The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar. 26-30, 2018. Topics: the New South, Southern Culture, Hank Williams, Confederate Symbols https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-114
Brion McClanahanMarch 31, 2018
President Trump’s proposed ten-percent tariff on refined aluminum yields a teachable moment for Southern history students. Historical analysis of the industry reveals an echo of the Northern tariff policies that angered Southerners during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the South was generally a raw materials exporter and feedstock supplier to Northern manufacturers. Tariffs during the era usually…
Philip LeighMarch 30, 2018
The recent Klan activities in Forsyth County, Georgia and Summerville, South Carolina make it more and more difficult for those of us who are trying to keep the battle flag flying and Dixie in the repertoire of bands around the region. You saw them on your television screen: angry little clusters of the ignorant, assembled in front of the ravenous…
Thomas LandessMarch 29, 2018
This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1985. Hank Williams has now been dead longer than he lived. And outside of a hundred or more fine songs, his thrity-year-old memory survives best among some of his cousins down in Georgiana, Alabama, about sixty miles south of Montgomery. Among them are Taft and Erleen Skipper (Taft’s daddy and…
Bill KoonMarch 28, 2018
A review of Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States: The Attack on Leviathan by Donald Davidson (Transaction Books, 1991). August 18, 1993 will mark the centennial of Donald Davidson’s birth. On April 25 of that year, he will have been dead a quarter of a century. During his lifetime Davidson was considered the most minor of the major Fugitives,…
Mark Royden WinchellMarch 27, 2018
On an abnormally warm early Spring day, I took a 150 mile motorcycle ride from Portsmouth to Stony Creek, Virginia. It is where my Great Great Grandpa, Randolph Page, was captured by Federal Forces in 1864. He rode with the SC 6th Insurgent Cavalry (Aka: the Dixie Raiders). His unit fought in nearly every major engagement in Virginia from 1862,…
Cliff PageMarch 26, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 19-23, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern culture, the New South, Reconstruction, Yankees https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-113
Brion McClanahanMarch 24, 2018
Social activist Julia Ward wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861, the same year that Henry Timrod composed his “Ethnogenesis” (the poem which kicked off part 2 of this series). In it, she penned that God will use His “terrible swift sword” to bring judgment upon “condemners” and “crush the serpent with his heel.” The wicked this New…
Dissident MamaMarch 23, 2018
Most modern historians reject any suggestion that the South fought the Civil War over states’ rights. They insist that the only states’ rights the South cared about, “as neo-confederates are loath to admit,” was slavery. (According to Wikipedia, “neo-confederate is a term that describes the views of who use historical revisionism* to portray the and its actions in the Civil War…
Philip LeighMarch 22, 2018
John Randolph of Roanoke with his dogs on the floor of Congress. There was a little dog down the street from us named Streety. My brother and I hadn’t got our own dog yet; that was five or six months in the future. So, we had adopted Streety as our own--though many in the neighborhood had done the same. He…
Paul H. YarbroughMarch 21, 2018
A review of Southern Horizons: The Autobiography of Thomas Dixon (IWV Publishing, 1994). The name of Thomas Dixon today is little remembered, North or South, but seventy years ago Dixon was one of the most prominent and controversial public figures in the country. The discovery and publication of his autobiography ought to be considered a significant event in the cultural…
Stephen P. SmithMarch 20, 2018
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I am speaking but the plain truth when I tell you that I would rather be here tonight facing an assemblage of men and women of Irish blood and Irish breeding than in any other banquet hall on earth. For I am one who is Irish and didn't know it; but now that I…
Irvin S. CobbMarch 19, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 12-16, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern culture, Southern literature, Abraham Lincoln, 20th century Southern history https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-112
Brion McClanahanMarch 17, 2018
The complex issues which have and continue to divide America’s North and South have a long and at times violent history, as well as having involved an extensive list of differences. Almost a century before the War Between the States and even prior to the establishment of a formal geographic boundary roughly dividing the two sections along the thirty-ninth parallel,…
John MarquardtMarch 16, 2018
In November 1970, Lt. William Calley (a Florida native born in 1943) went on trial for his life. He was being court-martialed by the U.S. military for his participation in the My Lai Massacre and was accused of killing twenty-two civilians. Even though twenty-six officers participated and an estimated five hundred South Vietnamese were killed, Calley was the only man…
Michael MartinMarch 15, 2018
There was a social order at Tom’s Service Station. It wasn’t posted on the wall. The “Welcome Wagon” didn’t slip it into the baskets they gave to the newcomers. It wasn’t revealed as part of an initiation along with the rumored secret handshake. But the old men who held court on the long bench outside of Tom’s knew. And the…
Frank ClarkMarch 14, 2018
A review of Two Against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition (University Press of Kansas, 2017) by William C. Harris In a speech before the Senate in 1863, James A. Bayard of Delaware stated that “The truth will out, ultimately…though they may be voted down by the majority of the hour, though they may not…
Brion McClanahanMarch 13, 2018
If I was forced to give an example of at least one good thing we got out of the Puritans, I would quickly point to Sacred Harp singing. Sacred Harp is a traditional, primitive method of church singing still favored in the Deep South, and it even comes complete with several different annual conventions. Brion McClanahan and others have written…
Tom DanielMarch 12, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 5-9, 2018. Topics: the War, Maryland, the U.S. Constitution, Southern Founders, 2nd Amendment, Political Correctness, Southern Culture. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-111
Brion McClanahanMarch 10, 2018
With the current heated debate over gun rights and the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution (which serves to affirm our natural rights…rights we have whether the State recognizes them or not), I thought it might be interesting to talk briefly about the Battle of Athens. If you’re like a lot of people, you probably haven’t heard about this…
Lewis LibermanMarch 9, 2018
Since the 1960s, the interpretation of Southern history and the War Between the States put forth by most of the news media and academia is largely a fraud. It is driven by the racist identity politics of the Democrat Party and not historical truth. If Southern history was interpreted objectively as it was before 1960, instead of with liberal political…
Gene Kizer, Jr.March 8, 2018
If you travel I-20 east from Jackson, Mississippi, somewhere about 20 miles short of Meridian you’ll see a sign: Hickory Exit. This sign is one almost ad infinitum of green signs along a monster interstate that has sucked the life out of localism, particularly important throughout the South. But should you drive into downtown from old Highway 80, you’ll see…
Paul H. YarbroughMarch 7, 2018
A review of Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution by M.E. Bradford (Georgia, 1993). Since the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, numberless books re-examining the document and the convention that made it have issued forth from commercial publishing houses and university presses. While some of them are excellent and make important contributions in the…
W. Kirk WoodMarch 6, 2018
It is near impossible to express any admiration of the antebellum South without incurring the wrath of the perpetually offended mob, online or otherwise. Even acknowledgment in the accomplishments of those men once universally and unequivocally admired by all Americans, such as Washington, Jefferson, and Lee, now brings the occasional sneer or mark of condemnation from “polite” society. Unfortunately, for…
Reverdy JohnsonMarch 5, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 26- Mar 2, 2018 Topics: the War, Confederate symbols, Southern culture, Yankees, Spencer Roane https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-110
Brion McClanahanMarch 3, 2018
“Religion, taking every mortal form But that pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven!” — From “Ethnogenesis,” by Henry Timrod South Carolinian Henry Timrod penned these words in February 1861 at the meeting of the First…
Dissident MamaMarch 2, 2018
The term “science” is applied rather loosely today. In some cases what we call science might be more appropriately labeled pseudoscience. The field of sociology comes to mind. It is more politically correct that scientifically objective, and you would be hard put to find a sociologist who doesn't hold Leftist political views. Sociological theories, questionable to begin with, are being…
Gail JarvisMarch 1, 2018
When I was very young, I recall my father telling me of George "No-Show" Jones, a country music legend. The moniker, I was told, was given after Jones failed to play a concert in some town in Texas. He was said to be seen riding a motorcycle in the opposite direction of his "postponed" performance, with a very attractive blonde…
Christopher J. CarterFebruary 28, 2018
