Blog

Destroying the Past to Change the Present

On June 17th, 2015, a deranged white man, Dylan Roof, attacked an all-black prayer meeting in a South Carolina church killing nine of the participants. Of course, most rational, intelligent (that is, ordinary) Americans saw the mass shooting as another opportunity for the “gun violence” crowd to demand an end to the rights of law-abiding Americans to own guns; and…
Valerie Protopapas
September 15, 2022
Blog

Biden’s Political Slavery

Joe Biden’s “address to the nation,” delivered September 1, 2022, was one of the most illuminating—as in revealing—speeches ever given by a president since Lincoln’s speech in which he falsely declared that the Union preceded and created the states. Biden’s speech, as in Lincoln’s speech, was full of emotion and ideological passion, supported by a fawning press but totally absent…
James Ronald Kennedy
September 14, 2022
Blog

History by Emotion

I presume the decision by the U.S. Postal Service leadership didn’t sound like a difficult one, especially in 2022. In Montpelier Station, Virginia, a post office was operating in a building where signs reading “White” and “Colored” hung over two separate doors. The signs were a historical artifact, and were intended to direct visitors to an exhibit about historical racial…
Casey Chalk
September 13, 2022
Blog

The Cry of the Vanquished

Owen Wister’s novel Lady Baltimore is the story of a Northern man spending time in South Carolina around 1905.  He is not your typical arrogant Yankee, but openly acknowledges the modern decay he sees in the North and is sympathetic to the South.  He is staying in a boarding house with a variety of guests; they include Juno, an elderly…
Julie Paine
September 12, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 324

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 5-9, 2022 Topics: Federalism, United States Constitution, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-324?si=437e52939fb0486e8aa31e53914712a4&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
September 11, 2022
BlogConferencesMedia Posts

Loving Home

Loving Home by Carey Roberts from the 2022 Abbeville Institute Summer School, July 5-8, 2022 at Seabrook Island, SC https://youtu.be/48dJnuFhfHc Note: The views expressed on abbevilleinstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Carey Roberts
September 9, 2022
Blog

Calhoun and the 21st Century

In 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy issued a report on the five most important Senators in United States history. He included John C. Calhoun, and while he understood the historical controversy it might create, Kennedy insisted that Calhoun's "masterful" defense "of the rights of a political minority against the dangers of an unchecked majority" and "his profoundly penetrating and original…
Brion McClanahan
September 8, 2022
Blog

Vendetta Over Alabama

Originally published at barelyablog.com In the mid-1950s my family arrived in Athens, Alabama, I being eleven, my father a mathematician working at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in nearby Huntsville. Athens was small, the county seat of Limestone County. The town square had the courthouse in the middle with the statue of a Confederate soldier and a Baptist church. The…
Fred Reed
September 7, 2022
Blog

Old State Rights

From Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics by Charles Henry Ambler Ritchie was not a genius. Either of the others of the great "Democratic Triumvirate" of political editors, Francis P. Blair of the Washington Globe, or Edwin Croswell of the Albany Argus, was his equal in natural ability. Possibly John Hampden Pleasants, Duff Green, and even others surpassed him…
Abbeville Institute
September 6, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 323

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 29 - Sept 2, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Southern tradition, Southern religion https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-323
Brion McClanahan
September 4, 2022
Blog

The Confederate Army and God

This article was first published by Crossfire: The Magazine of the American Civil War Round Table and is republished by permission. Introduction The United States Civil War produced some very dark days in American history. Ideas and values separated the North and the South. The whole world watched as America was at war with itself. Having been established as a…
David Crum
September 2, 2022
BlogReview Posts

The 200 Most Important Confederate Books

In 1978, Georgia native Richard Harwell--older brother of the famous baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell--published In Tall Cotton, a list of the 200 most important Confederate books. He asked fellow Georgian E. Merton Coulter to write the introduction knowing that this list would provide a valuable resource to those seeking to understand both Southern history and the Confederacy. Modern establishment historians…
Brion McClanahan
August 31, 2022
Blog

Jefferson Davis on Robert E. Lee

Remarks of President Davis at the Meeting of the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors held at the First Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia, November 3, 1870, for the purpose of organizing the Lee Monument Association, as reported in the Richmond Dispatch for Nov. 4, 1870. Robert E. Lee was my associate and friend in the military academy, and we were friends until…
Abbeville Institute
August 30, 2022
Blog

McCulloch v. Maryland

Editor's Note: This essay was written by Spencer Roane under the pseudonym Amphictyon in 1819. I. To the Editor of the Enquirer : SIR: I have read with considerable attention the opinion pronounced by the Chief Justice of the U. S. in the case of McCulloch against the State of Maryland. In that opinion we are informed, First, That it…
Abbeville Institute
August 29, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 322

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 22-26, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Reconstruction, Confederate monuments, Southern politics, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-322
Brion McClanahan
August 27, 2022
Blog

“His Richest Legacy to Posterity”

From Gustavus Pinckney, Life of John C. Calhoun. The attentive reader will not have forgotten that in the letter of Mr. Calhoun in reference to his acceptance of the Secretaryship of State he made mention of a project which he had in mind for leisure hours in the home routine to which at that time he looked forward. The home…
Abbeville Institute
August 26, 2022
Blog

The Red Ripple

Why the red wave will NOT be.  The typical contemporary Republicans lie for support, then reveal their lies. The Democrats just lie. The resignation of Dr. Ann Hunter McLean from her Youngkin appointment to the Virginia Historic Resources Board is a product of the same mentality wherein Ronald Reagan was deceived in 1981 insofar as Bob Bennett’s replacing M.E. Bradford.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 25, 2022
Blog

For the Fairfax County Confederate Dead

Editor's note: Delivered by Congressman John Warwick Daniel at the dedication to the Confederate monument at the Fairfax County, Virginia courthouse October 1, 1890. The monument stood on the courthouse square "upon Fairfax soil" on a lot purchased so the "grassy mound at the base of this monument now covers the remains of two hundred heroes." Funds were collected in…
Abbeville Institute
August 24, 2022
Blog

Northern Negrophobia

No doubt the media and the activists tearing them down justify the destruction of Confederate monuments on the premise that the South fought to perpetuate slavery and the North entered and fought the Civil War to end it. Today’s academics are comfortable acquiescing to that false public impression because it serves their anti-Southern agenda. Only if directly asked, “Did the…
Philip Leigh
August 23, 2022
Blog

The Better Men

John William Corrington (1932—1988) of Louisiana was a prolific author of poetry, stories, and novels. And, as with Faulkner, making a living in commercialised American “culture”  required him to expend talent in Hollywood on movie and television scripts. Corrington has received some recognition, but no less an authority on Southern literature than M.E. Bradford has said that his reputation falls…
Clyde Wilson
August 22, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 321

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 15-19, 2022 Topics: Southern literature, Southern tradition, Southern culture, Southern politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-321?si=6946f8f8370b4e718851ad8f571ec26f&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2022
BlogReview Posts

Confessions of a Copperhead

A review of Confessions of a Copperhead: Culture and Politics in the Modern South (Shotwell Press, 2022) by Mark Royden Winchell The concept of the South as a peculiar and singular region of America, indeed not quite American except in its vices of racism and violence, is something of an industry in the halls of academia. Numerous university centers and…
John Devanny
August 18, 2022
Blog

The Federalists and the Philadelphia Convention

We have before us The Federalist Number 10. I'd like to say a word about The Federalist. As you know, it was here (in Philadelphia) that the Constitution, that infamous document, was signed. It was a document that was already well on its road to destruction in my mind. When people ask me, “Well, when did the Constitution die?” I…
Ross Lence
August 17, 2022
Blog

Capitulation in Virginia

The resignation of Dr. Ann Hunter McLean from her Youngkin appointment to the Virginia Historic Resources Board is of seismic consequence for the Governor and his administration and for the Commonwealth. The Governor and his team were on the ropes in a very tight race in which the electoral outcome was in the balance. His low-key campaign worked to draw…
Cliff Page
August 16, 2022
Blog

The Decaying Distillery

Very few things in my native Fairfax County are especially old. That’s unfortunate, given the county’s founding (1742) predates the United States of America, and boasts the homes of Founding Fathers George Washington and George Mason. Yet post-World War II development rapidly changed the character of the county, and many of the old properties were sold and their ancestral homes…
Casey Chalk
August 15, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 320

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 8-12, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Reconstruction, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-320?si=fb340de708a248db816dfc49c3f78545&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
August 13, 2022
BlogClyde Wilson Library

Emancipation and Its Discontents

There is an interesting little noted fact of African American history that would alter current standard views if it were ever to be properly recognised.  The U.S. African American population was in many measurable respects worse off fifty years after emancipation than it had been before the War Between the States. The census of 1900 showed that the average life…
Clyde Wilson
August 12, 2022
Blog

When Things Go South

“When things go south” is a phrase that typically means matters have taken a turn for the worse.  Well, things have gone south in my family for a while now, and I couldn’t be happier.  That is because I literally mean, gone South, and I feel more at home than I ever imagined possible.  For things to go South, they…
Julie Paine
August 11, 2022
Blog

The War that House Built

It might truly be said that the death, funeral and burial of Thomas Jefferson’s American republic came about at the hands of the nation’s three most prominent wartime presidents . . . with Abraham Lincoln digging the grave, Woodrow Wilson constructing the coffin and Franklin Roosevelt performing the final interment of America’s body politic. As to the wars themselves, while…
John Marquardt
August 10, 2022
Blog

Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 2

By early January 1861, South Carolina had seceded from the Union and stood alone as an independent republic. In the ensuing weeks, six additional Southern States would follow suit. Lame-duck President James Buchanan did nothing to stop the dissolution of the Union, mainly because he did not believe he had any authority to coerce a state, but also preferring to…
Ryan Walters
August 9, 2022
Blog

Aunt Elizabeth, the Desert Fox, and General Jackson

Raised on a tobacco farm at the edge of the Chinquapin Forest in Southern Maryland, my Aunt Elizabeth for much of her life attempted to divest herself of her rustic upbringing.  When she graduated from nursing school, she married and subsequently lived for long spells in South America and Europe.  In spite of all this, fortunately, she never succeeded in…
J.L. Bennett
August 8, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 319

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 1-5, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-319
Brion McClanahan
August 7, 2022
BlogClyde Wilson Library

George W. Kendall of New Orleans–America’s First War Correspondent

In the long range of history the war correspondent, a journalist embedded with a fighting army, is a fairly recent development.  George Kendall was the pioneer.  He was  with Winfield Scott’s army during the U.S/Mexico War 1846—1848, from Vera Cruz to Mexico City.  Like the soldiers he faced sickness and was wounded. His 215 dispatches from Mexico were the primary …
Clyde Wilson
August 5, 2022
Blog

The Attack on Leviathan, Part 3

VI. Still Rebels, Still Yankees Originally published as two essays in the American Review and can be found in the anthology Modern Minds. Many will recognize this chapter’s title from another book of Davidson’s collected essays with the same title published in 1957. Davidson begins recollecting a meeting of Southern writers in Charleston, SC. In 1932, Davidson penned a brief…
Chase Steely
August 4, 2022
Blog

NASCAR Goes Sissy

“As with so many other episodes in early American history, the true story of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion has been purposefully scrubbed from the collective American memory and replaced with a cleaner, more pro-statist version reaffirming one of the core tenets of that doctrine: federal law always trumps conflicting state statutes.” Joe Wolverton, The Abbeville Institute, “A Little Whiskey Rebellion.”…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 3, 2022
Blog

Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 1

In 1859 the Union of American States entered the final stages of its greatest crisis, one that would eventually split the country in two. America was then a young republic but growing larger and stronger with each passing year. Yet North and South were growing apart, seeing the world through a different lens. The North was more industrial, while the…
Ryan Walters
August 2, 2022
Blog

The Religious Foundations of a Redeemer

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. After the decision was made to build a new capital on land granted by Virginia and Maryland, George Washington gave the task of sorting through proposals for the Federal buildings to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was very, very conscious of the enormity of what was about to happen. He wanted to…
Carey Roberts
August 1, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 318

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 25-29, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Southern literature, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-318
Brion McClanahan
July 30, 2022
BlogClyde Wilson Library

My Life as a Southern Historian–Becoming Nobody

As we progress into old age, our perspectives tend to change. Things that occupied most of our active life--accomplishments and “the bubble reputation” are seen to be  less important than family and friends. I suspect that even accumulating money loses some of its flavor as the years move on, although I don’t really know about that. This reflection is provoked…
Clyde Wilson
July 29, 2022
Blog

Ideas Have Consequences

Palatial Porches and Dying Civilizations I take great pains to ensure that the devilish tempo of modern life never breaches my portico. Life should always be in adante, and I like to imagine that the haint blue of the porch repels the unclean spirits of prestissimo. A fine porch can make you feel like King Solomon, and a fine man…
Lafayette Lee
July 27, 2022
Blog

The South’s Drink

Several years ago, my wife and I visited a distillery in rural Virginia that made the only whiskey in the Old Dominion that possesses legislative approval to make something called  “Virginia Whiskey.” It’s a good product, though it requires the taster to accept the fact that it doesn’t taste much like Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (I’d offer there are hints…
Casey Chalk
July 26, 2022
Blog

The Ballad of Confederate Abolitionists

I am a descendant of a family of Confederate soldiers, and I have been told I should be embarrassed.  A liberal activist told me recently that all Confederates were racist degenerates who deserve nothing except desecration of their statues and memorials.  I usually avoid deep discussions of this topic on social media, because the predicted result is that people don’t…
Tom Daniel
July 25, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 317

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 11-22, 2022 Topics: Southern Founders, Southern History, Southern Politics, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-317?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
July 23, 2022
Blog

A Hard Line Ozark Man

I sit here, watching the fading sun over the Ozarks hills, not too far from where I was raised. Last night, we had an annual birthday bash for an old family friend, and I got the opportunity to sit and visit with many of the older generation that I grew up around. The most notable, a long visit with a…
Travis Holt
July 22, 2022
BlogReview Posts

The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals

A review of The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals (Regnery History, 2022) by Samuel Mitcham The valor of the Confederate Army is one of the greatest stories in American history. Southerners needed brilliant leaders because they faced such overwhelming odds. They were outnumbered four to one and outgunned a hundred to one. The author’s purpose of the book is to make…
Jeff Wolverton
July 21, 2022
Blog

Attacking George Washington

In yet another attack on American history and heritage, the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. is changing the name of their sports team, which is known as the Colonials. GW Today, the University’s official online news source, reported, “The George Washington University Board of Trustees has decided to discontinue the use of the Colonials moniker based on the recommendation…
Timothy A. Duskin
July 20, 2022
Blog

Herald of Liberty

Aberrant as it has become, when the young Thomas Jefferson spoke or wrote of what he termed, “my country,” he was not referring to the empire of England or what became the United States of America. He was referencing his native State of Virginia. Sixteen years ago, at the suggestion of Clyde Wilson in his book From Union to Empire:…
Joshua Doggrell
July 19, 2022
BlogClyde Wilson Library

A View of the Constitution

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. St. George Tucker is a significant member of the Revolutionary generation, the Founding Generation, and he was looked to by Jefferson and Madison as the judge of Jeffersonian democracy, the man who saved the judiciary from false doctrines in his View of the Constitution and his other writings. Tucker’s View was published in…
Clyde Wilson
July 18, 2022
Blog

The Attack on Leviathan, Part 2

I. The Diversity of America Parts of this chapter (along with several others) are from “Sectionalism in the United States,” Hound and Horn, VI (July-September, 1933). The link to Davidson’s “Sectionalism” essay provides some context of its genesis—some of which is a smidge uncomfortable. In The Idea of the American South (1979), Michael O’Brien portrays Davidson as a misfit compared…
Chase Steely
July 15, 2022
Blog

The Lost Cause of Conservatism

The history of political parties in America is as old as the United States itself and while the seeds of England’s Whig and Tory Parties goes back to 1679, those in America even predated the rise of most such factions in Europe by several decades. However, for half a century many of America’s founding fathers, particularly those in the South,…
John Marquardt
July 13, 2022
Blog

The Lyric Poet of Georgia

No one acquainted with the poetical literature of the late war can have forgotten the noble contributions to it of Dr. Francis Orray Ticknor, of Columbus, Ga. "The Virginians of the Valley" and "Little Giffin" are alone sufficient to prove that Dr. Ticknor was a genuine poet, and he has left behind him ( for alas! he died two years…
Paul Hamilton Hayne
July 11, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 316

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 4-8, 2022 Topics: Lincoln, Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-316?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
July 9, 2022
Blog

The Attack on Leviathan, Part 1

“In 1938 appeared the clearest and most courageous of the Agrarian documents, Donald Davidson’s Attack on Leviathan.” – Richard M. Weaver Russell Kirk tells the story of discovering Davidson’s book in 1938 as a sophomore at Michigan State in the introduction for its reprint in 1991. Kirk writes, “The book was so good that I assumed all intelligent Americans, or…
Chase Steely
July 8, 2022
Blog

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Origins of Southern Constitutionalism

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School On April 10th, 1606, King James I of England (and VI of Scotland) granted letters of patent to Sir Thomas Gates and others, thereby establishing two companies for the settlement of colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America, which was then called Virginia in honour of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. The…
John Graham
July 7, 2022
Blog

Why We Didn’t Need the 1776 Commission Anyway

To anyone devoted to the political revitalization of Western Civilization, and a re-founding of the Anglo-American tradition within this context, Michael Anton has no doubt been a breath of fresh air of late. He is an articulate thinker, a brilliant polemicist, and, by all accounts, a decent man—crucial assets for anyone devoted to the uphill climb of the “paleoconservative” cause.…
Robert E. Salyer
July 6, 2022
Blog

Lincoln’s Repudiation of the Declaration of Independence

Perhaps the biggest falsehood ever pedaled about Abraham Lincoln is that he was devoted to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  Exactly the opposite is true; he repudiated every one of the main principles of the Declaration with his words and, more importantly, his actions.  In our time the odd and ahistorical writings of Harry Jaffa and his “Straussian”…
Thomas DiLorenzo
July 5, 2022
Blog

The Jefferson Hemings Myth

Did Thomas Jefferson father any children with Sally Hemings? The historical profession argues, yes. But the evidence does not support this conclusion as Professor M. Andrew Holowchak explains in this video. https://youtu.be/GweMqp4zdjw
abbeinstitute
July 4, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 315

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 27-July 1, 2022 Topics: Reconstruction, Southern History, Confederate Symbols https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-315?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
July 2, 2022
Blog

