Topics: Confederate monuments, PC, Slavery and the War, Switzerland https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/podcast-episode-17
Brion McClanahanMarch 12, 2016
With each visit to Switzerland, my understanding and appreciation of the political economy of the country becomes deeper and more nuanced. The Swiss people have been incredibly successful in evolving a philosophy, culture and political structure which, limits the potential power of a centralist, nationalist and statist administration through the adoption of a federal system and other policies which distribute…
Harry TeasleyMarch 11, 2016
It was the spring of 1865 . . . the remnants of what once had been Confederate regiments had stacked their arms, the tattered battle flags were furled, the cause which had been so gallantly defended was lost and one by one the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of Tennessee and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi were disbanded. Those…
John MarquardtMarch 10, 2016
Conventional wisdom of the moment tells us that the great war of 1861—1865 was “about” slavery or was “caused by” slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment but a political slogan. What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast…
Clyde WilsonMarch 9, 2016
“To live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.”-Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner was a Boston legal scholar and philosopher during the nineteenth century. What makes this man of Massachusetts valuable to the legacy of the Southern tradition is that Spooner was a consistent proponent of Jeffersonian Classical Liberalism*. There are two characteristics that are…
Matt De SantiMarch 8, 2016
For anyone with a casual knowledge about Alabama’s juicy and active history, the words “Tuskegee” and “Confederate” seem to be an odd match. Tuskegee, Alabama is the site of Booker T. Washington’s visionary Tuskegee Institute, the home of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, and the location of the first integrated public high school in Alabama. And yet, the center of town…
Tom DanielMarch 7, 2016
The Week in Review, February 29-March 4, 2016 Topics: Southern literature, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, PC, the Confederate Flag, Confederate monuments, the Southern tradition. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-16
Brion McClanahanMarch 5, 2016
As Baltimore is preparing to honor a coprophagic crossdresser, the city’s double-equestrian Lee-Jackson monument is coming down. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who presided over and encouraged the riots following the death of Freddie Gray last year, is expected to direct its removal from Wyman Park where the monument, the site of many Lee-Jackson Day celebrations, has stood since 1948. …
J.L. BennettMarch 4, 2016
First they banned prayer in schools. Then they removed nativity scenes on courthouse grounds. Then they removed the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court. Next came the “War on Christmas” involving the omission of the word “Christmas” from office and Government calendars to be substituted with “Holiday”. According to Wikipedia “The expression ‘War on Christmas’ has often been used…
Lunelle McCallisterMarch 3, 2016
This talk was delivered on Friday, February 26, 2016 at the Abbeville Institute Conference "The PC Attack on the South." We are here to deal with the PC attacks on Southern Tradition. We have become so familiar with PC in everyday life that our perception of what it actually is has been dulled. PC is a deceptive cover name for…
Clyde WilsonMarch 2, 2016
Mr. Newhouse’s daughter in Atlanta no longer knew what to do about her younger son, Kyle. He was completely out of control. He violated curfew regularly. He cultivated distasteful friends and assumed their worst characteristics and generally behaved with unwarranted sullenness and disrespect. He had been given everything, after all: a private school education, trips, without chaperone, to places like…
Randall IveyMarch 1, 2016
The top ten articles for February 2016: 1. The Nationalist Myth by Brion McClanahan 2. Scalia, the Constitution, and the Court by Carl Jones 3. What's Holding Alabama Back? by Tom Daniel 4. The Principle of Secession Historically Traced by George Petrie 5. Rethinkin' Lincoln by Brion McClanahan 6. Dilorenzo and His Critics by Clyde Wilson 7. John C. Calhoun…
Brion McClanahanMarch 1, 2016
This time of year we begin seeing recommendations of books for Christmas presents. This article is also a recommendation for a gift book but I admit that I have an ulterior motive. I intend to compare this book with another one in order to illustrate a political phenomenon that has always intrigued me. The phenomenon I am referring to is…
Gail JarvisFebruary 29, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 22-26, 2016. Topics: George Washington, Agrarianism, the Southern tradition, Antonin Scalia, Abraham Lincoln, Southern heroes. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-15
Brion McClanahanFebruary 27, 2016
The most frequent question I have received during promotion of my new book, 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her, has been, “How can you say that Lincoln screwed up America?” After all, he is the man who saved the Union and who put slavery on the path to extinction. There should be a…
Brion McClanahanFebruary 26, 2016
