The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Dec 7-11, 2020 Topics: United States Constitution, Southern Tradition, Secession, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-242
Brion McClanahanDecember 11, 2020
There are very few human symbols that find absolute approval or, in the alternative, disapproval. Symbols are called that because they represent something far larger than themselves. An unknown symbol is an oxymoron. At present, the symbol that is seemingly most under attack in this country is the Confederate battle flag albeit other flags that represented that short-lived, tragic nation,…
Valerie ProtopapasDecember 11, 2020
Earlier this year, shortly after the sad and unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I witnessed an especially peculiar example of one of the many thousands (perhaps millions?) of debates on social media regarding race in America. In this case, both of the virtual combatants were white males — one was a young, recent graduate of an Ivy League…
Casey ChalkDecember 10, 2020
All-too-often, seemingly buried in the myriad dates and statistics of history, lies the human experience that should do more to make up that history in the first place. These eyewitness accounts and anecdotes seem to speak to us, across the ages, in ways that numbers do not (something historians might want to pick up on, if they want a revived…
Travis ArchieDecember 9, 2020
A review of The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Second Edition; Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1999) by James Farmer The role of religion leading up to the War Between the States is sometimes overlooked. However, there is no question that Christian clergy had a major influence on the Old South, including the politics…
Zachary GarrisDecember 8, 2020
The dramatic events leading up to the secession of the Southern States, the tragedy of the War Between the States and the ensuing final act of the South’s Reconstruction period were, for the most part, staged east of the Mississippi River, as well as in the waters surrounding the East Coast. A lesser part of the drama was played out…
John MarquardtDecember 7, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 30 - Dec 4, 2020 Topics: Abraham Lincoln, Southern Tradition, Southern Music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-241
Brion McClanahanDecember 5, 2020
In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to advance their art. For example, Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made their composed music sound Russian, and the only way to do this was to become immersed in Russian folk music to see what made it tick. They studied work songs, play songs,…
Tom DanielDecember 4, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zksz7mOggqI&feature=youtu.be The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the most iconic speech in American history. Students are required to memorize it, and it has become as important to American political culture as the United States Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. This is unfortunate, because in this speech, Abraham Lincoln invented history and by doing so intellectually nuked the original federal republic.…
Brion McClanahanDecember 3, 2020
"May 29, 1856 "Abraham Lincoln, of Sangamon, came upon the platform amid deafening applause. He enumerated the pressing reasons of the present movement. He was here ready to fuse with anyone who would unite with him to oppose slave power; spoke of the bugbear disunion which was so vaguely threatened. It was to be remembered that the Union must be…
Vito MussomeliDecember 2, 2020
A review of General Edmund Kirby Smith C.S.A. (LSU Press, 1992 (1954) by Joseph H. Parks This biography is a must read for any student of the War for Southern Independence in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. It is an informative broad overview of Smith’s life and career, while also humanizes the man who was often subject to heavy criticism during and,…
Wes FranklinDecember 1, 2020
The life of a man is something that runs deep in all history. Before the war on gender roles, man and woman had a clear, defined boundary that all recognized and respected. Man was the provider, and woman, the nurturer and homemaker. A story and role as old as time. But, what of the physical boundaries of a man? My…
Travis HoltNovember 30, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 23-27, 2020 Topics: New South, Southern music, Southern sports, Southern economics, Southern culutre https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-240
Brion McClanahanNovember 28, 2020
When you hear the word “jazz,” what type of music pops into your head? What do you hear? You probably hear piano, brass, saxophone, or all of the above. But do you hear it melodious and catchy, or do you hear it jumbled and chaotic? There’s a lot of jazz out there that’s very melodious and catchy, and extremely easy…
Tom DanielNovember 27, 2020
This Thanksgiving, the second of three NFL games will feature one of the oldest (albeit moribund) rivalries in professional football history: the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Football Team, previously known as the Redskins. Since the late 1970’s, the Cowboys, who with the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving, have been nicknamed “America’s Team.” Yet Washington, who under woke capitalist…
Casey ChalkNovember 26, 2020
Edited by Robert Hoyle. A Discourse delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hampden-Sydney College, June 15, 1882, before the Philanthropic and Union Literary Societies. Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and Union Societies, and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Audience: You will credit my expression of sincere embarrassment at this time when you consider that I am attempting a species of…
Robert Lewis DabneyNovember 25, 2020
The South Was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. New Edition for the 21st century. Shotwell Publishing, 2020. In 1991 the Kennedy brothers first published The South Was Right!, a classic that can be considered a key document in the modern movement of Southern awareness and activism. With a second edition in 1994, the book has sold an astonishing 180,000 copies.…
Clyde WilsonNovember 24, 2020
The chief conflict in American history was and remains the conflict between the center and the periphery. Geographically, this conflict plays out as a powerful antagonism between the large, urbanized, metropolitan areas of America and their satellite college and university towns, and the less densely populated small towns and rural areas. In the political and financial realms, the conflict is…
John DevannyNovember 23, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 16-20, 2020 Topics: Secession, Lincoln Myth, Nationalism, John Brown https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-239
Brion McClanahanNovember 21, 2020
Secession: The point of the spear aimed at the heart of the American Leviathan – or so I once thought. Certainly secession has been a live idea in Europe for a long time, often under the rubric of “self-determination.” Ludwig von Mises wrote in Liberalism in 1927 that “he right of self-determination... thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular…
Terry HulseyNovember 20, 2020
The following address was delivered as part of a symposium at the 150th anniversary of the burning of Winnsboro, S.C., in February 2015, sponsored by the Winnsboro Historical Society. It is published here for the first time. By preface, I have one common-sense comment on the manufactured controversy over who burned Columbia. An army who torches and pillages every town…
James Everett KiblerNovember 19, 2020