Marking the Wolf

'Yates Standridge, who recently escaped from the state convict farm, where he was serving what practically amounts to a life sentence for murder, declared that he never will return to the penitentiary, according to residents of the sparsley settled hills of Newton County, where Standridge makes his home. These hill people say Standridge recently spent two weeks in that section…
Travis Holt
July 1, 2022
Blog

Holding Heritage Groups Responsible

When the assault on Southern heritage with the destruction of monuments, symbols and heroes began, I wrote a letter to the President of the Civil War Trust as a member of that group attempting to determine the course the Trust would take in this matter. Sadly, the gentleman did not even have the courtesy to respond even in a form…
Valerie Protopapas
June 30, 2022
Blog

Elvis Has Left the Building

The Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie is as good as it is frustrating. The movie might serve as a good introduction for those who don't know much about Elvis (which, sadly, is becoming most people). I say it might because it is more than likely that viewers will come away knowing more about Col. Tom Parker, Elvis' manager, than Elvis himself.…
Aaron N. Coleman
June 29, 2022
Blog

Pete Hegseth’s Hopeful War on “Education”

Pete Hegseth has a book out, Battle for the American Mind, which among other promotions and revelations has taken on the chore (however “Johnny-come-lately”) of denigrating the general process of education in this country. First, and foremost I would say, hooray for Mr, Hegseth. And to his efforts, I say, good hunting, Sir.  And when you finally tree this coon,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
June 28, 2022
Blog

An Open Letter to the Valentine Museum

On June 24, 2022, Mr. William J. Martin, Director of the Valentine Museum in Richmond, gave notice that the damaged, desecrated, and vandalized statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis – on loan from the Black History & Cultural Center of Virginia - would be displayed by the museum within its core exhibit. The purpose stated by the Valentine is for…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
June 27, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 314

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 20-24, 2022 Topics: Nullification, Supreme Court, Southern Politics, Reconstruction, 14th Amendment https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-314
Brion McClanahan
June 25, 2022
Blog

The Principles of ’98

From the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School This morning we’re talking about the two greatest losers in American history. “Loser’s History” is the only history that needs to be told. With the winners, you know everything about it, even if you don’t care to know it; just turn on the History Channel. My suggestion is to never watch the History…
Marco Bassani
June 22, 2022
Blog

Juneteenth

The reason your bank was closed yesterday: cultural appropriation and virtue signaling On February 25, 2021, Senator Edward J. Markey (D – Mass) introduced a bill which would become public law on June 17, 2021 under President Joe Biden.  It was entitled the “Juneteenth National Independence Day Act”. The Democrat-led initiative was co-sponsored by 60 senators, 40 of whom were…
Lola Sanchez
June 21, 2022
Blog

Ulysses S. Grant’s Failed Presidency

Below is a footnote-free version of the Preface from my U. S. Grant's Failed Presidency (2019). Ulysses Grant's presidency deserves a fresh analysis because modern historians and biographers have praised him too much. Initially, their "rehabilitation" of his previously mixed reputation concentrated on his military performance during the Civil War, but more lately it has included his presidency. In 1948,…
Philip Leigh
June 20, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 313

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 13-17-2022 Topics: Slavery, Moonshine, the War, Reconstruction, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-313?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
June 18, 2022
Blog

Randolph Shotwell in War and Prison

We live in a regime with an industrial output of lies about Southern history, so we should let our forebears speak for themselves whenever we can.  I have been reporting  on little known  Southern books and here is another. Randolph Shotwell in the 1880s put together some materials for his an account of his extraordinary life,  using his diaries, letters…
Clyde Wilson
June 17, 2022
Blog

The Problem of Singular “They”

As I grow older my appreciation for the wisdom of my parents increases. As the United States descend daily further into madness, I find myself torn between being glad they aren’t here to be angered and tormented by the tragedy, wickedness, and vicious idiocy of the times, and a strong desire to profit from their counsel and advice. They were…
Earl Starbuck
June 16, 2022
Blog

Moonshine

Moonshine, though often associated with Appalachia, is also an integral part of the Ozarks culture. Growing up in the hills of Newton County, Arkansas, I lived a privileged life. I got to know a good amount of my ancestors, and hear their stories and experiences. Though most of them were straight laced, hard-working and proud folks, I would occasionally hear…
Travis Holt
June 15, 2022
Blog

Dixie Africanus

Black slaves toiling in the fields of large plantations, gentlemen in frock coats and ladies in hoop skirts relaxing on the verandas of large mansions . . . all set in places named Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland and Mississippi. Most would imagine this to be a picture of the antebellum American South, but they would be mistaken, as it would…
John Marquardt
June 14, 2022
Blog

They Also Arrived in Bondage

Tommie D. Boudreau, chairwoman of the African American Heritage Committee of the Galveston Historical Foundation in Galveston, Texas, recently stated that the Juneteenth national commemoration “gives an accurate picture of United States history because so much has not been shared. African Americans are the only immigrants that were forced to come to America – or the colonies. This gives people…
Timothy A. Duskin
June 13, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 312

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute June 6-10, 2022 Topics: The War, Abraham Lincoln, Confederate Constitution, Southern Film, Slavery, Southern Humor https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-312
Brion McClanahan
June 11, 2022
Blog

Setting Lincoln Straight

On March 7, 1862, Lincoln sent to congress and congress passed a joint resolution offering pecuniary aid to any State that would initiate gradual emancipation. However, no funding had been passed, only a declaration of intent. The offer fell on deaf ears in all the slave States, including those still in the Union. This prompted Lincoln to call a meeting…
Rod O'Barr
June 10, 2022
Blog

The Confederate Constitution

From the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School I come from a somewhat different mold and my thought processes on these issues have changed a bit over the last couple of years. I have written on American jurisprudence and I have detected what I would deem to be ominous trends in American case law, and also in international law. I also…
Marshall DeRosa
June 6, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 311

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 30-June 3, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Jefferson Davis, War for Southern Independence, Cancel Culture, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-311?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
June 4, 2022
Blog

Jefferson Davis: American Statesman

Most people don't know anything about Jefferson Davis other than he was the President of the Confederate States of America. His great-great grandson, Bertram Hayes-Davis, explains why Davis should be highly regarded among all Americans today. https://youtu.be/RAKw8U_PBAc
Abbeville Institute
June 3, 2022
Blog

W.E.B. DuBois’s Selective Moral Outrage

In March of 1928, W.E.B. DuBois published a short essay attacking the character of Robert E. Lee in a publication created by DuBois called The Crisis. This magazine was also the official publication of the NAACP, which was also co-founded by DuBois, and (according to their November 1910 premier issue) had the expressed goal of setting forth “those facts and…
Michael Martin
June 2, 2022
Blog

The Nullification Crisis

Going back to Jefferson, you can say that Jefferson’s vision of radical Federalism was of a libertarian Federalism, based on the rights of local self-government circumscribing and limiting their agent, the Federal government, whose referent is not a single people, but the peoples of the various States. It’s strange that in the writings from the Founding period, the plural of…
Marco Bassani
June 1, 2022
Blog

The Worst Street Corner in America

Mako Honda recently told the Washington Post that she and her husband Ryan Finley live on “the worst street corner… across the U.S.” You might speculate that the couple live somewhere in Los Angeles, which retains the notoriety of having the three most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States. Or perhaps they live somewhere in inner-city Chicago like West Garfield…
Casey Chalk
May 30, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 310

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 23-27, 2022 Topics: United States Constitution, Federalism, Southern Tradition, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-310?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
May 28, 2022
Blog

Commander in Chief of the Reds, Blues, and Wars

Katy Pavlich commented on the Five recently that President Biden needed to do something about the southern border problem as it was his responsibility as Commander-in-chief. Now, Ms. Pavlich, in my opinion, is one of the more clued-up and sager among the groups or individuals who are trotted out as either regulars or contributors on Fox. As a rule, she…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 27, 2022
Blog

President Grant’s Free Homes

  Although most modern biographies attribute the corruption in Grant’s Administration to venal advisors who took advantage of the President’s innocent naivety, those biographers tend to ignore early examples of Grant’s own dubious conduct through which he set low ethical standards for others in his Administration to follow. One incident was the sale of his “I Street” residence in Washington…
Philip Leigh
May 26, 2022
Blog

This Land is Ours

It’s hell, sittin’ here. I grew up in the hills of Newton County, Arkansas, the place that my direct line had hacked out and settled in the 1850s, when the first white settlers moved in. Being a native Ozarker has its advantages and disadvantages. When I married and moved one county north, it almost seemed like sacrilege. The next phase…
Travis Holt
May 24, 2022
Blog

The Anti-Federalists and the Ratification Debates

From the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School. I’m going to be talking about the Anti-Federalists. The first question we might ask is: “Who were the Anti-Federalists and why did they take the position they took?” Today, historians are never happy just to study the writings, speeches, correspondence, and other documents produced by the protagonists of an era or a battle.…
Marco Bassani
May 23, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 309

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 16-20, 2022 Topics: Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, the War, Nationalism, Southern Politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-309?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
May 21, 2022
Blog

Armistead Burt: A Friend to Jefferson Davis

On a recent visit to Abbeville, South Carolina I visited the Burt-Stark House, one of the main historic attractions of the town and the prime reason for my visit there. Followers of the Abbeville Institute website who also have an interest in Jefferson Davis may know that Abbeville claims it as the site of Davis’ last war council on May…
Thomas Hubert
May 20, 2022
Blog