A review of Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States (Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) by Gene Kizer, Jr. In all my growing up years I was taught that the War Between the States was fought over slavery. That's what the "history" books, so called, told us and it is certainly what the "news media" has screamed…
Al BensonFebruary 27, 2018
“It has been our happiness to believe, that in the partition of powers between the general and State governments, the former possessed only such as were expressly granted, or passed therewith as necessary incidents, while all the residuary powers were reserved by the latter.” Spencer Roane Had one-time friends John Adams and Thomas Jefferson not had such a high-profile and…
Joe WolvertonFebruary 26, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 19-23, 2018 Topics: the War, Reconstruction, North over South, Southern politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-109
Brion McClanahanFebruary 24, 2018
Recently, Business Insider editor, MSNBC contributor, and public-radio personality Josh Barro called the left’s war on American culture “annoying.” He explained that “Liberals have supplanted conservatives as moralizing busybodies.” New York Magazine‘s Jonathan Chait even tweeted support of Barro’s “sensible thoughts,” calling out the Democrats’ supposedly new-found misadventure of “liberal sanctimony.” Funny that in all his talk condemning such “moralizing,” neo-liberal Barro went on to further pontificate about the Dems suffering “from a cultural disconnect…
Dissident MamaFebruary 23, 2018
Abbeville Institute scholar Dr. William Wilson presents a talk on the congruity between Washington and Lee at our 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkgsJc9KCyQ
William WilsonFebruary 22, 2018
Judas failed in his purpose because he failed to recognize the coming of Christ for what it was: The coming of God with His presentation, gift, of grace. Judas followed Christ, as an apostle, never seeming to understand why Christ came or even who He was, thus carrying him to treachery and his own death and condemnation by God…
Paul H. YarbroughFebruary 21, 2018
Although labeled a Western, True Grit is also a novel about Reconstruction in Arkansas and the Indian Territory that would become eastern Oklahoma. The Reconstruction aspects are more evident in the novel, which turns fifty years old this year, than in the movies. The story is about fourteen year old Mattie Ross who leaves her mother, sister and little brother at home…
Philip LeighFebruary 19, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 12-16, 2018. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern poetry, Southern literature, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-108
Brion McClanahanFebruary 17, 2018
Propaganda. It’s a well-known word defined as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” And, I might add, used for the purpose of demonizing and destroying one’s enemies. The South has had more than its fair share of time in the crosshairs of Yankee propaganda, and…
Ryan WaltersFebruary 16, 2018
When you hear or read about the burning of Columbia, General Sherman’s principal target in South Carolina, you are often told that the origin of the fire is a historical mystery that can't be conclusively solved, or that the fires were actually initiated by the evacuating Confederate troops, or even by the citizens of Columbia themselves—none of which is true.…
Karen StokesFebruary 15, 2018
For as many years as I’ve been an artist, I’ve seen numerous Southerners, Christians, libertarians and other traditionalist-minded folks wring their hands over people subscribing to this or that tenant of leftist ideology, but then turn around and market their own ideas in just about the most boring manner possible. Because if there’s anything the left has done exceptionally well,…
Lewis LibermanFebruary 14, 2018
A review-essay on A Memory of Manaus: Poems by Catharine Savage Brosman. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2017. A Memory of Manaus, Catharine Brosman’s eleventh full-length collection of poetry, confirms her rightful place in the front rank of contemporary American poets. Working skillfully in both traditional forms and in tightly controlled free verse, Brosman is among that very small number…
David MiddletonFebruary 13, 2018
The Stockholm Syndrome is a condition where captives or hostages develop a psychological attachment and loyalty to their captors. Psychologists often describe this syndrome as a “survival strategy.” This strategy is employed by captives when all hope for returning to a normal life appears to be lost. By befriending one’s all-powerful captors, life is preserved within the new “normal” order. …
Walter D. (Donnie) KennedyFebruary 12, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 5-9, 2018 Topics: Southern film, Southern humor, Southern literature, Political Correctness, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-107
Brion McClanahanFebruary 10, 2018
Everyone wanted to be Southern in the 1970s. The rejuvenated interest in Southern music from bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlies Daniels, and the Allman Brothers (and the unknown Southern influence in the "Motown" sound) was just one component of a larger pro-Southern, working class, populist movement. Southerners had been made consciously Southern again after over a decade of national attention,…
Brion McClanahanFebruary 9, 2018
Yes, give me a land with a grave in each spot And names in the graves that shall not be forgot; Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb-- There is grandeur in graves--there is glory in gloom The new Kulturekampf, having already eyed and attacked the more visible elements of Dixie identity in prominent places across…
Christopher J. CarterFebruary 8, 2018
When Georgia Scenes came from an Augusta, Georgia press in 1835, the literary world realized (to varying degrees) that here was a new kind of book. It took a discerning critic like Edgar Allan Poe to recognize so immediately that its “verisimilitude” was an outstanding trait. What was so radically new about the work was its author’s intention not to…
James Everett KiblerFebruary 7, 2018
A review of Remember Mississippi: How Chris McDaniel Exposed the GOP Establishment and Inspired a Revolution (WND, 2017) by Ryan S. Walters. Ryan S. Walters, who is book review editor for Abbeville Institute and editor of Mississippi Conservative Daily, has produced a highly readable biography of his close friend, Chris McDaniel. For those who may not remember, McDaniel is the…
Paul GottfriedFebruary 6, 2018
Once upon a time in America, in a far different and far more gentle age, it was possible for four young men from Memphis, Tennessee, to appear at a performance in a Northern city dressed as Confederate officers and sing a song entitled “Save Your Confederate Money Boys, the South Shall Rise Again” without being booed off the stage. Not…
John MarquardtFebruary 5, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 29-Feb 2, 2018. Topics: Sectionalism, Secession, Southern Economics, the War, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-106
Brion McClanahanFebruary 3, 2018
Anthony Hervey was born in Water Valley, Mississippi in 1965. He grew up in Oxford, served in the military for a short period, then went on to the University of Mississippi, where he studied sociology and Afro Studies. He then traveled to London, England where he studied Race & Ethnicity at the University of London and served as an intern…
Michael MartinFebruary 2, 2018
A little while ago, I spent some time at Colonial Williamsburg as a tourist. While my wife was getting dressed for dinner our first evening, I happened to watch a short film on TV entitled Portrait of a Patriot, which, I learned, was piped into all of the area hotels and motels. Briefly, the film is set in and around…
Roger W. ColeFebruary 1, 2018
Address by Sam H. Jones, Governor of Louisiana to the Southern Farm Bureau Training School, Monroe, La., August 18, 1943 The history of mankind relates many stories where superior military force has conquered nations of superior civilization. In the wake of overwhelming brute force the great citadels of culture and economic and social progress have fallen never to rise again.…
Sam H. JonesJanuary 31, 2018
A review of Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis, (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). Shearer Davis Bowman presents a comprehensive view of the events leading to the secession of the southern states. Bowman (p. 12) explores “what Americans on the eve of the Civil War believe about themselves and the world…
Jonathan WhiteJanuary 30, 2018
Recently Michael S. Greve of George Mason University Law School wrote an insightful article which contends that sectionalism has reared its head again. This new sectionalism is dividing the states along the lines of economic interests, which also happen to be aligning nicely with current ideological and partisan fault lines as well. Professor Greve rightly points out that the states…
John DevannyJanuary 29, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 22-26, 2018 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, the War, Abraham Lincoln, Jack Jouett, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-105
Brion McClanahanJanuary 27, 2018
Modern American society seems to have little understanding of what really happened before, during and after the War Between the States. To see evidence of this one need look no further than the shocking success in eradicating and censoring Southern monuments and artwork, the names of various buildings and roads, or even symbols of Southern history itself. And while some…
Lewis LibermanJanuary 26, 2018
Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of — Jack Jouett? Jouett’s mission, like that of his more famous fellow horseman, was to warn American patriots of the approaching attack by British regulars. While most people have heard of Paul Revere and his ride, forever memoralized by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, there are few who…