A Review of The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (Uncommon Books, 1993) by Otto Scott. The Leftist political violence that has engulfed the disintegrating American nation for much of the past year traces its origin on the North American continent to the infernal life of the original American terrorist, John Brown. Like the terrorists of today who…
Neil KumarNovember 17, 2020
The pattern for modern American politics was set by Lincoln and his cronies in the 1850s—1870s, although it took an immense war against other Americans to make it stick. The pattern involved making the federal government (not the “Union” or the Constitution) the center of power and the fount of good (and goods). This meant, in everyday terms, that the…
Clyde WilsonNovember 16, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 9-13, 2020 Topics: Decentralization, Southern Tradition, Southern Politics, Education https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-238
Brion McClanahanNovember 15, 2020
The roots of the myth that slavery was primarily a white Southern institution were planted three decades prior to the War Between the States by the abolitionists in New York and New England. This myth also included the idea that those same abolitionists of the 1830s had introduced the freeing of slaves in America. Actually, however, the first seeds…
John MarquardtNovember 13, 2020
It is not often enough, but I do set aside blocks of time to express gratitude to God for all the many blessings He has bestowed on me in my lifetime. There are many things I have missed out on, or simply fouled up royally, but the stars aligned in mid-October and I had the good fortune of being able…
Joshua DoggrellNovember 12, 2020
‘There has always been this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.’ – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ‘In each one of us there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of common sense. The road to totalitarian domination leads through…
James Rutledge RoeschNovember 11, 2020
While watching a seventy-minute interview with Professor Adam Domby about his book, The False Cause, I was surprised at the number of errors, biased interpretations and even endorsement of "extralegal" conduct by anti-statue mobs. The False Cause focuses on Civil War and Reconstruction memory, particularly involving Confederate memorials. First, and foremost, Domby erroneously proclaims that the signature Confederate statues erected in Southern courthouse squares between…
Philip LeighNovember 10, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 2-6, 2020 Topics: Southern Culture, Abraham Lincoln, Elections, Reconstruction, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-237
Brion McClanahanNovember 7, 2020
Like any other economic exchange, the slave trade developed with a supplier, a consumer, and a trader or merchant that brought the two together. African kingdoms that had access to the western seaboard had a product, people, that they could readily be collected and sold based on labor demand, primarily from the new world during this time period. The English,…
James (Jim) PedersonNovember 6, 2020
In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and the first man to hold that office). The two men were drawn to each other immediately and became fast friends for the rest of their lives. In her biography of…
Karen StokesNovember 5, 2020
‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.’ – Milan Kundera ‘I personally think…
James Rutledge RoeschNovember 4, 2020
Will Rogers had a quip for just about any situation, but he loved to talk politics. Rogers was born on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. His father was a Confederate veteran and political leader in the Cherokee nation. At the height of his career, Will Rogers had the number one radio program in America and was the highest paid actor…
Brion McClanahanNovember 3, 2020
“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns and battles and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those…
Valerie ProtopapasNovember 2, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 19-30, 2020 Topics: Secession, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-236
Brion McClanahanOctober 31, 2020
As some business owners and residents on King Street described it, “Charleston was raped” on the night of May 30, 2020, as mobs looted and burned the Holy City, turning so-called “peaceful protests” violent. Following numerous calls to remove the John C. Calhoun Monument and repeal the South Carolina Heritage Act, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg took a resolution to the…
Stewart O. JonesOctober 30, 2020
There’s a popular meme floating around the internet that has a middle-aged, pot-bellied, suburban male standing by a charcoal fire with the caption below reading, “I just want to grill for God’s sake!” It has been seen as both an ideal (men just want to go about their weekly business without intrusion by the pet causes of the day) and…
Christopher J. CarterOctober 29, 2020
When asked why he was a Catholic, Southern author Walker Percy liked to provocatively respond, “What else is there?” Savannah-born writer Flannery O’Connor, a Catholic or Irish heritage, once asserted that she was a “hillbilly Thomist,” a nod to Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologiae she piously read. Percy and O’Connor certainly saw no conflict between their Southern identity and their…
Casey ChalkOctober 28, 2020
The political chaos that has accompanied President Trump’s first term will not abate anytime soon. From the Russian Collusion hoax to rioting in the streets to the public policy responses to the Covid-19 so-called pandemic, there appears to be something afoot that does not bode well for the future. Whether the motivation is ideological, economic, official incompetence, or a toxic…
Marshall DeRosaOctober 27, 2020
Through the centuries since Jamestown was founded, the South has held certain values, virtues, and ideals in high esteem: Courage, duty, humility, integrity, courtesy, chivalry, gallantry, self-control, reverence, selflessness, strength, wisdom, and a willingness to defend what was right, no matter the odds. To be noble, to be a gentleman, was to exemplify those ideals. Sir Walter Scott’s novels were…
Earl StarbuckOctober 26, 2020
The Southern Tradition is not something easily defined in a few words. Its specific formulation comes from the work of Richard Weaver as he interpreted the thought of the Nashville Agrarians with significant augmentation by M.E. Bradford. For my purposes here I will just consider it to be the sum of the myriad ways that southern culture, history, and ways…
Mike GoodloeOctober 23, 2020
The United States acquired a vast area of the Southwest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (May 30, 1848), which included all or part of the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, Texas and Utah. As part of the treaty, Mexico agreed to sell the land (more than 1,000,000 square miles) to the United States for $15…
Steve LeeOctober 22, 2020
The story I’m about to tell is one of the many coming from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Hardscrabble existence was a way of life with our pioneers, and it was no different in my own bloodline. The Holts, James Simpson, and sons settled on a land grant in Newton County, Arkansas in the 1850s. They were some of the…
Travis HoltOctober 21, 2020
A review of American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup (Encounter Books, 2020) by F.H. Buckley When asked whether a state can constitutionally secede from the United States, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia brushed the question aside, saying the matter was settled by the Civil War. He was wrong. A Zogby poll in 2018 found that 39 percent of…
Donald LivingstonOctober 20, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 12-16, 2020 Topics: Reconciliation, 1619 Project, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-235
