By Vito Mussomeli and Patrick Ward Inching down the hillside among wet clover, careful not to slip, our amiable air and sun warm your face while beautifully, sparkling dark…
This piece was originally published at SlaveNorth.com. “[R]ace prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more…
This piece originally appeared on www.fitsnews.com. When you’re out and about in Charleston, S.C., almost everyone assumes you are not from here or that you do not have ancestral ties…
Robert Barnwell Rhett, born on December 21, 1800, is remembered as one of the foremost “fire-eaters” of the South in the years leading to the War in 1861. He championed…
States’ rights may have been the defining force in Antebellum America, but modern, mainstream historians would have you believe that they were nothing more than a wicked creed cooked up…
In honor of John Taylor’s birthday, December 19. From Tyranny Unmasked: “The rival remedy for our troubles, so insignificant in the eyes of the Committee as to be wholly suppressed, although…
Born in 1816, Ann Pamela Cunningham was raised at Rosemont, a plantation on the Saluda River in Laurens County, South Carolina. At the age of seventeen, she suffered an injury…
Although I have been in exile many years, I am a Tar Heel born and a Tar Heel bred, and when I die I will be a Tar Heel dead….
This essay was first published at Unz Review on November 23, 2014. Back in 1975 the Warren County [N.C.] Historical Association initiated a comprehensive project to study the life and…
What are people for? –Wendell Berry I do not view politicks as a scramble between eminent men; but as a science by which the lasting interest of the country…
The US Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014) has uncovered a somewhat disturbing reality. Consider the following. In 1993 Congress passed and President Clinton signed…
M.E. Bradford said of Southern Conservatism that: “This conservatism is both historic and principled in not insisting on rights anterior to or separable from the context in which they originally…
This essay is excerpted from Brion McClanahan’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers and is presented here in honor of Mason’s birthday, December 11. If a list were…
If we want to understand the origins and nature of Southern culture we must consider it from the standpoint of the West. Because the South was the West of Britain,…
The defeat of liberal Democrat Mary Landrieu removed the Deep South’s last Democratic U.S. Senator. It is interesting to see the reaction of Yankee liberals (pardon the redundancy) as they…
Part V of a Five Part Series. Part I, II, III, and IV. 1. Taylor as a Liberal “Individualist” Taylor writes that society not made up of individuals is a…
Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast believes “It’s Time to Dump Dixie.” Please do. He also thinks that there may be a point in the future when the South should…
A Critique of Onufian Revisionism and Jefferson’s “Contradictions” Robert Booth Fowler writes: “The monuments to Stalin that have come down in recent years in Eastern Europe mark the fall of…
A review of Henry Timrod: A Biography by Walter Brian Cisco, Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickison University Press, 2001. 168 pages. Henry Timrod died in 1867 at the age of…
A modern student of American literature would be hard pressed to find anything written on or about Henry Timrod in a current anthology of American poetry. Bob Dylan and Langston…
The fiercely contested, yet inconclusive election of 1824 set the stage for one of the great debates of American political history. According to Irving Bartlett, “the key to understanding Calhoun’s…
This piece was originally published at Alabama Pioneers on 3 December 2014. The old home place stood among large oak trees at the top of a hill, more of a…
Geologists say Earth’s clay is dust of star. That I believe But not from science chart or learned formulae. Dwarf iris prove it. Blue aster and blue gentian too, Sky-coloured…
Citizenship in these United States has consistently been in a transformative mode. From early American settlers, through the colonial period to Statehood and nationhood, and through transition from territorial to…
In an ideal world the separate studies of history and literature would enlighten one another. A historian—whether of republican Rome, seventeenth century France, the Old South, or any other subject—would…
This article was originally published by the History News Network and is reprinted here by permission. Henry Wiencek’s Master of the Mountain (2012), which depicted Jefferson as a greedy and…
Address of Colonel Edward McCrady, Jr. before Company a (Gregg’s regiment), First S. C. Volunteers, at the Reunion at Williston, Barnwell county, S. C, 14th July, 1882. It is with…
It is not in the power of any single, or few individuals to preserve liberty. It can only be effected by the people themselves; by their intelligence, virtue, courage, and…
The best of November, 2014. 1. Rehabbing Sherman, by James Rutledge Roesch 2. 20 Million Gone: The Southern Diaspora 1900-1970, by Clyde Wilson 3. What Would Lincoln Do?, by Brion…
Lately, media outlets have been giving some attention to the 150th anniversary of General William T. Sherman’s infamous march through Georgia that took place in 1864, minimizing, of course, the…