Acknowledging the True Cost of the War

Alfred Emanuel Smith (1873 – 1944) was an American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democrat Party’s candidate for president in 1928. Smith grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan and resided in that neighborhood for his entire life and though he remained personally incorrupt, as with many other New York City…
Valerie Protopapas
May 19, 2022
BlogReview Posts

Blacks in Gray

A Review of Blacks in Gray Uniforms (Arcadia, 2018) by Phillip Thomas Tucker South Carolina Confederate history is my area of research, so I was interested to come across the book Blacks in Gray Uniforms, which gives information on some black Confederate soldiers from the Palmetto State, and I wanted to bring it to the attention of the readers of…
Karen Stokes
May 18, 2022
Blog

An Adopted Valley Virginian

While teaching at the University of Virginia, William Faulkner once remarked: “'I like Virginia and I like Virginians because Virginians are all snobs, and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob he has little left to meddle with you, and so it's very pleasant here." Perhaps Faulkner should have spent more time in…
Casey Chalk
May 16, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 308

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 9-13 2022 Topics: Abraham Lincoln, Northern Studies, Slavery, Secession, Civil War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-308/s-O6QI3ZTYJt5?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
May 14, 2022
Blog

In the Saddle with Stonewall

The best of the many Confederate memoirs, in my opinion, are those of General Richard Taylor (Destruction and Reconstruction) and Admiral Raphael Semmes  (Memoirs of Service Afloat and Ashore). There are also many excellent women’s diaries and memoirs, perhaps a subject for another occasion.  Taylor and Semmes were men in high places, intelligent and experienced, keen judges of character, and…
Clyde Wilson
May 13, 2022
Blog

Honorable and Courageous Patriots

Delivered at the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Park for the Confederate Memorial Day remembrance held April 30, 2022. Thank you for taking time today to consider the deeds and lessons of our long-dead ancestors. When Confederate commemoration began, it was a memorial to people who were known to those living.  Today, it is unlikely that there is a person here…
Martin O'Toole
May 12, 2022
Blog

Boston, Home of the Bean, Cod, and Slaves

In a penitent act of fiscal flagellation, Harvard University recently reported that it was establishing a hundred million dollar “Legacy of Slavery Fund” in an effort to atone for its century and half history of using enslaved people.  In the report, it was cited that from its founding in 1636 until 1783, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared slavery to…
John Marquardt
May 10, 2022
Blog

Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural

It has been over a century and a half since Lincoln’s assassination did much to deify his image and place him as the centerpiece of the American Pantheon. Such behavior is hardly unexpected; as the leader of his country during America’s deadliest war, a war directed towards enacting unprecedented changes in the structure of government and American society, Lincoln’s partisans…
Shaan Shandhu
May 9, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 307

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute May 2-6, 2022 Topics: Southern Politics, Southern Conservatism, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-307/s-RQm1hRyONDA?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
May 7, 2022
BlogReview Posts

Arm in Arm

A review of Arm in Arm (Mercer, 2022) by Catharine Savage Brosman Our conscious civilisation begins with Homer and is firmly anchored in Virgil, Dante, the French troubadours, and the Viking bards.  Its deepest expressions are in verse.  William Faulkner may have had something like this in mind when he  lamented that he was “only a failed poet.” That is…
Clyde Wilson
May 6, 2022
Blog

The Unconstitutional “National Guard”

Speech delivered by Senator A.O. Bacon of Georgia, December, 1902. Mr. President: Of course, I think the amendment offered by the Senator from Ohio , which has now been accepted, makes this section less objectionable. I might agree, however, with what the Senator from Wisconsin stated yesterday, that with this amendment the section is of not very much practical operation.…
A.O. Bacon
May 4, 2022
Blog

President Grant is Overrated

A recent article in the politically conservative National Review about Ulysses Grant’s presidency by historian Allen Guelzo is merely another example of unjustified claims that he was a virtuous champion of black civil rights. To be sure, Grant promoted Southern black suffrage but that was because he knew they were nearly certain to vote for him and his Republican Party.…
Philip Leigh
May 3, 2022
Blog

No Capitulation: A Call to Southern Conservatives

This piece was originally published at Chronicles Magazine and is reprinted here by permission. The following speech critical of the conservative establishment is one that I did not give at The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, S.C., whither I was invited by its organizer Gene d’Agostino, as a speaker for the evening of April 14. After espying copies of my book…
Paul Gottfried
May 2, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 306

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 25-29, 2022 Topics: Southern Tradition, Confederate History, Articles of Confederation, Southern Family https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-306?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
April 30, 2022
Blog

Why Were the Articles of Confederation Dissolved?

I'm going to talk about the way the Articles of Confederation functioned, how people acted under the Articles, and the three reasons why I think the Articles were dissolved. The signers of the Articles of Confederation were not happy with what was finally implemented. Indeed, once the Articles were sent to the States, it took nearly four years before they…
Carey Roberts
April 29, 2022
Blog

God’s General

Neither side in the War for Southern Independence produced a finer or more morally upright man than Richard Montgomery Gano. He was the descendent of a distinguished military/evangelical family. His great-grandfather, John Allen Gano, was born in New Jersey and became a Baptist preacher. He joined the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, where he was known as “the fighting…
Samuel W. Mitcham
April 28, 2022
Blog

So VMI Isn’t Structurally Racist After All

The Washington Post’s Ian Shapira and his social justice allies in Richmond and Lexington, Virginia, must be worried, big-time. For nearly two years running, their Axis-Against-VMI has enjoyed remarkable success: forcing an honorable VMI superintendent to resign; removing Lt. Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson’s statue, and his name from Jackson Arch; renaming buildings and recontextualizing the past; inserting divisive ideology into courses;…
Forrest L. Marion
April 26, 2022
Blog

Did the Confederacy Oppose the Rule of Law?

Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama. Most Americans believe the War and Southern history are synonymous, so much so that to many, the War has come to define the South. If you are reading this post and have followed the Abbeville Institute for any length of time, you know that our mission to "explore what is true and valuable…
Brion McClanahan
April 25, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 305

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute April 18-22, 2022 Topics: Southern Politics, Southern Tradition, Secession, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-305?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
April 23, 2022
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XX

William Gilmore Simms, Part 2 The Green Corn Dance Come hither, hither, old and young--the gentle and the strong, And gather in the green corn dance, and mingle with the song-- The summer comes, the summer cheers, and with a spirit gay, We bless the smiling boon she bears, and thus her gifts repay. Eagle from the mountain, Proudly descend!…
Clyde Wilson
April 22, 2022
Blog

Triumph and Subjugation

In 1935 Lyon Gardiner Tyler – descendant of 10th President John Tyler – wrote: “The old Union was a union of consent; the present Union is one of force. For many years after the war, the South was held as a subject province, and any privileges it now enjoys are mere concessions from its conquerors, not rights inherited from the…
Valerie Protopapas
April 21, 2022
Blog

Common Cause and Common Fate

Mr. President--I fully concur with the gentleman from Montgomery, in the propriety of immediately passing the resolution now under consideration. All the powers of the State of Alabama should be pledged to aid in resisting any attempt to coerce a seceding State back into the Union. Sir, the Southern States recognize the right of secession. It constitutes the very essence…
Lewis M. Stone
April 20, 2022
Blog

Kith and Kin: The Enduring Ethic of the South

From the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. So, what I have to say is gonna be, I think, somewhat maybe tedious.  I've tried to boil down stuff I've been working on for years, many chapters of a book project, and sometimes when you boil things down, it's not like distilling rose petals. You don't get the fine essence, what you…
Thomas Fleming
April 19, 2022
Blog

A Red Wave? So What?

There is a vast political swell among some ill-informed conservatives that the great mid-term elections will come and a tide of goodness (spelled R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N) will sweep over the grand land, often puerilely referred to as “American exceptionalism,” for everyone. Everyone but conservatives, however. Yes, that’s what I meant.  Conservatives are republicans. Republicans are Republicans. They aren’t goodness or even good. They…
Paul H. Yarbrough
April 18, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 304

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 11-15, 2022 Topics: the War, Secession, Slavery, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-304?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
April 17, 2022
Blog

The Pride of Kentucky…and Maryland

There are disagreements on the subject, but I wholeheartedly believe that Bardstown, Kentucky is “where bourbon was born.”   Many of the first bourbons, however, were variations on old rye whiskey recipes brought to the Bardstown area by settlers from Maryland.  Among them were people named Dant, Mattingly, Medley, Wathen, Pottinger, Miles, Willett and Beam, all families associated with the earliest…
J.L. Bennett
April 15, 2022
Blog

Rough Music

In the mid-1760s, violent criminal activity began to spread throughout the sparsely populated interior of the colony of South Carolina. Residents in these areas, alarmed at what was occurring, pled with the government for assistance. None would be forthcoming. Instead, individuals residing in the area turned toward the idea of communal, ritual punishment to stem the tide of criminal activity.…
Nicole Williams
April 13, 2022
Blog

The War of Secession

A line from Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” In the case of the great American conflict of 1861, the name by which it has become generally known is, of course, the "Civil War." This term was, however, only occasionally used during the war, such as Lincoln’s reference in his 1863 Gettysburg Address that the country was “engaged in a…
John Marquardt
April 12, 2022
Blog

A Dangerous Rock Rolling Down Hill

Part 6 in Clyde Wilson’s series “African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective.” Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. “He who controls the past controls the future.  He who controls the present controls the past.”  George Orwell “Live asses will kick at dead lions.”  Admiral Raphael Semmes In the long run of history, the story of…
Clyde Wilson
April 11, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 303