Joe WolvertonJanuary 25, 2018
More than 150 years after the Civil War, the nation is engulfed in controversy over statues of people who fought for the Confederacy. Many people want the statues taken down. The statues, they say, depict men who were slaveowners, slavery proponents, and traitors. Those who want the statues to stay in place are said to be racists. The feelings run…
Jacob G. HornbergerJanuary 24, 2018
A review of Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic by Paul C. Graham (Shotwell Publishing, 2017). In a brilliant new book on one of the most important topics of our time, Paul C. Graham, the co-founder of Shotwell Publishing, tackles the recent nationwide effort to eradicate every vestige of the Confederacy from our public life. It’s a new psychological condition that he…
Ryan WaltersJanuary 23, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 15-19, 2018 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, Southern Education, Robert E. Lee, Chesty Puller https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-104
Brion McClanahanJanuary 20, 2018
Lewis Burwell Puller is a Marine Corps legend and American hero. Nicknamed “Chesty” for his burly physique, he was one of the most combat-hardened leaders in military history and saw action in Haiti, Nicaragua, WWII, and Korea. The winner of five Navy Crosses and many other medals, he will always be remembered as a fierce warrior and proud patriot. One…
Michael MartinJanuary 19, 2018
A few years after General Lee accepted the presidency of the then Washington College, I was sent to be entered in the preparatory department, along with an older brother who was to enter college. The morning after we reached Lexington we repaired to the office of General Lee, situated in the college building, for the purpose of matriculation and receiving…
John B. CollyarJanuary 18, 2018
White privilege has become a major leftwing talking point and justification for a plethora of progressive initiatives that can best be described as reverse racial discrimination. White privilege is the mirror image of white supremacy. Both are evil ideas based upon race consciousness linked to a political ideology that denies the value of the individual. White supremacy is the outward…
James Ronald KennedyJanuary 17, 2018
A Review of The Elements of Academic Success by Gene Kizer, Jr. Charleston: Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014. Reviewed by Michael Potts I wish I had read a book like Gene Kizer Jr.’s The Elements of Academic Success when I began my undergraduate work. If I had followed his helpful advice, my grades in first-year Classical Greek may have been As…
Michael PottsJanuary 16, 2018
For most of our nation's two and a half century history, newspapers were the essential source of public opinion. Although newspapers expressed political preferences, regional newspapers did provide other sides of stories, as well as a variety of editorial opinions. But as the 1950s drew to a close, the public began getting its news from a few television networks. Reporters…
Gail JarvisJanuary 15, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 8-12 2018 Topics: Northern studies, the Constitution, 14th Amendment https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-103
Brion McClanahanJanuary 13, 2018
Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin. All of these Founding Fathers are well known and need no first names. Tucker, however, that’s a surname of a member of the Founding Generation that isn’t familiar at all and definitely needs a first name and what a first name it is: St. George! St. George Tucker is a man whose name has been…
Joe WolvertonJanuary 12, 2018
In 1933, General Smedley R. Butler blew the whistle on an attempt by American fascists to overthrow president Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this speech he detailed the following: “I appeared before the congressional committee, the highest representation of the American people, under subpoena to tell what I knew of activities which I believed might lead to an attempt to set…
Michael MartinJanuary 11, 2018
Advance the flag of Dixie For Dixie’s land we take our stand To live or die for Dixie And conquer peace for Dixie Anyone singing the above lyrics from the patriotic Confederate song of 1861, “Dixie to Arms,” would today, as with its earlier counterpart “Dixie,” be considered most politically incorrect and would probably ignite a firestorm of protest demonstrations…
John MarquardtJanuary 10, 2018
A review of Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment by Raoul Berger (Second Edition; Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997). Also available online. Raoul Berger was a legal historian who did not fear challenging academic consensus. His 1977 contrarian work Government by Judiciary argued that the Supreme Court radically departed from the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, citing…
Zachary GarrisJanuary 9, 2018
The following is an excerpt from a 1946 pamphlet dedicated to the Public Schools of North Carolina by the Anson Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy in honor of its author, Dr. Henry Tucker Graham of Florence, South Carolina. Dr. Graham was the former president of Hampden-Sydney College and for twenty years the beloved pastor of the First Presbyterian Church…
Bernard ThuersamJanuary 8, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 1-Dec 31 2017. Topics: Year in review, the Southern tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-102
Brion McClanahanDecember 23, 2017
Well, the old mill closed down on us Tuesday night at 6 P.M. for the rest of the week, so as to give us a holiday for Christmas, which came this year on December 25th inst. And so when I came out of the shop and started home it was sunset, and all back to the west was the prettiest…
Clinton Martin BissellDecember 22, 2017
Reading on the Abbeville site articles about the South and the West, I was reminded of my newspaper piece on Florida as the Wild Wild (South) East, which had a popular run. It was inspired by a Frederic Remington article describing his adventures in Florida with cowboys in the 1880s. Our county (Marion, named for Gen. Francis Marion) was as…
Joscelyn DunlopDecember 21, 2017
The Setting Postcolonial studies have been all the rage for many decades. A great number of contributors to the field have come from India and their work wrestles (in part) with the socio-psychological situation of Indian bureaucrats in the British Raj. These functionaries were, after all, Indians of some kind working for His Majesty’s Government – not the one in…
Joseph R. StrombergDecember 20, 2017
A review of Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution by Harry Jafffa, (Regnery, 1994). When Professor Harry Jaffa, in his new book Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question, refers to Abraham Lincoln as the “greatest interpreter of the Founding Fathers,” one must wonder whose Founding Fathers he has in mind. From the outset…
William J. WatkinsDecember 19, 2017
Fred Douglas Young, Richard M. Weaver, 1910-1963: A Life of the Mind. University of Missouri Press, 1995. 217; Joseph Scotchie, editor, The Vision of Richard Weaver. Transaction Publishers, 1995. Early in the fall of 1939, while driving over "the monotonous prairies of Texas" to begin a third dismal year at Texas A & M with its "rampant philistinism, abetted by…
David MiddletonDecember 18, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 11-15, 2017 Topics: Southern culture, George Mason, original intent, political correctness, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-101
Brion McClanahanDecember 16, 2017
A bit of free verse to address our current situation, which is probably not as good as I think it is. It marshals various lines from Donald Davidson’s poems. As Faulkner said, all of us writers are really only failed poets. You, Mel Bradford, told Of remembering who we are. A time has come When answers will not wait. But…
Clyde WilsonDecember 15, 2017
At the Battle of Nashville, on 16 December 1864, the Tennessean’s brigade, fought valiantly, but Brigadier General Thomas Benton Smith soon found himself surrounded on three sides by Federal troops. A bullet had pierced the skull of Colonel William M. Shy, the commander of Smith’s original regiment, the 20th Tennessee Infantry. He had fallen, fighting to the last, and holding…
Jeff WolvertonDecember 14, 2017
‘Just a post, just a post, just a post on a blog, just a post, just a post, and the war has begun’ (To the tune of “Sloth,” Fairport Convention, ca. 1978) General Uncivil Background Blessed as we are -- so the economists say (they never lie) -– with relentless, inescapable digital bother and cyber-mania, any one of us might…
Joseph R. StrombergDecember 13, 2017
A review of The World They Made Together, Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia, by Mechal Sobel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1987 I In America, in 1607 the first successful British settlement began in a land they called Virginia. Within a few decades another people began arriving, taken from their homes in Africa. Both peoples arrived…
Vito MussomeliDecember 12, 2017
Every fact bearing upon the character and service of the statesmen whose genius created a model form of human government should receive a warm greeting from those who are proud of the growth, progress, and prosperity of the republic. The harmonious working of the component parts which enter into the life of the country is to-day the result of the…
Fitzhugh LeeDecember 11, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 4-8, 2017 Topic: Special Interview with the President of the Abbeville Institute, Don Livingston https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-100
Brion McClanahanDecember 9, 2017