Among the various moral reform and benevolence movements in the Jacksonian Era such as temperance, antislavery, prison reform, and the peace movement, one of the lesser known efforts sought to…
Tom Watson Brown was an icon of the Southern tradition and one of its strongest defenders. He was a respected attorney, businessman, civic leader, philanthropist, and, in addition, a very…
I have written before here at Abbeville about the legendary music that came out of the Muscle Shoals area in the 60’s and 70’s, and that was before I’d seen…
Whatever happened to Western civilization? Somehow, Christians have lost ground in every cultural area of leadership and influence in Europe and America since 1700. This is an indubitable fact. The…
Focusing on the cultural, political and economic long-term consequences of President Obama’s amnesty executive action obscures placing attention on a more fundamental problem lurking in the shadows of American culture…
It is the very genius of a consolidated Government to elevate one portion of the Community, while it corrupts the other. –Calhoun Generally, however, the secession movement was a remarkable…
Reprinted from Circa1865.com Anti-abolition sentiment was often found north of Mason and Dixon’s line and evidenced by incidents like the 1837 shooting death of abolitionist Elija Lovejoy in Alton, Ohio….
“To parties of special interests, all political questions appear exclusively as problems of political tactics.” I want to take a look at this strange institution we know as the Republican…
As 1861 drew to a close, Governor Thomas Hicks recorded for posterity the events of the Northern invasion and occupation of Maryland in a message he sent to members of…
“The amount of plundering, burning, and stealing done by our own army makes me ashamed of it. I would quit the service if I could for I fear we are…
Self government and the secession required for it in oversized States are as much a province of the Left as of political conservatives. It was the left that raised the…
Part IV of a Five Part Series. Part I, Part II, Part III 1. War Finance Disillusioned by the policies of his Republican allies, who had leapt unprepared into the…
“Your enemy is not a criminal just because he is your enemy.” —Saying credited to the founder of Israeli intelligence. “How could we help falling on our knees, all of…
This piece was originally published on November 16, 2012 on LewRockwell.com and is reprinted here by permission. On 20 March 1861, United States Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware began…
The most fundamental elements of government are wealth and power. Their interplay is forever to aggregate to themselves at the expense of the governed. The structure of government comes from…
Southern history contains many fine examples of literary and artistic merit long ignored by contemporary scholars and forgotten by the American public at large, both North and South. Much of…
Today, November 13, is the birthday of one of the Troubadours of Southern Rock, Toy Talmadge Caldwell of The Marshall Tucker Band. Toy was born in 1947, grew up in…
*Apologies to Jon White from whom I sole the title for this piece. Invariably, any discussion regarding the causes of the Late Unpleasantness brings forth the tortured issue of slavery….
In the early days of the United States, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton remarked: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment.” The common…
Acclaimed in his time as the “Calhoun of the Church,” James Henley Thornwell was a prominent Presbyterian clergyman of South Carolina and one of the state’s greatest men in the…
That is Bobby Bare on Detroit and Dwight Yoakam on Los Angeles. Sometimes there are significant movements in history that go unnoticed because they take place slowly over a long…
Originally published Nov. 8, 2014 on LewRockwell.com. The Republicans won. What’s next? In a November 5 opinion piece for the Washington Times, Charles Hurt postulates that this could be the…
As with literature, nineteenth-century American art is dominated by the North and Northern subjects. The Hudson River School, which incidentally found its greatest inspiration from the West, and most American…
Part III of a Five Part Series. Part I, Part II. 1. Republicanism and Liberalism Revisited As noted previously, 18th-century Anglo-American opposition writers employed several political languages. One of these,…
The Constitutional power of the President never was or could be formidable, unless it was accompanied by a Congress which was prepared to corrupt the Constitution. –Calhoun Devolution is not…
In the South, many people want to demolish a structure if it looks a little ragged around the edges. Eufaula, AL is a prime example. It is not with pleasure…
Our top ten posts for October 2014. If you have not read any of these fine pieces, please do so and share with your friends. 1. “In All the Ancient…
It filled the screen from midnight until dawn After the late show, anthem, station sign In those brief early days of innocence When television broadcast black and white. The pattern…
The final part in this installment is a lecture entitled, “Reconstruction in the Experience of the Southern People,” delivered at the 2009 Summer School. Violence is a big subject in…
Brion McClanahan discusses nullification and the Tenth Amendment at the Reclaiming America for Christ Conference in Moore, Oklahoma, August 25, 2014.
