The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 15-19, 2019. Topics: Southern tradition, Political Correctness, John C. Calhoun, Nationalism
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So, smart moms in two homeschool social-media groups of which I’m a member are super-excited about Hillsdale College’s free “Constitution 101” course. “Hillsdale’s conservative, so it must be teaching Christian-centered…
Of all the American vice-presidents, none is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. Calhoun is known as the “defender of slavery,” the “cast iron man,” the “man who started the…
“It is out of fashion these days to look backward rather than forward,” the poet John Crowe Ransom wrote almost thirty years ago. “About the only American given to it…
A review of Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism For Our Times (Routledge, 2017) by Joseph Scotchie Joe Scotchie’s recently published anthology Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism…
Back last year an OpEd piece showed up in The [Raleigh NC] News & Observer by one Professor John Biewen, who is Audio Program Director at the Center for Documentary…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 8-12, 2019 Topics: Thomas Jefferson, Reconstruction, Reconciliation, Political Correctness
To the student of the Classics the most interesting thing in the Library of Congress at Washington is the considerable remnant of the library of Thomas Jefferson. On October 6,…
‘The Journalist & The General’ Thomas Morris Chester, the war correspondent in the Eastern Theater for the Philadelphia Press paid homage to General Robert E. Lee on his return from…
A decisive moment is coming for the peoples of the States, especially for those who consider themselves conservatives yet belong to the cult of Lincoln: Will the Electoral College system…
A review of Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home (Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by James Ronald and Walter Donald Kennedy The Kennedys have fired a well placed shot across…
2019 marks the 150th anniversary of U.S. Grant’s inauguration as President of the United States. It also has sparked a renewed interest in Reconstruction, particularly the notion that America failed…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 25-April 5, 2019 Topics: Political Correctness, the Southern Tradition, Robert E. Lee
Strom Thurmond was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, in 1902 and lived to be over 100 years old. He grew up in a time when the average person knew how…
Compatriots, how do y’all seek to maintain alive the Confederate heritage within your family & relatives? This would be a great discussion point for any Sons of Confederate Camp or…
Reparations for the deserving.? Who gets the money? Who gives up the money? Who owes the money? The idea for reparations for which many of the current political and /or…
A review of The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (Simon and Schuster, 2016) by Fergus Bordewich Amateur historians usually…
Most every Thursday I gather with a group of friends for lunch at some restaurant in Raleigh. Among the group are three PhDs in history, and one who holds two…
You don’t see much on the continued attack and removal of war memorials in the news, but that’s the intent of the left isn’t it? Do it quietly but totally….
“Fatti Maschii Parole Femine”1 In July of 1861, Union troops aboard the Chesapeake Bay steamer the Mary Washington found the “privateer” Colonel Richard Thomas Zarvona hiding in one of her…
The Hall of Fame recently dedicated at New York University was conceived from the Ruhmes Halle in Bavaria. This structure on University Heights, on the Harlem river, in the borough…
A review of John Gildart: An Heroic Poem. (H. Young & Co., 1901) by M. E. Henry-Ruffin and Plantation Songs: For My Lady’s Banjo, and Other Lyrics and Monologues (J.W….
In 1966, Senator Jim Eastland of Mississippi walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee and asked, “Feel hot in heah?” A staffer replied: “Well Senator, the thermostat is set at 72…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 18-22, 2019 Topics: John C. Calhoun, Patrick Cleburne, the War, Political Correctness, Southern Music
I need to tell you one story in order to tell you another. The Czechoslovakian composer Antonin Dvorak moved to the United States in 1892, and immersed himself in American…
Editor’s Note: During the height of the Silent Sam protests in the Summer of 2017, Jonathan Harris went to the statue and talked with the people wishing to tear down…
Some lawmakers in Mississippi, obviously alarmed at the violent demonstrations and restrictive measures at college campuses intended to silence what passes for conservative viewpoints, have come up what they consider…
A review of Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, Vol II. (Washington, 1900) edited by J. Franklin Jameson. It is a fitting crown to Professor Jameson’s efforts in promoting the establishment…
The sketch is necessarily imperfect, from the want of official records. Most of these were lost or destroyed by the casualties attending the close of the war, and those still…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 11-15, 2019 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Symbols, Confederate Monuments, Southern History, Confederate Constitution
‘Their revolution (the South in 1861) … was in fact an act of restoration, for the constitution drawn up in Montgomery in 1861 for the Confederate States of America was…
In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so…
Athletes gain money when they gain attention. Just like Congressmen. Ole Miss basketball players kneel in deference to standing for the National Anthem. Again, athletes, many of whom have an…
A review of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Harvard, 1998) by Ira Berlin For an understanding of the Atlantic-African slave trades and the…
For thirty-one years the North Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has sponsored annually Confederate Flag Day, an event commemorating our state’s rich history and Southern heritage, held…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 4-8, 2019 Topics: Jeffersonian tradition, economics, Southern symbols.