Brion McClanahanOctober 17, 2020
In an editorial published a little over a year after the Civil War ended, a Georgia newspaper writer expressed regret that the South had not accepted "the aid of the negroes" when it was offered. He even went so far as to say "we were fools" for refusing that help, and then he went even further and credited black Union…
Shane AndersonOctober 16, 2020
Some people come from the “the land down under”. I come from the land “where old times are not forgotten”. As historians we must recommit to helping our youth understand our history and realize that without a commanding knowledge of our history, there is no future for a free United States of America. It is natural to fight for your…
Barbara MarthalOctober 15, 2020
What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the war would not have happened. Indeed, it is probable that the circumstances leading up to the war would not have happened. So, what in fact, did happen?! Truth to tell,…
Valerie ProtopapasOctober 14, 2020
There’s something pernicious with the New York Times’ 1619 Project and its inversion of early Virginia colonial history. The colony of Jamestown isn’t a story of bravery and resilience in the face of disease and death. The House of Burgesses, founded in 1642, is not important as the first bicameral elected assembly in the American colonies. The Old Dominion of…
Casey ChalkOctober 13, 2020
In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” the central governmental agency in his fictitious country of Oceania is the antonymic Ministry of Truth, a body charged with the duty of erasing actual history and then rewriting it to meet what was considered to be more acceptable ideological concepts. In America today, the same type of inane metaphorical thinking is also taking place,…
John MarquardtOctober 12, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 5-9, 2020 Topics: Southern Tradition, Supreme Court, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-234
Brion McClanahanOctober 11, 2020
The 2020 presidential election took a decided turn as it moved into the final six weeks when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, passed away, opening up a seat that would, if filled by a conservative, shift the ideological balance of the High Court, and bringing the issue to the forefront of what is already a raucous…
Ryan WaltersOctober 9, 2020
The Supreme Court once again is the headline of the news. Judge Ginsburg died leaving eight judges for the nine-seat court. The so-called media, as usual, portrays SCOTUS as the greatest authority since God gave his law to Moses. But, now, the worship of man’s law begins again in the news. The drainage of all political conversation regarding SCOTUS seems…
Paul H. YarbroughOctober 8, 2020
Since 2015, it has become standard fare for the left to accuse President Trump of “Gaslighting,” meaning that the President uses his position of power to provide false data to confuse and therefore dominate Americans. The term originated from a 1930s Broadway play which was made into a movie “Gaslighting” in 1944 staring Ingrid Bergman. In the movie, the husband…
James Ronald KennedyOctober 7, 2020
A Review of Chained Tree, Chained Owls, Poems (Green Altar Books, 2020) by Catharine Savage Brosman. This is Catharine Savage Brosman’s twelfth book of poems, and the praise for her work has increased with each new publication. This review will follow suit; and in order to demonstrate-- to point out clearly-- this new level of excellence, it is best to…
William WilsonOctober 6, 2020
For the majority of my life I have had an intense interest in the history of the War Between the States. This interest germinated as a result of two very influential places that I became well acquainted with from a young age. The first of these was the land that I have lived on since before my memory was even…
Patrick SeayOctober 5, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 28 - Oct 2, 2020 Topics: Confederate Monuments, Western Civilization, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-233
Brion McClanahanOctober 4, 2020
Coming from a small, truly united community, I have many places that are dear to me that I often visit. One of these is a small city, located in the town where I grew up. But this is no ordinary city: it’s a resting place for people who have gone on before us. As I walk through Smith Cemetery at…
Travis HoltOctober 2, 2020
Antebellum California secession is a little known topic, but the Southern portion of the State nearly broke free from Northern California in the years just before the outbreak of war in 1861. California gained statehood in 1850 with a Senate vote of 34 ayes and 18 nays and a House vote of 156 ayes to 56 nays with Jeremiah Clemens…
Justin PedersonOctober 1, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 14-25, 2020 Topics: Secession, Treason, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, Agrarianism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-232
Brion McClanahanSeptember 26, 2020
From The Land We Love, V, no. I (May 1868), 25-34, edited by Joseph S. Stromberg. Combinations for the prosecution of industrial pursuits are the characteristic of our age. They now enjoy almost universal favor, and are extending themselves, in old and new directions, every year. In the delight which is inspired by their efficiency for money-getting, people seem unsuspicious…
Robert Lewis DabneySeptember 25, 2020
Reminiscences and Ramblings of a Novice Wing-Shooter It was the First of September, 2019 and there I sat, in the pre-dawn twilight, half asleep and fighting the near irresistible temptation, provided by the comfortable blanket of darkness that enveloped me, to “rest my eyes”. I guess that’s what you get for having longtime friends (and, soon-to-be hunting companions) over the…
Travis ArchieSeptember 24, 2020
Not long after I moved my family to Bangkok, Thailand — where we lived for three years — I happened to be walking through a park with an environmental specialist for the U.S. Department of State. I noticed an interesting black bird hopping around nearby. “What’s the name of that curious bird?” I asked my friend. “Hell if I know,”…
Casey ChalkSeptember 23, 2020
Travel writing about the American South is a genre of its own. One such observer was Henry Miller, who traveled through the South in 1941. Miller was born in 1891 in New York City and lived almost all of his life there until 1930 when he moved to Paris. He spent almost all of the years between 1930 and 1939…
Mike GoodloeSeptember 22, 2020
“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts.” Once there was a common theme among our ancestors, and it was a simple one: land is…
Travis HoltSeptember 21, 2020
Recently an acquaintance of mine remarked that the Confederate statue in her hometown should be removed from its present place of honour and relocated to the Confederate cemetery which is presently (and sadly) in a state of neglect. The statue should be moved, she said, because while the boys who fought and died during the Late Unpleasantness deserve to be…
Earl StarbuckSeptember 18, 2020
Reading an article in the latest Hillsdale College newsletter Imprimis I was shocked by the outrageous comparison of Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson as people fighting to “divide the nation.” The article was adapted from the speech, “American Sports Are Letting Down America,” in an online Hillsdale lesson by prominent black sports columnist,…
Carole Hornsby HaynesSeptember 17, 2020
A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors. It is a lie for two reasons. First, the Confederate states had no intent to overthrow the government of the United States. They seceded merely to form a government of their own. The first seven states that seceded during the winter of 1860-61…
Philip LeighSeptember 16, 2020