Yesterday (October 29) was Thomas F. Bayard, Sr.’s birthday, the next to last member of the great Bayard congressional dynasty from Delaware. His great-grandfather, Richard Bassett, signed the Constitution. His…
The most influential literary contribution to the politics of the northern States during the mid-to-late 1850’s — helping incite State Secession and a horrific four-year war that killed 360,000 Federals…
Cold metal arms, skeletal, sepulchral, Reaching upwards, grasping. Devil’s towers topped with devil’s claws, Tearing the creation – earth and sky, Wind and water, what is seen, what is not….
When did the South ever lay its hand on the North? –Calhoun The body of a Confederate soldier was discovered near here a few days ago. I think I will…
“Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war!” Occasionally a scene or event will cross one’s path that will set the machinery of memory running at full speed. Recently…
This essay originally appeared on Fred Reed’s website and is reprinted here by permission. My sins creep up on me, sent by the Devil, and beset me by surprise. I…
By October 1864, the city of Charleston, South Carolina had been undergoing a bombardment for over a year. The Federal forces were in full possession of nearby Morris Island, and…
Originally published at the Jenny Jack Sun Farm blog, August 2014. The old man in the long Lincoln Town Car died yesterday. Perry Gene Williams visited the farm nearly every…
I just returned from Kent Masterson Brown’s three-day tour of the Battle of Gettysburg. Brown, a member of the Abbeville Institute (listen to his excellent lecture on the fallacy of…
People in the South who are intuitively attuned to its culture and history suspect that what passes for popular, evangelical religion in the region is not precisely what it has…
Are you ready? Hell yea! Damn right! Hotty Toddy, gosh almighty, Who the hell are we? HEY! Flim Flam, Bim Bam, OLE MISS BY DAMN! WARNNING: Blasphemy ahead. College football…
This article originally appeared on LewRockwell.com. For years those who advocated even a scholarly examination of secession were labeled “crackpots” and “fringe radicals” by the establishment. Secession had gone out…
I never claimed a victory, though I stated that Lee was defeated in his efforts to destroy my army. –Gen. George G. Meade, Union commander at Gettysburg The army did…
Protecting Our People in the Era of Islamic Terror & Ebola Within a few days after the Federal Empire’s current glorious leader, Barack Obama, calmly assured Americans that there was…
Part II of a Five Part Series. Part I 1. Liberalism Taylor stood on liberal ground in holding that men were a mixture of good and evil. Self-interest was the…
If you were to conjure up an image in your head of an exploitive, money-grubbing industrialist with no regards for pollution or conservation, and I’ll bet a Yankee pops into…
This essay is in honor of George Mason’s death, October 7, 1792. He wrote the foundational words for America. If we listen, he taught us the dream that the import…
As the first American bombs begin to rain down on mud and adobe structures in some far distant land, “patriotic” Americans rush to support “our men in uniform” which actually…
A good dog needs no pedigree, and if a dog ain’t any good, a pedigree don’t help him none. –Havilah Babcock Southerners are the world’s worst record-keepers. –Havilah Babcock It…
Over the past couple of weeks, a very simple act has renewed my faith in the great Southern way of life, and it involves making a new friend. It all…
Many current Americans, indeed perhaps most, regard the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 as a premeditated act of violence by South Carolina against the United States Government. They…
During the War Between the States, thousands of Americans were incarcerated for political reasons in various Northern prisons without due process of law. One of these Americans, Rev. Isaac W….