On a February 2017 episode of televangelist Pat Robertson’s “The 700 club,” a viewer sent in the following question about dissent: “Why do so many hate President Trump and say…
Whoever weds himself to the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. — William Inge Few realize that Florida was so committed to…
During the weekend of 15 to 16 February, I had the great honor to represent my law school at the 48th Annual Spong Moot Court Tournament hosted by William &…
A Review of Beyond Slavery: The Northern Romantic Nationalist Origins of America’s Civil War (Shotwell Publishing, 2019) by Walter Kirk Wood In the post-War between the States mythology supported by…
The chattering class’ newest obsession, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has seized the policy initiative from the Democratic Party’s geriatrics by promoting a “Green New Deal.” T’is clever branding to combine left-wing eco…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institutes, Feb 25-Mar 1, 2019 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition, Jeffersonian tradition
Southeast Virginia is a region rich in history, from the earliest colonial times to today’s modern military. Cape Henry welcomes visitors today, just as it did the Virginia Company colonists…
The so-called Civil Rights movement began in the mid-1950s with goals of ending segregation and discrimination. Over the decades it has evolved from “correcting” certain aspects of society, into a…
Right wing radio personalities need no excuse to engage in South-bashing, but the recent events in the Old Dominion have given them free rein to indulge in their passion non-stop. …
A review of Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and Empire (LSU Press, 2018) by Peter Onuf Historian Peter S. Onuf first saw the light as a Connecticut Yankee. Powerful…
Pat Caddell died on February 16. Several major news outlets ran stories about his influence in both the Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump campaigns. Everyone understood Caddell’s role as the…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institutes Feb 18-22, 2019 Topics: Southern tradition, New South, Southern politics, American presidents
“I plainly perceive that the time will come when a shirt shall not be washed without an excise.”— Representative James Jackson of Georgia, speech against the Whiskey Tax delivered on…
It was an indelible moment, one that has resonated with me up to the present day. My father and I had gone to whatever permutation of Wal-Mart existed at that…
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does that famous dictum’s author, Cambridge…
A review of Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty (The Independent Institute, 2014) by Ivan Eland The annual veneration of American monarchy–“Presidents Day”–has passed again. While…
In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institutes, Feb 11-15, 2019 Topics: Southern history, Political Correctness, Abraham Lincoln, Neoconservatives
In this age of political correctness it may surprise people that there were three TV series that portrayed Confederates in a good light. All three are very good and all…
I usually don’t engage in online arguments and discussions because I know I’m not the smartest cookie in the jar, and I’m afraid that I might open my mouth and…
Given what is occurring in our society and culture, the ever increasing frenzy and hysteria associated with what is called “the women’s movement” and the ever-changing, always-increasing “racism test,” a…
A Review of Historical Consciousness, or The Remembered Past (Schocken Books, 1985) by John Lukacs In the introduction to the new edition of his Historical Consciousness (first published in 1968), Professor…
There is an old Chinese curse the English translation of which is “May you live in interesting times.” The implication of the curse, of course, is that it is better…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 4-8, 2019. Topics: Secession, Southern History, Political Correctness, Alexander Hamilton
Even among the most Grant-partial historians there’s no denying that Ulysses Grant and his wife owned slaves prior to the Civil War. In fact, “Ulysses Grant” is the correct answer…
“The revenue of the state is the state.” Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution Washington D. C. finds itself in the midst of an entertaining, nay consuming, Kabuki theatre. …
Presented at the Lee-Jackson Banquet, Finley’s Brigade Camp 1614 – Tallahassee, Florida, 19 January 2019 Prologue It seemed like just another day at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, for…
A Review of The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (Knopf Publishing Company, 1990) by Robert Caro “I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:…
Watching NBC’s TODAY program on Tuesday, January 23, 2019, there was anchor Savannah Guthrie demanding to know if Covington, Kentucky, Catholic High School student, Nick Sandman, wished to “apologize” for…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 25-Feb 1, 2019. Topics: Decentralization, Southern Tradition, Political Correctness
Texas will turn blue before it’s over with its local Neocons in charge. Former sports announcer and Bankrupt, now Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick has decided that his historical…
In the ongoing war against Southern Confederate heritage, we need to be cognizant of the academic pressures against it. As y’all know, UNC Chapel Hill recently tore down Silent Sam….