Upon the Painting by Paul Davis of the Statue of a Young Confederate Soldier —on the cover of The Fugitive Poets: Modern Southern Poetry in Perspective (William Pratt, editor, 1965)— in honor of Clyde Wilson The cover holds us from the poems within, This young Confederate Davis captured here, A private guarding gates at two removes, This painting of a…
David MiddletonDecember 8, 2017
A July 2017 article from Buzzfeed.com, the hallmark of all popular wisdom of our time, was entitled, “15 Things You'll Understand If You've Ever Eaten At A White Friend's House.” In the article, a series of snarky memes and illustrative pictures were meant to communicate the idea that “white people” don’t know anything about “spicing up” their food. In other…
David HarrisDecember 7, 2017
With the election of Rutherford B. Hayes by a one vote margin in the Electoral College, the Compromise of 1877 ended the era of Reconstruction in the minds of the people. As Southern States were re-admitted into the Union, Federal troops stood down or returned to the North. From about 1885 to 1924, before and after the 50th Anniversary of…
Cliff PageDecember 6, 2017
A review of Gettysburg Rebels: Five Native Sons Who Came Home To Fight As Confederate Soldiers, by Tom McMillan, Regnery, 2017. In 1912, the renowned publisher of books on The War for Sothern Independence, Neale Publishing Company of New York, released Fighting by Southern Federals, written by Charles C. Anderson. He argued that more than 600,000 Southerners fought for the…
Bill PotterDecember 5, 2017
There is an old saying in the theater that when one is acting the part of a butler in a play, the actor tends to regard it as a play about butlers. This manner of observing personages and events, both past and present is, of course, a sad fact of life within many levels of modern society. All too often,…
John MarquardtDecember 4, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, November 27-December 1, 2017. Topics: the War, slavery, secession, war crimes, Southern literature, political correctness. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-99
Brion McClanahanDecember 2, 2017
After the rousing success of Kansas University’s redesigned football uniforms in honor of Jennison’s Jay-hawkers of 1861, a competing Kansas university also recently unveiled a special-edition football uniform in commemoration of the atrocities of that bloody time. Planned for an upcoming series of games, the uniform features blue pants with yellow stripe and bloodied saber, and a blue jersey styled…
Lewis LibermanDecember 1, 2017
From its port side northern Kentucky’s foremost tourist attraction looks exactly like a real vessel, a big one, with a ramp fitted along it to take on animals and supplies. From bow to stern it is 510 feet long, about as long as a modern missile frigate, and the designers have gone to great lengths to make the structure appear…
Jerry SalyerNovember 30, 2017
For five days in May, 1856, Charles Sumner delivered a speech entitled The Crime Against Kansas. For those five days, he continuously slandered South Carolina and its senator, Pierce Butler. Regarding South Carolina, Sumner stated: “If we glance at special achievements, it will be difficult to find anything in the history of South Carolina which presents so much of heroic…
Michael MartinNovember 29, 2017
A review of Pickett’s Charge – The Last Attack at Gettysburg by Earl J. Hess (UNC Press, 2001). When I was still on active duty with the U.S. Army, the true “Gettysburg” book was Professor Coddington’s The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (1968). But his book was about the entire battle and command and not the attack. Hess mentions several others,…
John C. WhatleyNovember 28, 2017
The recent apoplexy over White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly’s comments about Robert E. Lee and the Civil War have revealed on ongoing problem in the thinking of many Americans when it comes to history and politics in general – the inability to see any issue or event in anything but the most oversimplified terms. In the particular context of the…
Michael ArmstrongNovember 27, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 13-17, 2017. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern culture, Robert E. Lee, secession, John C. Calhoun, the Deep North https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-98
Brion McClanahanNovember 18, 2017
John C. Calhoun–valedictorian of his class at Yale, Vice President, Secretary of War, and Senator–was one of the greatest statesmen America has produced. Margaret Coit wrote a favorable biography of him in 1950 that won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1959, a Senate committee, headed by John Kennedy, ranked him among the five greatest senators in American history. Calhoun wrote one…
Donald LivingstonNovember 17, 2017
If you listen to the modern historical profession, Southern secession in 1861 represented "treason." David Blight, Professor History at Yale University, has made this belief the part of the core of his attack on Confederate symbols. If we should not take them down because they represent "white supremacy," then they should be removed because Southerners were "traitors." Traitors to whom…
Brion McClanahanNovember 16, 2017
A Review James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation by Jeff Broadwater (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Speaking at the celebration of the completion of the restoration of Montpelier, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “Montpelier restored is certainly beautiful but is in no sense the most fitting memorial to James Madison. If you’re looking…
Joe WolvertonNovember 14, 2017
There is a popular theme embraced by many that the uniqueness of Southern culture is explained by its “Celtic” origins in opposition to the “Anglo-Saxon” foundations of the North. This thesis has been expressed strongly in such works as Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, Jim Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, and James…
Clyde WilsonNovember 13, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 6-10 2017. Topics: Reconstruction, Jewish Confederates, Southern weather, Southern literature, Southern culture. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-97
Brion McClanahanNovember 11, 2017
We hear endless accounts today concerning the dire effects of global climate change, as well as the horrific devastation caused by the recent hurricanes that have mainly struck the Southern states. However, if one studies the five billion years of Earth’s climatic history, it should soon become evident that climate change has been an ongoing cyclical occurrence during the latter…
John MarquardtNovember 10, 2017
The Jewish people have endured much throughout their long history, yet have always continued to hold on to their religious and cultural identity. Finding a safe harbor from persecution was perhaps the main justification for the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Yet before this monumental event, amidst the often tumultuous sea of the diaspora, there did briefly…
Jonathan HarrisNovember 9, 2017
Those who have read his Count of Monte Cristo can readily appreciate the wisdom of Alexander Dumas who wrote, “The difference between treason and patriotism is a matter of dates.” Similarly, Civil War era historical interpretations are a matter of dates. Consider the example of President Ulysses Grant. While the many corruption scandals during his presidency cannot be denied, modern biographers and…
Philip LeighNovember 8, 2017
A review of A New England Romance: And Other Southern Stories by Randall Ivey (Shotwell Press, 2016). Randall Ivey’s book of Southern stories will make you laugh, cry and nod your head in recognition of delightful characters you feel you have known forever, or at least most of your life. This is especially true if you are lucky enough to…
Patricia WoodsNovember 7, 2017
Portraying a furtive agenda as a benevolent endeavor has occurred frequently throughout our history. Unscrupulous politicians have been able to hoodwink the public because it takes a while for their fraudulence to be discovered; Sometimes decades. The Reconstruction of Southern states is a classic example of this phenomenon. There were rational, well-thought out strategies put forth for re-admitting Southern states…
Gail JarvisNovember 6, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 30 - Nov 3, 2017 Topics: Southern religion, Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Southern Humor, Southern Founding, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-96
Brion McClanahanNovember 4, 2017
William Faulkner said much about Southern writing when he called Henry James "the nicest old lady lever met.” He indicated, of course, the sense of humor that the region has always had. And he indicated his disregard for the kind of psychological drama that identifies the target of his joke. If James liked to have a character weep seriously over…
Bill KoonNovember 3, 2017
At the time of his death, was Robert E. Lee a man without a country? No, the Gray Fox of the Confederacy was not like the naval officer in Edward Everett Hale's novel who cursed his country. Lee’s country, before and after the War Between the States, was the United States of America, a republic he served with valor and…
William FreehoffNovember 2, 2017
Thomas Sumter in his encounters with the Indian nations enters the pages of recorded history. He had probably been present at the fall of Fort Duquesne and in the campaign across the Ohio River and had learned something of the red man during this early service. In any case, he was chosen to accompany Lieutenant Henry Timberlake to treat with…
M.E. BradfordNovember 1, 2017
A review of Brian R. Dirck, Lincoln and Davis: Imagining America, 1809-1865 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2001). Mr. Dirck’s comparative analysis of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis promises much. Friendly reviewers have found his work “intellectual history at its most stimulating,” or “psychologically sophisticated.” Alas, I confess that I do not see it. To be fair to Mr.…
John DevannyOctober 31, 2017