What if there were 15.3 million dead American soldiers? Imagine it. Legions of the unburied down rows of summer corn, strewn along riverbanks, and discarded on roadsides. And imagine if many of the boys’ bodies had lain there for months or even years, for the fighting was so fierce and the resources so few that only the fortunate lay in…
Duncan KillenSeptember 15, 2020
The tiny hamlet of Lake Hill in New York State’s Catskill Mountains was my mother’s hometown, and her ancestors there, the Howlands, could trace their family history to its roots in Fifteenth Century England and to Bishop Richard Howland of Peterborough who officiated at the burial of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587. During the next century, Henry Howland sailed…
John MarquardtSeptember 14, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 7-11, 2020 Topics: Yankees, Cancel Culture, Southern Music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-231
Brion McClanahanSeptember 12, 2020
The City Council of Lexington, Virginia has renamed the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. The new name is Oak Grove Cemetery. The reasons stated were the usual ones. Jackson was a racist who fought for slavery. I hope the males on that council never have to do anything requiring manhood. Lexington Councilman Chuck Smith said the effect on tourism would likely be…
Paul H. YarbroughSeptember 11, 2020
“The blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man feelin’ bad,” according to “Negro Blues,” penned in 1913. There’s no question about the “feelin’ bad” part. The genre is defined by its twelve-bar tune with the distinctive flatted third and seventh notes on the major scale (producing the “blue” note) coupled with lyrics of misery, injustice, and even sometimes self-loathing. One…
Casey ChalkSeptember 9, 2020
A review of Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music (University of California Press, 2014) by Nadine Hubbs If I had been told a short while ago that I would soon read a book by the Professor of Women’s Studies and Music at the University of Michigan, I would not have believed it. Had I further been told that the author would…
Joshua DoggrellSeptember 8, 2020
Kwanzaa is an invented tradition. Billed as a kind of “black Christmas”—you can even buy Kwanzaa greeting cards at the store and mail them with Kwanzaa stamps—the odd holiday was created out of spite by a certain Ronald Everett in the 1960s in a fit of pique after the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Kwanzaa begins the day after Christmas,…
Jason MorganSeptember 7, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 31 - Sep 4, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern environment, Political Correctness, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-230
Brion McClanahanSeptember 5, 2020
A recent article in Hillsdale College’s newsletter “Imprimis” compared Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in wanting to “divide the country.” On a lessor point, it was in a figurative reference to the battle of Gettysburg, which Jackson wasn’t even present at, of course, being dead by then. The article was taken from an online…
Wes FranklinSeptember 4, 2020
On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War of Independence. These brave men embodied that irrepressible Southern spirit, that martial valor and moral sublimity that suffused the souls of Dixie and her children for generations upon generations, stretching…
Neil KumarSeptember 3, 2020
A frequent argument against Confederate monuments is a “sound bite” of a quote from General Robert E. Lee in 1869 in some variation to “I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war.” The time of the event and the Monument Movement is significant. Understanding this connection changes the meaning of the "sound bite" entirety. Here's the…
Ernest BlevinsSeptember 2, 2020
Growing up in the Arkansas Ozarks, I early on found out I had a love for history; the history of my people. It was passed down to me in short snippets, in stories told between the older generations that revolved around love, tragedy, learning experiences, or sometimes just comedic encounters or sayings. My Grandfather would often quote an older man…
Travis HoltSeptember 1, 2020
Have any of you all heard about the film, "General Orders No. 9" ? It's a visual & musical tone poem—an experimental film which appeared in 2011. The filmmaker, Robert Persons, took 11 years to make it. It concerns his musings about the Deep South, mostly Georgia, but also includes abutting parts of Mississippi & Alabama. This strange film struck…
Alphonse-Louis VinhAugust 31, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 24-28, 2020 Topics: Cancel Culture, Political Correctness, Yankees, Confederate Monuments https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-229
Brion McClanahanAugust 29, 2020
Eight-tenths of a mile down a dead-end Arkansas gravel road, at that dead end, past two neglected old cattle guards and in the back pasture is not where you’d expect to find a hero, much less a monument to him and his men. But, alas! There he is, lying in all of his humble glory. There are no official monuments…
Travis ArchieAugust 28, 2020
And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.August 27, 2020
Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural civilization; one of the first and most intense Southern nationalists; and the man who fired the first gun at Sumter and ended his own life in grief when the civilization…
Neil KumarAugust 26, 2020
A review of Cleburne: A Graphic Novel (Rampart Press, 2008) by Justin S. Murphy and others. The graphic novel is a major feature of literature in these times. Southerners can indeed be happy that the Confederacy has entered this field in grand style. Murphy is a nationally notable animator, writer, publisher, composer, and prize-winning dramatist from Florida. As a youth…
Clyde WilsonAugust 25, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 17-21, 2020 Topics: Southern history, Political Correctness, Cancel Culture, Language, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-228
Brion McClanahanAugust 22, 2020
Identity Politics is changing our language in order to advance its agenda. One example is “people of color.” Hemingway would have convulsed at such a laborious construction. Does its nearly Global use today suggest that “people of whiteness” should also be adopted for consistency? While the simpler “colored people” technically has the same meaning, perhaps its potential racist connotation can…
Philip LeighAugust 21, 2020
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are constantly under attack from those on the left and the mainstream historical establishment for leading the charge of promoting the “lost cause myth” of the Civil war. Defenders of popular history and the “righteous cause” narrative disparage any attempt to justify the Confederate Cause with the pejorative “Lost Cause Myth.” Their mantra…
Kevin FlynnAugust 20, 2020
I’ve never written of this episode in the history of Marion County, Fla., but then, I don’t think anyone else has either. However, so much time has passed, with most of the witnesses long gone, I feel it’s time to mention it for posterity’s sake. Back in the late 1960s, there was a very active chapter of the Weathermen in…
Joscelyn DunlopAugust 19, 2020
I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They raised their families, fought in the war, battled famine and drought and came out ahead, leaving their children small, improved farms. They taught them the joy of being independent, finding…
Travis HoltAugust 18, 2020
“Madam, don't bring your sons up to detest the United States Government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities and make your sons Americans.” -Lee writing to a Southern mother, with a heart wrenching of hatred towards the North. Source: Proceedings & Debates, 2nd Session of the Seventy-First Congress, United States of America, Vol. LXXII-Part 8, United…