Suffering from a nasty bacterial infection, the insomnia induced by a lamp kept lit in his cell at all hours, and the very real possibility of being hanged by a…
A review of Snowflake Buddies: ABC Leftism for Kids (Shotwell, 2018) by Lewis Liberman It is said that the one thing Satan cannot stand is mockery. The primal sin is…
The Southern political tradition, in practice and theory, is one of its most valuable contributions to America and the world. The one constant theme of that tradition from 1776–through Jefferson,…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 21-25, 2019 Topics: Reconciliation, Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, John C. Calhoun, Confederate Symbols
I hope that no one who reads this paper will suppose that I have any feeling in the matter. I am only correcting errors in Northern writers, and I trust…
When Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo issued a ruling on the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act just minutes before his term expired last week, he upended the entire understanding and…
The dominant powers in American discourse today have succeeded in confining the South to a dark little corner of history labeled “Slavery and Treason.” This is already governing the public…
A review of A Thousand Points of Truth: The History and Humanity of Col. John Singleton Mosby in Newsprint (ExLibris, 2016) by V.P. Hughes Valerie Protopapas (who writes under her…
The White House, Washington, January 16, 1907. To the Hon. Hilary A. Herbert, Chairman, Chief Justice Seth Shepherd, President Edwin Alderman, Judge Charles B. Howry, General Marcus J. Wright, Mr….
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 14-18, 2019 Topics: The Southern tradition, Neoconservatives, Yankees, the War
The South is and always been conservative. But with the constant hammer of political correctness and political falsehood (redundant?) pounded on it, it has waffled among many who brand it…
On the stump in New Boston, New Hampshire in early January 1852, Franklin Pierce gave a long oration during which free-soil hecklers forced him to address his ideas on slavery….
The presidential election of 2016 gave promise to be a watershed in American politics. Donald Trump appeared, a non-politician and rich enough to support his own campaign without selling himself…
A review of Catholics’ Lost Cause: South Carolina Catholics and the American South, 1820-1861 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018) by Adam L. Tate Some thirty odd years ago, scholars…
Many years ago the historian Francis Parkman wrote a passage in one of his narratives which impresses me as full of wisdom and prophecy. After a brilliant characterization of the…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 7-11, 2019 Topics: The War, Political Correctness, Southern Art, Southern Literature
One summer day in Paris, France, just a year after the Great War, a former French military officer, not yet nineteen years of age was invited by his father to…
When one grows old one tends to resent wasting time and there is nothing that wastes time quite so much as efforts to counter the claims and assertions surrounding the…
The destruction of Confederate monuments and the slandering of all things Confederate is in vogue in contemporary mainline media, academia, and the political establishment. The destruction of Confederate monuments by…
A review of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999) by Allen C. Guelzo. Presidential hopeful John McCain recently stated that he was of “the party of Lincoln, not…
None knew it then, but in 1915, Southern agrarian influence on the movies was at its height. The film trade had just left Fort Lee, New Jersey, only to land…
Oh! a wonderful stream is the river of Time, As it runs through the realm of tears, With a faultless rhythm, and musical rhyme, And a broader sweep, and a…
On one fine evening, in which winter’s chill hung in the air and the stars sparkled merrily in the heavens above, a happy song of the season could be heard…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 17-21, 2018 Topics: Southern symbols, Political Correctness, Secession, Southern tradition
In 1875, Rev. Moses Drury Hoge stood before 40,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, at the foot of the newly dedicated statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, and delivered what one…
William Plumer Jacobs (1842-1917), a native of Yorkville, South Carolina, was a Presbyterian minister and scholar whose entire life has been called “a singular consecration to work and service in…
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” – H. L. Mencken “Let any man of contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them [the Puritans], they close…
A review of The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage (Scuppernong Press, 2018) by Boyd Cathey I must confess that I feel a bit awkward about reviewing Dr….
