Blog

Re-Humanizing Johnny Reb

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

A Breach in the Wall

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

The AP Gets It Wrong…Again

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

Podcast Episode 77

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

Is the Confederacy Obsolete?

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

The Real Reason Confederate Symbols are Attacked

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

The Ad Too Hot to Print—Progressive Censorship in Action

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

Understanding Andrew Lytle

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

Why Does the Left Really Despise the Confederacy?

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

Podcast Episode 76

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

Yankee Finance Capitalism Part III: The Creature from Jekyll Island

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

The Forgotten History of the Confederate Flag

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

The War Between the States: Who were the Nazis?

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

Poor but Proud

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

Should Stanford University Change Its Name?

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

Podcast Episode 75

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

Yankee Finance Capitalism Part II: The Jeffersonian Triumph

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

New Orleans Mayor Hypes His Cultural Cleansing

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

Music from the Lake

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

The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act and the Political Market

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

Robert E. Lee, Revolution, and the Question of Historical Memory

Two weeks ago New Orleans removed its Robert E. Lee Monument, one of four that the city decided to take down. As well, Charlottesville, Virginia, currently finds itself in the midst of a rancorous debate over its Lee statue. All over the South and the nation moves are afoot to take down monuments, remove flags, hide any symbols that in…
Boyd Cathey
June 5, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 74

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

Yankee Finance Capitalism Made Simple

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

Blame Abraham Lincoln for Confederate Monuments

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

“Contextualizing” History

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

Hank Williams and the Elusive Redneck

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

The Confederate Origins of Memorial Day

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

Podcast Episode 73

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

Was the South Poor Before the War?

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

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

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

Radical Republican Selective Racial Equality

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

Fired in Washington

The Left is wringing its hands and talking about impeachment because of the Comey firing, but it has a very short memory--its hands resemble Lady MacBeth's- dripping with the blood of Republicans they have savaged in unceremonious firings over the years. Some of the very people crying buckets of tears for the insensitive way Comey was fired have treated Republicans with utter contempt.…
Christina Jeffrey
May 23, 2017
Blog

Home

Mary Fahl sang the beautiful song, “Going Home,” for the movie Gods and Generals. Such lyrics and tune that reached into my Southern psyche as to remind me of what the fight was all about. They say there's a place where dreams have all gone They never said where but I think I know It's miles through the night just…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 22, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 72

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

Virginia’s Lost Counties

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

A Virtuous Man

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

A Better Guide Than Reason

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

Be Proud You’re a Rebel

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

The South is America’s Hope

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

Podcast Episode 71

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

Bledsoe on St. Elmo

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

Trump on Jackson

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

Why the Southern Tradition is Winning

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

April 2017 Top Ten

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

Reconsidering Trump’s “Faux Pas”

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

High Tech Hunley

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

Podcast Episode 70

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

New Orleans is Ground Zero

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

Where Will the Attacks End?

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

Understanding Faulkner

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

Trump as Historian

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

Wendell Berry: More Than a Southern Thoreau

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

Podcast Episode 69

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

The Nabob as Antifederalist: Benjamin Harrison of Virginia

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

The Latest 18th Century Fake News

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

The Imperial Penman

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

New Orleans: A People Without A Past Have No Future

Early this morning the local television station WRAL, Raleigh, NC, broadcast news that the first of “four Confederate monuments in New Orleans…honoring white supremacy” will come down today. The fate of these monuments has been debated now for a number of years, with the majority black city government wanting to expunge these reminders of New Orleans’ history, while various heritage and…
Boyd Cathey
April 25, 2017
Blog

Why Flannery O’Connor Never Liked Yankees

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

Podcast Episode 68

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

The Search for Life After Pac Man

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

Reflections of a Ghost

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

The Mind of the Old South

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

The South and Her People

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

The Soul of the Southern Tradition

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

Podcast Episode 67

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

The Hard Hand of War

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

What Was Lost 150 Years Ago

One-hundred and fifty-two years ago, April 9, 1865 was a Palm Sunday just as today, and in the central part of war-torn Virginia, a major turning point occurred in American history. General Robert E. Lee, that "chevalier sans peur"---that knight without fear---surrendered the tattered remnants of the proud Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant, setting in motion the end…
Boyd Cathey
April 13, 2017
Blog

Jefferson New and Improved

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

Tolerating the South’s Past

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

Confederate Monuments

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

Podcast Episode 66

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

Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans

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

Republican Death Wish

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

Is it 1982 Again?

