Clyde Wilson Library

Introduction to James Pettigrew’s Notes on Spain

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 Wilson
December 30, 2015
Review Posts

The Immortals

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 Stokes
December 29, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 6

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 McClanahan
December 28, 2015
Blog

Rebels of the Golden State

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 Santi
December 28, 2015
Review Posts

Christmas in Richmond, 1864

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 Davis
December 25, 2015
Blog

A Christmas Story for the Old South

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 Jarvis
December 24, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXIII

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 Wilson
December 23, 2015
Review Posts

For the Paris Dead

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 Brosman
December 22, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 5

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 McClanahan
December 21, 2015
Blog

A Tale of Two Plantations

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 Stokes
December 21, 2015
Blog

South from Egypt

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 Marquardt
December 18, 2015
Review Posts

A Wisconsin Copperhead

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 Battell
December 17, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

The Jeffersonian Democrat Rediscovered

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 Wilson
December 16, 2015
Review Posts

“We want not Gascons, but Southern gentlemen, honorable, high-toned men of strict integrity and straight hair.”

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 Hill
December 15, 2015
Blog

Jefferson Was Right

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 Benner
December 14, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 4

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 McClanahan
December 12, 2015
Blog

A Brave New World…in the South

“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 Wilson
December 11, 2015
Review Posts

The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln

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 Landess
December 10, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

The Virginia Roots of American Values

"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 Wilson
December 9, 2015
Blog

What Was the Confederacy After All?

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 Sale
December 7, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 3

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 McClanahan
December 6, 2015
Blog

Remembering Hugh Williamson

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 Benner
December 4, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Can the Republic Be Restored: Presidency

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 Wilson
December 2, 2015
Blog

November Top Ten

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 McClanahan
December 2, 2015
Review Posts

The Same Old Stand?

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 Reed
December 1, 2015
Blog

Pilgrim Myths and Legends

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 Roberts
November 30, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 2

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 McClanahan
November 28, 2015
Blog

Stapleton

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 McClanahan
November 27, 2015
Review Posts

Defending the Southern Tradition

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. Weaver
November 26, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXII

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 Wilson
November 25, 2015
Review Posts

No Lost Cause

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 Johnson
November 24, 2015
Blog

Kentucky’s Baron Munchausen

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 Marquardt
November 23, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 1

Brion McClanahan discusses the week that was in the Abbeville Institute, November 16-20, 2015. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-1
Brion McClanahan
November 21, 2015
Blog

Is The Campaign To Eradicate Southern Heritage Losing Steam?

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 Jarvis
November 20, 2015
Review Posts

A New Reconstruction: The Renewed Assault on Southern Heritage

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 Cathey
November 19, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Scholars’ Statement in Support of the Confederate Flag (2000)

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 Wilson
November 18, 2015
Blog

A Long Farewell: The Southern Valedictories of 1860-1861

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. Bradford
November 17, 2015
Blog

Catalonia and the Southern Tradition

  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 McClanahan
November 16, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXI

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 Wilson
November 13, 2015
Blog

The Birthday Surprise

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 Dunlop
November 12, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters, Part II

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 Wilson
November 11, 2015
Review Posts

Sovereignty

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 Caroline
November 10, 2015
Blog

When I Was Little: A tale of life in Mississippi during the War

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 Wilcox
November 9, 2015
Review Posts

Virginia First

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. Tyler
November 6, 2015
Blog

King Kudzu

“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 Marquardt
November 5, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters, Part I

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 Wilson
November 4, 2015
Blog

Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

‘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 Roesch
November 3, 2015
Blog

Ferrol Sams and Run With the Horsemen

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 Hulsey
November 2, 2015
Blog

John William Corrington and Southern Conservatism

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 Mendenhall
October 29, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XX

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.--Jefferson When did the South ever lay its hand on the North?--Calhoun . . . it remains true that the bulk of modern monopoly or quasi monopoly is not the result of always irresistible economic forces, but simply the…
Clyde Wilson
October 28, 2015
Review Posts

Thomas F. Bayard and the Defense of the South, 1866-1876

This article is reprinted from Edward Spencer, An Outline Public Life and Services Of Thomas F. Bayard, Senator of the United States from the State Of Delaware,  1869-1880. With Extractions from His Speeches and the Debates Of Congress (1880) and is published in honor of Bayard's birthday, October 29. The war was fought for the Union. Whatever may have been the hopes or desires of some of…
Edward Spencer
October 27, 2015
Blog