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 4-8, 2022 Topics: Secession, Union, Woke History, Slavery, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-303/s-qYnlgLQYJE8?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
April 9, 2022
Blog

Indentured Servitude in Early America

French politician and author Jean-Nicholas Démeunier, in 1786, published his Essai sur les États-Unis. Prior to its publication, the essay, intended for Encyclopédie Méthodique, was in the words of Jefferson’s secretary William Short in a letter to William Nelson (25 Oct. 1786), “as false as might be expected from a man who had made the Abbe Raynal his model, and…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 8, 2022
Blog

The Constitutionality of Secession

To begin with, it is hornbook law* that the signatories to any contract or compact, are all accorded the same rights; that is, no signatory of such an agreement has more—or fewer—rights than any other signatory. Neither does this fact have to be stated in the document; it is understood. If the Party of the First Part is permitted to…
Valerie Protopapas
April 7, 2022
Blog

Poe’s Battle with Puritan Boston

I've learned a good deal about Poe's paternal and maternal backgrounds; I had never really pursued that; the biographies don't. But I found that Poe's grandfather had immigrated to America in about 1750 from Drung, County Cavan, Ireland. To put that on the board for you, that's about 75 miles Northwest of Dublin, so it’s sort of in the center…
James Everett Kibler
April 6, 2022
Blog

Emancipation After the War

Part 5 in Clyde Wilson’s series “African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective.” Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Early in Reconstruction the staunch Unionist William Sharkey was appointed governor of Mississippi by Andrew Johnson.  Sharkey said that he believed that half the African American population of the state had perished in the war.  This may not be…
Clyde Wilson
April 5, 2022
Blog

The Gathering Mystique of Union

‘Union’  neither denotes nor explicates a form of government. It is a word estranged in both the commonplace and the legal arts. There is no constraint to the daily rumble of social or personal definition. Any two or more people can form a 'union', even without using the word. At law ‘union’ is not a term of art. Rather it…
Vito Mussomeli
April 4, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 302

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 21 - April 1, 2022 Topics: American History, Neo-Abolitionism, the War, Woke Culture, Slavery, New South, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-302/s-gLn42tchtze?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
April 2, 2022
Blog

Til Hazel’s Virginia

On March 15, John T. “Til” Hazel Jr. died in Broad Run, Fauquier County, Virginia. There’s no reason why you should necessarily know the name, though if you have spent any time in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., you have witnessed first-hand his tremendous influence. Joel Garreau in his 1992 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier…
Casey Chalk
April 1, 2022
Blog

Neo-Abolitionist Historiography

  From our 2008 Summer School, Northern Anti-Slavery Rhetoric In some respects, the title of this lecture, “Post 1960’s Neo-Abolitionist Historiography,” is a lie.  I’m actually going to start earlier than the 1960’s, but I promise you we’re not going to lengthen it out any more than that. A lot of this is going to be a cautionary tale for…
John Devanny
March 31, 2022
Blog

Emancipation

Part 4 in Clyde Wilson’s series “African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective.” Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Many Americans doubtless tend to assume a rosy view of emancipation, of brave boys in blue rushing into the arms of newly freed slaves to celebrate the day of Jubilee while handing out Hershey bars to children. Nothing could be further…
Clyde Wilson
March 29, 2022
Blog

The 1862 Louisiana Native Guard

In April 1861, a public meeting was held in New Orleans, Louisiana to discuss Governor Thomas O. Moore's call for volunteers to defend the South against the invading Union army as the War Between the States was just beginning. This particular meeting did not consist of white men, however. It was led and attended by what the newspapers called the…
Shane Anderson
March 28, 2022
Blog

Music in Camp

Originally published in 1898 in The Ridpath Library of Universal Literature, Vol. XXII by John Clark Ridpath THOMPSON, John Reuben, an American journalist and poet, born at Richmond, Va., October 23, 1823; died in New York, April 30, 1872. He was graduated at the University of Virginia in l845, studied law, and in 1847 became editor of the Southern Literary…
John Clark Ridpath
March 25, 2022
BlogReview Posts

The Dreadful Frauds

A review of The Dreadful Frauds: Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics, (Shotwell Publishing, 2022) by Philip Leigh In one hundred pages, author Philip Leigh has given us a scathing indictment of Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics, and the corrupting influences of both on America’s two hundred and fifty year meritocracy. It exposes the power politics of the Victimhood Olympics…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
March 24, 2022
Blog

Lincoln, Putin, and Yankee Hyopcrisy

At the writing of this article, the ongoing struggle between Ukraine and Russia has most people’s attention.  While prayerfully hoping for a peaceful settlement of this conflict, it is difficult to overlook the actual hypocrisy of the Federal government and U. S. media as they deal with the reported issues such as “saving the union,” “secession,” and “war crimes.”  It…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
March 23, 2022
Blog

A War to Free the Slaves?

Part 3 in Clyde Wilson's series "African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective." Read Part 1 and Part 2. In 1798 Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Taylor: “It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and substance.” He added…
Clyde Wilson
March 22, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 301

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 14-18, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Slavery, Lincoln, the War, Segregation, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-301?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
March 19, 2022
Blog

Segregation on Track: Plessy v. Ferguson

In most minds today, the word segregation and the term “Jim Crow” immediately evoke a picture of the American South at the start of the Twentieth Century. It is, however, a false image that has been carefully crafted over the years to mask the actual genesis of the legal separation of black and white races in public facilities. This is…
John Marquardt
March 18, 2022
Blog

The Keeper of the Family Story

The advent of my coming and going to another world was not through a portal handcrafted from a felled silver-barked tree of old, but the factory-made casket of my Father. My people bury in several places–my Father, a stone’s throw from Sarah Cannon, right down the street from where Tate was roused to write his Ode. He died at 61…
Chase Steely
March 17, 2022
Blog

Lifetime Bondage

  Part 2 in Clyde Wilson's series, African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective. Part 1 can be read here. Life was tough for everyone in the America of the 1600s and 1700s.  The 1800s saw some improvement which led people to entertain the idea of enlightenment and  progress in living conditions. Southerners were as much conscious of and happy about a…
Clyde Wilson
March 15, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 300

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 7-11, 2022 Topics: Southern Tradition, Robert E. Lee, Slavery, Abraham Lincoln, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-300?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
March 12, 2022
Blog

The Once Southern City

I presume I am not the only person who thinks regularly about the strange reality of living in a part of what traditionally was the South, that is no longer really the South, like my native Northern Virginia. I think my idiosyncrasy explains why whenever I travel to a place that fits that description, I am infinitely curious about the…
Casey Chalk
March 11, 2022
Blog

African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective

Our culture’s indifference to the past---which easily shades over into hostility and rejection---furnishes the most telling proof of that culture’s bankruptcy. ---Christopher Lasch The purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present. ---Cicero The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn. ---Cicero Introduction The slavery that…
Clyde Wilson
March 10, 2022
Blog

The Shadow of Red Rock

Anyone who knows me knows I am obsessed with time and place. As far as time goes, I’m mainly concerned with what happened before me - those who came before and their lives in this beautiful, rural and untouched county that we call home. Time has brought changes, as it always does, and some of it is even good. However,…
Travis Holt
March 9, 2022
Blog

Robert E. Lee and His Time

Delivered at the 2013 Abbeville Institute Summer School. What I want to do is thoroughly cover Lee in his time and in ours, and try to understand that transformation. There's more there than meets the eye, and it has to do with our understanding of Lee. If we can understand the transformation as carefully as I hope to take us…
William Wilson
March 8, 2022
Blog

The Preacher Who Stole Lincoln’s Past–By the Carload

On July 17, 1849, Robert Smith Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, died suddenly of cholera. He was among thousands who'd die in the world-wide epidemic that had already killed former president James K. Polk a month before and would be blamed for the death of Edgar Allan Poe a bit later. Todd's hasty death-bed will was endorsed by only one witness;…
Kevin Orlin Johnson
March 7, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 299

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 28 - March 4, 2022 Topics: Southern humor, Southern literature, Jefferson, Reconstruction, Southern agriculture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-299?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
March 6, 2022
Blog

Stonewall Jackson’s Scabbard Speech

Originally published in the Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 16. 1888 While the Virginia Convention of 1861 was in session in Richmond, wrestling with the weighty problems of the day, and the grand old “Mother of States” was doing all in her power to prevent the terrible strife which her breast was so soon to bear, there occurred at Lexington,…
William A. Obenchain
March 4, 2022
Blog

“Moral the Question Certainly is Not”

Filmmaker Arlen Parsa has recently undertaken a project that blots out the faces of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence in John Trumbull’s famous painting “The Declaration of Independence.” The stunt has unsurprisingly gained the filmmaker much notoriety. While the project might seem to have been a frivolous undertaking for Parsa—something to pass the time in these Coronavirus…
M. Andrew Holowchak
March 3, 2022
Blog

Reconstruction Era Chicanery

Postwar Southern reconstruction became corrupted when congressional Republicans took charge of it with the March 1867 Reconstruction Acts, almost two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Prior to that, the process began in December 1863, while the war was still in progress. After Lincoln died and Andrew Johnson advanced to the presidency, Johnson tried to continue with a “Presidential Reconstruction…
Philip Leigh
March 2, 2022
Blog