With the recent passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, folks are writhing in fear over the prospect of Obama appointing a new SC Judge. "This", they say, "could be the most monumental appointment in history and could drastically change our political landscape" and this "is especially true with regards to how the 2nd Amendment is interpreted." This is all…
Carl JonesFebruary 25, 2016
A friend’s encounter with a clergyman: His mission, he says, is Social Justice. Our South Carolina governor, when she removed the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, had “a Jesus moment,” a Divine Revelation of Social Justice. He hopes that others will have such a Moment. What impressed me most about this leader of the faith was not the arrogant…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 24, 2016
Over time a man, if he is perceptive, comes to certain conclusions. The most startling is that the greatest truths were spoken to him throughout his life by ordinary men, simple preachers, old men sitting around drinking soda and eating peanuts, his father. These men, if beneficiaries of a culture and community that embraces common-sense as a virtue, know truths…
Barry ClarkFebruary 23, 2016
From Washington and the Generals of the American Revolution by Rufus Wilmot Griswold and William Gilmore Simms, 1847. (Editor's Note: Thank you to Simms scholar Jeff Rogers for correcting the auhtorship of this article. Griswold, not Simms, wrote this chapter on Washington. Simms wrote several chapters in this two volume work, notably on Southerners Pinckney, Sumner, and Moultrie). An attentive…
Rufus Wilmot GriswoldFebruary 22, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 15-19, 2016. Topic: Abraham Lincoln https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-14
Brion McClanahanFebruary 21, 2016
Dave Benner, Compact of the Republic: The League of the States and the Constitution (Life and Liberty Publishing, 2015). James Ronald Kennedy, Uncle Seth Fought the Yankees (Pelican Publishing, 2015). Jack Kerwick, The American Offensive: Dispatches from the Front (Stairway Press, 2015). One of the results of the Northern victory in 1865 was the codification of Lincolnian nationalism and its…
Brion McClanahanFebruary 19, 2016
This essay is a chapter in M.E. Bradford, Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative (University of Georgia Press, 1985). With the time and manner of his death Abraham Lincoln, as leader of a Puritan people who had just won a great victory over "the forces of evil," was placed beyond the reach of ordinary historical inquiry and…
M.E. BradfordFebruary 18, 2016
Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln has provoked the utterly predictable torrent of abuse from state worshipers and self-appointed prophets of The True American Way. All DiLorenzo has done (and this does not in the least detract from his courage, eloquence, and insight) is to analyze Honest Abe as a historical figure just like any other, rather than treat him…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 17, 2016
Mr. President, during the special session of the Senate in March last, when seven States had withdrawn, by the action of their people, from the Federal Union, disclaimed all allegiance to the Government, and organized a separate common government, I took occasion, before the public mind had become excited, to express fully my views of the structure of our Government,…
James A. BayardFebruary 16, 2016
This essay first appeared in National Review, 6/1, June 21, 1958, 18-19. Just one hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were stumping Illinois for tire office of United States Senator. They made a total of eighty-three appearances before the voters of that state, seven of which were in the form of joint debates. Now, on this anniversary…
Richard M. WeaverFebruary 15, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 8-12, 2016. Topics: Reconstruction, Southern History, Secession, James Iredell, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-13
Brion McClanahanFebruary 13, 2016
One of the greatest legal minds of the founding generation was also one of the most reserved and unobtrusive. On many levels, he differed from his peers. Outspoken Federalist from New York, John Jay, became the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Prominent Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph was selected by George Washington to be the first Attorney…
Dave BennerFebruary 12, 2016
This essay is taken from The South in the Building of the Nation Series, Vol. 4 The Political History. THE political theory on which the Southern states in 1860 and 1861 based their right to withdraw from the Union was not the sudden creation of any one man, or of any one group of men. Like other ideas that have…
George PetrieFebruary 11, 2016
The death of the spirit is the price of progress. --Eric Voegelin The Athenians know what is right, but will not do it. --Cicero Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: in time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 10, 2016
The origin of the elephant as a symbol of the Republican Party occurred in 1874 after a political cartoon by Thomas Nast appeared in the popular New York newspaper, “Harper’s Weekly.” It was during the congressional elections of that year when Nast, a renowned Republican satirist, drew a picture of the Democratic donkey dressed in a lion’s skin frightening away…
John MarquardtFebruary 9, 2016
