of the classic The South Was Right! and other good books, is always a cause for celebration. The latest, Uncle Seth Fought the Yankees by James Ronald Kennedy, does not disappoint. Uncle Seth, a Confederate veteran, in about 100 easy lessons, gently educates the young…
Clyde Wilson
April 20, 2016
Review Posts

The Confederacy’s Rule of Law

As Southern States seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, the matter of transitioning the US Judiciary into the CSA Judiciary required both skill and determination. Issues of jurisdiction, personnel, legal codes, records, writs and ongoing processes had to be considered. Rather than starting de novo, the CSA Provisional Constitution mostly adopted the structure of…
Marshall DeRosa
April 19, 2016
Blog

Grant Gets the Votes

It is no surprise to Civil War students that Ulysses Grant’s reputation has soared over the last fifty years. During the past twenty years nearly all of his biographies have been favorable. They typically ignore, minimize, or deny his failings. Examples include those of Jean Smith, H. W. Brands, and Joan Waugh. Two more will apparently join the group later…
Philip Leigh
April 18, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 22

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 11-15, 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern music, Southern literature, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, secession, Southern symbols, William T. Sherman, war crimes. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-22
Brion McClanahan
April 16, 2016
Blog

Is the Mississippi State Flag “Anti-American”?

United States District Judge Carlton Reeves is considering a lawsuit by Mississippi attorney Carlos Moore to rule that the Mississippi State flag is unconstitutional because it is “anti-American,” meaning it symbolizes secession and slavery. I leave aside the contorted legal reasoning that might support such a suit, namely whether Moore has standing to sue, if this is a judicial not…
Donald Livingston
April 15, 2016
Blog

Sherman’s Army in North Carolina

Some historians have suggested that General William T. Sherman's terror campaign through the deep South came to an end when his troops crossed the state line into North Carolina, and some of his officers are on record noting a pronounced change in the conduct of their soldiers. It is true that North Carolina did not see the scale of ruthless…
Karen Stokes
April 14, 2016
Blog

Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday

Thomas Jefferson’s birthday went virtually unnoticed earlier this year (1993), the 250th anniversary of his birth. Nothing is more indicative of how badly we Americans have squandered our moral capital and betrayed the substance of our history. We did have, of course, President Clinton’s inaugural journey from Monticello, though it is hard to imagine anything further from the true spirit…
Clyde Wilson
April 13, 2016
Review Posts

The Ireland of the Union

Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847) was regarded as one of the finest American poets of his day.  Born in Ireland, he settled in Georgia and served several terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Democratic-Republican and later Jacksonian Democrat.  He supported William H. Crawford for president in 1824.  Wilde left the United States for Europe in 1835 then…
Richard Henry Wilde
April 12, 2016
Blog

McWhirter Tries to Strike Back

My recent piece on James Ryder Randall, "At Arlington", touched a nerve, at least with Christian McWhirter.  I spent some time in "At Arlington" discussing his March Time magazine piece, and thus he was compelled to reply. McWhirter begins by wondering when the "neo-Confederate crowd" would respond to his article.  It only took him one sentence to use the tired pejorative "neo-Confederate"…
Brion McClanahan
April 12, 2016
Blog

American Music Is Southern Music

“American Idol,” a reality-based music singing competition on the Fox Network, has come to an end, and Yankees everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief, as their long, national nightmare is finally over.  Yankees haven’t been whipped this badly since Fredericksburg, and it’s a miracle they allowed the American Idol carnage to continue on as long as it did.  All…
Tom Daniel
April 11, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 21

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 4-8, 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern literature, Robert E. Lee, James Ryder Randall, American imperialism, the original Constitution and State's Rights. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-21
Brion McClanahan
April 9, 2016
Blog

The Sovereign States

This essay is the introduction to Mr. Kilpatrick's The Sovereign States (Regnery, 1957). AMONG the more melancholy aspects of the genteel world we live in is a slow decline in the enjoyment that men once found in the combat of ideas, free and unrestrained. Competition of any sort, indeed, seems to be regarded these days, in our schools and elsewhere,…
James J. Kilpatrick
April 8, 2016
Blog

Why They Hate Us

This post was originally published at fredoneverything.org. A frequent theme nowadays is “Why do they hate us?” meaning why does so much of the world detest the United States. The reasons given are usually absurd: They hate our freedom or democracy. They hate us for our cultural superiority. They hate us because we are wonderful. No. Actually the reason is…
Fred Reed
April 7, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXX

The Western intellectual knows,  or  rather thinks he knows, what others do not.  He rarely considers reality as such. . . . He thinks in terms  of  concepts and abstract models.  The reasoning  does  not start with the observation of events , but with  the invocation of a formula or a theoretical concept  issued  by a theoretician  whom he considers…
Clyde Wilson
April 6, 2016
Review Posts

At Arlington

The PC police have found a new target.  Not satisfied with monuments and flags, the Maryland general assembly recently voted to alter the lyrics to the official State song, James Ryder Randall's "Maryland, My Maryland."  Lincoln apologist Christian McWhirter penned a piece for Time magazine that labeled the song "dissident."  This is true if using the standard definition of the word,…
Brion McClanahan
April 5, 2016
Blog