Calhoun and Yale

I can still recall one of my college economics professor's witticisms. When a student mentioned that the current year's test had the same questions as last year's, the professor replied: "Yes, but the answers have changed." My professor illustrated a valid point: theories of economic causation, like other theories, often change. A culture's political and social attitudes also change. But…
Gail Jarvis
October 26, 2015
Blog

The Queen City Humbled

In 1865, a writer for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine described Charleston, South Carolina, contrasting her condition before the war, and after four years of siege, blockade and bombardment: Not many years ago, Charleston sat like a queen upon the waters, her broad and beautiful bay covered with the sails of every nation, and her great export, cotton, affording employment to…
Karen Stokes
October 23, 2015
Blog

Jefferson’s “Rightful Remedy”

This article was originally published at Townhall.com. Victor Davis Hanson has a strange and misguided infatuation with “Confederates.” In June, his widely read National Review piece on the Confederate Battle Flag equated the Confederacy to a “racist separatist group” like Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and just this week, Hanson suggested that so-called “sanctuary cities” are the new “Confederates.” Hanson’s overarching…
Brion McClanahan
October 22, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Chronicles of the South

Introduction to Chronicles of the South: In Justice to So Fine a Country “The South” is a Problem. A Big Problem. This has been true at least since the 1790s when Mr. Jefferson and his friends rallied to put the kibosh—only temporarily, alas—on New England's attempt to reinterpret the new Constitution and set up a central government powerful enough to…
Clyde Wilson
October 21, 2015
Review Posts

Slavery in the Confederate Constitution

...... Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or Inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known and my practice has been so conformable to my sentiment that I have always employed freemen both as Domisticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave. The…
Vito Mussomeli
October 20, 2015
Blog

The Last Southern Democrat

“Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat, They oughta get a rich man to vote like that.” Bob McDill, “Song of the South” The presidential candidacy of Jim Webb marks, perhaps, the last gasp of that nearly extinct species of politician populus austrinalus, the southern democrat. Webb, a native Missourian, has an impressive record of public service: a marine officer…
John Devanny
October 19, 2015
Blog

The Cemetery Tour Revisited

Well, another year has come and gone that the Auburn Heritage Association did not invite me back to portray secessionist William F. Samford in their annual cemetery lantern tour. This year’s tour concluded last weekend, and it has been at least a decade since that fateful night when innocent young progressives were assaulted at dusk by my fire breathing interpretation…
Tom Daniel
October 16, 2015
Blog

Hiding from History

When I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina as a retiree over twenty years ago, I brought much of the Yankee historical baggage—as written by the victors—of the War Between the States, or Lincoln’s War as many Southerners know it. I’ve always been interested in history, so naturally I wanted to understand more about the Southern views of the war. I…
R.E. Smith, Jr.
October 15, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Prosperity

Declining prosperity is now a settled fact of American life. Prosperity is not measured by the day’s average of stock speculation, or the profits of bankers, or the munificence of government subsidies and salaries, or the consumption of luxury goods, or even by the Gross Domestic Product. It is amazing how in a few short decades American “educators,” “experts,” “journalists,”…
Clyde Wilson
October 14, 2015
Review Posts

Habeas Corpus

Recently, I came across a little known case that I wanted to call to your attention. It involves the ancient writ of habeas corpus, which was first recognized in 1215 in the Magna Carta, but existed long before that. In Alabama, the writ of habeas corpus has been codified in Section 15-21-1 et. seq. Code of Alabama (1975). It did…
Joseph S. Johnston
October 13, 2015
Blog

Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

Note: A version of this paper originally appeared in the Summer 2015 Edition of the Palmetto Partisan, the Official Journal of the SC Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans. The grey riders are gone, but yet they remain. Asleep in our soil, and alive in our veins. Untouched by fire, untouched by frost, they whisper within us, "Our cause is not…
Paul C. Graham
October 12, 2015
Blog

Believe It Or Not…

Criss-crossing the South, from Virginia and Maryland to Texas, and from Missouri and Tennessee to South Carolina and Florida, there are thirteen museums dedicated to the myriad oddities of life . . . Robert Ripley’s “Odditoriums.” Almost a century ago, as a reporter for the New York Globe, Ripley created what would soon become the world-famous media feature, “Believe It…
John Marquardt
October 9, 2015
Blog