Rage Against the [Industrial Food] Machine

In the rural Virginia town of Swoope, near the Shenandoah Valley, Joel Salatin practices common sense and ecologically sustainable agriculture on his farm, Polyface. In the wake of a COVID-19 pandemic that has drastically changed food distribution networks and disrupted the entire supply chain of the country, farming methods like Salatin’s have become increasingly desirable as we approach a dystopian…
Michael Martin
March 1, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 298

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 21-25, 2022 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-298?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
February 26, 2022
Blog

Secession Declarations Do Not Prove the War was over Slavery

ACADEMIA'S ABSOLUTE PROOF that the War Between the States was fought over slavery is based primarily on the declarations of causes for the secession of four of the first seven Southern states to secede: South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. However, those four declarations prove nothing of the sort. There were 13 Southern states represented in the Confederate government. That…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
February 25, 2022
Blog

Southern Distinctiveness

Have you ever accidentally used the wrong mushrooms in a recipe inducing you to think the South is some type of hallucination? Me neither–I reckon we aren’t enlightened enough to grasp such concepts. Until recently, I never pondered ideas like “regional consciousness” or “Southern distinctiveness”—truth be told, “provincial” seemed too overdressed to feel comfortable amongst my hand-me-down vocabulary—and not a…
Chase Steely
February 24, 2022
Blog

South Carolina in 1865

There is nothing new under the sun, but there are things which have lain undiscovered, forgotten, or neglected, and these can be brought to light. In my new book South Carolina in 1865, I have collected unpublished, obscure, and neglected records which document events and conditions in the Palmetto State during the last year of the war. The most cataclysmic…
Karen Stokes
February 23, 2022
Blog

Two Southern Heroes

The Adventures and Recollections of General Walter P. Lane, A San Jacinto Veteran  (1887) John Salmon Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas  (1885, 1963) Our forebears of the antebellum South are being subjected to  pervasive dishonest slander (by both left and right) these days.  Brave and honourable people who did far more than their fair share in the creation of the United…
Clyde Wilson
February 22, 2022
Blog

Beyond the Hunley

As far back as the days of ancient Greece and Rome, people have dreamed of various means of underwater travel and warfare. Over two thousand years ago, Alexander the Great even devised a type of diving bell that allowed his Macedonian troops to make surprise underwater attacks on enemy positions. It was not until two millennia later, however, that an…
John Marquardt
February 21, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 297

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 14 - 18, 2022 Topics: Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, the War, Reconciliation, Abolitionists https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-297?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
February 19, 2022
Blog

Has CRT Entered VMI?

The writer remembers with respect and admiration Mr. Anthony E. “Tony” Hamilton (1957-2022), President of the VMI Class of 1979, joining many in the VMI community who are mourning his recent loss. On January 18, 2022, three days after the inauguration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Richmond, Virginia – and for which the VMI Corps of Cadets passed-in-review, as is…
Forrest L. Marion
February 18, 2022
Blog

The South Has No Culture?

I once broke up with a girl because of the South. Well, sort of. We had been dating for a month or so, and she invited me to come visit her parents, who were living in central Virginia. Her father was a widely respected and well-known U.S. Army officer. The family had recently moved to Virginia after many years stationed…
Casey Chalk
February 17, 2022
Blog

A Suburb to Nothing

I. The Fall of Richmond In 1930, that caustic fellow H.L. Mencken wrote that if the war of 1861-1865 had gone otherwise, “Richmond would be, not the dull suburb of nothing that it is now, but a beautiful and consoling second-rate capital, comparable to Budapest, Brussels, Stockholm or The Hague.” I had occasion to be in downtown Richmond for a…
Joseph R. Stromberg
February 16, 2022
BlogReview Posts

What We Have to Expect

A review of How Radical Republican Antislavery Rhetoric and Violence Precipitated Secession, October 1859 - April 1861 (Abbeville Institute Press, 2022) by David Jonathan White. One of the tragic casualties of America’s long culture war is the distortion of the country’s central event, The War Between the States. During the 1950s, historians such as Avery Craven began to question the…
John Devanny
February 15, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 296

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 7-11, 2022 Topics: Abraham Lincoln, the War, Southern Tradition, Lost Cause https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-296
Brion McClanahan
February 13, 2022
Blog

Lincoln Lied and People Died

Tomorrow is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Familiar Lincoln idolaters will gather to celebrate the birth, on Feb. 12, 1809, of the 16th President of the United States, and finesse his role in “the butchering business”—to use Prof. J. R. Pole’s turn-of-phrase. Court historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is sure to make a media appearance to extol the virtues of the president who…
Ilana Mercer
February 11, 2022
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XIX

A Series by Clyde Wilson. WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870) of South Carolina, amazingly prolific novelist, poet, essayist, lecturer, historian, critic, and editor, has been rightly called "The Father of Southern Literature." Without question Simms is the most important Southern writer of the 19th century after Poe. Without question Simms is in every way one of the most important American writers.…
Clyde Wilson
February 10, 2022
Blog

The Lost Cause Reconsidered Once More

  On a website devoted to publishing scholarly articles, I recently did a search for “The Lost Cause” and unsurprisingly found a plethora of articles on that theme relating mostly to the aftermath of the American War of 1861-65. Also unsurprisingly, many of these apparently set about to examine the issue with a view toward debunking that effort as futile,…
Thomas Hubert
February 9, 2022
Blog

Who Was Francis Lieber?

The opening of this essay is from my segment of the documentary Searching for Lincoln under the heading: Lincoln and Total War. Herein I mentioned the claim that the “Lieber Code” of war – General Order 100 – was somehow unique illustrating that the concerns of Lincoln, his Administration and his military was the humane waging of war: Despite growing…
Valerie Protopapas
February 8, 2022
Blog

The South and America’s Wars for Righteousness

Delivered at our 2011 Scholar's Conference, The South and America's Wars Well, good morning, and I wonder if you have the stamina for a third hour? Prop yourself up here and I’ll try to keep us all awake. My thanks to Don Livingston for his invitation to speak to you today and for all of his work organizing and hosting…
Richard M. Gamble
February 7, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 295

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 31 - Feb 4, 2022 Topics: Reconciliation, Southern Tradition, the Founding https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-295?si=32c56dfc806440239b666087f4ed321d&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
February 5, 2022
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XVIII

A series by Clyde Wilson HENRY ROOTES JACKSON (1820—1898) of Georgia was a lawyer, judge and poet. He was U.S. Minister to Austria/Hungary 1853—1858 and was well-known for prosecuting Yankee slave traders trying to import African captives into Atlanta shortly before the war. He was Colonel of the 1st Georgia Volunteers in the Mexican War and fought in the Confederate…
Clyde Wilson
February 4, 2022
Blog

The Achievements of M.E. Bradford

By Forrest McDonald and Clyde Wilson. These essays were originally published in the Fall 1982 issue of Southern Partisan. A review of M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution. Marlborough, NH: Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982 and M.E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. La Salle, Ill.: Sherwood…
Abbeville Institute
February 3, 2022
Blog

Grover Cleveland and the South, Part 2

Excerpt from Ryan Walters, Grover Cleveland: The Last Jeffersonian President (Abbeville Institute Press, 2021) While in his first term in the White House, Cleveland decided to make a symbolic gesture of goodwill toward the South. Acting on a recommendation from the secretary of war, the president decided to return captured Confederate battle flags to their respective Southern states. The move,…
Ryan Walters
February 2, 2022
Blog

Guess I Won’t Qualify for Reparations

I’ve spent the last forty-five years doing family research and family history. I’ve interviewed some of my older relatives who have now passed on and I’m grateful that I had the foresight to do that. My only regret is that I did not start sooner. This process started around 1977 with the premier of the movie “Roots” the dramatization of…
Barbara Marthal
February 1, 2022
Blog

The Flight of Freedomseed

In the summer of 2015, a 60-year old former-member of the American Service and retired-electrician determined on a course that would result in a pedestrian protest from his home in the state of Alabama, culminating in the hall of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. In response to the removal of the Confederate Battle Flags from the Alabama state capital…
Gerald Lefurgy
January 31, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 294

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 24-28. 2022 Topics: Reconciliation, Confederate Monuments, Southern Tradition, Grover Cleveland https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-294
Brion McClanahan
January 30, 2022
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XVII

A series by Clyde Wilson Thomas Holley Chivers (1809—1858) of Georgia was a physician and poet and a friend of Edgar Allan Poe, who encouraged him. He published over 10 volumes of poetry and plays but was largely forgotten until rediscovered by 20th century critics. Chivers believed that  good poetry was a result of “divine inspiration.” Faith Faith is the flower that…
Clyde Wilson
January 28, 2022
Blog

Suffering, Providence, and Robert Lewis Dabney

In his 1903 book, The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney, Thomas Cary Johnson wrote of his friend, colleague, and spiritual brother, “Dr. Dabney was a great man. We cannot tell just how great yet. One cannot see how great Mt. Blanc is while standing at its foot. One hundred years from now men will be able to see…
Miles Foltermann
January 27, 2022
Blog

Grover Cleveland and the South, Part I

From Ryan Walters, Grover Cleveland: The Last Jeffersonian President (Abbeville Institute Press, 2021). “Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.” Thomas Jefferson “I have faith in the honor and sincerity of the respectable white people of the South. … I am a sincere friend of the negro.” Grover Cleveland On March 4,…
Ryan Walters
January 26, 2022
Blog