Lee’s Memory

In the wake of growing hostility toward the Confederacy a New Orleans Robert E. Lee statue is scheduled for destruction and debate is underway in Charlottesville, Virginia to remove another one. Even though Washington & Lee is a private university, it has already yielded to pressures to remove the Confederate flag from the Lee Chapel. The school may ultimately feel…
Philip Leigh
April 4, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 20

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 28 - April 1, 2016. Topics: Secession, Abraham Lincoln, Southern Literature, Southern Culture, Independence, Jeffersonian Tradition, Southern Art https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-20
Brion McClanahan
April 2, 2016
Blog

March Top Ten

The Top Ten articles for March 2016: 1. Why The War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 2. Baltimore Set to Ban Lee and Jackson, to Welcome Degenerate Divine by J. L. Bennett 3. Secession Hypocrisy: The Case of West Virginia by Dave Benner 4. The Battle Flag and Christianity by Lunelle McCallister 5. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the…
Brion McClanahan
April 2, 2016
Blog

Interpreting Southern Art

For several weeks my local art museum displayed a traveling exhibit from the Johnson Collection of art permanently located in Spartanburg, South Carolina.   The prevailing consensus among historians is that the antebellum South did not produce much in the way of art, that its literature was substandard, and that its only contribution to American history was slavery and militaristic oligarchy.  Those who read this blog understand this position to…
Brion McClanahan
April 1, 2016
Blog

The Jeffersonian Solution

This post was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. The original strength of our American republic was found in the ability to supply our own needs. That is the very definition of independence. We provided our own form of government, our own energy resources, our own manufacturing, and we grew an overabundance of our own food. We were a self-sufficient…
Herrick Kimball
March 31, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXIX

In a PC world, humor is a capital offense.   --Taki Happiness is never an accident.  It is the prize we get when we chose wisely from life’s great stores.  --Irene Dunne,   citing advice from her  Kentucky father There is no such thing as being too Southern.    --Lewis Grizzard “The war between the Yankees and the Americans.”  --Granny  Clampett  on the …
Clyde Wilson
March 30, 2016
Review Posts

Sot Weed from the Maryland Muse

EBENEZER COOKE (fl. ca. 1680s—1730s?) of Maryland is a major figure in colonial American literature. He is best known for the long satirical poem "The Sot-Weed Factor." (The sot-weed is tobacco, mainstay of the Southern, and American economy in the colonial period, and the factor is a figure long familiar in the South—the seaport merchant who sold and exported the…
Ebenezer Cooke
March 29, 2016
Blog

Secession Hypocrisy: The Case of West Virginia

Many people know that the state of West Virginia came to be during the Civil War, but very few know that its admission to the union was particularly controversial. Even in the north, free from the influence of the departed southern states, many opposed Lincoln’s desire to admit West Virginia. Opposing Lincoln’s ultimate stance, those who offered candid deference to…
Dave Benner
March 28, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 19

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, 21-25 March, 2016. Topics: William T. Sherman, War Crimes, Republicanism, Secession, Southern Easter https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-19
Brion McClanahan
March 26, 2016
Blog

A Rural Southern Easter

Benjamin Franklin White, born 1800 in South Carolina, was a Southern music pioneer. His collection of hymns titled The Sacred Harp, published in 1844, was based on shape note singing and became the standard hymnal in the South. Shape note music first appeared in 1801 and quickly spread through the rural Southern congregationalist communities. The music is performed a cappella…
Brion McClanahan
March 25, 2016
Blog

Vale Res Publica

Once again, it is politicking time in the good ol’ US of A.  The Democrats, the party of youth, vision, and vigor, present to the country a senile old socialist who doesn’t believe that poor white people exist, and a former first lady rejected by Netflix central casting for a role in  House of Cards (It was the looks, not…
John Devanny
March 24, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXVIII

Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing,  and  careerist  logrolling. --John Derbyshire A lie can travel half way around the world while truth is still putting on his boots.  --Mark Twain The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those, who, in times of great moral crisis,  maintain  their neutrality.  --Dante They change their sky, not…
Clyde Wilson
March 23, 2016
Review Posts

The Destruction of Old Sheldon Church and Other Ravages of War

From time to time an unsuspecting tourist visiting the ruins of the Old Sheldon Church will insist that they caught a glimpse of a spectral figure hovering among the scattered remains of the time-weathered gravestones. Some might scoff at such sightings, but the reports of the ghost are consistent. Witnesses describe what appears to be the ethereal figure of a…
Gail Jarvis
March 22, 2016
Blog

Death is Mercy to Secessionists

William T. Sherman viewed Southerners as he later viewed American Indians, to be exterminated or banished to reservations as punishment for having resisted government power. They were subjects and merely temporary occupants of land belonging to his government whom they served. The revealing excerpts below are taken from “Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama,” published in 1872: Headquarters, Department of…
Bernard Thuersam
March 21, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 18

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 14-18, 2016 Topics: John C. Calhoun, PC, Confederate Emancipation, Slavery, Charles Carroll of Carrollton https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-18
Brion McClanahan
March 19, 2016
Clyde Wilson Library

Calhoun’s Carolina

John C. Culhoon. Culhoon is the right pronunciation by the way. John C. Culhoon was an upcountryman. We upcountry people tend to suspect Charlestonians, like Dr. Fleming, of being somewhat haughty and dissipated. Calhoun studied law briefly in Charleston and found a bride here, and he stopped off when he couldn't avoid it on his way to and from Washington,…
Clyde Wilson
March 18, 2016