The Abbeville Institute conducted three conferences this year on the fracturing of American national identity and what means for the Southern tradition and the Southern people. The general public knows…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 10-14, 2018 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern History, Southern Culture, Southern Music, Southern Sport
Why do Southerners continue to fall into that trap where we only talk about the years1861-1865? There are almost 400 years of Southern culture to talk about, yet we keep…
Two of the poems I most admire are very short. One is simply a name – Shoeless Joe Jackson. Read it aloud and feel the assonance and alliteration. The other…
President Trump recently used his executive powers to designate a national monument to honor African Americans’ role as soldiers during the War Between the States. The monument will be a…
A review of Recovering the Past: A Historian’s Memoir (University Press of Kansas, 2004) by Forrest McDonald “History is marble, and remains forever cold, even under the most artistic hand,…
In November 2018 Will Hiott, Director and Curator of Historic Properties at Clemson University, included a thinly disguised political paper from Clemson University History Professor Rhondda Robinson Thomas as part…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 3-7, 2018 Topics: Agrarianism, United States Constitution, John Marshall, Andrew Johnson, Thomas Johnson
Thomas Johnson was born in Calvert County, Maryland, on his father’s lands near the mouth of St. Leonard’s Creek. He was the son of Thomas and Dorcas Sedgwick Johnson and…
Andrew Johnson was born into poverty in rural North Carolina. His father died after saving some town locals from drowning and left the family to fend for themselves in a…
On November 10, 2018, the Abbeville Institute hosted an event called The Revival of Nullification and Secession in Dallas, TX. The purpose was to educate people on the means by…
A review of John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court (Basic Books, 2018) by Richard Brookhiser John Marshall presents a curious problem for Southern history. How can a…
For all of the pontificating of the virtues of the South, we have increasingly seen our agrarian landscape polluted by strip malls and environmental contamination. I make the case that…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 26-30, 2018 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern music, Southern culture, the War
The King of Rock and Roll brought himself up by his bootstraps, served Uncle Sam as a soldier and before his early demise came he had made an honest fortune…
Yesterday The Washington Post published an Op-Ed by former General Stanley McChrystal in which he boasted of removing a long-displayed Robert E. Lee painting from his home to “send it on its…
The news came Thursday, November 15, that country music legend, Virginia-born Roy Clark had passed away at age 85. For those either too young to know who Clark was, or…
A review of Slavery, Secession, & Civil War: Views from the United Kingdom and Europe, 1856-1865 (Scarecrow Press, 2007) by Charles Adams. At long last Charles Adams’s new book, Slavery,…
As the brilliant American military victory in the Persian Gulf approaches its second anniversary, the focus has shifted from the emotions of homecoming celebrations to the seriousness of lessons learned…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 19-23, 2018. Topics: Southern literature, black slaveowners, historical myths
In the spirit of historical course correction, I herewith submit some thoughts to those who may find themselves in an American Revolution between 1774 and 1783. 1. Rule number one….