On October 31, while many parents whisk their little ones from house to house in the pursuit of temporal tasty treats, a large portion of Christendom will be observing the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, a movement which arguably changed the very course of Western Civilization up through the present. Many Protestant denominations, seminaries, churches, and para-church organizations are…
Jonathan HarrisOctober 30, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 23-27, 2017. Topics: Abraham Lincoln, the United States Constitution, Slavery, Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-95
Brion McClanahanOctober 28, 2017
Not to be outdone by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s brilliant idea for a new post-Game of Thrones show exploring the drama and high-stakes tension of an alternate America where slavery still exists (which can be read here and here), Keltag Hagrinax and J.X. Parnohack of the hit series Shame of Crones also recently unveiled details of their new show at the Galactic Imperium News…
Lewis LibermanOctober 27, 2017
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected…
Kirkpatrick SaleOctober 26, 2017
In our politically correct culture where even the mildest criticism of a societal group can earn someone the label of racist, it remains open season on rural America. When Barack Obama famously spoke of rural Pennyslvanians in 2008 as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them" and are prone to "anti-immigrant…
Michael ArmstrongOctober 25, 2017
A review of Liberty & Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism by Timothy S. Huebner (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016). Timothy S. Huebner’s new synthetic account of the Civil War and Reconstruction melds military history, political history, constitutional history, and black history in telling the tale of the most popular subject in American history. Published by one…
Kevin R.C. GutzmanOctober 24, 2017
Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article about eighty-eight year old Nelson Winbush who is a Florida black man and proponent of Confederate monuments. His grandfather, Louis Napoleon Nelson, was a Tennessee slave who followed his master and sons into the Confederate military. Initially Louis was a cook but later became a rifleman and a chaplain under the command of cavalry leader Nathan…
Philip LeighOctober 23, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 16-20, 2017 Topics: The War, Political Correctness, Nat Turner, Federalism, Abraham Lincoln, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-94
Brion McClanahanOctober 21, 2017
Donald Trump made the following statement at a recent rally in Phoenix, Arizona on August 22: “In the proud tradition of America's great leaders, from George Washington -- please, don't take his statue down, please. PLEASE! Does anybody want George Washington's statue? No. Is that sad? To Lincoln, to Teddy Roosevelt, I see they want to take Teddy Roosevelt's down,…
Michael MartinOctober 20, 2017
As the old cliché goes, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” The phrase has been around forever, it seems, and sometimes it can be true, I suppose. There are always exceptions to every rule. But most of the time, a terrorist is simply a terrorist, a person who uses extreme violence and fear to achieve a political or…
Ryan WaltersOctober 18, 2017
A Review of States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, by Walter Brian Cisco, Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1991. “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”-Psalm 90:12 (KJV) Of all types of literature, I enjoy reading biographies. As a man, I profit from biographies of men whose…
Barry KayOctober 17, 2017
Russian-American relations over the past two and a half centuries, like the weather in Alaska, the land Russia sold to the United States in 1867 for ten dollars a square mile, have blown from very warm to extremely frigid; but its balmiest period by far was during the War Between the States. In stark contrast to America’s sixteen-year hiatus in…
John MarquardtOctober 16, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 9-13. 2017. Topics: Political Correctness, Yankees, the War, War Crimes, Confederate Monuments, Nullification https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-93
Brion McClanahanOctober 14, 2017
Back in my days as a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, I and some fellow graduate students were involved tangentially, very tangentially, in the great Confederate flag debate in Columbia, SC. During the 1990s the Confederate flag flew over the capitol in Columbia, SC. Various civil rights groups began to snipe at the flag, viewing it as…
John DevannyOctober 13, 2017
What was amazing about watching two dozen states and several hundred cities defy Donald Trump’s decision to take the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement was that so little was made of it. It represented open defiance of the national government and a commitment to follow the principles of a treaty that our elected leader has specifically rebuked. I…
Kirkpatrick SaleOctober 12, 2017
In the wake of the current controversy over Confederate monuments, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has created a timeline that has made its way around the worldwide web like wildfire. It purports to show that two spikes in the building of the monuments coincide with occurences of racially-charged historical eras, such as the rise of the Ku Klux Klan…
Michael ArmstrongOctober 11, 2017
A review of Karen Stokes, A Legion of Devils: Sherman in South Carolina (Shotwell Press, 2017). Many of us have read about the horrendous things William Tecumseh Sherman did as he and his "bummers" marched through Georgia, things a lot of us would rather not have read about. However, if we are to properly understand our history we are often compelled…
Al BensonOctober 10, 2017
Another Southern city with a rich history has fallen into the wallow of political pus. Who knows who represents the final word on the subject, although when it comes to these miscreants, these political poltroons, it is difficult to rummage through the dung of their dogmatic house to reveal any one germ. Now Memphis’ Orepheum Theatre Group has banned Gone…
Paul H. YarbroughOctober 9, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 2-6, 2017 Topics: Political Correctness, Cultural Marxism, Confederate symbols, secession, Braxton Bragg https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-92
Brion McClanahanOctober 8, 2017
A few years ago Stephen Fry, English actor, writer, and comic, hosted a televised tour of America, traveling from location to location in a London cab. His junket into the “Deep South” was introduced this way: “For years, I've been intrigued and bewitched by what seems to be America's most charactable region. A place of cotton, courtesy, Gospel music, mint…
Gail JarvisOctober 5, 2017
This isn’t 1990. The Winds of Change have stopped blowing. When the Soviets present a more docile response to self determination than a “western democracy,” the situation is bad. How painful is it to pine for the days of passive Soviet resistance to secession? Images and videos of the jack-booted thugs bulldozing their way through crowds of peaceful voters (including firemen…
Brion McClanahanOctober 4, 2017
A review of Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess, University of North Carolina Press, 2016. In Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy, prolific Civil War historian Earl J. Hess attempts the near impossible task of resurrecting the reputation of one of the Civil War’s most disparaged generals. Many contemporaries and…
Jason StewartOctober 3, 2017
In the news late today, on a nice summery afternoon in early September, I saw live on television a crane removing the large statue of General Robert E. Lee from a park in Dallas. I had to switch channels immediately because I was so upset and fed up with these imbecile journalists bleating the left-wing party line about the nobility…
Alphonse-Louis VinhOctober 2, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 25-29, 2017 Topics: the War, Politically Correct History, Reconstruction, Andrew Jackson, Radical Republicans https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-91
Brion McClanahanSeptember 30, 2017
"Anybody who would trash Lee and laud Lincoln is either stupid as a post or just plain evil," said a sage reader. This applies in spades to anyone who would laud the Radical Republicans of 1865, as one TV GOP blonde has recently, and asininely, done. The Radical Republicans, if you can believe it, considered Abraham Lincoln a moderate (a…
Ilana MercerSeptember 29, 2017
On Labor Day, I visited The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s Nashville manor. As a Tennessee native, going to The Hermitage was always a goal of mine – even though for various reasons I had never been able to do so before. With a candid demeanor, I paid my $20 dollars and entered the intro museum. For reasons expressed in my book,…
Dave BennerSeptember 28, 2017
From the beginnings to rather recent times, sympathetic portrayals of Confederates have been a mainstay of America cinema. An astounding number of major stars without any Southern background have had no objection to favourably portraying Confederates (and other Southerners). It might be noted that two of the major figures of early American film, D.W. Griffith and Will Rogers, were the…
Clyde WilsonSeptember 27, 2017
A review of Southern Reconstruction by Philip Leigh (Westholme, 2017). Confronting the establishment narrative about any historical topic can be a perilous endeavor. There are several that present such large minefields that most historians dare not attempt to cross, among them the “Civil War,” Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement. Bucking the accepted version of events in any of those…
Brion McClanahanSeptember 26, 2017
Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free: Beginning of Jefferson's Statue for Religious Freedom, passed by the Virginia Legislature in 1786 I With one intro line Jefferson explains the core of human liberty. Our minds, a composite of intellect and heart that defines us as human, are forever free to choose what to believe, where to inquire, who to…
Vito MussomeliSeptember 25, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 18-22, 2017 Topics: Culture war, Alexander Hamilton, American constitutions, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-90
Brion McClanahanSeptember 24, 2017
With roots in urban America, the libertarian New Class, which staffs so many of today’s influential think tanks, is disinclined to view the troubles in rural America as a real crisis. This group tends to view a farm as simply another unit of production that, if inefficient, should wither away without public concern—indeed no more deserving of concern than the…
Anthony HarriganSeptember 22, 2017
It is unsurprising that one of the antifa groups that have been making the news lately identifies itself with John Brown, the revolutionary abolitionist who was hanged shortly after leading an attack upon Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Brown’s career embodies the progressive fixation with being on the ostensibly “right” side of history, and as the attempted massacre of Republican senators…
Jerry SalyerSeptember 21, 2017
A review of How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America by Brion McClanahan, Regnery History, 2017. A thinking American must choose between Hamilton and Jefferson, whose contrary visions of the future were contested in the first days of the Constitution. If you are happy with big government, big banks, big business, big military, and judicial dictatorship, then you have Alexander Hamilton…
Clyde WilsonSeptember 19, 2017
Southern leaders had few complaints with the old Constitution under which they had lived. The heart of the conflict, they felt, was that the intent of the written law had been subverted by Northern sectionalists. Three major areas of conflict were over protective tariffs, the settlement of common territories, and the right to be secure in one’s property. Although tariffs…
James David AltmanSeptember 18, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, September 11-15, 2017 Topics: Southern symbols, political correctness, Southern literature, the War, James Madison https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-89
Brion McClanahanSeptember 16, 2017
Lee Sam and Abner were settin’ on the porch drinking ice-tea one day when the Yankee from Boston come running his Toyota Prius up the road to the house. He stopped, and as it was July and hadn’t rained in a month, the dust kinda poured over his car when he stopped. He got out a coughing and fussing and…
Paul H. YarbroughSeptember 15, 2017
In 2015, Todd Horwitz posted an article on on the Ron Paul-sponsored website Voices of Liberty aimed at restoring the definition of liberal. Horwitz explained: “Today’s liberals are not liberal at all. They are elitists, communists, and socialists that believe that they should dictate how people live. The true liberals are conservatives that try to restore the country to the…
Joe WolvertonSeptember 14, 2017
To assert the dogma that slavery caused the war of the 1860s sanctifies the North, vilifies the South, glorifies the Blacks, and mythologizes the war. This dogma has been thrown out there as an unchallenged “given” for a hundred and fifty years to put the South on the guilty defensive and keep her there, but it all collapses with one…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.September 13, 2017
A review of Fred Chappell, Familiars, LSU Press, 2014. The cat, the felis silverstrus catus, both wild and domesticated, has exercised a considerable fascination for the creative artist throughout the thousands of years of Western and non-Western civilization. One need only peruse art and history books containing sculptures of the animal originating in Byzantium and Egypt, among other ancient locales,…
Randall IveySeptember 12, 2017
The gentle wave of what had been termed “monumania” that rolled over the South and parts of the North during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries was one which saw the dedication of numerous monuments in memory of the Confederacy and its heroes. That long dormant wave has now suddenly turned into a manic tsunami dedicated to the tearing…
John MarquardtSeptember 11, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 4-8, 2017 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, Battle of Fredericksburg, Republican and Democrat Parties https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-88
Brion McClanahanSeptember 9, 2017
Agitation, Abstraction, Disruption, Distraction… These words are the most primal reasons that southern, and arguably mainstream American, history is under attack throughout the country. On August 16, 2017, I attended a protest to remove the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston, South Carolina. While I was at this protest, I gained a lot of insight on how these “protestors” think…
Michael MartinSeptember 8, 2017
"Some crazy person just compared President Abraham Lincoln to Hitler. Yes, this just happened on CNN and Brooke Baldwin's reaction was perfect." So scribbled one Ricky Davila on Social Media (Twitter). Indeed, an elderly Southern gentleman had ventured that President Lincoln, not General Lee, murdered civilians, a point even a Court historian and a Lincoln idolater like Doris Kearns Goodwin…
Ilana MercerSeptember 7, 2017
On 28 August 2017, the American Historical Association (AHA) issued a “Statement on Confederate Monuments” that presumed to speak for the entire American historical profession on the issue of whether these monuments should remain or if they should be removed from public spaces. Unfortunately this “statement” is little more than historical establishment claptrap disguised as highbrow intellectual discourse—par for the…
Brion McClanahanSeptember 6, 2017
A Review of The Angel of Marye’s Heights, by Les Carroll, Columbia, SC: Palmetto Bookworks, 1994. The famed G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.” No quote better sums up the actions of one brave Confederate soldier on the field…
Barry KaySeptember 5, 2017
Recent years have seen a new revisionist theme emerge in the history of America’s two principal, modern-day political parties – the Democrats and Republicans. In the new debate, two questions have emerged: Did the two parties switch platforms at any point in history? And did the Democrats, with its longtime Southern stronghold, always have a monopoly on racism and white…
Ryan WaltersSeptember 4, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 28 - Sep 1, 2017. Topics: United States Constitution, nullification, slavery, United States Presidents, Political Correctness, Lost Cause https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-87
Brion McClanahanSeptember 2, 2017
The top ten articles for August 2017: 1. Why The War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 2. Defending the Confederacy by Ryan Walters 3. The Real Robert E. Lee by James Rutledge Roesch 4. A Monumental Spin by H.V. Traywick, Jr. 5. What Confederate Monument Critics May Not Know by Philip Leigh 6. We Long to Be Free!…
Brion McClanahanSeptember 2, 2017
This is the gravestone of my great-great-great grandfather, Benjamin Parks Middleton, located in the Bethel Baptist Church cemetery between the towns of Hazelhurst and Georgetown in Copiah County, Mississippi. He was a farmer from that area and, to my knowledge, was not a slave-owner. Benjamin served as a private in the 6th Mississippi infantry unit of the Confederate States Army…
Houston MiddletonSeptember 1, 2017
Nullification, also known as State interposition, is controversial because it challenges the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation. The argument behind nullification is that the States—as parties to the compact that created the federal government—have a right to interpret the Constitution and veto acts where the federal government exceeds its delegated power. Genuine nullification involves a State’s declaration of unconstitutionality…
Zachary GarrisAugust 31, 2017
The current pogrom against Southern history and symbols ignores the influence the South and the institution of slavery had on most American presidents. American history would not be the same without it. If the current goal is to purge any reminder of slavery and the Confederacy from the public sphere, then nearly every American president would have to be withdrawn…
Clyde WilsonAugust 30, 2017
A review of Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet, The Life of Luther Martin, by Bill Kauffman, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008 "Happiness is preferable to the Splendour of a national Government" Luther Martin to the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787, Kauffman at 41 This book takes no prisoners. Nor does it gloss the favored actors. It sides with Martin's stance at the…
Vito MussomeliAugust 29, 2017
Let us imagine for a moment that the French army and fleet were not present at Yorktown to augment Washington’s army, and that the British prevailed in their war to suppress the rebellion of their subjects populating the American colonies below Canada. As the victorious redcoats swarmed through those colonies they arrested and imprisoned rebel leadership including Jefferson, Washington, Franklin,…
Bernard ThuersamAugust 28, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 21-25, 2017. Topics: Southern symbols, Robert E. Lee, Nullification, Confederate law, Confederate Constitution. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-86
Brion McClanahanAugust 26, 2017
During the past few decades, there has been an ever-growing sentiment throughout the Unites Sates to erase from the public mind, if not from American history itself, all vestiges of the Confederate States of America, and in particular, all memorials dedicated to the heroes, leaders and symbols of the Lost Cause. Following the senseless murder of a number of African-American…