Misdirected Outrage

The federal government facilitates fundraising for traitors. That’s the claim made by the Washington Post’s Joe Davidson in a 14 January column. This occurs, says Davidson, through the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), a philanthropic funding operation managed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which enables federal employees to donate to charities they choose through automatic payroll deductions. This may…
Casey Chalk
January 25, 2022
Blog

A Tale of Two Statues

When Robert E. Lee died in 1870, a memorial association was formed in the City of New Orleans.  After six years had passed, the association raised an amazing $36,400 - during the throes of Reconstruction - to construct a monument.  The world-famous New York-based sculptor Alexander Doyle (who studied in Bergamo, Rome, and Florence) was commissioned, and it was installed at…
Rev. Larry Beane
January 24, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 293

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 17-21, 2022 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Russell, Wokism, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-293
Brion McClanahan
January 22, 2022
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XVI

A series by Clyde Wilson. LOUISA  SUSANNAH  CHEVES  McCORD  (1810—1879) of South Carolina  was one of the most outstanding women of 19th century America.  She was the daughter of Langdon Cheves, who had been Speaker of the U.S. House of  Representatives and had held other important posts.  In the antebellum period, while a plantation mistress, she published poetry, strong polemical…
Clyde Wilson
January 21, 2022
Blog

Yankees in “Pineland”

The Yankee Empire was born on the ruins of the shattered South. After the Yankee imperialists who had hijacked Northern politics looted, raped, and burned their way through the South, they kept armies of occupation there—armies which remain to this day. Long before there were any Yankee Empire bases in Korea or Japan, or anywhere in Europe or the Middle…
Jason Morgan
January 20, 2022
BlogReview Posts

The Yankee’s Lee

This essay was originally published in the First Quarter 1992 issue of Southern Partisan. A Review of: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (UNC Press, 1991) by Alan T. Nolan When Frank Owsley sought from among the vast number of interpretations of the cause of the war of 1861 for the principal cause, he defined it as “egocentric…
David Bovenizer
January 19, 2022
BlogReview Posts

20/20 Moral Hindsight

A Review of: Richard B. Russell, Jr. Senator from Georgia (UNC Press, 1991) by Gilbert C. Fite “We can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Booker T. Washington, speech to the Atlanta Exposition, 1885 Speaking of the current trend toward all-black dormitories, fraternities, and graduation exercises, Coretta Scott…
Charles Goolsby
January 18, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 292

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 10-14, 2022 Topics: Slavery, Democracy, the War, Southern History, Northern Studies   https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-292
Brion McClanahan
January 16, 2022
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XV

A series by Clyde Wilson Alexander Beaufort Meek,  Part  2 The Rose of Alabama I loved, in boyhood's happy time, When life was like a minstrel's rhyme, And cloudless as my native clime, The Rose of Alabama. Oh, lovely rose! The sweetest flower earth knows, Is the Rose of Alabama! One pleasant, balmy night in June, When swung, in silvery…
Clyde Wilson
January 14, 2022
Blog

Democracy and Universal Suffrage

Edmund Ruffin, from his Diary: hen the mob bears the sway in elections, it knows little, & cares not at all, for the superior fitness or honesty of candidates. Each of the lowest voters gives his vote, or the direction of his vote, to some one the nearest in qualities to himself, or by whose favor the voter expects to…
Abbeville Institute
January 13, 2022
Blog

Slavery and Abolitionism as Viewed by a Georgia Slave

After 200 years of digesting Enlightenment ideals of natural rights, and reciting a pledge that concludes with “liberty and justice for all,“ it is hard for us to realize there are circumstances when slavery could be considered a “positive good.” John C. Calhoun has lately been excoriated for taking this position. Yet in 1861 an educated Georgia slave named Harrison…
Rod O'Barr
January 12, 2022
Blog

How the British Viewed the War

But most significant of all was the attitude assumed by the Federal Government in dealing with the secession of the South. Long before that secession some of the best observers had clearly pointed out how the influence of climate, and much more the special type of industry and character which slavery produced, had already created a profound and lasting difference…
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
January 11, 2022
Blog

Orphans of the Storm

There once were more than fifteen hundred Confederate memorials, including over seven hundred major monuments and statues, erected all across the United States and Canada, as well as in such far-flung locations as Brazil, Ireland and Scotland.  These memorials were erected from 1867 to 2017, and during the first century and a half of their existence, only five of them were ever removed…
John Marquardt
January 10, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 291

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 3-7, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Abraham Lincoln, the War, Reconstruction, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-291
Brion McClanahan
January 8, 2022
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XIV

A series by Clyde Wilson ALEXANDER BEAUFORT MEEK (1814-1865) of Alabama. Meek was one of the most prominent citizens of antebellum Alabama--judge, orator, international chess master, and historian of the early days of his State. He also published two volumes of verse. Selections are from The Songs and Poems of the South (1857). COME TO THE SOUTH Oh, come to…
Clyde Wilson
January 7, 2022
Blog

When does the wisdom of crowds transition to the madness of crowds?

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal along with Tesla’s Elon Musk and an early Facebook investor, is famed for his thought-provoking questions. One example is a question he typically asks entrepreneurs seeking venture capital from him: “What are you certain to be true that most of your peers would disagree with you about?” Copernicus, for example, might have answered that…
Philip Leigh
January 6, 2022
Blog

Abraham Lincoln’s Pyrrhic Victory

The true legacy of Lincoln usually gets drowned in the perennial gush about a president whose name is synonymous with freedom and the end of slavery. Lincoln’s role in bringing to an end the Jeffersonian ideal of a limited, constitutional government, with powers vested in sovereign states, remains relatively unexamined. The direction in which Lincoln took America is not without…
Ilana Mercer
January 5, 2022
Blog

The Coerced Soldiers of the USCT

“That the negroes did not revolt is one of the incomprehensible features of our Civil War. Every chance for success was theirs, nor were they ignorant of their opportunity for striking an effectual and crushing blow against their oppressors.  Why was it not done? Several potent causes combined to render any widespread insurrection at that time impossible. There was in…
Rod O'Barr
January 4, 2022
Blog

Was There a Real Lynching Threat at VMI?

The subject of lynching, or “lynch law” as it was also called, is a decidedly unpleasant and, often, a morally repugnant, topic. The term lynching has been used more broadly than as a synonym for death at the end of a rope at the hands of a violent mob to include other forms of vigilante activity such as shootings or…
Forrest L. Marion
January 3, 2022
Blog

Barbarians in the Gates

The barbarians have broken through the gates and are now running rampant through the streets. The opening of the Lee Monument "time capsule"--with one preservationist admitting it wasn't really a time capsule because it was never intended to be opened--and the decision to hand over every Richmond Confederate Monument to groups determined to destroy them are just examples of the…
Brion McClanahan
December 31, 2021
Blog

Requiem for Grandma

Growing up on ‘Holt Hill’ in Vendor, Arkansas, I was truly blessed. I had a touch of the ‘Old South’ that I now have oft read of; a true, closed community of my own people who endured hardship, drought and war, and came out stronger as a result. Of the many giants who walked through my childhood, there is one…
Travis Holt
December 30, 2021
Blog

Southern Patriotism and Foreign Military Interventions

Is it un-patriotic for Southerners to question American military intervention? This is a perplexing question for those raised during the Cold War. For us, it was a battle to defeat atheistic communism—an evil power attempting to force its will upon the world. We were raised and educated by the World War II generation for whom patriotism was intricately linked to…
James Ronald Kennedy
December 29, 2021
Blog

The Lee Monument Time Capsule

Governor Northam's henchmen have finally located the time capsule buried in the Memorial erected to Confederate Gen. Robert Edward Lee in Richmond, Virginia.  How shameful and hypocritical that today the Virginia Department of Historic Resources shows so much interest in opening and disgorging the contents of the time capsule in light of their insipid defense of this monument and others…
Cliff Page
December 28, 2021
Blog

Adding Monuments

In a speech to the Georgia legislature in 1866, Former Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens urged, "That wise and humane provisions should be made for " and that they "may stand equal before the law, in possession and enjoyment of all rights of person, liberty, and property. Many considerations claim this at your hands. Among these may be…
Donald Livingston
December 27, 2021
Blog

An Alabama Christmas

Christmas can be both a wonderful and awful time of the year for many of us.  The holiday has become one associated with worries over holiday debt, sadness from loss, concerns over gatherings, and add into that the calamities of the last few years: the pandemic, politics around the dinner table, and now, worries over the supply chain.  Contrary to…
Nicole Williams
December 24, 2021
Blog

Melting Down Art and History

After the Civil War, former North Carolina governor Zeb Vance became a U.S. senator. His Northern colleagues enjoyed his affable nature and sense of humor, and some of them invited him to Massachusetts during a break in government business. While there, Vance attended a party, and eventually required a visit to the outhouse, where his hosts as a joke had hung a…
Jeff Minick
December 20, 2021
Blog

White Supremacy, Yankee Style

In the warped minds of today’s so-called “woke,” even such an evocative holiday song as Irving Berlin’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” can take on a far different connotation than when Bing Crosby sang it eight decades ago.  Going back much further in time, the simple “OK” hand gesture which has been in use around the world for well…
John Marquardt
December 9, 2021
Blog

Andrew Lytle and the Order of the Family

Andrew Nelson Lytle—novelist, dramatist, essayist, and professor of literature—extolled the order of the family, which by the 1930s he thought all but spent, precisely because it was rooted in the very concept of divine order that the modern world had decried and rejected. As patriarchy deteriorated, as acceptance of divine supremacy vanished, the family languished, and with it the community…
Mark G. Malvasi
December 8, 2021
Blog