Reconstruction Continues…

I spent some time perusing my son's sixth grade history book. I didn't read it from back to front (yet), but just glanced through it. However, in that short span of time the fallacies, distortions and half-truths were pretty staggering. To begin with, the book is definitely not on a sixth grade reading level. My child is, in his personal…
Carl Jones
October 8, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XIX

A man has only got room for one oath at a time. I gave mine to the Confederate States of America. --John Wayne, “The Searchers” Going back is the quickest way on. --C.S. Lewis Idiocy is bipartisan. --Ilana Mercer The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shall…
Clyde Wilson
October 7, 2015
Review Posts

On a Postmodern Publisher

  A modest query falls out of the fog: “Might you be interested in this small book, which would appear to fit your catalogue— new figures, new research? Please take a look.” The answer is politely couched, and smooth; they cannot risk offense that might be quoted. The momentary business is to soothe, while the assessment’s “pending, as was noted.”…
Blog

September Top 10

Our top ten articles for the month of September.  Read 'em again and pass 'em along. 1. John C. Calhoun and States Rights by James Rutledge Roesch 2. The War for Southern Independence: My Myth or Yours? by Clyde Wilson 3. Revisiting 25 Years of Revisionist Claptrap by Gail Jarvis 4. Apostles of Racism by Brion McClanahan 5. Life in…
Brion McClanahan
October 6, 2015
Blog

One Ruler to Enforce Obedience

The peaceful political separation desired by the American South in early 1861 was best summarized by President Jefferson Davis’ in his inaugural address: “We seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated. All we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall…
Bernard Thuersam
October 5, 2015
Blog

Is the Public Getting a Skewed Idea of Thomas Jefferson?

This article was originally published by History News Network. In a recent article on Thomas Jefferson’s mythic and contradictory legacy for Time, Joseph Ellis begins with an account of an encounter during a book tour with an outraged woman. She snaps: “Mr. Ellis, you are a mere pigeon on the great statue of Thomas Jefferson.” Ellis has a decisive retort.…
M. Andrew Holowchak
October 2, 2015
Blog

Pope Francis and the Southern Tradition

Recent attempts made by the left and the right to make Pope Francis one of “their” own has sparked considerable debate among the political class and their voices in the mainstream media.  Pope Francis’s speech before Congress was nothing more than a continuation of themes he has publically endorsed throughout his time as pontiff, namely support for the environment and opposition…
Brion McClanahan
October 1, 2015
Blog

The War to Prevent Southern Independence and Other New Tomes

Thanks for the “Amateurs” “Amateur” has come to mean “inferior” to most people today. But the term originally meant someone who was as good as a professional but did not take money for performance. Fortunately, Dixie has always had and still does have many able “amateur” historians. This is a good thing since most of the paid “professional” historians these…
Clyde Wilson
September 30, 2015
Review Posts

Pride

Variation on a theme by Chekhov “Oh, Eldridge. Well. Ain’t seen you in a week. I thought they must have re-routed you or something, boy.” Eldridge Sartor had spotted Mr. Hitt moseying from his front door to the mailbox as soon as he pulled up. “Naw, sir,” Mr. Sartor replied. Even though Mr. Hitt was now standing no more than…
Randall Ivey
September 29, 2015
Blog

Civil Rights at the Casa Mañana

At the Battle of San Jacinto in April of 1836, the badly outnumbered Texas forces under the command of General Sam Houston avenged the historic defeat at the Alamo in San Antonio the month before by soundly crushing General Santa Anna’s vastly superior Mexican Army.  After that battle, Santa Anna was forced to sign the Treaty of Velasco which granted…
John Marquardt
September 28, 2015
Blog

Discovering Jackson

  Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson (2014) by S.C. Gwynne. A braver man God never made. – Richmond Dispatch, 3-28-1862 (page 226) Gwynne’s biography of Stonewall Jackson is simply one of the best biographies I have ever read. Many biographies plod along a “cradle-to-grave” timeline that starts out something like “our hero’s father started out as…
Terry Hulsey
September 25, 2015
Blog

Revisiting 25 Years of Revisionist Claptrap

With its usual promotional hype, PBS re-broadcasted its 1990 program The Civil War. This 25-year-old program, along with Jazz and Baseball constitutes Ken Burns' trilogy on racial relations. Wanting to make the Civil War "comprehensible to a contemporary audience", Burns chose to present a "social history", one that was heavily influenced by contemporary socio/political sentiments. Burns publicly admitted that he…
Gail Jarvis
September 24, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XVIII