John MarquardtAugust 24, 2017
The mark of an advanced civilization is the rule of law, with the highest being the rule of law that protects life, liberty and property. Based upon this standard, the Confederate States of America embodied an advanced Christian civilization. Accepting this truism goes a long way in understanding why the Confederacy has been demonized to the point of eradicating it…
Marshall DeRosaAugust 23, 2017
A review of Nullification: Reclaiming the Consent of the Governed by Clyde Wilson, Shotwell Press, 2016. As a young conservative, I came across ideas like nullification and states’ rights, during my studies. But they were always passed over, as if they didn’t mean anything anymore. When I read Robert Bork’s excellent book on Originalism, I never saw his unquestioned and…
Christopher McDonaldAugust 22, 2017
The events in Charlottesville, Virginia that transpired this past weekend (11 Aug to 13 Aug) were the product of very misguided and miseducated adherents of the Nazi ideology and white supremacism who sought to voice their disapproval of the proposed removal of a statue to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It is almost rote to assume that what Lee, as…
Robert McReynoldsAugust 21, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 14-18, 2017. Topics: Southern symbols, Southern history, Slavery, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-85
Brion McClanahanAugust 20, 2017
Delivered at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. The attack on the so-called “lost cause” myth in American history is nothing new. Beginning in the 1950s and 60s, historians like Kenneth Stampp began a concerted effort to undermine the dominant historical interpretation of the War, namely that the War and Reconstruction had been stains on American history, that the War…
Brion McClanahanAugust 18, 2017
Today's Americans are not nearly as gullible as the Leftist establishment seems to think. Also, its hard to believe that these starry-eyed ideologues think they can remove all obstacles that they have decided stand in the way of the “purification” of America. They cleverly created ambiguous and questionable encumbrances that can be interpreted in whatever way is necessary to justify…
Gail JarvisAugust 17, 2017
It takes men of worth to recognize worth in men. – Thomas Carlyle Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. – Hannah Arendt Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain to leave an equal baseness. – Tennyson The mob attacks on Confederate monuments remind me of the “useful idiots” and “rent-a-thugs” who are happily condoned, if…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.August 16, 2017
Review of Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 by Nelson D. Lankford. (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2008): 308 pages. Few people, whether northerners or Southerners know the details and decision making processes that led to Abraham Lincoln’s attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter and thus the Confederate decision to fire on the fort to prevent that aggression.…
Jason KorbelAugust 15, 2017
Most of the world knows of the Hollywood Celebrity “Martin Sheen,” (born and baptized Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez). Much of the world knows that he portrayed General Robert E. Lee in the film “Gettysburg.” I am even on record mildly complimenting his performance. Of course, nobody today can possible represent Lee, but I thought Sheen did better than Robert Duvall…
Clyde WilsonAugust 14, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 7-11, 2017. Topics: Agrarianism, populism, John C. Calhoun, William L. Yancey, political minorities, secession, Southern identity, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-84
Brion McClanahanAugust 13, 2017
Lincoln’s War established a permanent, centralized regime of crony capitalism for the formerly federal U.S. In the centralized U.S., real power is in the hands of big business and big banks that use government to protect and increase their own private profit and wealth. Lincoln implemented Henry Clay’s “American Plan”, without giving it a name. At the time, however, free…
Norman BlackAugust 11, 2017
Neo-conservatives can’t seem to make up their mind about the Confederacy. They all agree that the Confederacy represented everything evil about early America (which places them squarely in league with their intellectual brothers on the Left) but why they hate it presents the real conundrum. It borders on schizophrenia. Neo-conservative historian Victor Davis Hanson, for example, often rails against the…
Brion McClanahanAugust 10, 2017
The shots keep coming. Now Archie Manning, who once was from Mississippi but moved away to play football, has determined, in his opinion, that Mississippi’s flag need to be changed. Archie, in the eyes of most, has forgotten who brought him to the dance. Sadly, that dance partner bled and suffered for so many, not only in Mississippi, but in…
Paul H. YarbroughAugust 9, 2017
A review of William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War. by Eric H. Walther. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2006. William Lowndes Yancey was described as the Patrick Henry of the Confederacy. Eric Walther’s biography of follows the evolution of a staunch unionist to the orator of secession. Yancey was the son of a Navy war hero. The…
Jonathan WhiteAugust 8, 2017
Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. False River —For Olivia Pass, and for Patric It’s wide, impressive, but it’s false—really an oxbow lake, formed when the Mississippi, on its own, changed its course, three hundred years ago or so, chopping off a loop, leaving to the west a “Pointe Coupée”— an “island” and a flowing C. Farther north…
Catharine Savage BrosmanAugust 7, 2017
1. Why Vicksburg Canceled the Fourth of July – For a Generation by Karen Stokes 2. Bust Hell Wide Open by James Rutledge Roesch 3. You Are Deplorable by Clyde Wilson 4. The Origins of the Neo-Marxist Attack on the South by Norman Black 5. General Lee Figured It Out by Fred Reed 6. "Free People of Color" in Dixie…
Brion McClanahanAugust 6, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 31- August 4, 2017 Topics: Secession, Political Correctness, the Jeffersonian political tradition, Confederate monuments. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-83
Brion McClanahanAugust 5, 2017
In 1958 a nearly forgotten thirty-four year old Texas author named William Humphrey debuted his first novel, Home From the Hill, to widespread praise. Legendary director Vincente Minnelli released a film version only two years later. Both the book and the movie are highly rated by Amazon customers. The novel begins as follows: Early one morning last September the men squatting on the Northeast corner…
Philip LeighAugust 4, 2017
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has given the green light for CalExit proponents to begin collecting signatures for a California secession ballot initiative in the 2018 general election. This is good news. California is the logical place to begin having a conversation about secession, and every red state American should be actively supporting the proposal. As California goes, so goes…
Brion McClanahanAugust 3, 2017
An Address given on the Occasion of the Observance of Confederate Flag Day Raleigh, North Carolina | 03 March 2017 SEVEN SCORE AND SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new union, freely chosen and legally adopted by eleven Southern States with the consent of the people, and expressed through their chosen delegates in solemn assembly;…
Paul C. GrahamAugust 2, 2017
A review of Clyde Wilson, The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma (Shotwell Press, 2016). The Yankee Problem An American Dilemma by Clyde Wilson consists of 12 sections, four of which involve book reviews (half of them devoted to biographies of the Beecher family or the family of John Adams), four of which directly address the devilish nature of that New…
Charles SteinerAugust 1, 2017
Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. When historians discuss reasons for Southern secession, as if the South needed to produce one, perhaps the most important, and sometimes neglected, motive was the protection of the Jeffersonian tradition, essentially the right to self-government. What was this Jeffersonian tradition or ideal? It is our lost political heritage of limited government and…
Ryan WaltersJuly 31, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 24-28, 2017. Topics: Southern identity, nullification, the New South https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-82
Brion McClanahanJuly 30, 2017
Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. As scholars dedicated to exploring what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition, we are most often drawn to the antebellum South and the early federal period, the days when Jeffersonian federalism and political economy reigned supreme and Southern statesmen were regarded as the best in the land. We still fight…
Brion McClanahanJuly 28, 2017
This article will restore necessary context to the word "nullification” as used by James Madison in an 1834 letter called “Notes on Nullification.” First, we have to put Madison’s role in the formulation of the concept of nullification into some context of its own. As indispensable as he was to the development of our Constitution, James Madison is not the…
Joe WolvertonJuly 27, 2017
A Review of The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of its People, by Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Reviewed by Michael Potts. Progressive ideology dominates academia, and political science is no exception. Professors Cooper and Knotts, political scientists from Western Carolina University…
Michael PottsJuly 25, 2017
Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. You are deplorable. It is worse than that. If you are Southern or interested in the South you are the most deplorable of all the deplorables. There is no place for you among the enlightened and virtuous people of 21st Century America. But perhaps there is a certain advantage to being an…
Clyde WilsonJuly 24, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 17-21, 2017 Topics: Southern Literature, Southern Art, Political Correctness, Southern Identity https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-81
Brion McClanahanJuly 22, 2017
On July 5th, the Abbeville Institute published an article entitled “Southern Identity and the Southern Tradition” by John Devanny. Mr. Devanny noted that Marxism is involved in attacks on southern culture and heritage and wrote that many of them were “the inheritors of a secular Puritan legacy and the disciples of cultural Marxism who began to dominate the academy in…
Norman BlackJuly 21, 2017
Edgar Allan Poe secured a permanent place among world authors as father of the short story, creator of the detective story, and/poetic genius. While he has an international reputation, Poe consciously identified himself as a Southern writer. Poe may not often come to mind as a Southern writer because he did not write about the South the way Simms or,…
Harry Lee PoeJuly 20, 2017
This essay was originally printed in the comments section of the Apollo Magazine article "Dismantling America's Monuments to White Supremacy" by Kristen Teen. The removal and desecration of images of enemies of the state was an accepted part of Roman political life, a formal public dishonour named as damnatio memoriae, and the destruction of built and material culture of a…
Juliette PeersJuly 19, 2017
A Review of Catharine Savage Brosman, Southwestern Women Writers and the Vision of Goodness, McFarland Press, 2016. The term “man of letters” has fallen largely into desuetude over the last few decades, and for good reason. Very few such entities exist nowadays on the literary landscape either in this country or elsewhere. One is more apt to come across a…
Randall IveyJuly 18, 2017
Editor's note: Three recent poetry submissions, the first two by Walt Garlington, the third by Stephen Borthwick. The Patriarch’s Clan The patriarch’s clan By the lake is gathered To honor again Their common father: The matriarch with Her circle of friends, Cousins, with new wives' and husbands' And newer children, The bond of kinship Strengthened in their meeting. Traditions are…
Abbeville InstituteJuly 17, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 10-14 2017 Topics: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Richard B. Russell, the New South, Confederate symbols, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-80
Brion McClanahanJuly 15, 2017
Foreword for A Rebel Born: A Defense of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General, American Legend, by Lochlainn Seabrook, Sea Raven Press, 2010. There is a story that a year or two after the great American war of 1861–1865, a visiting Englishman asked Gen. R.E. Lee, “Who is the greatest soldier produced by the war?” It is reported that Lee without…
Clyde WilsonJuly 13, 2017
There was a time both before and after the War when the South dominated the United States Congress. In the antebellum period, James Madison, John C. Calhoun, John Randolph of Roanoke, and Henry Clay placed their mark on congressional debates, and several other Southerners ranked among the best statesmen of the era. But most Americans, even those in the South, don't realize that by the mid-twentieth century, Southerners…
Brion McClanahanJuly 12, 2017
A review of Bust Hell Wide Open: the Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., Regnery History, 2016. Writing a biography about Nathan Bedford Forrest – a man recognized by no less than General Robert E. Lee and General William T. Sherman as “the most remarkable man produced by the Civil War on either side” – is…
James Rutledge RoeschJuly 11, 2017
A common technique of Liberal ideologues is to change the meanings of words to suit their agendas. So “illegal aliens” become “undocumented immigrants” and “adolescent criminals” become “justice-involved youths.” We're witnessing a version of this phenomenon with the “contextualizing” of Confederate monuments. Realizing that the eradication of Confederate memorials was not receiving the widespread public support they expected, hostile progressives…
Gail JarvisJuly 10, 2017
The top ten for June 2017. Read 'em again. 1. Why Does the Left Really Despise the Confederacy? by Ryan Walters 2. The War Between the States: Who were the Nazis? by Clyde Wilson 3. New Orleans Mayor Hypes His Cultural Cleansing by Gail Jarvis 4. The Real Reason Confederate Symbols are Attacked by Tom Landess 5. The Ad Too…
Brion McClanahanJuly 9, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 3-7, 2017 Topics: the Southern tradition, Southern history, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-79
Brion McClanahanJuly 8, 2017
This piece was originally printed at Fred On Everything. “The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.” Robert E. Lee The man was perceptive. Amalgamation of the states under a central government has led to exactly the effects…
Fred ReedJuly 7, 2017
This article was originally printed at Townhall.com A couple of days ago, a friend of mine from Alabama shared on his Facebook wall an article from Alabama Political Reporter by a Mr. Josh Moon. The title is, “An Apology for White People.” Moon, a white man, writes that “white people in Alabama (and other states too, I presume)…like to pretend a lot…
Jack KerwickJuly 6, 2017
In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay in the archipelago of enlightenment. There are some cracks in this edifice of Yankee bigotry, but when political and cultural wars become heated, the edifice is trotted out once more…
John DevannyJuly 5, 2017
“The modern man has lost his sense of vocation.” “A Statement of Principles,” I’ll Take My Stand “One wonders what the authors of our Constitution would have thought of that category, ‘permanently unemployable.’” –Wendell Berry A Review of Land!: The Case For an Agrarian Economy by John Crowe Ransom, Edited by Jason Peters, Introduction by Jay T. Collier University of…
Alan CornettJuly 4, 2017
Malcolm X wrote that “History is a weapon.” He was right, and no topic encompasses this truth more than the War of Northern Aggression. And the most practical way we rebels can advance in this post-modern war being waged against the South is simply education. Sounds cliche, right? But how can we expect anyone who doesn’t have a clue about our past, its people and their divergent ancestry,…
Dissident MamaJuly 3, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 26-30, 2017 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern literature, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-78
Brion McClanahanJuly 1, 2017
This article is the abbreviated address that I made at the Upcountry Literary Festival 2017, at the University of South Carolina, in Union South, Carolina. Some people come for the land down under (Australia). I come from the land where old times are not forgotten. I started my presentation by singing the old spiritual entitled, Wade in the Water, God’s…
Barbara MarthalJune 30, 2017
Modern progressives are just as evil in their bloodlust against the South as were William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan. Today's leftists may not yet be waging the shock-and-awe total warfare that the Union generals inflicted upon Southern civilians (whites and blacks alike) and their dwellings, businesses, churches, infrastructure, and food supply, but their aim is still the same: to…
Dissident MamaJune 29, 2017
“…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 ArchieJune 28, 2017
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 NicholsJune 27, 2017
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 JonesJune 26, 2017
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 McClanahanJune 24, 2017
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. JohnsonJune 23, 2017
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 LandessJune 22, 2017
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 KennedyJune 21, 2017
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 AlexanderJune 20, 2017
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 WaltersJune 19, 2017
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 McClanahanJune 17, 2017
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 DevannyJune 16, 2017
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 RoeschJune 15, 2017
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 WilsonJune 14, 2017
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 JordanJune 13, 2017
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 LeighJune 12, 2017
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 McClanahanJune 11, 2017
“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 DevannyJune 9, 2017
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 JarvisJune 8, 2017
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 WilsonJune 7, 2017
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 DeRosaJune 6, 2017
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 McClanahanJune 3, 2017
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 DevannyJune 2, 2017
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
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 WilsonMay 31, 2017
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 LeamonMay 30, 2017
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 McClanahanMay 29, 2017
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 McClanahanMay 27, 2017
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 CawthonMay 26, 2017
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 MercerMay 25, 2017
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 LeighMay 24, 2017
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 JeffreyMay 23, 2017
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