Robert Drake and the Presence of the Past

There are stories, and then there are stories within stories. This is one of the latter. In 1981, upon the publication of Robert Drake’s The Home Place, I wrote a review of it for Modern Age (Fall 1981) which I entitled “A Concelebration of Verities.” I suppose that title captured some element of the book, but as I look back…
Thomas Hubert
December 7, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 290

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 29-Dec 3, 2021 Topics: Tradition, Southern Politics, Secession, Treason, Southern Education https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-290
Brion McClanahan
December 6, 2021
Blog

An Unlikely Prophet: Agrarianism in the Music of Jackson Browne

The flourishing of art is necessary for the preservation of any people or tradition. Over-reliance upon didactic or dialectical methods of communication is trademark of rationalism's withering grip. Artistic expression, whether in architecture, on the canvas, in prose or verse, in works of literature, or in music, possesses the ability to conjure or reinforce the values and traditions of a…
Robert Hoyle
December 6, 2021
Blog

When Baltimore was “An Old Crab Town”

“My shirt is ragged and my pants are tore. I ain’t found nothin’ I’m a-looking for, And I want to go back to Baltimore…. Good old Baltimore.”— lyrics from a country song recorded in 1954 by Sonny James In 1910, when visitors would come to call on Confederate Veteran George Watts, he would “ from a rickety chair” and receive…
J.L. Bennett
December 3, 2021
Blog

Thomas Roderick Dew

Editor's note: The author of this piece won the Bennett History Medal in 1908 for this essay, and was published in the June 1909 volume of the John P. Branch Historical Papers. The Bennett prize is still awarded annually by Randolph Macon College to the best undergraduate history paper. This particular essay displays a depth of understanding even contemporary graduate…
D. Ralph Midyette, Jr.
December 2, 2021
Blog

Secession Isn’t Treason

A few more words, and we shall be in a condition to answer the question which stands at the head of this chapter. Being a legal question, it will depend entirely upon the constitutional right the Southern States may have had to withdraw from the Union, without reference to considerations of expediency, or of moral right; these latter will be…
Raphael Semmes
December 1, 2021
Blog

Mississippi–A Warning for Virginians

The proud folks of The Old Dominion turned their state from Blue back to Red in their recent governor’s election. Even more dramatic is the fact that in the last twelve months, voters in various Virginia counties voted overwhelmingly to keep their Confederate monuments! In nine out of nine ballot referendums, the voters spoke, and they spoke with a loud…
James Ronald Kennedy
November 30, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 289

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 22-26, 2021 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern Tradition, Southern History, Southern Culture, Thanksgiving https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-289
Brion McClanahan
November 27, 2021
Blog

Windy

Of all the giants that strode through my childhood, some loom larger than others: Some due to their innate kindness or acts towards me, some for the wisdom they imparted or their willingness to share life experiences, and some simply due to the fact of just how damn likeable they were. But there are a few who loom large for…
Travis Holt
November 26, 2021
Blog

The Ideal Historian of the American Republic

In the future some historian shall come forth both     strong and wise-- With a love of the Republic, and the truth before     his eyes! He will show the subtle causes of the War be-     tween the States, He will go back in his studies far beyond our     Modern dates; He will trace out hostile ideas, as the miner does     the…
James Barron Hope
November 25, 2021
Blog

The Real First Thanksgiving

On Saturday, November 20, MSNBC aired a segment by activist Gyasi Ross comparing Thanksgiving to genocide. "But I'm still trying to find out what indigenous people received of value. Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence…” he said. Ross’s ignorance and searing rhetoric contradicts the historical record but nevertheless has been fueled by an educational…
Brion McClanahan
November 24, 2021
BlogReview Posts

The Right Side of History

A review of Robert E. Lee: A Life (Random House, 2021) by Allen Guelzo “How do you write the biography of someone who commits treason?” asks historian Allen C. Guelzo in his new book Robert E. Lee: A Life. It’s a bit of an odd question for a historian to ask. Sure, treason is a terrible crime. But so are…
Casey Chalk
November 23, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 288

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 15-19, 2021 Topics: Foreign Policy, Southern Tradition, Southern Symbols, Wokism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-288
Brion McClanahan
November 20, 2021
Blog

An Able Address Against Conscription

Editor's Note: This speech was delivered in 1917 and was published in the September issue of Watson's Magazine. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: Deeply impressed with the gravity of this occasion, and an earnest desire to preserve the liberties of my people and our common country, I beg to submit, that — The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United…
H.W. Johnston
November 19, 2021
Blog

The Arrogance of Power

The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation…
J. William Fulbright
November 18, 2021
Blog

A New Civil War?

By 1860 our country was so hopelessly divided that it broke up, and only by force was it kept unified. While the North and South had profound political, economic, and moral differences, institutional slavery being paramount, the two halves had a great deal in common, so much so that after the bloodletting and rage subsided, we were able to come…
M.C. Atkins
November 17, 2021
Blog

Rally ‘Round the Flag!

As in the practice of lingchi, the ancient Chinese form of slow and painful execution by a thousand cuts, Southern history and tradition are today dying a similar death. The first of these virtual cuts was inflicted over twenty years ago in South Carolina when the Confederate Battle Flag was taken down from the dome of the State Capitol in…
John Marquardt
November 16, 2021
Blog

Southern Hospitality in Asia

Many years ago I spent five fantastic weeks in Boston during the fall. Though I had heard about the explosive colors of autumn in New England, it truly was a sight to see. So too were the two games I attended at Fenway Park, only a year after the Red Sox swept the Rockies in the World Series. But the…
Casey Chalk
November 15, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 287

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 8-12, 2021 Topics: Lost Cause, Social Justice, Woke, Northern Studies, Slavery, Monuments https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-287
Brion McClanahan
November 13, 2021
Blog

John Rock and Yankee Hypocrisy

John Rock was an American teacher, doctor, dentist, lawyer and abolitionist. Rock was one of the first African-American men to earn a medical degree. In addition, he was the first black person to be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. On January 23, 1863, John Rock made a speech at the annual meeting of…
Rod O'Barr
November 11, 2021
Blog

Social Time in Old Virginia

Editor's Note: Often considered one of the more important "Lost Cause" post-bellum narratives, Letitia Burwell's A Girl's Life in Virginia Before the War offers a captivating glimpse of life in the Old South. Her grandfather had been Thomas Jefferson's private secretary and her father served in the Virginia legislature ten times. Americans often marvel at the social mores and customs…
Letitia M. Burwell
November 10, 2021
Review Posts

Social Justice is Our New Religion

A review of Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict (Reformation Zion Publishing, 2021) by Jon Harris Writing during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy in the 1920s, Princeton New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen argued that Christianity and liberalism are hostile and antithetical religious systems. “In the sphere of religion,” wrote Machen, “in particular, the present time is a time of conflict;…
Darrell Dow
November 9, 2021
Blog

American Monuments

Editor's Note: Former Abbeville Institute summer school student Jon Harris and his Last Stand Studios produced this original documentary about American monuments and the ongoing American iconoclasm. It features Abbeville Institute scholars Donald Livingston, Brion McClanahan, Bill Wilson, Philip Leigh, and Kirkpatrick Sale. From the website: "Our next project, American Monument, will explore the good, true, and beautiful qualities represented…
Abbeville Institute
November 8, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 286

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 1-5, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, the War, Cancel Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-286
Brion McClanahan
November 6, 2021
Blog

Missouri’s Road to Secession

Missouri celebrated her 160th anniversary of her secession from the Union on October 28. It was that day, in 1861, that both chambers of the duly elected Missouri legislature passed an ordinance of secession in extra session in Neosho, Missouri. The ordinance was signed by the duly elected governor three days later, on October 31, 1861. Missouri was officially accepted…
Wes Franklin
November 4, 2021
Blog

What Did the Founders Intend? Ask a Canadian

Critical to the debate regarding the right of secession is where, in the minds of the founders, did sovereignty reside. Were the States sovereign principals and the federal government their created agent? Or was the federal government sovereign and the States its created agents? State sovereignty prevailed for most of the 70 years after the founding, but political prejudice and…
Rod O'Barr
November 3, 2021
Blog

Southern Heritage and “New Right” Populism

The current conservative populist movement appears to offer some hope of mounting an effective resistance to the corporate state that was established during, and has largely adapted and stayed in power, since the failed War for Southern Independence. While having turned away from the endless wars and being able to effectively mobilize people to resist the political establishment that has…
James (Jim) Pederson
November 2, 2021
Blog

Thomas Moore, RIP

In August, Thomas Moore, novelist and founding Chairman of the Southern National Congress, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Aiken, South Carolina at the too-early age of 73. Tom was South Carolina-born, a graduate of the Citadel and had an M.A. in National Security Affairs from Georgetown University. He worked for 25 years in powerful circles in Washington in…
Clyde Wilson
November 1, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 285

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 25-29, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, slavery, Robert E. Lee, John C. Calhoun, Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-285
Brion McClanahan
October 30, 2021
Blog

A Sham of Free Government

  Editor's Note: United States Senator Thomas F. Bayard delivered this speech in January, 1875 on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. Bayard, later United States Secretary of State, considered the military occupation of New Orleans to be an unconstitutional usurpation of power and a direct assault on republican government. He denounced Gen. Philip Sheridan, insinuated that…
Thomas F. Bayard
October 29, 2021