Citizens of Dixie…. This is a call to arms, or rather, a call to your legs and feet. Get up off that couch! If you don’t have family plans, ballgame,…
The opinion has been often stated that Edgar Allan Poe was bizarre and amoral; that he was a lover of morbid beauty only; that he was unrelated to worldly circumstances-aloof…
A review of Andrew Durnford, A Black Sugar Planter in the Antebellum South by David O. Whitten, (Transaction Publishers, 1995). I In the year 1800 the Viceroyalty of New Spain was…
From the front porch, Jakob Emig could look across fields where his winter wheat greened nicely. An old man now, with sons gone off to war, he lived mainly in…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 12-16, 2018 Topics: Secession, Nullification, Federalism, American Imperialism, Southern Culture, Southern Literature
We are threatened by a powerful, dangerous, conspiracy of evil men. The conspiracy is the enemy of free institutions and civil liberties, of democracy and free speech; it is the…
Secession? Nullification? A second Civil War in the presently not-so United States of America? According to a historic and highly fascinating Abbeville Institute event that took place November 9 and 10, 2018…
Nationalist Jeff Sessions gets canned and a nullifier takes his job. This is actually an odd twist of fate. A friend of mine knows Sessions personally, and he continually expressed…
A review of four novels by Dr. James Everett Kibler, Jr: Walking Toward Home (Pelican Publishing, 2004), Memory’s Keep (Pelican Publishing, 2006), The Education of Chauncey Doolittle (Pelican Publishing, 2008),…
Prehistoric warfare was total war in which victors normally killed all enemy women, children, and adult males, according to groundbreaking research published by Lawrence H. Keeley, in his book War…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 5-9, 2018. Topics: History, Southern Culture, Political Correctness
The study of history cannot be neatly contained behind the tall foreboding doors of an ivory tower nor swept under the rugs of dusty corner offices housing stacks of paper….
I recently traveled with ten undergraduate students to the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) held at Calvin College, Grand Rapids Michigan. This was an exciting and enriching trip for…
I grew up in Summerville, South Carolina, just a few miles from historic Charleston. This quiet little town is separated from the Holy City by some plantations, swamps, and marsh…
A review of “An Arch Rebel Like Myself;” Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas, by by Gene Armistead and Robert D. Arconti (North Carolina: McFarland &…
When National Socialism came to power in Germany in 1933, it sought an ethnic and cultural cleansing of the country. Jewish culture and art was not considered fully human and…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 29 – Nov 2, 2018 Topics: Southern political tradition, Lincoln
The latest in Lincoln polemics comes courtesy of Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. In the latest issue of the latter, Lowry both promotes his new work and takes aim…
Retired General Stanley McChrystal who never led troops in a winning war bravely threw out a picture of Robert E. Lee because his wife apparently made him do so. As…
Pro-Southern writers have long been suspicious of Victor Davis Hanson, given his association with the neoconservative ascendance of the Bush II era. Yet unlike most of his former colleagues, the…
A review of From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by James Rutledge Roesch. Mr. James Rutledge…
Greetings fellow neo-Confederates. You have been right all along. How do I know this? Hillary Clinton said so, and if the smartest woman in the world said it, then it…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institutes, Oct 22-26, 2018. Topics: Secession, Nullification, Federalism, Lincoln, the Southern Tradition
In 21st–century America, it’s difficult to imagine life without the ability to access information at an electronic click or command. But it was not always so. Two centuries ago, outside…
Constitutional Violation: Amendment One. Freedom of Speech Denied. Vallandigham Imprisoned in Ohio. “From the beginning to the end of these proceedings law and justice were set at naught;…the President should have…
Was the Old South Feudal? Eugene Genovese wrote several works on antebellum slavery that essentially argued the Old South was neither feudal nor capitalist. His book Fruits of Merchant Capital:…
A review of Lincoln: As He Really Was by Charles T. Pace (Shotwell Publishing, 2018). Abraham Lincoln was American’s Robespierre, but his crimes only reflected the character flaws he had…
“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” The 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump produced the wedding of Bible Belt social conservatives and a flamboyant New York Billionaire with a legitimately questionable…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 15-19, 2018 Topics: Decentralization, Secession, Nullification, Culture War, Political Correctness, Agrarianism
Despite the establishment attempts to throttle free speech—most recently actions taken by PayPal, by Google, by Facebook, by Amazon and by other major Internet sites to both block access to…
In the past few weeks two major interrelated events took place in these once United States of America that should serve as a warning for all Americans. First, after the…
“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Attributed to Mark Twain Americans at their best are a pragmatic “can do” folk, be it “Yankee ingenuity” or good old…
A review of Taking Root: The Nature Writing of William and Adam Summer of Pomaria by James Kibler (editor) and Wendell Berry (Foreword) (University of South Carolina Press, 2017). Perhaps…
On June 20, 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Crawford: “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in union, I have…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 8-12, 2018. Topics: Southern Founders, Andrew Jackson, Poor Whites of the Old and New South.