It is a strange fact of modern American culture that when looking at famous people in the political realm of American history, far more often than not the more statist…
Reality is what continues to exist whether you believe in it or not. –Philip K. Dick There is but one rule if you want to be a man—absolutely but one—and…
Ron Paul recently opined about Scotland’s recent flirtation with seceding from the United Kingdom. He wrote that the: possibility that people will break away from an oppressive government is one…
These 40 questions have been carefully designed to test your qualifications as a citizen. The test is self-administered, but please be honest. Answer each question with “Agree” or “Disagree.” The…
When I first heard of the topic “Small is Beautiful,” I thought of the wonderful motto of Chilton Williamson’s friend Edward Abbey: “Growth is the Enemy of Progress.” Abbey went…
“Sic Semper Tyrannis.” — from the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia “I want everybody to hear loud and clear that I’m going to be the president of everybody”…
Our top ten articles for September 2014. If you have not read any of these fine pieces, you are missing out: 1. States Rights Did Not Cause the War! by…
Few American cities have been so meticulously studied, admired or—for that matter—vilified as has Charleston. There are substantial reasons for this. During the Colonial period Charleston, or Charles Town as…
In honor of Senator Sam Ervin’s birthday, September 27, from his Preserving the Constitution; The Autobiography of Senator Sam Ervin, Jr., 1984, The Michie Company, Charlottesville, Virginia, pp. 160-161 During…
“Defeat has not made ‘all our sacred things profane.’ The war has left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own tears, its own dead. Under these traditions,…
The Scottish secession vote has led to a great number of pieces about the future of secession and its viability in the United States: 1. Ryan McMaken wrote about it…
In honor of William Faulkner’s birthday (Sept 25), Clyde Wilson discusses Faulkner as a conservative. This essay first appeared in Clyde Wilson and Brion McClanahan, Forgotten Conservatives in American History…
Scotland has certainly lit the fire under a lot of folks who are warming to the concept of secession. Of course, many of us here in Dixie have been pretty…
Part II in a two part series. Part I. 1. Elvin Bishop: Rock My Soul Most people only know Elvin Bishop from the Charlie Daniels tune “The South’s Gonna Do…
This essay appears in Clyde Wilson and Brion McClanahan, Forgotten Conservatives in American History and is reprinted here in honor of Jackson’s birthday, Sept 21. James Jackson did not sign…
“What caused the Civil War?” Ever since the close of the conflict, historians have been struggling with this crucial question. Given the profound consequences of the war, asking “how?” and…
Ladies and Gentlemen, Scotland voted “No” to independence. The media will have you believe this was a crushing victory. After all, only 45 percent of the Scottish people voted for…
After the War Between the States began, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and during the course of the conflict, thousands of citizens (mostly Northerners) were arrested…
Swagger and ferocity, built on a foundation of vulgarity and cowardice, those are his characteristics, and these are the most prominent marks by which his countrymen, generally speaking, are known…
Scotland votes on independence from the United Kingdom today. I’ll be rooting very hard for a yes vote. The primary reason I strongly support Scottish independence is because it will…
This essay originally appeared in Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture. In the previous chapter we discussed the early stages of the North American War of Secession of…
When the Scottish Parliament voted to join the English Parliament in 1707, it seemed the end of Scottish national identity. It was thought that a small country like Scotland could…
Part I of a Two Part Series A few months ago, Tommy Daniel and I posted two pieces on the Best Southern Rock Bands and the Best Southern Rock Albums….
Part IV of a four part series. Part I, Part II, Part III. I come now to urge my objection to the jurisdiction of the court. It goes on the…
Part 1 of a Five Part Series 1. The Relevance of John Taylor John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824) has a secure, if minor, place in the history of American political…
While I could never with safety repose confidence in a Yankee, I have never been deceived by an Indian. —Daniel Boone That cold-blooded demon called Science has taken the place…
“No wonder men were willing to fight for such a country as ours—and such women. They were enough to make heroes of any material.”- President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A. Mary Boykin…
For Julian Ivey In a time when the dead are forgotten As quickly as yesterday’s news, My father attends funerals In coat, tie, and mirror-bright shoes. This formality is largely…
Part III of a Four Part Series by the Legal Scholar Spencer Roane written in 1819. Part I and Part II. I trust I have shown by the preceding detail,…
How do you achieve peace and normal life after a civil war? Of course the War to Prevent Southern Independence was not really a civil war since the South did…
I think all of us have probably experienced this in one form or another. You’re standing on the toothpaste aisle in Wal-Mart, and you have the whole display to yourself. …
The fall vegetable garden is a delight in the Mid-South. The greens and reds are vivid. Fresh lettuce and beans will grace the table until the first heavy frosts; perhaps…