In 1872, Daniel W. Voorhees, a Congressman of Indiana, made a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he described conditions in the South after the war, during the period (laughingly) known as “Reconstruction.” He accused the United States government, under the control of the Republican Party, of plundering and slandering the conquered Southern states, sending “powerful missionaries…
Karen StokesFebruary 8, 2016
The Week in Review for Feb 1-5, 2016. Topics: Southern culture and Black Southerners https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-12
Brion McClanahanFebruary 6, 2016
Many people are familiar with the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s. While some historians reject them for what has been called gross inaccuracies due in large part to the many positive memories of the institution (the negative accounts are always used), they have become the standard source for firsthand information on the institution from the…
Brion McClanahanFebruary 5, 2016
"Social Justice" is one of today's manipulative phrases. In this case "justice" is defined as the equal distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges among all groups in a society. In past generations, the concept of "social justice" was referred to as "leveling"; a more accurate, and certainly more honest, description. Leveling is one of those Utopian goals often sought, but…
Gail JarvisFebruary 4, 2016
I promised to keep you updated on our government’s radio ads. In the latest, the Department of Justice offers you its benevolent services for any problem you might be experiencing with school bullies. * * * * I may not be a good American. I have never watched a Super Bowl or an NBA championship, never been to Las Vegas,…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 3, 2016
This essay is a chapter from The South in the Building of the Nation series, History of the Social Life. The solidarity of public opinion in the South has been so often commented upon that it is difficult to realize the heterogeneous elements employed in making her population. The "solid South" is not only a political but in many respects…
Edwin MimsFebruary 2, 2016
Our top ten articles for January 2016: Black Slaveowners by Larry Koger Robert E. Lee: Gallant Soldier, True Patriot, Noble Christian by Mike Scruggs Did Black People Own Slaves? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A Southerner Repents by Fred Reed Stonewall Jackson by James I. Robertson, Jr. When the Yankees Come: Former South Carolina Slaves Remember the Invasion by Paul…
Brion McClanahanFebruary 2, 2016
As I watched my local Montgomery, Alabama news station this morning, I saw that question pop up on the screen. What’s holding Alabama back? Wait, what? What do you mean by “holding back?” In the segment, the news station sent out a roving reporter on the streets of Montgomery to ask random citizens to tell him what they believe is…
Tom DanielFebruary 1, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 25-29, 2016. Topics include the Southern tradition, Southern cooking, Southern politics, Thomas Jefferson, Southern education, and Robert E. Lee. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-11
Brion McClanahanJanuary 30, 2016
In the Old South, only those children whose parents thought they needed education, attended school; many did not. Of those who did not, many were taught at home to read or to read and write. A higher percentage of Southerners than Northerners attended college, though students in Southern colleges were more interested in making and enjoying social contacts than in…
George CrockettJanuary 29, 2016
In Louisiana history and folklore, Huey Pierce Long occupies a very special niche. To be depressingly brief, he was born and reared in north-central Louisiana’s hardscrabble Winn Parish where, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contrariness, populism and socialism were dominant. Charismatic and unscrupulous but unquestionably brilliant, Huey secured a law degree and entered politics. With a knack…
Roger BusbiceJanuary 28, 2016
Throughout most of American history region has been a better predictor of political position than party. That aspect of our reality has been neglected and suppressed in recent times as the rest of the country has conspired or acquiesced in transforming the South into a replica of Ohio. Yet the notorious squeak vote on the ObamaCare bill shows that the…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 27, 2016
President Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address articulated his philosophical manifesto: “Peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.” These basic maxims were stressed repeatedly by Jefferson, who cherished a commercially free country that would avert the costly European wars of the past. Optimally, Jefferson hoped to avoid foreign conflicts completely. Jefferson had long championed the idea…
Dave BennerJanuary 26, 2016
This essay served as the concluding chapter to Page's biography of Robert E. Lee, published in 1908. I stood not a great while ago on the most impressive spot, perhaps, in all Europe: beneath the majestic dome of the Invalides where stands the tomb of Napoleon. It was a summer evening, and we descended the steps and stood at the…
Thomas Nelson PageJanuary 25, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 18-22, 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-10
Brion McClanahanJanuary 23, 2016
This essay was originally published in The Georgia Review, Vol. II, No. 3 (Fall 1948), 297-303. As the Civil War assumes increasingly the role of an American Iliad, a tendency sets in for its heroes to take on Fixed characterizations. Epithets of praise and blame begin to recur, and a single virtue usurps the right to personify the individual. In…