Having traveled in all fifty states, I must admit there are certain areas of this great country that continue to draw me back, time and again, to enjoy their natural…
There was a time, before universal white male suffrage and the closing of the frontier, when the poor whites of the South were considered shiftless and without caste. If we…
Mel Bradford’s outstanding tome A Better Guide Than Reason lifted that phrase from a speech John Dickinson made during the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. Dickinson worried that the delegates to…
A review of In Defense of Andrew Jackson by Brad Birzer (Regnery History, 2018). Andrew Jackson, who Davy Crockett famously mocked as “the great man in the white house,” occupies…
Why does congress have hearings for people who are paraded through their judiciary committee- noise for examination as to their qualifications. Quality of what? Those jobs, for example the Supreme…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 1-5, 2018. Topics: The New South and Nu South, Ty Cobb, Southern history, Southern culture.
A Short Story of a Dystopian America To my fellow Associates: My name is Diversity-26, although my family and friends knew me as John before the Great Purge of Christianity….
In some ways, historians are like anyone else: they hate to make mistakes. But if you write enough, sooner or later, you will make a mistake—I assure you. I certainly…
The following is a letter-to-the-editor of the Charleston, SC Post and Courier September 15, 2018 defending the crew of the CSS Hunley. It applies to all Confederates soldiers. Dear Editor…
A Review of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen, (Simon & Schuster, 2015). Baseball fans familiar with major league records remember Ty Cobb for his .366 lifetime batting…
“Nashville’s going to be a progressive, diverse city and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Millennials moving from up north and foreigners immigrating from across the border have…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 17-28, 2018 Topics: Federalism, Southern Culture, Southern History
The whole 20th century was a horrible time for the friends of tradition: the mild rule of Europe’s Christian monarchs – Habsburgs, Romanovs, and others – was replaced by the…
There is a dichotomy to how people view Jesse James. While some have viewed him as a murdering thief, others have argued that he was like a modern-day Robin Hood….
Writing about the “Great Triumvirate” of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun during the third Nullification controversy in America of 1828-1832, and in particular about the Webster-Hayne debate of 1830, the late…
A Review of The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences” by Michael F. Holt (University Press of Kansas, 2017). Chapter One of Michael F. Holt’s contribution to the…
The 1850s is viewed by most scholars as the crucial decade of the sectional crisis that resulted in the War Between the States. The Great Triumvirate of John C. Calhoun,…
Back in 1958, when I was fifteen years old, I made the most critical and important decision in my youthful life. I made the choice any all-American fifteen-year-old farm boy…
Some claim offense by the red white and blue image of the Confederate Battle flag and demand its immediate removal from public places. Others embrace it and fly it proudly….
A review of The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828 by Saul Cornell (University of North Carolina Press, 1999). The Anti-Federalists who opposed ratification of the Constitution…
Proposals to turn national programs over to the states are abound in Washington. The failure of federal programs over the past 60 years demonstrates that centralized solutions to local problems…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 10-14, 2018. Topics: Southern literature, the War, Southern music, Bobby Horton
Galactic Imperium News Service (GINS) Special Report: Will Democrats and Republicans in America finally set aside their differences and save the world through the imperial aspirations of big government, a…
“Why don’t you get a tractor? You could get more done.” “Don’t need more done.” “But you could get it done faster.” “Faster than what?” “Faster than that mule goes.”…
Constitutional Violation: Amendment One: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;…
A review of My Own Darling Wife: Letters from a Confederate Volunteer by Andrew P. Calhoun (Shotwell Publishing, 2018). This is not just a book of family letters from the…
When the evolution of presidential power in early American history is discussed, it is sometimes alleged that the Louisiana Purchase was a particularly unconstitutional act and an example of presidential…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 3-7, 2018 Topics: Secession, nullification, federalism, Thomas Jefferson, United States Constitution.