The Committee on Foreign Affairs, to whom was referred so much of the President’s Message as relates the affairs of the Confederate States with the United States, respectfully report :…
In March, 2014, the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart had Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News “debate” three “distinguished” Lincoln “scholars” in a game show format called, “The Weakest…
The Roman satirist, Juvenal, once asked the most annoying question that could ever fall upon the ears of a lover of big government: Quis custodiet ipsos custodies, who will guard…
The Abbeville Institute is pleased to announce the launch of The Abbeville Institute Press and our first title, Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War, edited by D. Jonathan White. An…
“The Civil War was fought over slavery.” If you want verification of this “known” fact, this politically correct “given” all you have to do is ask a typical Southern politician,…
To the Editor of the Enquirer: According to the regular course of legal proceedings I ought, in the first place, to urge my plea in abatement to the jurisdiction of…
Reconstruction. There is no part of American history in which what is taught these days is more distorted by false assumptions and assertions. For leftists, Reconstruction can be celebrated as…
Because of the 1989 movie Glory, many Americans know of the battle on Morris Island in 1863 in which the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment fought. Very few…
California AB 2444 has cleared all legislative hurdles by overwhelming majorities (71 to 1 in the Assembly and 33 to 2 in the Senate) and is now on Governor Jerry…
The Abbeville Institute is dedicated to promoting Southern culture, and doesn’t shed a single calorie denigrating others. Every article I’ve read in the Abbeville Institute blogs cheer and champion the…
The books found on library shelves began changing some time ago. The intellectual interests of most Americans began to diminish, and those Americans who do have intellectual interests, normally use…
From April to July of 1863 British Lieutenant Colonel Arthur J. L. Fremantle visited all but two Confederate states. He entered at Brownsville, Texas and finished by observing the battle…
The burden of our endeavour in this conference is to examine the great morality play of Northern Good versus Southern Evil that is the conventional history of anti-slavery in the…
Abbeville President Don Livingston talks to Tom Woods about the Southern tradition, secession, and the principles of American government.
Maria Henrietta Pinckney (1782-1836) of South Carolina was the daughter of General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, an officer in the Continental Army and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Maria…
This is Part I of four letters that originally appeared in the Richmond Enquirer in 1819 under the nom de plume Hampden. They could have been written yesterday. To the…
My wife and I lived in Iowa during the mid-90’s, and we thoroughly enjoyed playing in the snow. The very first snowfall we encountered was an 11-inch blizzard that fell…
“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of…
For centuries the Scottish Highlanders, existing under a clan system, were apt to “revolt” against English rule. “Revolt” is the term the British used. In actuality, what the Scots were…
This essay is taken in part from the chapter “Frontiersman” in Brion McClanahan’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes (Politically Incorrect Guides) and is presented here in honor…
While cleaning my study the other day I ran across my copy of a $10.00 “Dix” note. This paper money was issued by the Bank of New Orleans up to…
Cotton and tobacco. For years those two agricultural products were as synonymous with the South as sweet tea and grits. Cotton still is, but tobacco has fallen out of favor,…
This morning the farm looked especially inviting, like a photographed far off place meant to attract the soul seeking solace. A diffused, soft light blanketed everything and sound limited itself…
One of the cultural markers that has identified that which we call Southern from the undistinguished mass of American nonculture is language. Obviously pronunciation is involved here, but also words,…
Expert testimony in several federal court cases: Scholars in every field in the humanities and social sciences have long recognized that Southerners have formed a distinct people within the body…
Many readers are new to our blog and Review, so I thought it would be helpful to list the top ten viewed articles since we launched the new site April…
It has become fashionable among contemporary historians to claim that the Southern identity was fabricated in the late antebellum period mostly as a result of the attack on slavery. Historians…
“The confederation has been formed by the free will of the states. […] If today one of these very states wanted to withdraw its name from the contract, it would…
Brion McClanahan discusses the original Constitution at the Reclaiming America for Christ Conference in Moore, Oklahoma, July, 2014.
The real U.S. Constitution, which was scrapped long ago, does not permit judges to be its final interpreters, executive orders, coercion of the people of a State by the federal…
I didn’t know there was going to be a “part 2” to this blog entry about Tuskegee, but someone pointed out that I didn’t finish the story. What happened to…
Writing in 1913, historian Nathaniel Wright Stephenson explained the political situation in America thus: “It is almost impossible to-day to realize the state of the country in the year 1860….