Richard M. WeaverJanuary 22, 2016
This essay is excerpted from the Preface to Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997) by James I. Robertson, Jr. Thomas Jonathan Jackson’s walnut bookcase at the Virginia Historical Society contains six shelves filled with the volumes he collected. Almost in the center of the case stand three works side by side. The one in I he…
James I. Robertson, Jr.January 21, 2016
"And the cause of all these things was power pursued for the gratification of avarice….." -- Thucydides Lee made few political statements, as befits a soldier. When he did it was almost always in private and in response to questions. The most important of such statements is his letter to Lord Acton after The War, which will be treated later.…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 20, 2016
January 19 will mark the 209th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Lee in 1807, one of the most respected and revered military leaders in American history. That respect and reverence extends over most of the world, wherever military leadership is studied. Lee’s birthday is an official state holiday in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida. It was also an…
Mike ScruggsJanuary 19, 2016
I was watching the national news immediately after the San Bernardino terror. A sympathetic host was interviewing a refined Muslim gentleman, who was given more than ample time to explain that his faith and its symbols were being misrepresented by the terrorists’ holocaust. But consider: The Koran contains the words of Allah whose many commandments therein call for the extermination…
Herbert ChambersJanuary 18, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 11-15, 2016. Host Brion McClanahan discusses Harper Lee, Southern literature, Southern Jews, Reconstruction, and political correctness. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-9
Brion McClanahanJanuary 16, 2016
Widely praised for his 2009 Cotton and Race in the Making of America, author Gene Dattel recently wrote an article titled “The Untold Story of Reconstruction,” in the September 2015 edition of The New Criterion. Although predicting that the present Reconstruction Sesquicentennial shall result in “reams of material blaming the South for our racial conundrum” he concludes that all the…
Philip LeighJanuary 15, 2016
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? The Merchant of Venice (Act 3, Scene…
John MarquardtJanuary 14, 2016
Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization.--Eric Voegelin The South is the foe to Northern industry---to our mines, our manufactures, and our commerce.--Abolitionist Theodore Parker, 1861 Consolidators, supremacists, and conquerors, however, will all equally disregard any instrument, however solemn and explicit, by which ambition and avarice will be restrained and the…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 13, 2016
Michael Drayton never came to the New World. In 1606 he wrote this ode "To the Virginian Voyage," in honour of Sir Walter Raleigh's first expedition to plant a permanent settlement of English people in North America. The poem illustrates the culture out of which the first Southerners came and almost uncannily anticipates the South that was soon to be…
Michael DraytonJanuary 12, 2016
Harper Lee betrayed the literary establishment and many of her readers with the recent publication of her novel, Go Set a Watchman. The novel was originally written before the acclaimed, To Kill a Mockingbird and when it was published last year the literary public, readers and critics, were most impatient to read it. Many of them had reactions ranging from…
John DevannyJanuary 11, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 4-8, 2016, hosted by Brion McClanahan. Topics include Black slaveonwers, Black Confederates, Revisionism, and Political Correctness. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-8
Brion McClanahanJanuary 9, 2016
This articles was originally published as Chapter 27 in Understanding the War Between the States, Howard Ray White and Clyde Wilson, eds., 2015. Students will be surprised to learn of the extent to which African Americans supported the Confederate army and navy. That will be covered in some detail in this chapter. Also covered with be the more familiar story…
Earl L. IjamesJanuary 8, 2016
This essay is the introduction to Larry Koger's book, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860. Black slaveholding is a historical phenomenon which has not been fully explored by scholars. Graduate students of history are often surprised to learn that some free blacks owned slaves. Even historians are frequently skeptical until they discover the number of…
Larry KogerJanuary 7, 2016
A review of Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, by Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, 447 pages; and Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slavemasters in South Carolina, 1790-1860, by Larry Koger, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994, 286 pages. Black Confederates! Remember, you heard it here first. You will be hearing more if…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 6, 2016