On October 31, 1910—seven years after the Wright Brother’s first airplane flight of less than a minute—seventy-five thousand spectators gathered at Belmont Park to watch a day of competition among…
Much of John C. Calhoun’s criticism stems from his 1837 speech in the Senate where he stated slavery was “a positive good.” This quote is often paraded as evidence of…
The punitive “preclearance” regime under the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) of 1965, imposed on seven “covered” southern states and a number of counties in two others, was essentially invalidated by…
A review of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson by David N. Mayer (University of Virginia Press, 1994). Thomas Jefferson’s reputation is that of a great thinker. He is popularly…
Many of us in the South have maintained our faith in the Constitutional right of nullification and secession despite the efforts of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets. But is the talk…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 27-31, 2018 Topics: Fake History, Political Correctness, Alexander Stephens, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, the War
The “Fake News” appellation has been applied to just about every outlet that presents itself as something on the order of a news outlet, manned (yes–the word) by what are…
There is a tendency for each generation to assume its opinions are the ultimate correct opinions. But each generation’s beliefs are typically modified by succeeding generations. Unfortunately, societal structures are…
In June 2017, The Atlantic published a hit-piece on Robert E. Lee titled “The Myth of the Kindly General Lee.” The article made the rounds on Leftist echo chamber social media…
A Review of Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation by John M. Taylor (Booklocker, 2016). Most of the time, finding historical gems requires a lot of work and…
Most mainstream historians point to the “Cornerstone” speech by Alexander Stephens as the clearest piece of evidence that slavery and white supremacy alone were the reasons for Southern secession. After…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 20-24, 2018. Topics: Jimmy Carter, Silent Sam, Confederate Monuments, Slavery, Political Correctness, Abraham Lincoln
There is a 1909 “Lincoln penny” attached to the probe arm of Curiosity, a unit of currency, as it were, stuck to its palm. On the face of it, this…
On Monday night, August 20, 2018, approximately 200 to 250 raucous demonstrators gathered in a mob on the campus of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and proceeded to tear…
In September of 1961, I left my job at a basket factory in Wilmington, North Carolina and hitch-hiked up to Chapel Hill to become a student there. I followed in…
A review Slave and Free on Virginia’s Eastern Shore by Kirk Mariner (Onancok, VA: Miona Publications, 2014). The book can be purchased by emailing Miona Publications. One of the ironies that plague…
Jimmy Carter may have been the last Jeffersonian to be president. A recent article in the Washington Post labeled him the “Un-Celebrity President.” In either case, Carter is a reflection of…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 13-17, 2018. Topics: Reconciliation, Southern music, Southern culture, agrarianism, Ronnie Van Zant, Wendell Berry
I was saddened to hear that Phil Harris had died. I knew the man. You might say we were old friends. As a matter of fact, we first met in…
Because we live in such a hurried time, we hear countless “noises” but have little time to appreciate actual “sounds.” Sound is a sensation that you can feel, not just…
In October 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the executive mansion. This was an unprecedented move. No African-American had ever been asked to dine with…
A review of What Are People For? by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1990) “We should love life,” Dostoyevski once said, “more than the idea of life.” It is this…
The 1970’s were an interesting time in the South. The 1970’s were the last time Southerners could be Southern without feeling the need to apologize for, or be ironic about,…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 6-10, 2018 Topics: the War, Political Correctness, Neoconservatives, Reconstruction, Southern Culture, Southern Literature.
In the book The Mystery of the Wonder-Worker of Ostrog, the main character, Mladjen, a fictional representation of the modern Serb uprooted from his traditions by the lingering effects of…
In a PBS interview seven years ago historian and Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War. “Historians are pretty united on the cause of…
Southward Returning To you, Virginia, Tennessee, To Georgia’s red roads, to the past That binds the delta and the sea, Your Southern sons return at last. No more the always…
A review of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight (Harvard University Press, 2001). In Race and Reunion, historian David Blight recounts the first fifty years after…
In case you haven’t heard, there is a new “conservative” film out; it is titled “Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time?” It’s director and screenwriter…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 30 – Aug 3, 2018 Topics: the War, Abraham Lincoln, myth-making, Southern culture, Southern history.