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

A Question of Sovereignty

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

On Liberty

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

March Top Ten

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

Podcast Episode 65

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

Why Lee? Why Acton?

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

Yankee Foreign Policy and the Cold War

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

A Disease of the Public Mind

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

Maryland’s Confederate Sisterhood

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

Jefferson and Slavery

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

Podcast Episode 64

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

Bernard Baruch: Son of the South

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

Manly Wade Wellman: The Voice of the Mountains

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

Southern Heritage Then and Now

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

The Shining Spirits

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

Jefferson the Man

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

Podcast Episode 63

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

Coit’s Calhoun

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

Heil to the Chief

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

The South’s Gonna Do It Again

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

A Deep Devotion to the Constitution

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

The Timely Wisdom of Robert Lewis Dabney

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

Podcast Episode 62

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

H.L. Mencken and the South

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

Russell Kirk’s Southern Sensibilities: A Celebration

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

The Bonus Bill Veto and the Southern Tradition

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

God, Gallup, and the Episcopalians

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

Films from the South

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

Podcast Episode 61

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

The Sense of “Southernizing”

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

New England Against America

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

A Pilgrim’s Progress: Nathaniel Hawthorne Reconsidered

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

February Top Ten

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

Era of the Sow’s Ear

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

Let the Bear Flag Go

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

Podcast Episode 60

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

Southern Nullification and the Stamp Act

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

The American President: From Cincinnatus to Caesar

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

Washington vs. Lincoln

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

Explaining Trump to the Brits

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

Finding the Swamp Fox

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

Podcast Episode 59

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

Union or Else

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

The Burning of Atlanta

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

Yale’s Folly

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

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

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

In Search of the Real Abe Lincoln

No one interested in American history can escape Abraham Lincoln. Over the years the outpouring of books, articles, essays, and poems has been enormous, so much so that this form of activity is sometimes referred to as "the Lincoln industry." With all of this attention devoted to one man, how can there be a "Lincoln puzzle"? Surely all Americans know…
Ludwell H. Johnson
February 13, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 58

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 6-10 2017 Topics: Southern manners, Southern culture, Southern literature, Southern tradition. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-58
Brion McClanahan
February 11, 2017
Blog

The Black Confederate and the Teddy Bear

Most people have never heard of Holt Collier - and those who have heard of the "Teddy Bear" may be surprised to learn about his history. Collier was born into slavery in Mississippi in 1848. By his 15th birthday, he had become an expert on wildlife in the Mississippi Delta and was known as one to of the best bear…
Lunelle McCallister
February 10, 2017
Blog

A Man’s Interest: Sports and the South

I am a Georgian and a University of Georgia alumni. I have been a fan of all the Atlanta sports franchises since I was a kid, and I was a huge fan of the Georgia Bulldogs even before I went there. Needless to say, I was very disappointed by the outcome of the Super Bowl, and since Atlanta/Georgia is a…
Dan E. Phillips
February 9, 2017
Blog

The Continuing Relevance of Calhoun’s Wisdom

I am always glad to talk about my favourite subject–-John C. Calhoun. I think it will become apparent that what he has to say has some relevance to our topic “Building Communities of Resistance”—and perhaps in surprising ways that have little to do with the familiar lessons of State rights and nullification. By the way, despite what you may hear…
Clyde Wilson
February 8, 2017
Review Posts

Listening in Autumn: “Thin Time” in North Louisiana

Two Poems by Robert Peters and David Middleton Who Will Hear? From distant ridge to distant ridge hunting horns serenading with stories before great fires; Bobbing over hill and into hollow the fox hounds’ course voices; The pitch of the pack rising with the tiring of the stag; Watery break singing with a million mosquitoes; Chip marrying the widow with…
Abbeville Institute
February 7, 2017
Blog

Tidewater Wit and Wisdom

An honest man can never be outdone in courtesy. A sensual life is a miserable life. The contempt of death makes all the miseries of life easy to us. -Taken from Seneca’s Dialogues, a primer for young men in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland   Fear God. Reverence the parents. Imitate not the wicked. Boast not in discourse of thy wit…
John Devanny
February 6, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 57

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 30 - Feb 3, 2017 Topics: Secession, Yankees, Decentralization, Nationalism, Conventions https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-57
Brion McClanahan
February 4, 2017
Blog