Wherever you bluebellies go you cause trouble. . . . Yankees always lie. --Clint Eastwood, “Ambush at Cimarron Pass,” 1958. For every right wing lunatic in a cabin in Idaho, there are 500 left wing lunatics with tenure at state universities. --David Burge My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee,…
Clyde Wilson
September 23, 2015
Review Posts

Robert B. Rhett: Liberty Protected by Law

“The one great principle, which produced our secession from the United States – was constitutional liberty – liberty protected by law. For this, we have fought; for this, our people have died. To preserve and cherish this sacred principle, constituting as it did, the very soul of independence itself, was the clear dictate of all honest – all wise statesmanship.”–…
James Rutledge Roesch
September 22, 2015
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He Loved To Tell The Story: An Appreciation of William Price Fox (1926-2015)

From personal experience I can draw any number of anecdotes that would vividly personify William Price Fox, the South Carolina novelist, story writer, and chronicler of the South who died in April at age eighty-nine, a few days following his birthday, another vibrant person claimed by the scourge of Alzheimer’s. This occurred in 1988. I hitched a ride with Bill…
Randall Ivey
September 21, 2015
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Catalan Independence? An Interview With Marco Bassani

This interview was originally published at the Fleming Foundation.  Prof.  Bassani, there was a mass demonstration in Barcelona on Friday.  Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to proclaim their desire for independence. Why, with all the crises in Europe—Syrian migrants, EU economic woes, and the Greek bailout, to name just two—are people in northern Spain agitating for independence? First…
Thomas Fleming
September 18, 2015
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From the Saddle

John Rutledge of South Carolina is one of the most important men of the founding generation, but he has been lost to mainstream history. He is politically incorrect (most in the founding generation are) and his positions on the nature of federal power do not comport with modern nationalist interpretations of government. At 25, Rutledge was sent by South Carolina…
Brion McClanahan
September 17, 2015
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Life In The Old Land Yet

There is life in the old land of Dixie yet. There seems to be no end of talent and knowledge coming forth in our defense against the South-hating jihadists who seem to dominate the American scene these days.   Valiant and wise people continue the daunting task of educating our fellow citizens about the truth of American history. The end of…
Clyde Wilson
September 16, 2015
Review Posts

Destruction of the City of Columbia, South Carolina: A Poem by a Lady of Georgia. A True Statement of Facts.

About the author: Elizabeth Otis Marshall Dannelly (1838-1896), a native of Madison, Georgia, was a published poet significant enough to be included in the book Living Writers of the South (1869). During the War Between the States, she lived in Columbia, South Carolina, where her husband Dr. Francis Olin Dannelly (1823-1880) was on duty as Chief Surgeon. Mrs. Dannelly was…
Karen Stokes
September 15, 2015
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From Under the Rubble: The Wearin’ of the Cross

This article was originally published by the Fleming Foundation. In simpler times when our world was young, we used to sing, "It's a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be." Now we might just as well call it an Obama and Osama world: It's still phony but a lot more dangerous than circus lions. A Palestinian Muslim…
Thomas Fleming
September 14, 2015
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Randolph of Roanoke and the War Party, 1806-2015

Few who encounter John Randolph of Roanoke in the pages of American history ever forget that inimitable, irrepressible figure. Randolph, a son of one of the “First Families” of Virginia, was the passionate, principled champion of the rights of the States and Virginia’s way of life, and the sworn enemy of nationalism, imperialism, mercantilism, abolitionism, and various other “isms” howling…
James Rutledge Roesch
September 11, 2015
Review Posts

Promoting Christian Sabbath or Lord’s Day Observance in South Carolina, 1827-1837

In the eighteenth century, each of the British North American colonies that later formed the United States of America had statutes that regulated the observance of the Christian Sabbath, or the Lord’s day. The two motivating concerns were, first, religious worship; and, second, commercial or business activity on the weekly rest day. While the high regard of New Englanders for…
Forrest L. Marion
September 8, 2015
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M.R. Ducks