This article was originally printed at TheRoot.com on March 4, 2013. One of the most vexing questions in African-American history is whether free African Americans themselves owned slaves. The short answer to this question, as you might suspect, is yes, of course; some free black people in this country bought and sold other black people, and did so at least…
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.January 5, 2016
South Carolina State Senator Katrina Frye Shealy recently declared that the state should “get past race and fix current problems.” Dr. W. Kirk Wood, Professor History Emeritus at Alabama State University, wrote this in reply. Dear Sen. Shealy, Your recent letter to the editor of the State newspaper of 12-7-2015 (“Let’s Get Past Race and Fix Current Problems”) was welcomed…
W. Kirk WoodJanuary 4, 2016
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 28, 2015-January 1, 2016. Topics: Southern literature, the year in review, John C. Calhoun, slavery, the Confederate Flag, Southern film, California. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-7
Brion McClanahanJanuary 3, 2016
Brion McClanahan discusses the continuity between the Old South and the New South and the Jeffersonian understanding of the War for Southern Independence at the October 2015 Conference in Stone Mountain, GA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYzD2vhNE3c
Brion McClanahanJanuary 3, 2016
Author Barbara Marthal discusses her Southern heritage through stories and song at the October 2015 Abbeville Institute Conference in Stone Mountain, GA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp9JF4tzIJg
Barbara MarthalJanuary 3, 2016
Our top ten for 2015: 1. Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence by Clyde Wilson 2. Was the Civil War About Slavery? by Dave Benner 3. The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln by Thomas Landess 4. What is a Southerner? by Clyde Wilson 5. Why Do They Hate the South and Its…
Brion McClanahanJanuary 2, 2016
Sean Hannity begins his nationally syndicated radio talk show by welcoming listeners to “the revolution.” This is a clever marketing ploy, but nothing Hannity discusses is truly revolutionary nor that inspiring. Many thoughtful listeners are left searching for a voice that articulates their worldview, particularly in the South. Some of these people—not just Southerners—have ended up at the Abbeville Institute. …
Brion McClanahanJanuary 1, 2016
Donald Livingston on "The Real Reason the South Seceded" at the October 2015 Abbeville Institute Conference in Stone Mountain, GA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S96iQYL0bw
Donald LivingstonDecember 31, 2015
Marshall DeRosa on "The Confederate Rule of Law: An American Patrimony Worth Fighting For, Then and Now," from the October 2015 Abbeville Institute Conference in Stone Mountain, GA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzAqFXj3Fds
Marshall DeRosaDecember 31, 2015
You might not find Stark Young's So Red The Rose in current recommendations of novels set during the civil war era, but Young's novel, published in 1934, was a record-breaking best seller, so popular with the reading public that it was made into a Hollywood film. It differs from most novels in that it doesn't have a protagonist, nor is…
Gail JarvisDecember 31, 2015
1832 - Speech Explaining and Enforcing the Remedy of Nullification - Judge Harper Download the PDF
James McClellanDecember 31, 2015
Introduction This is James Johnston Pettigrew’s only book, privately printed in Charleston in the first weeks of the War between the States and here for the first time published. In the opening passage the author describes himself crossing the Alps on his way to seek service in the army of the king of Sardinia. His mission was to take part…
Clyde WilsonDecember 30, 2015
Dr. Thomas Fleming on "The Southern Genocide," October, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF2AYtNBbN4
Thomas FlemingDecember 30, 2015
THE IMMORTALS: A STORY OF LOVE AND WAR In 1861, as a deadly conflict looms between North and South, Charleston sits like a queen upon the waters—beautiful, proud and prosperous—and no native son loves her more than George Taylor. A successful Broad Street lawyer, Taylor has won the heart of an enchanting young woman and looks forward to a brilliant…
Karen StokesDecember 29, 2015
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 21-25, 2015 Topics: Christmas, Paris, Mt. Vernon, Arlington House, Nathaniel Macon https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-6
Brion McClanahanDecember 28, 2015
On July fourth 1861, Major J.P. Gillis made a public display of his support of colonial secession from the British Empire as well as Southern secession from the United States by parading in the streets with a Confederate flag of his own design. He drew cheers from a large crowd of onlookers, but two men named Curtis Clark and J.W.…
Matt De SantiDecember 28, 2015
This piece is taken from Varina Davis's recollections of life in the South, published in the New York World on December 13, 1896, and reprinted here. ...Rice, flour, molasses and tiny pieces of meat, most of them sent to the President's wife anonymously to be distributed to the poor, had all be weighed and issued, and the playtime of the…
Varina DavisDecember 25, 2015
This piece was originally published on the Canada Free Press. Much to the annoyance of multiculturists, Christmas is still America’s most celebrated holiday, and in the weeks preceding this festive time, traditional Christmas stories will appear on television screens. We can expect to see numerous versions of Charles Dickens renowned tale, A Christmas Carol, O.Henry’s The Gift of the Magi,and…