Gerald LefurgyAugust 17, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 9-13, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, Yankees https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-227
Brion McClanahanAugust 15, 2020
During the War of Northern Aggression not every Southerner was on board for the Cause. Not every Yankee was opposed to the Cause. The numbers, apparently, from the action of four years of massacre and bloodshed indicate that each of the other sides saw few who crossed over. So be it. Or so it was. Records are probably not available…
Paul H. YarbroughAugust 14, 2020
A series by Clyde Wilson MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR (1798-1859) of Texas moved from his native Georgia to the Texas Republic in 1835. He took a conspicuous part in the Texas War of Independence and was cited by Sam Houston for outstanding bravery at the Battle of San Jacinto. Lamar served in the Texas government and followed Houston as President. He…
Clyde WilsonAugust 13, 2020
A Yankee is a creature without a civilization. Having no people, no breeding, no past, he roams the earth by instinct, tearing down the civilizations built by others who, unlike him, lovingly cultivate human society. Being unwelcome in England due to his penchant for religious terrorism, the Yankee was exiled across the sea where he immediately set about destroying the…
Jason MorganAugust 12, 2020
A Review of Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War (Amazon, 2019) by James Michael Pasley. Ordinarily, I don’t endorse novels. As a general rule, I don’t even read them. But after my wife suggested I read Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War, I couldn’t put it down, so I decided to make an exception…
Samuel W. MitchamAugust 11, 2020
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of Hosts had left to us a…
James Rutledge RoeschAugust 10, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 3-7, 2020 Topics: Black Southerners, Confederate Monuments, Southern Literature, Southern Poetry, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-226
Brion McClanahanAugust 9, 2020
Today we are besieged with raucous cries on both America’s streets and its social media platforms, as well as by all too many in the halls of government, to bring to an end what is now termed “systemic racism.” To bring this amorphous demand about, we are led to believe that the systems that formed the very foundation upon which…
John MarquardtAugust 7, 2020
A Series by Clyde Wilson THEODORE O'HARA (1820-1867) of Kentucky. "The Bivouac of the Dead" is often thought of as related to The War of 1861-1865. Like the "Star-Spangled Banner" it was confiscated for the North. Theodore O'Hara was a Confederate officer. (He was with Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston when he was fatally wounded.) He wrote the poem about 1850…
Clyde WilsonAugust 6, 2020
Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), known as “The Father of Black History,” was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, the son of former slaves. He received his doctorate from Harvard, rose to prominence as a writer and historian, and was the editor of The Journal of Negro History. He is best known for establishing Black History Week, which evolved into Black…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.August 5, 2020
A review of Southern Scribblings (Red Mill Publishing, 2020) by Brion McClanahan In an age in which error, falsehood, and perversion are regaled by the politically correct, neo-Marxist as being America’s new normal, Brion McClanahan’s new book, Southern Scribblings, provides Southerners with a compass pointing them back to the tradition of virtue, honor, and the American principles of constitutionally limited…
James Ronald KennedyAugust 4, 2020
Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us…All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are…
James Rutledge RoeschAugust 3, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 27-31, 2020 Topics: Secession, Southern Literature, Southern Music, Political Correctness, Confederate Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-225
Brion McClanahanAugust 1, 2020
Northern secession was openly in the political brew again. Eleven (11) years before, Jefferson had cautioned New England's desire to secede while accepting their sovereignty to choose as they wished. Since then extensive changes had come about. Jefferson was retired and Hamilton deceased. Our landmass more than doubled with the Louisiana territory. 2 more States, Ohio and Louisiana, were added…
Vito MussomeliJuly 31, 2020
A Series by Clyde Wilson EDGAR ALLAN POE, Part 2 Sonnet – To Science Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wanderingTo seek for treasure…
Clyde WilsonJuly 30, 2020
I have written here before about the history and mechanics of Sacred Harp singing, shape-notes, and Singing Schools. James Kibler has delivered some truly excellent talks about Singing Billy Walker and the origins of Amazing Grace as an original tune called New Britain in Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, and I strongly urge you to listen to his presentations. Listen…
Tom DanielJuly 29, 2020
I don’t have time to detail everything the piece in question gets wrong, because it's a lot. I’m sure this will be fodder for Abbeville posts for a long time, so I’m going to focus on the Constitutional issues. Stephanie McCurry writes: “In late February 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, the seven breakaway states formed the C.S.A.; swore in a president,…
Aaron GleasonJuly 28, 2020
How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me. And if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me. If indeed you exalt yourselves against me, and plead my disgrace against me, know then that God has wronged…
James Rutledge RoeschJuly 27, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 20-24, 2020 Topics: The War, Abraham Lincoln, Black Confederates, Southern Poetry, Southern Art https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-224
Brion McClanahanJuly 25, 2020
‘Only such men could tell what once could be, Hear what we hear, see what we see.’ Donald Davidson, “Late Answer: A Civil War Seminar” The wind is all but silent in the pinesAround a glade whose light comes down from fire,Not filtered or aslant through needle, cone, A heightened brightness passing as it stays. And there, alone,…
David MiddletonJuly 24, 2020
One of the more interesting things about the Civil War is the primary evidence, from Union accounts, that show black men serving as sharpshooters for the Confederacy. Unfortunately today you have men such as Kevin M. Levin, among others, who ignore or gloss over these accounts. In a 2015 article by Ernie Suggs, of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, states “Boston-based historian…
Wayne PeaseJuly 23, 2020
From the 1870s to the late 1950s, there was an unofficial truce between the North and South. Each side recognized and saluted the courage of the other; it was conceded that the North fought to preserve the Union and because Old Glory had been fired on, and the Southerner fought for liberty and to defend his home; the two great…
Samuel W. MitchamJuly 22, 2020
The Legend of the Speech Abraham Lincoln’s dedicatory speech of the memorial cemetery at Gettysburg “Gettysburg Address” has, like its author, achieved a kind of apotheosis. The soldiers, about whom it was written and to whom the memorial itself was dedicated, are virtually forgotten. Observers today consider the Gettysburg Address the American political creed, a “prose poem” of the triumph…
Christopher KirkJuly 21, 2020