Years ago I was introduced to my wife’s grandmother. This small but formidable woman lived in Columbus, Ohio, a descendant of tough, blue collar shanty Irish. We got to talkin’ about the experience of the Irish in America, the Democratic Party’s abandonment of regular folk, why you never can really trust a Republican, and wouldn’t it be great if Pat…
John Devanny
September 7, 2015
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Judah P. Benjamin: Able Statesman, Forgotten Patriot

If you showed the average American pictures of famous figures from Confederate States of America, there is a good chance many would recognize Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Pressed further, some may even identify Alexander Stephens. All were influential men, and important to the establishment and development of the Confederacy. However, none of them assisted the Confederate cause in…
Dave Benner
September 4, 2015
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ISIS Punks and USA Vandals

This article was originally published at the Fleming Foundation. When the Islamic State blows up the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, the UNESCO (the cultural arm of the United Nations) condemns the act as a war crime.  UNESCO’s director-general declared that in destroying ancient monuments, IS was “seeking to deprive the Syrian people of its knowledge, its identity and history.”…
Thomas Fleming
September 3, 2015
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Trump: A Southern Conservative Perspective

Source: Washington Post There are several attributes of Donald Trump’s bid for the U.S. Presidency that this Paleo-Conservative finds to be interesting. To follow is an adumbration of the more salient. His campaign style is refreshing. The absence of teleprompters, which results in spontaneity, which in turn reveals the unvarnished candidate in contradistinction to the coached, stale, and unconvincing political…
Marshall DeRosa
September 2, 2015
Review Posts

The War for Southern Independence: My Myth or Yours?

In the antebellum era, Matthew Carey, Philadelphia publisher and journalist, was the most zealous and articulate advocate of a protective tariff to raise the price of imported goods so high that American manufacturers would be guaranteed a closed internal market that would provide them with growth and profits. He believed fervently that this was necessary to build a strong country.  …
Clyde Wilson
September 1, 2015
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Apostles of Racism

If the modern historical narrative is to be believed, then the antebellum North was the happy land of butterflies, flowers, rainbows, and racist free Americans who insisted on racial equality. Only in the South did anyone encounter “Apostles of Racism” as the historian Charles Dew labeled the 1861 Confederate commissioners to other Southern States. But was this so? Would antebellum Southerners…
Brion McClanahan
August 31, 2015
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The Cost of Total War in the South

Chapter 29, on "Lives Lost," in the newly released booklet, "Understanding the War Between the States," reveals startlingly higher numbers of people who lost their lives as a result of the War for Southern Independence, especially among Southern soldiers, civilians, and blacks.   New scholarly works on these topics are the basis for these significantly higher figures.   I learned…
William Cawthon
August 28, 2015
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Japan and the South

When William Faulkner visited Japan in 1955 to attend a literary symposium in Nagano, he noted certain parallels between the aftermath of the Confederacy’s defeat in 1865 and that of Japan’s a century and a half later. In an address, “To the Youth of Japan,” Faulkner summed up these mutual experiences by saying; “My side, the South, lost that war,…
John Marquardt
August 27, 2015
Review Posts

John C. Calhoun and “State’s Rights”

  The following is an abridged version of a chapter which will appear in the forthcoming, From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South  “Union among ourselves is not only necessary for our safety, but for the preservation of the common liberties and institutions of the whole confederacy. We constitute the balance wheel…
James Rutledge Roesch
August 25, 2015
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Secession For The North!

Two weeks ago, authorities combing through disgraced former IRS executive Lois Lerner's e-mails released a message she sent to a subordinate who had complained about a Texas Tea Party group. “Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best," she said.  "He should let the south go. We really do seem to have different mind sets.”  She…
Brion McClanahan
August 24, 2015
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Are You Certified Organic?

At the farmer’s market on Saturday morning a question often expressed is, “are you an organic farm?” It’s encouraging and admirable that the standards by which food is grown is at least as important as the sticker price, and that maybe more and more folks are becoming increasingly educated on conventional Ag’s toxic side effects. We are all slowly learning…
Chris Jackson
August 21, 2015
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People Along the Way: Dan Smoot

Dan Smoot never considered himself to be a Southern conservative, though he was born and reared in Missouri and spent his early adult life in Texas.  He was one of the leading conservative voices in the 1960s and hosted a weekly television program titled "The Dan Smoot Report." There were once principled men who were willing to carry the conservative…
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