This article is taken from The Unz Review and was originally presented at the Confederate Flag Day in Raleigh, NC in 2007. Those Southern secessionists whose national flag we are…
The month following Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865, Andrew Johnson submitted for comment to his cabinet a plan for reconstructing the Union to include the former…
It has been much too long since so-called “serious” poetry has had a legitimate hold on the affections and imagination of the American reading public at large. Many culprits stand…
On August 24th, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to politician and editor Henry J. Raymond that Raymond might seek a conference with Jefferson Davis and to tell him that hostility…
Recent releases of four classic films should gladden the hearts of patriotic Southerners and those viewers not yet infected by the currently-raging virus of political correctness and multiculturalism. A few…
“The very axioms of American politics now are, that “all men are by nature equal,” that all are inalienably “entitled to liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and that “the…
Statements that disparage the South and its culture are typical of our times. In fact, they are so typical that the authenticity of their content is rarely questioned. Some of…
I will be giving a talk to a large group of Oklahomans today (July 25) at the Reclaiming America for Christ Conference on nullification. This is a great event and…
“Then the soldiers of the governor [Pontius Pilate] took Jesus … stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they…
The introduction to Mike Church’s edited volume of Albert Taylor Bledsoe’s masterful work, Is Davis A Traitor? or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861? The…
The table below summarizes Federal Tax revenues and spending for twenty years following the Civil War. For clarity, the total period is separated into four discrete five-year intervals. As may…
Aristotle taught that “To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements, for none of these things retain their natural power…
We Sons of Confederate Veterans are charged with preserving the good name of the Confederate soldier. The world, for the most part, has acknowledged what Gen. R. E. Lee described…
This article originally appeared in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (ISI Books). It is reprinted by permission of the publisher. Southern conservatism, as opposed to the generic American variety, is a…
It seems like every family is thankfully blessed with that one, highly motivated individual who is willing to tackle the family tree. That person allows the rest of the family…
In the mid-1800’s women were not to be leaders in politics and religion, but Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe did just that. Of Harriet, daughter of Lyman Beecher…
From Tyranny Unmasked: The Committee inform [sic] us ‘that the true economy of individuals, is to earn more than they spend; het this is said to be bad policy for…
To most historians, states’ rights are nothing more than a treasonous rationale for chattel slavery. One historian, in a purportedly definitive history of “disunion,” takes the incredible liberty of having…
Dislocation brings with it a multiplicity of dissonance. Moving disrupts the consonance of time and place, of family, friends, parish, and all the landmarks and milestones that speak to us…
This past May 8 would have been the late Melvin E. Bradford’s 80th birthday. That the anniversary passed without much, if any, commentary is not surprising, given the intellectual tenor…
About ten years ago, I was invited to participate in a cemetery tour in Auburn, Alabama, because they were desperate, and I actually learned something. I’m pretty sure I upset…
The University of South Carolina mascot is somewhat of a joke among SEC football fans. “Cocky” has won several awards for his die-hard performances, but it is the innuendo that…
The flag which he [my grandfather, Francis Scott Key] had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal despotism…
*What American President launched a massive invasion of another country that posed no threat, and without a declaration of war? *What President raised a huge army at his own will…
One of the greatest men in American history was born on this date (July 13) in 1821 near the town of Chapel Hill, Tennessee, then known as Bledsoe’s Lick. It…
I was killing time the other day in my office looking through human interest websites (because I’m human, and I was, you know, interested), when I found an article called…
Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia in an effort to combat the “dark Federalist mills of the North” and keep Virginians home for their higher education. He was not…
Revival week at Covenant Baptist Church in Compton, South Carolina, was a time of great festivity. Some claimed it rivaled, in spectacle and variety, the state fair in Columbia. Indeed…
I’m afraid we may be looking at an upcoming generation of Southern children who don’t know what it means to say “sir” and “ma’am.” It’s an interesting concept, but Southerners…
Last in a six part series. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. As we all know, in recent times, Southerners, so far as Hollywood is concerned,…
The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern States. —Charles Dickens, 1862 Slavery…
The North is full of tangled things . . . . —G.K. Chesterton A meddling Yankee is God’s worst creation; he cannot run his own affairs correctly, but is constantly…
Today (July 8) is Lt. Col. John Stith Pemberton’s birthday. While not as important to the Confederacy as John C. Pemberton, John Stith Pemberton contributed more to American culture and…