I am not a great fan of President Andrew Jackson. Yet this equestrian statue (erected in 1852, five years after its commissioning), in front of the White House, is one of the most important pieces of sculpture in the world. You see it was created by an American sculpture Clark Mills, in his studio and bronze foundry he established in…
Cliff PageJuly 20, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 13-17, 2020 Topics: Yankees, Cancel Culture, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-223
Brion McClanahanJuly 18, 2020
The dogs of racial war were released this May in Minneapolis by the senseless death of George Floyd, a black man, under the knee of Derek Chauvin, a white police officer. Even though Chauvin had a long record of misconduct, the charges against him had been mainly disregarded by the local authorities, including former prosecutor, now Senator and failed Democratic…
John MarquardtJuly 17, 2020
I caught a snatch of news the other day that, even with all that is happening in our time, stunned me. It seems that Hollywood is gearing up its machinery to produce entertainment about “Confederate War Crimes.” This so contradicts the historical record that it can represent nothing but willful ignorance, dishonesty, and malice. For Hollywood, anything they don’t like…
Clyde WilsonJuly 16, 2020
While Fake News may be a new term, the concept has a long history. We have been taught that a free, independent, and ethical press is essential for a free society to function and thrive; however, in practice, the American press has typically been far from these ideals. The press has been most malicious in times of crisis, acting not…
James (Jim) PedersonJuly 14, 2020
Pietas, the most Roman of virtues, referred to the duty owed to one’s country, parents, kin, and ancestors. It is from pietas that patriotism, not nationalism, springs forth. It is a virtue once esteemed by Americans, for once upon a time Americans were formed by classical learning, and most especially they were formed in their political and literary imaginations by…
John DevannyJuly 13, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 6-10, 2020 Topics: Southern music, Southern tradition, Political Correctness, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-222
Brion McClanahanJuly 11, 2020
The sun, a single red eye, burnt what was left of the earth, holding everything beneath it in a heavy, never-dimming glare. It never left the sky, not even in those hours once reserved for night and the stars. The land lay red and uneven under it like flayed flesh, gorges deep and hills steep. Almost nothing remained, all flora…
Randall IveyJuly 10, 2020
While mobs continue tearing down monuments and shaming elected officials into removing statues of historical significance — from Christopher Columbus to Gen. Robert E. Lee and even Thomas Jefferson and George Washington — Clemson University (which receives over $100 million annually from the State of South Carolina) quietly decided to remove John C. Calhoun’s name from its honors college. Never…
Stewart O. JonesJuly 9, 2020
A Review of The Road to Mass Democracy: Original Intent and the Seventeenth Amendment (Routledge, 2017) by C.H. Hoebeke On April 8, 1913, the requisite three quarters of the State legislatures kneecapped themselves, surrendering to “the people” their authority to elect Senators of the United States. The ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which provided for the direct popular election of…
Neil KumarJuly 8, 2020
Charlie Daniels is dead. Just a shade over three years ago, I wrote this piece in honor of his birthday. The South has lost one of its greatest bards, and Dixie is worse for it. Daniels recorded arguably his best album, Fire on the Mountain, at Capricorn studios, the Peach State's famous recording studio in Macon. Unlike FAME or Muscle…
Brion McClanahanJuly 7, 2020
Perhaps no American thinker has suffered more in recent days than John C. Calhoun, whose work and personage are often dismissed by his critics for a single phrase attributed to him, diminishing the careful and complicated analysis he deserves. Critics of Calhoun simplistically suggest his statecraft and thought, as well as his critique of America, serve a single purpose: the…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.July 6, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 29-July 3, 2020 Topics: Political correctness, Confederate monuments, Abraham Lincoln, the War, Southern culture, Dixie https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-221
Brion McClanahanJuly 4, 2020
The Orwellian nightmare known as 2020 continues. Not only are Confederate monuments and symbols under attack, seemingly benign references to anything Southern are now considered "racist." Real estate listings that use the term "master bedroom" are being changed because the term is a reference to slavery, as does the word "plantation." The State of Rhode Island is considering changing its…
Brion McClanahanJuly 3, 2020
A series by Clyde Wilson EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809--1849) of Virginia was the great creative genius of 19th century American literature in poetry, fiction, and criticism. Although accidentally born in Boston and spending part of his foreshortened life earning a living in New York, Poe was, and unequivocally considered himself to be, a Southerner. In all his career he was…
Clyde WilsonJuly 2, 2020
“Very late in the war, when defeat seemed inevitable, Northern generals were complaining that the Confederate soldier refused to give in and admit defeat, that Southern women remained indomitable in spirit….” – Dr. Clyde Wilson, “Rethinking the War for the 21st Century,” The Abbeville Review, September 14, 2016 “God bless…ALL who boldly defend the good name and honor of our…
J.L. BennettJuly 1, 2020
Editor's Note: The Abbeville Institute does not endorse or support the views of Alexander Dugin on race, religion, or government, and Mr. Garlington offers his philosophical positions on identity in the broad concept of the term. The Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin lists three kinds of identity in his book Eurasian Mission – diffused, extreme, and deep. The diffused identity is…
Walt GarlingtonJune 30, 2020
“The problem with Lincoln is the problem with America,” said my friend Clyde Wilson when I asked him for a blurb for my new book, The Problem with Lincoln (Regnery, 2020). That in fact is the theme of the book, written seventeen years after my first book on the subject, The Real Lincoln (TRL), as I shall explain. A secondary…
Thomas DiLorenzoJune 29, 2020
Tucker Carlson, a man who had revealed himself as a reliable reporter/journalist over the years, in my opinion, stumbled recently. His nightly show, like most, has been confronted with the contemporary left-wing anarchic news happenings. Anarchy brings with it, anarchic news. By its very nature, bestial conduct becomes the news story of the moment(s). And for the most part fake…
Paul H. YarbroughJune 24, 2020
Today, as it was a hundred and sixty years ago, America stands on the edge of an ever-widening chasm of cultural, ideological, political, racial and sectional divisions. In 1860, there was at least one prominent voice of reason that cried out to end the nation’s mad rush into the abyss, that of Charles Mason of Iowa. Mason was a Northern…
John MarquardtJune 23, 2020
Bentonville is the lovely little town in Northwest Arkansas that I have spent nearly my entire life in. At the heart of Bentonville, in the center of our town square, there has rested a Confederate monument for the last 112 years, honoring the Southern soldiers who, carrying on the spirit of their Revolutionary fathers and grandfathers, gave their lives for…
Neil KumarJune 22, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 15-19, 2020 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Symbols, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-220
Brion McClanahanJune 20, 2020