A Sacrifice for His People: The Imprisonment of Jefferson Davis

In 1866 Margaret Junkin Preston of Lexington, Virginia, a sister-in-law of Stonewall Jackson, wrote a poem she called “Regulus.” Regulus was a Roman hero who was tortured by the Carthaginians but never yielded his honour or his patriotism. Her verse, which did not mention Jefferson Davis by name, was a reflection on the imprisonment of President Davis—a tribute to Davis’s…
Clyde Wilson
August 19, 2015
Review Posts

A Small Poetics

A poetess, invited to submit her verse—a friendly offer— answered back: “Your editorial policies don’t fit my own advanced ideas; I’d be a hack   if I were to contribute. Life is short, and poems few; I want them to do good, and advertise my causes.”   That retort astonished me. So poems, briefly, should   be activist endeavors, meant to…
Blog

Digging For Southern Roots

With all due apologies to Samuel Clemens, I like to think of myself as a Connecticut Confederate. Therefore, I was delighted to find recently that, in addition to being a self-made devotee of the “Lost Cause” and an ardent admirer of the South in general, I also have at least two actual ancestors who served gallantly in the Confederate Army…
John Marquardt
August 17, 2015
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Was the Civil War About Slavery?

A new video entitled “Was the Civil War About Slavery?” from Prager University is currently making the rounds on the Internet. A caption claims that the video “settles the debate once and for all,” superseding over a century’s worth of scholarship by historians who have argued this matter. But does it really? The video is filled with misconceptions and myths…
Dave Benner
August 14, 2015
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Will Today’s Activists Be Able To Make Robert E. Lee A Villain?

Persons interviewed on those amusing and disturbing videos by satirist Mark Dice, were unaware of even basic facts of American history. They had to be told why the 4th of July was observed, and they couldn't identify the country we declared our independence from. Quite a few thought it was Mexico. One woman claimed that America gained its independence from…
Gail Jarvis
August 13, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XVII

It has been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be entrusted to the hands of mortal man. --Calhoun, 1841 When it comes once to be understood that…
Clyde Wilson
August 12, 2015
Review Posts

A Clear-Eyed Look at the Old South

Now that a third Reconstruction is very much underway in the South, it is more needful than ever to know and understand her history and her ways of living. Thankfully, Mrs. Elizabeth Allston Pringle, a South Carolina plantation owner and rice planter (1845-1921), has left us a valuable guidebook for doing such things in her written account of her family’s…
Walt Garlington
August 11, 2015
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The South: The Genesis of American Independence

Originally published at www.circa1865.com In 1887 North Carolina’s Lieutenant-General Daniel H. Hill spoke of the American Republic and the men who founded, led and sustained it until a revolutionary movement ended its life after some eighty years. Shorn of the conservative South after 1861, the Northern government descended into political corruption, the Gilded Age, incessant warfare and moral depravity. The…
Bernard Thuersam
August 10, 2015
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Another Look at the Confederate Battle Flag

Recently Mr. Donald Fraser wrote a column in my hometown newspaper, the Northeast Georgian, titled “Battle Flag Promotes Hate, Not Heritage.” He opened his article expressing a twinge of fear that he would probably not make many friends. I am glad, however, he is willing to say what he believes even at the expense of offending others, a luxury often…
Samuel C. Smith
August 7, 2015
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Why Yankees Won’t (And Can’t) Leave the South Alone

This essay was first published in Southern Partisan in the Winter, 1985. Southerners rarely while away their leisure hours by contemplating Yankees, for there is no point in thinking of unpleasant things if one is not obliged to do so. Yet the practice does have value; to some extent, at least, we are defined by those attributes which set us…
Forrest McDonald
August 6, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XVI

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals can believe them.   --Orwell I believe you love me---God knows why?     --Yates Snowden Even if the GOP can’t see the light they can feel the heat. “We’ve got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs!”     --James Fulford For all practical purposes, today’s press is an arm of government.   --Fred Reed The instinct for Power…
Clyde Wilson
August 5, 2015
Review Posts

The Poet Laureate of the Lost Cause

It was the fate of much Southern poetry to have been written during the stormy period of our Civil War and hence to have been overlooked and neglected. War may furnish incitement to the production of poetry, but it does not generate that attitude of quiet and content most conducive to gentle, poetic reading. Indeed misfortune befell much poetry of…
Charles W. Kent
August 3, 2015
Blog