Sometime around 1939, Lead Belly sang the song Daddy I’m Coming Back to You, which features the interesting lyrics: “I’m dreaming tonight of an old Southern town, the best friend…
“Living in Washington, you can’t take politics too seriously. I draw the line at honesty. I have no time for political hacks who say things they don’t believe because they…
Whether it’s the Civil War, War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence or Lincoln’s War, this extremely important period of American history continues to resonate powerfully over 150 years…
A review of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North by Jennifer L. Weber (Oxford University Press, 2007). They say a picture is worth a thousand…
This essay is Chapter 13 in Mr. Taylor’s Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation (2016). “I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 23-27, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern history, Southern politics, Yankee myths
The War Between the States is called by many names, the most genteel being “The Late Unpleasantness.” The low country districts of South Carolina, including the environs of Charleston, is…
Following the senseless racial murders at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015, Hollywood’s moonshining Duke boys from fictitious Hazzard County, and more particularly their 1969 Dodge Charger “General Lee,”…
The leading authority on this aspect of affirmative action is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (2014), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (by a plurality) that it…
A review of Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico by Mary Margaret McAllen (Trinity University Press, 2014). Leaving forever the land of your fathers is painful, yet many…
The Tricentennial celebration of New Orleans has stirred much interest into different facets of the city’s history. The search for the quintessential old New Orleans novel yields few results. The rich culture of New…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 16-20, 2018 Topics: Neoconservatives, Southern identity, Southern culture, the War New banjo introduction by Barrow Wheary.
Southerners confronted by Northerners touring our section are made aware of the difference in their speech from ours. They approach us speaking a form of English known outside the United…
Last November, when President Bush issued an executive order establishing a system of military commissions to punish non-citizens, I asked myself, as no doubt countless other Americans did, “But what…
James Iredell was born at Lewes, Sussex County, England. He was the eldest of the five sons of Francis Iredell, a Bristol merchant, and Margaret McCulloh Iredell, originally of Dublin….
A review of Vicksburg: The Bloody Siege that Turned the Tide of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. (Regnery History, 2018). On the eve of the War for Southern…
There are many examples of heroism that illustrate spiritedness in America’s history. Indeed, the American Revolution was won because of the indomitable spirit of the Patriots and a growing unwillingness…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 9-13, 2018 Topics: Southern independence, Southern culture, Southern architecture, the War, Sam Houston
They were standing at the ledge. Their view mirrored a panorama of buildings and smoke stacks. Great edifices, heaving asymmetrically, skewed with monster cylinders venting plumes of expended energy. The…
“Lincoln, under no circumstances, would I vote for … So, I say, stand by the ‘Constitution and the Union’, and so long as the laws are enacted and administered according…
In the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, after Atlanta has been burned and Scarlett O’Hara is fleeing to Tara, there is a scene where she arrives…
A review of America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation, by David Goldfield (Bloomsbury Press, 2011). Whether or not the American Civil War might have been avoided has…
Is the South today a captive nation? Most Southerners would never consider the question—most likely because they would deem the issue to be absurd. But is it inane to ask…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 2-6, 2018 Topics: Independence, secession, the War, Political Correctness, Southern religion, Southern founding
In his important 1994 work, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858, the Rev. Iain H. Murray examined the periods in American church history known as…
I try to collect all the business that I must do in Raleigh into one day. One trip a week into North Carolina’s increasingly cosmopolitanized and rapidly de-Southernized capital city…
The bloody conflict of 1861 to 1865 is often called the Civil War, but most Southerners regarded it as a war for independence and self-government. Many if not most Confederate…
A review of The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew’s Regiment of Mounted Rifles by W. Craig Gaines (LSU Press, 2017). When most people think of Confederate Cherokees, the name Stand Watie…
Richard Henry Lee was a patriot, Anti-Federalist, and statesman from his “country,” Virginia. He led the charge for independence in 1776 and was a powerful figure in Virginia political life. …
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 25-29, 2018. Topics: Southern history, perception, United States Constitution, Southern culture.
The diagram below graphs the number of Confederate statues erected between 1870 and 1980. Since the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) compiled the data, they suggest the memorials were most…
The Electoral College, a bulwark of federalism, is under attack. Straightforward abolition of the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, which is most unlikely to be passed in the…
One of the foremost scholars of the Southern Cause lives in New Market, Virginia. He has never written a book, authored a scholarly thesis, or lectured at a university. Instead,…
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