The Southern Yankee

Beyond the New England slave trade which populated the American South with millions of enslaved Africans, there were many Yankees who moved South before 1861 to engage in agriculture and the holding of slaves.  And they had a Southern counterpart who learned the Yankee’s  close-fisted ways.  During the War and after Northern bayonets had conquered Southern regions, many industrious and profit-minded Yankees…
Bernard Thuersam
February 2, 2017
Review Posts

The Small Nation Manifesto

A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from power. Leopold Kohr Breakdown of Nations We the small nations and aspiring small nations of the world find it increasingly difficult to escape the clutches of the largest, wealthiest, most…
Thomas Naylor
February 1, 2017
Blog

January Top Ten

The top ten articles for January 2017. 1. Ashley Judd Gets Nasty by Brion McClanahan 2. Old Western Man: C.S. Lewis and the Old South by Sheldon Vanauken 3. The Dixie Curse by Paul Yarbrough 4. Robert E. Lee, Southern Heritage, Media Bias, and Al Sharpton by Gail Jarvis 5. Robert E. Lee: American Hero by Brion McClanahan 6. Stonewall…
Brion McClanahan
February 1, 2017
Blog

Never the North, Always the South

"I think every heritage has things that are good about it, every heritage has things that are harmful about it," replied Representative Tom Price recently to a question from Senator Tim Kaine. "And I'm happy to answer the specific question. I think slavery was an abomination." Price was being interviewed for Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Health and Human…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 31, 2017
Blog

Calexit: California, Adios!

It seems that out in California an impressively large number of people are petitioning for a referendum on secession.  While I don’t think much of their motive, I say more power to them. The motivation is, of course, fear by California leftists and foreigners that the 2016 federal election has deprived them of the excessive influence they have exercised over…
Clyde Wilson
January 30, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 56

Editor's note: McClanahan misspoke at the beginning of the podcast. This is episode 56, not 55. The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 23-27, 2017. Topics: Southern women, Ashley Judd, Southern literature. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-56
Brion McClanahan
January 28, 2017
Review Posts

Octavia Walton Le Vert

Fredrika Bremer calls the subject of this sketch her "sweet Rose of Florida." She certainly is a "Rose that all are praising." It would require the scope of a full biography to change this rose into a bud, and then, petal by petal, to unfold the bud again to the rose; after all, we might not find the dew-drop at…
Julia Deane Freeman
January 27, 2017
Blog

My Fantasy Visit with Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty once said that "Each writer must find out for himself, I imagine, on what strange basis he lives with his own stories." This has always struck me as a particularly profound observation about not only the writer's life, but "life" in general, the "stories" we all live. Eudora Welty. One of America's all-time great writers. One of America's…
Wayne Hogan
January 26, 2017
Blog

A Bow to the Ladies

A review of Understanding Mary Lee Settle, by George Garrett, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1988, 187 pages. One useful way to distinguish between types of novelists is to characterize them as either intensive or extensive. An intensive novel, much the more com­mon variety in modern times, deals with a small segment of individual experi­ence and consciousness, wringing from…
Clyde Wilson
January 25, 2017
Review Posts

Forgotten Heroines of the Confederacy

Millions know Scarlett O'Hara's fictional story. Yet few among even the staunchest Southerners know the true stories of Confederate heroines like Molly Tynes, Lola Sanchez, Lottie and Ginnie Moon, Erneline Pigott, Robbie Woodruff, Antonia Ford, Nancy Hart and Alice Thompson. Some of these women en¬joyed a measure of local recognition, but others had to cloak their deeds in secrecy for…
Anne Funderburg
January 24, 2017
Blog

Ashley Judd Gets Nasty

  “Treat a woman like a lady, And your lady like a queen….” Charlie Daniels Ashley Judd’s recitation of “I’m a Nasty Woman” at the “women’s” march on Washington D.C. splashed across every media outlet in America. Judd proudly proclaimed to be a feminist and then launched into a verbal diatribe against “racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault,…
Brion McClanahan
January 23, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 55

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 16-20, 2017. Topics: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Southern History, Dixie, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-55
Brion McClanahan
January 22, 2017
Blog

The Dixie Curse

In the tradition of all authority to trample love and devotion, an outsider (or perhaps a group of) has decided to cut into the heart of a people’s birthright. Ross Bjork, University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) athletic director has in all his Kansas wisdom arbitrarily and highhandedly told the world that no renditions of the grand old song, “Dixie,” will…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 20, 2017
Blog