July Top Ten

July was another great month at the Abbeville Institute.  Please keep sharing and reading our material. We can only grow with your help.  Here are the top ten articles for July: 1. Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence by Clyde Wilson 2. Why Do They Hate the South and Its Symbols? by…
Brion McClanahan
August 3, 2015
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Civil War Arbitrage

Wouldn’t it be great if an act of Congress enabled your federal government bonds to be worth twice what you paid for them? That’s precisely what happened for many federal Civil War bond investors during the Reconstruction Era. In the second year of the War in 1862 it was obvious the federal government could not finance the war without creating…
Philip Leigh
July 31, 2015
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The War of Words

The guns of the War Between the States fell silent a century and a half ago, but the verbal and written battles related to that great conflict have continued. In the more than 50,000 books, as well as the countless thousands of additional articles and discussions which have taken place during the intervening years , it would seem that every…
John Marquardt
July 30, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

A Jeffersonian Political Economy

Your other lecturers have pleasant and upbeat subjects to consider. I am stuck with economics, which is a notoriously dreary subject.   It is even more of a downer when we consider how far the U.S. is today from a Southern, Jeffersonian political economy which was once a powerful idea. Economics as practiced today is a utilitarian and materialistic study. It…
Clyde Wilson
July 29, 2015
Review Posts

Raphael Semmes and the Confederate Navy

On October 17, 1862 William E. Gladstone, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered a speech at New Castle concerning the widening conflict in America. He said: “We may have our opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army. They…
Mark Baxter
July 28, 2015
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The Southern Accent

https://youtu.be/XPfOL4wUuMU Thanks to Tom Daniel for shooting me this video.  This was made when the History Channel had real history in its program lineup.  Charlie Daniels narrates the segment.  For those looking to read more into this subject, please read David Hackett Fischer's seminal Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history) and Cleanth Brooks's The Language…
Brion McClanahan
July 27, 2015
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The Real History of Tap Dancing

After an enforced retirement due to a bad back, and moving to the Deep South to get away from the madness of living inside the DC Beltway in Virginia most of my life, and the cold winters, I had the typical delusion that I wanted a vegetable garden, a big one. I brought in tons of a rich humus to…
Arnie Lerma
July 24, 2015
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Franklin Pierce: Reviled Jeffersonian

Sometimes opponents of nullification base their opposition on the claim that Jefferson and Madison’s blueprint against federal overreach could only have applied to a unique situation present in 1798. The Alien and Sedition Acts, they say, represented an extreme situation for which there was an applicable remedy, but those ideas have died and can never be invoked again. They say…
Dave Benner
July 23, 2015
Blog

Think Again, Jeff

The “conservative” Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby, thinks that the Confederate flag is “anti-American,” “an ugly symbol of oppression,” “the most poisonous ideologies in our national history,” “racial bigotry and victimization,” “racial hatred,” and “the right of white Americans to buy and sell black Americans.” The flag is also “the banner of slaughter” that “represents armed rebellion against the United…
Jack Kerwick
July 22, 2015
Review Posts

An Effective Diplomat

One of America's most successful diplomats of the 20th century, was Horace C. Holmes, who spent over 30 years in the diplomatic service. Most of that time was spent in what are now called Third World countries, where he became known for being able to change the minds of those he was trying to help---even though most were firmly convinced…
Joscelyn Dunlop
July 21, 2015
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Our Noble Banner

The Confederate battle flag is protean. It is a powerful symbol that has entered the world’s consciousness. “Protean,” going back to the classical Proteus, is defined as “readily taking on varied shapes, forms, or meanings.”   And as “having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms.”   The flag’s power   is very real, but engenders a different feeling according to…
Clyde Wilson
July 20, 2015
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Fear, Hate, and Loss of Freedom

Last week hate and fear triumphed over our constitutional First Amendment. House Republicans, once again in timid positions, hide under their desks afraid of Democrats, again accusing them of racism; this time because they meekly tried to clarify and provide guidelines on the use and sale of Confederate flags in national parks and cemeteries. The U. S. House of Representatives…
R.E. Smith, Jr.
July 17, 2015
Blog

The “Hawaiian Prophet” from South Carolina

South Carolina is not known for great surfing, but a native son named Alexander Hume Ford (1868-1945) is credited with the revival, preservation, and promotion of that sport. The scion of an old South Carolina family, he was the son of Georgetown County planter Frederick W. Ford (1817-1872) and Mary Mazyck Hume. His mother died at the time of his…
Karen Stokes
July 16, 2015