I am desperately trying to sooth a despaired and troubled heart. What’s the source of my despair? The stuck record that is playing in my mind, repeating this question. How do we help our fellow citizens to understand that we cannot make sweeping changes and decisions in our society while being caught up in a blinding fog of emotional rage? …
Barbara MarthalJune 19, 2020
On June 13, 2020, Clemson University president Jim Clements proclaimed, “this was an important day for Clemson-a historic day for Clemson.” Nothing could be further from the truth. It was but another victory for historical revisionists and “presentism.” On the day before, University Trustees voted 13-0 to remove John C. Calhoun’s name from the University’s Honors College because he…
Andrew P. CalhounJune 18, 2020
Like locusts eating out the sustenance of farmers and agrarians, the once-proud land called Virginia is in philosophical and spiritual rot. The disease that is the deep state, progressivism, liberalism, Antifa, Blacks Lives Matter (because others don't?); or any of the other dogmatic, villainous human species swimming in their own waste, has spread like the black plague of Europe. Pitiful…
Paul H. YarbroughJune 17, 2020
“Southerners who still value their heritage but don’t know what to do about it in such a hostile environment. They are our audience.” DM: What is your best short answer to people who say the War for Southern Independence was all about slavery and nothing but slavery? Should we come at this from an offensive posture, rather than being defensive,…
Clyde WilsonJune 16, 2020
In a gosh attempt at virtue signaling, the Clemson University Board of Trustees has unanimously voted to remove John C. Calhoun's name from the school’s Honors College. This decision came after former Tiger football stars Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins joined a petition campaign which declared: “To maintain the name is to convey Clemson University's continued indifference toward a history…
William J. WatkinsJune 15, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 8-12, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, political correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-219
Brion McClanahanJune 13, 2020
Last week Governor Ralph Northam announced his plan to remove the iconic statue of Robert E. Lee from Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. This step will be the beginning of an ambitious leftist Taliban undertaking that calls for the removal of four other statues of Confederate heroes, including that of Jefferson Davis. The now endangered statues have long been beloved…
Paul GottfriedJune 12, 2020
A series by Clyde Wilson EDWARD COOTE PINKNEY (1802-1828) of Maryland was born and partly raised in England where his father, William Pinkney, was the U.S. Minister. After publishing a good deal of poetry, he attempted to join the Mexican Navy during that country’s war of independence. From this venture Pinkney returned home to Baltimore, his health shattered. He continued…
Clyde WilsonJune 11, 2020
The Great Men of History: What part do the so-called “Great Men of history” play in history and cultural evolution? The answer is double-edged, for it requires an understanding of the distinction between the temporal process of “history” (“a chronological series of events each of which is unique”) and the temporal-formal process of “evolution” (“a series of events in which…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.June 10, 2020
Since 1960, the racist identity politics of the left has politicized and degraded American history in academia and the news media. One of the problems with academia is that, in a metaphorical sense, it is inbred. It is so liberal, the 33 wealthiest colleges in the last election gave Hillary Clinton $1,560,000. They gave Donald Trump $3,000. Over 90% of…
Gene Kizer, Jr.June 9, 2020
I hope you all enjoyed Part 1 of my interview with Dr. Clyde Wilson. In this installment, the Carolina lion talks about his years in Chapel Hill, decimates modern higher “education,” explains his journalistic background, discusses his seminal academic work, gives Calhoun his due, and even offers some advice to today’s students. DM: Was your bachelor’s degree in journalism? And…
Dissident MamaJune 8, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute June 1-5, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern symbols, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-218
Brion McClanahanJune 6, 2020
A Japanese neighbor of ours in Tokyo, a former university professor, has written a number of books on American and Western humor, with some of his material covering the witticisms of Abraham Lincoln. One such example was drawn from an 1858 Illinois debate with Senator Stephen Douglas in which Lincoln attempted to deflect Douglas’ charge that he was two-faced by…
John MarquardtJune 5, 2020
In Memory of Dr. Neil Compton, Arkansas Hero, 1912-1999 Neil Compton of Bentonville, Arkansas, my beloved hometown, stands as a paragon of civic virtue. Born in Falling Springs, western Benton County, he lived with his family on Upper Coon Creek until the age of eleven, when he moved to Bentonville upon the election of his father, David, as Benton County…
Neil KumarJune 4, 2020
Who should Americans blame for the iconoclasm on display during the "protests" in virtually every American city this past weekend? Not the Left. They are the easy targets, and not without culpability. The washed up hippies teaching in American classrooms at every level have certainly been a major component of the cultural Marxism that now saturates American society. But they…
Brion McClanahanJune 3, 2020
I first met Dr. Clyde Wilson in February 2018 at an Abbeville Institute conference in Charleston. I had been reading his many works since I began becoming more intellectually curious about Southern tradition, the War, Reconstruction, and the New South, my own Confederate ancestry, and what it all means for the world today. Once you crack the veneer of the…
Dissident MamaJune 1, 2020
It is an established principle of the current political class, made up of mostly of abhorrent political party office seekers and bureaucrats that the Electoral College is not just obsolete, but apparently a fool’s errand. The Democrats, for now, are at the forefront of this thought. But then what can be expected of a group of people who think 16-year-olds…
Paul H. YarbroughMay 30, 2020
Ramblin’ Man - Allman Bros https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1xjl00sbao This was the biggest hit for the Allman Brothers and it led Lynyrd Skynyrd to Sweet Home Alabama. Every Southern rock outfit wanted to recreate the magic of Ramblin’ Man. The tune was written by Dickey Betts and was one of the last AB songs to feature Berry Oakley on bass. Homesick – Atlanta…
Brion McClanahanMay 29, 2020
A series by Clyde Wilson RICHARD HENRY WILDE (1789--1847) of Georgia gave up a successful career as lawyer and Congressman to pursue the Muse in Europe. This poem, though perhaps out of fashion, was praised by Byron and was long immensely popular in the English-speaking world. The Yankee black-face minstrel show impresario Stephen Foster "appropriated" some of the lines and…
Clyde WilsonMay 28, 2020
Watching events unfold as the non-pandemic/pandemic worked its way across the fruited plain has been an eye-opening experience. For those of us who have been warning Americans that the Constitution is nothing but a paper barricade against tyranny, we are vindicated—but this is not a source of joy. Many years ago, I had a good friend who loved cigarettes and…
Walter D. (Donnie) KennedyMay 27, 2020
Part of the blood that flows through the veins of the Southern ethnos is French blood, both of the high-born that settled in places like New Orleans and the plainer folk like the Cajuns of Acadiana and the Huguenots of South Carolina. This being so, and it also being the case that all true sons and daughters of the South…