Robert E. Lee: American Hero

Several years ago, leftist blowhard Richard Cohen at the Washington Post wrote that Robert E. Lee “deserves no honor — no college, no highway, no high school. In the awful war (620,000 dead) that began 150 years ago this month, he fought on the wrong side for the wrong cause. It’s time for Virginia and the South to honor the…
Brion McClanahan
January 19, 2017
Blog

Recovering Southern History

Every historian has a viewpoint, shaped by his own background, values, and perception of the present. The relationship between background and viewpoint is not necessarily simple. As in the case of Supreme Court nominees, one cannot always predict in advance in what direction a historians background, modified by research and thought, will lead. At any rate, we properly measure a…
Clyde Wilson
January 18, 2017
Review Posts

Stonewall: By Name and Nature

Stonewall lay dying of his wounds at Chancellorsville — "the most successful movement of my life," he murmured, and then remembered to give full credit to God. "I feel His hand led me." He had smashed Fighting Joe Hooker and 134,000 invaders of Virginia with 60,000 Confederates. Jackson didn't mention General Robert E. Lee who was with the reserves that…
Holmes Alexander
January 17, 2017
Blog

This is Mosby

V.P. Hughes, A Thousand Points of Truth: The History and Humanity of Colonel John Singleton Mosby in Newsprint (XLIBRIS, 2016). Given command over a semi-independent unit of partisan rangers in the Army of Northern Virginia, a dashing young Confederate major led a cavalry raid at the Fairfax county courthouse, deep behind Federal lines. With just a handful of men and…
James Rutledge Roesch
January 16, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 54

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 9-13, 2017. Topics: The Southern Tradition, C.S. Lewis, 19th Century Politics, Donald Trump, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-54
Brion McClanahan
January 15, 2017
Blog

The Window on the West

Editor's note: This piece was published less than ten years (1983) before the end of communist control of Romania. Bradford's assessment of the Romanian people well applies to the South, a region that had been defeated and "reconstructed" but still retained much of its cultural vibrancy, albeit suppressed and ridiculed by the political class. It also serves as a stark…
M.E. Bradford
January 13, 2017
Blog

Papa Daws

Three long ringing signals from I the driver's horn, and the hunt was over. I quit my stand and met Dad on the road back of our line. We had both seen a doe that had kept us on our toes for a while, but otherwise, the drive had been uneventful. We fell quiet and listened. Then Dad asked if…
Henry D. Boykin II
January 12, 2017
Blog

Differences

How much better off the American people would be if they could learn the difference between: *investors and speculators *the Constitution ratified by the people of the States and the one promulgated by federal judges *education and training *necessary taxation and an oppressive burden *national defense and foreign interventionism *law enforcement and war *justifiable borrowing and destructive, irresponsible debt *entertainment…
Clyde Wilson
January 11, 2017
Review Posts

Old Western Man: C.S. Lewis and the Old South

I write not as an expert to tell you of my thought but to explain a particular concept of Lewis's and my own application of it to the Old South. Almost everyone knows something about C.S. Lewis as a writer of extremely readable children's books (about the land of Narnia that can be entered through the back of an old…
Sheldon Vanauken
January 10, 2017
Blog

Dan Sickles and the First Presidential Cover-Up

In our time, we think we know a lot about presidential cover-ups. There was Nixon's Watergate, of course. Some of us remember Lyndon Johnson's problems with Bobby Baker. And President Kennedy had his secret girlfriends. All of these, however, are minor matters compared to the granddaddy of them all, the biggest presidential cover-up in American history, the murder of Barton…
William H. Hunter
January 9, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 53

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 2-6, 2017 Topics: Secession, Southwestern History, the Southern Tradition, Federalism, Old Republicans https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-53
Brion McClanahan
January 8, 2017
Blog

Things as They Are

William S. Belko, Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew’s Court (The University of Alabama Press, 2016). Sometimes a professional historian gets it right. William Belko has produced a quality tome that both expands and enhances our understanding of American history. While most academics write about the same subjects and regurgitate fashionable theories with “new”…
Brion McClanahan
January 6, 2017
Blog

A State of Mind

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, which began with the epic demand, “ That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”   After a month of heated deliberation, the Congress finally adopted Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence which…
John Marquardt
January 5, 2017
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