On April 4, 1964, The Beatles achieved American chart success that will almost certainly never be duplicated. Only 15 artists have ever held on to the #1 and #2 spots…
The article originally was published by Townhall.com on July 4, 2010. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1825 that he intended the Declaration of Independence to be “an expression of the American…
On July 2, 1776 the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from the English Crown. A committee of five men was selected to put an ordinance of secession into written…
The history of the South is yet to be written. He who writes it need not fear for his reward. Such a one must have at once the instinct of…
From May through early July 1863, Vicksburg, Mississippi, a strategically important city on the Mississippi River, was besieged by Federal forces under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, and…
Few American authors wrote as many stories set in the old South as William Sydney Porter, who used the pen name, “O.Henry.” There are differing versions of how and why…
The trailer (end of the piece) for the second season of Country Music Television’s “Party Down South” (a rehash of MTV’s “Real World,” but with stand-in hicks instead of angsty,…
Notwithstanding Ole Miss fans, those opening few bars of “Dixie” sends chills down the back of every good Southerner everywhere. By the time the notes hit the phrase “land of…
Speech of Hon. Joseph Wheeler, of Alabama. From the Richmond, Va., Dispatch, July 31, 1894 Causes Of The War. Opposition of the Southern Colonists to Slavery, and Their Devotion to…
Throw thy bold banner to the breeze! Front with thy ranks the threatening seas Like thine own proud armorial trees, Carolina! – Henry Timrod June 28th is an official holiday…
We now approach the heart of Taylor’s Inquiry: recent times had created a new type of privileged order exercising dominion in a new way. This was the “paper and patronage…
The “positive good” speech of February 6, 1837, is vintage Calhoun, an exercise of his conception of the proper role of a statesmen placed in the highest deliberative body of…
In what became the United States, servitude of people of the black African race existed for about two and a half centuries. The subject of American slavery is today so…
The Republic of Alabama existed for a little less than a month in 1861. When the popularly elected Alabama Secession Convention of 1861 voted to secede from the Union, the…
(Part 5 of a 6-part series on the South in cinema) Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. As you know, the folks who dominate the American movie industry…
Too often a narrative is passed from one person to the next until it becomes accepted as fact or “common knowledge.” In the society that we live in critical analysis…
Tom Hiddleston, an English actor best known for playing Loki in the Thor and Avengers movies, has been cast to play country music icon Hank William Sr. in an upcoming…
On June 18, 1954, Albert Love Patterson, attorney general nominate for Alabama, was gunned down while getting into his car in a dark ally in Phenix City, Alabama. He had…
Part 4 in a 5 part series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. In 1902 the Philadelphia aristocrat Owen Wister published what has been called “the first true Western novel.”…
John Taylor (1753–1824) of Caroline County, Virginia, is the most important, profound, prophetic and neglected American political thinker of the Revolution and early national period. To explore his thinking is,…
One of the unwritten great things about the South is our obsession with colorful nicknames. Everybody’s got one, and some people are blessed with several. If you’re Southern and you…
Hermann Keyserling was an Austrian writer quite well-known internationally in the early 20th century for his philosophical works and travel accounts. After an extended visit to the U.S., he published…
“Nations are the wealth of mankind, its generalized personalities; the least among them has its own unique coloration and harbors within itself a unique facet of God’s design.” —Alesandr Solzhenitsyn…
The Pledge of Allegiance is neither a sacred American tradition nor a patriotic duty, but a relatively recent piece of propaganda penned specifically to eradicate the memory of America’s revolutionary…
For any historian, seeing or hearing the past, holding it in your hand, is almost euphoric. We trudge around cemeteries, carefully handle old letters, documents, and newspapers while every word…
Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C., June 16, 1866 Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, Sleep, martyrs of…
When the Celtic people of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Northern England began coming in large numbers to what would become the United States, the Puritans and Cavaliers were already here….
Recently, Major League Soccer announced that it would be expanding into Atlanta. I like to tease soccer fans, because they’re so sensitive, so I took the occasion to get off…
When the fascist regime ruling Ukraine banned the use of the Russian language, arrested Ukrainians with dual Russian citizenship, and tore down Russian war memorials to the liberation of Ukraine…
This essay originally appeared at the Front Porch Republic. Marietta, GA. It was the spring of 2009. I was in a class called Lawyers & Literature. My professor, Jim Elkins,…
If I ever got started writing about Southern good manners, I’m not sure I could stop. I’ve heard it said that the South is the country’s last outpost of good…
(I’ll Take My Stand 75th anniversary conference, Franklin, Tennessee) The Twelve Southerners have been justly praised for their powers of prophecy. In reading ITMS once more after several years, it…
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