Gail JarvisDecember 24, 2015
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter -- Winston Churchill Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other kind that has been tried. --Churchill The lowest common denominator in America is a lot lower than it used to be. –Clyde Wilson The rebels have exhibited a most wonderful energy and skill…
Clyde WilsonDecember 23, 2015
The Wehrmacht coveted the wealth of France, its grain, vines, ports, its past—and Paris most of all. They planned, and took their shining chance. Admiring it, they didn’t want its ghost, or ruins! They too were Franks. “Leben wie Gott in Frankreich” was their watchword. Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Concorde, the Louvre besot them: vital presence, history, art. The…
Catharine Savage BrosmanDecember 22, 2015
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 14-18, 2015 Host: Brion McClanahan Topics: The PC Attack on the South, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Southern politics, Northern opposition to Mr. Lincoln's War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-5
Brion McClanahanDecember 21, 2015
In the 1850s, Ann Pamela Cunningham, a frail woman from South Carolina, was responsible for preserving the plantation home of George Washington, founding the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, an organization which still maintains this historic site. Thanks to her efforts, Mount Vernon remained virtually untouched during the War for Southern Independence. Arlington Plantation, the beautiful Virginia home of Robert E.…
Karen StokesDecember 21, 2015
Illinois has been known as the “Land of Lincoln” for the past sixty years . . . the state legislature having officially adopted the motto in 1955, but a century prior to that most residents of the state’s sixteen southern counties would certainly have objected to the term. That area of Illinois has been called “Little Egypt” or merely “Egypt”…
John MarquardtDecember 18, 2015
We have been taught that the North was united behind Lincoln in his war. This is simply not true. It is an outright lie told and taught by the victors of the war who, after implementing the government (“public”) schools called for by Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto, now control education in this land. As a Copperhead, I was…
John BattellDecember 17, 2015
A Review of A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Robert W. Whitaker. New York: Robert B. Luce, 1976, 208 pages. Hardly anyone has commented upon the seeming disappearance from American life of the Jeffersonian democrat. The Jeffersonian democrat was a hardy American breed, perhaps the only political type original to this continent. Outnumbering all other species between 1800 and…
Clyde WilsonDecember 16, 2015
Gentlemen of the Historical Society of Mecklenburg (1876): Our president has appropriately introduced the series of historical lectures with the inquiry, why so few have attempted to preserve the record of the great events in the history of North Carolina, and to. embalm the memories of the illustrious actors therein. Perhaps, it may not be amiss in me to pursue…
Daniel Harvey HillDecember 15, 2015
I am writing in response to the recently posted piece at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, entitled “History proves Thomas Jefferson was wrong (whew).” The author of this article drastically overstates Madison's role in the finalized Constitution. Madison desired a highly nationalistic government, with a national legislature that had general legislative authority, two houses of Congress both of which were apportioned…
Dave BennerDecember 14, 2015
The Week in Review, December 7-11, 2015, with your host, Brion McClanahan Topics: The origins of the Southern and American tradition, George Mason, Henry Timrod, Abraham Lincoln, and the PC attack on the South and Western Civilization https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-4
Brion McClanahanDecember 12, 2015
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? George Orwell, 1984 The Abbeville Institute was founded over a decade ago to preserve and defend the South… her traditions, literature, history, arts, and faiths. Recently we came across the memorandum below from a student affairs office at a major Southern university. The officers…
William WilsonDecember 11, 2015
By way of prologue, let me say that all of us like the Lincoln whose face appears on the penny. He is the Lincoln of myth: kindly, humble, a man of sorrows who believes in malice toward none and charity toward all, who simply wants to preserve the Union so that we can all live together as one people. The…
Thomas LandessDecember 10, 2015
"There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians." — Barnard Elliott Bee A Review of Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture, by Jack P. Greene, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988, 284 pages. We were British colonists for a long time.…
Clyde WilsonDecember 9, 2015
This article was originally published at lewrockwell.com. In all the recent fuss over symbols of the Confederacy, whether to honor them or get rid of the lot, not much attention has been paid to what that Confederacy was, after all, and why it might be something that anyone would want to commemorate. Of course one side doesn’t care. It is…
Kirkpatrick SaleDecember 7, 2015
The Week in Review, November 30-December 4, 2015 with your host, Brion McClanahan. Topics: The Pilgrims, the Jeffersonian tradition, secession, and the original Constitution. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-3
Brion McClanahanDecember 6, 2015
One of the most unknown, yet substantial political leaders in the founding generation was a patriot named Hugh Williamson. In his life he surrounded himself with the most famous people in North America, and gradually became an instrumental leader who contributed to the cause of American independence. Serving the role of an intellectual erudite, military hero, and champion of republican…
Dave BennerDecember 4, 2015
This essay was first published in Don Livingston, ed., Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century. Yes, Aristotle declared there to be a limit to the size of states: " a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large . . . , but they either…
Kirkpatrick SaleDecember 3, 2015
The American President began as Cincinnatus, a patriot called to the temporary service of his country (a republican confederation). The President ends as Caesar, a despot of almost unlimited power, presiding over a global empire. Like the Caesars, in some quarters the President is even worshiped as a god. Cincinnatus was called because of his proven ability and patriotism. Caesar…
Clyde WilsonDecember 2, 2015
The Top Ten posts for November. If you haven't read 'em yet, do so. If you have, read 'em again. And don't forget our new podcast. 1. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by James Rutledge Roesch 2. Is The Campaign To Eradicate Southern Heritage Losing Steam? by Gail Jarvis 3. Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters,…
Brion McClanahanDecember 2, 2015
This essay was published in Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I'll Take My Stand, edited by Clyde Wilson, 1981. When the Southern Agrarians took their stand, they did it stoutly, on two feet. Some emphasized the "Southern," others the "Agrarian," but fifty years ago it seemed that the two loyalties, to the South…
John Shelton ReedDecember 1, 2015
Abbeville Institute scholars Carey Roberts and Sam Smith sat down with Off the Grind News last week and discussed Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims, Jamestown, the Mayflower Compact, and the Plymouth colony. You can listen to their interview HERE.
Carey RobertsNovember 30, 2015
The week in review at the Abbeville Institute--November 23-27, 2015--with your host, Brion McClanahan. Topics: Thanksgiving, the Southern Tradition, and the "Lost Cause." https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ai-podcast-episode-2
Brion McClanahanNovember 28, 2015
Chris Stapleton is now a household name. This should have happened a long time ago. After cleaning up at the Country Music Awards, Stapleton showcased his outstanding voice in a duet with Justin Timberlake. He stole the show, both in hardware and in talent. In no time, his debut country music album, Traveller, rocketed up the charts. As I write…
Brion McClanahanNovember 27, 2015
History is a liberal art and one profits by studying the whole of it, including the lost causes. All of us arc under a mortal temptation to grant the accomplished fact more than we should. That the fall of Rome, the dissolution of medieval Catholicism, the overthrow of Napoleon, the destruction of the Old South were purposeful and just are…
Richard M. WeaverNovember 26, 2015
The further a society strays from the truth, the more it hates people who tell it. --George Orwell When the South lost we all lost. --historian Paul Hoar (New England-born) I don’t drink with Yankees. --Joel McCrea in “South of St. Louis” Men more frequently require to be reminded than to be informed. --Samuel Johnson You have a greater probability of…
Clyde WilsonNovember 25, 2015
A speech delivered in Richmond, VA, February 22, 1896 at the opening of the Museum of the Confederacy. Ladies of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, Friends, and Fellow-Confederates, Men and Women: To-day commemorates the thirty-fifth anniversary of the inauguration of the last rebel President and the birthday of the first. It commemorates an epoch in the grandest struggle for liberty…
Bradley Tyler JohnsonNovember 24, 2015
A century prior to the War Between the States, a German magazine writer, pseudo-scientist and notorious swindler, Rudolf Erich Raspe, penned a series of fictional articles describing the fantastic adventures of a military character he called Baron Münchhausen. In 1785, a book of Raspe’s collected stories was published in England under the title Baron Munchausen’s Narratives of His Marvelous Travels…
John MarquardtNovember 23, 2015
Brion McClanahan discusses the week that was in the Abbeville Institute, November 16-20, 2015. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-1
Brion McClanahanNovember 21, 2015
The concept of a panacea has always fascinated me, the idea that there is a relatively simple cure-all for a complex set of problems. Panaceas do have mass appeal. Isn't it comforting to think that there is a simple way to solve complex problems? - But history has proven that panaceas seldom live up to their expectations. We know that…
Gail JarvisNovember 20, 2015
This article was originally printed in the Nov/Dec 2015 issue of Confederate Veteran Magazine. In June 2015, after the depraved shootings in a Charleston, South Carolina, black church, a frenzied hue and cry went up and any number of accusations and attacks were made against historic Confederate symbols, in particular, the Confederate Battle Flag. Monuments, markers, flags, plaques, street and…
Boyd CatheyNovember 19, 2015
Statement of College and University Professors in Support of the Confederate Battle Flag Atop the South Carolina Statehouse, drafted just before the legislative "compromise." To the General Assembly and People of South Carolina: Certain academics have issued a statement on the cause of the Civil War as it relates to the controversy over the Confederate battle flag. They held a…
Clyde WilsonNovember 18, 2015
This essay was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine, 1989. As we conclude bicentennial celebration of the drafting and adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it may be hoped that we have finally arrived at the proper moment for looking back and appreciating the importance of those even more heated discussions of the document which occurred in the…
M.E. BradfordNovember 17, 2015
Catalonia has voted to secede from Spain. This is a remarkable development in modern Western civilization, particularly in the age of the modern bureaucratic unitary imperial State. It signals that not all Europeans agree with the borderless European Union pushed by the political class and that culture and true nationalism still mean something. The shocking Paris attacks this past…
Brion McClanahanNovember 16, 2015
The main problem with America today is the increasing scarcity of Americans. --Clyde Wilson The motive of those who have protested against the extension of slavery has always been concern for the welfare of the white man, not an unnatural sympathy with the negro. --William H. Seward, Republican leader Loyalty to party is treason to the South. --Congressman Lawrence M.…
Clyde WilsonNovember 13, 2015
Martha Jane Davis (Campbell) was born in Reed Creek, Henry County, Virginia in 1840. Her mother died when Little Mattie was two, and, her Turner grandparents (who lived nearby) took her to raise. A pretty child with auburn curls and gray eyes, she soon became the spoiled darling of her grandmother, who preferred being called "Grahma"(Grandmere) possibly because she had…
Joscelyn DunlopNovember 12, 2015
Several generations after his lifetime Jefferson became best known, as he still is, of course, for these words "All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Here is another important lesson in understanding history. The American Founders tend to be treated as…
Clyde WilsonNovember 11, 2015
The reader has perceived that the question concerning state powers, is condensed in the word sovereignty, and therefore any new ideas upon the subject, if to be found, would not be unedifying. A will to enact, and a power to execute, constitute its essence. Take away either, and it expires. The state governments and the federal government, are the monuments…
John Taylor of CarolineNovember 10, 2015
This story was originally published at Alabama Pioneers and comes from the book Alokoli : the Choctaw County. “Tell us about when you were little” was the oft repeated request of two lovely wee girls, my grandchildren and now comes the request that I put it down in writing. Viewed from their own childhood of peace and plenty mine seemed…
Clemmie Parker WilcoxNovember 9, 2015
I. THE name First given to the territory occupied by the present United States was Virginia. It was bestowed upon the Country by Elizabeth, greatest of English queens. The United States of America are mere words of description. They are not a name. The rightful and historic name of this great Republic is "Virginia." We must get back to it,…
Lyon G. TylerNovember 6, 2015
“Cotton isn’t king in the South anymore … Kudzu is king!” Channing Cole, Atlanta Constitution The mysterious disappearance of England’s first settlement in North America, Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Lost Colony” which was established in 1584 on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina, may never be solved, but it is safe to assume that starvation must have played…
John MarquardtNovember 5, 2015
There was a popular ragtime song in the 1940s and ‘50s, derived from an old minstrel tune, that went like this: Is it true what they say about Dixie? Does the sun really shine there all the time? Do sweet magnolias blossom 'round every door? Do the folks eat possum till they can’t eat no more? If you really want…
Clyde WilsonNovember 4, 2015
‘If only I can restore to our institutions their primitive simplicity and purity, can only succeed in banishing those extraneous corrupting influences which tend to fasten monopoly and aristocracy on the Constitution and to make the government an engine of oppression to the people instead of the agent of their will, I may then look back on the honors conferred…
James Rutledge RoeschNovember 3, 2015
Do men read fiction anymore? In my youth I remember visiting other boys’ homes and finding novels from their fathers – you know, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming. In my own family there were no books, and I can confidently state that not one of my forebears had read even 50 books, fiction or nonfiction, not even…
Terry HulseyNovember 2, 2015
This piece was originally published at The American Conservative. When John William Corrington died in 1988, Southern conservatives lost one of their most talented writers, a refined Cajun cowboy with a jazzy voice and bold pen whose work has since been unjustly neglected. A lawyer and an English professor, an ambivalent Catholic and a devotee of the philosopher Eric Voegelin,…
Allen MendenhallOctober 29, 2015
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