Walt GarlingtonMay 26, 2020
Should it be asked, why then build this monument? The answer is, they do not need it, but posterity may. It is not their reward, but our debt. - Jefferson Davis So said the former President of the Confederate States in a letter regretfully turning down an invitation to speak at the laying of the cornerstone for the Confederate Monument…
Shane AndersonMay 25, 2020
Once upon a time, somewhere near here, there were thirteen sturdy proprietors. They lived within haling distance of one another and things weren’t so bad. There was a fourteenth proprietor as well, a rascally fellow called Vermotte, but no one liked him or visited him. Anyway, a couple of these householders got a bad case of Condo-maniacal Vision and began…
Joseph R. StrombergMay 22, 2020
A series by Clyde Wilson WASHINGTON ALLSTON (1779--1843) of South Carolina was one of the most important of early American painters. The first two poems were written in response to his first viewing of major artistic works in Italy. On a Falling Group in the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, in the Cappella Sistina How vast how dread, o'erwhelming, is…
Clyde WilsonMay 21, 2020
People remember Missouri as a Union rather than a Confederate state. Even those who are not offended by the memory of the Confederacy are either unaware Missouri seceded from the Union or refuse to recognize Missouri’s secession because it was not done “properly.” Considering the attitudes and underhanded politics common in the 1860s, what exactly does proper mean? When most…
Jason WelchMay 20, 2020
A review of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties (Simon and Schuster, 2020) by Christopher Caldwell In his recently (2020) published book The Age of Entitlement, Christopher Caldwell, a northeast “intellectual” boldly proclaimed something that few Southerners would dare to say. He declares that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created, “a rival constitution, with which the original…
James Ronald KennedyMay 19, 2020
When the sick brain with crazy skill Weaves fantasies of woe and ill. Returning nostalgically for a moment to the presidential debacle—excuse me, "campaign”—of 2003-4, let us recall the headline on the front page of the Nov. 5, 2003 Washington Post which read, "Rivals Demand Dean Apology." An apology, that is, for a remark made by the then…
Jonathan ChavesMay 18, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 11-15, 2020 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition, Southern literature, Southern music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-217
Brion McClanahanMay 17, 2020
Hot 'Lanta - Allman Brothers Band https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWSoo3bLhIc The typical standard jazz composition that would be played by Miles Davis or John Coltrane is exactly the same type of composition as “Hot ‘Lanta.” It begins with the melody (which is repeated), moves into a section where everyone takes turns improvising (Duane Allman melts off your face), and then concludes with a…
Tom DanielMay 15, 2020
A series by Clyde Wilson FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1779-1843) of Maryland. The story is well known how Key composed "The Star-Spangled Banner" after he witnessed the repulse of the British attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbour in 1814. It casts an interesting light on the official U.S. national anthem when one notes that Key's grandson, Frank Key Howard, was…
Clyde WilsonMay 14, 2020
The question before us, ‘how did the writings of Blackstone influence American political philosophy, and what evidence for this influence is seen in Tocqueville's observations of American political life?’ is perhaps best quantified with qualifiers such as influence ‘upon whom’, ‘for how long’, ‘to what extent’. If we accept a genealogy of ideas from Blackstone’s conception of positive law reinforcing…
Barry ClarkMay 13, 2020
Presbyterianism has a rich legacy in American history. The Presbyterian church was founded in Scotland by John Knox (d. 1572), a disciple of John Calvin. Along with the Dutch Reformed and New England Puritans, the Presbyterians brought Reformed theology to the New World. Scottish and Irish immigrants introduced Presbyterianism to the American colonies in the 18th century, and the first…
Zachary GarrisMay 12, 2020
Allen Mendenhall interviews John Shelton Reed. AM: John, I really appreciate this interview. Your latest book is Mixing It Up: A South-Watcher’s Miscellany. I noticed that you dedicated the book to Beverly Jarrett Mills. She was helpful to me over recent years, and I wish I had known her much earlier and far longer. I sense that she and others, like…
Allen MendenhallMay 11, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute May 4-8, 2020 Topics: Southern culture, Southern literature, Southern music, Confederate States Constitution, Neoconservatives https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-216
Brion McClanahanMay 9, 2020
A series by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Loan Me a Dime - Boz Scaggs Boz Scaggs rose to prominence after teaming with Steve Miller in the late 1960s on his first two albums. That led to a record contract and a date with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section in Florence, Alabama in 1969. He knew where to…
Brion McClanahanMay 8, 2020
A series by Clyde Wilson Homage to Revolutionary Heroes DOLLEY PAYNE MADISON (1768—1849) was the wife of President James Madison. Lafayette Born, nurtured, wedded, prized, within the pale Of peers and princes, high in camp---at court--- He hears, in joyous youth, a wild report,Swelling the murmurs of the Western gale,Of a young people struggling to be free! Straight quitting…
Clyde WilsonMay 7, 2020
The Confederacy never organized a Supreme Court because her founders generally interpreted the U. S. Constitution strictly. Over the years they had seen that the U. S. Supreme Court tended to make rulings, and assume jurisdictions, that strengthened and enlarged the Federal Government. As a component of that Government they realized that the Court had a natural tendency to increase its authority.…
Philip LeighMay 6, 2020
A review of Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Friends (Convergent Books, 2019) edited by Benjamin Alexander. One of the more agreeable and important books about literature to emerge recently is Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends, edited by Benjamin Alexander who recently retired from teaching literature…
Henry T. Edmonson IIIMay 5, 2020
The political structure in the United States is often portrayed by the media and its guests via a histrionic history of federalism. However, it seems, no historian or commentator can speak without referencing Southern (and only Southern) racism. And history is always linked, era to era, as Conservative vs Liberal vs Southern. It is often linked as Republican versus Democrats…
Paul H. YarbroughMay 4, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 27 - May 1, 2020 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Yankees, Southern tradition, Southern literature, Southern music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-215
Brion McClanahanMay 2, 2020
A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Good Time Feelin' - Dickey Betts Betts’s solo projects were as good (if not better) than most Allman Brothers albums post Duane Allman. “Good Time Feelin’” is a blistering blues rock tune, and this live version is better than any studio recording of Betts and Great Southern. “I can’t…
Brion McClanahanMay 1, 2020
A Series by Clyde Wilson UNKNOWN WRITER, 1781 The Battle of King’s Mountain 'T was on a pleasant mountainThe Tory heathens lay,With a doughty major at their head,One Forguson, they say.Cornwallis had detach'd himA-thieving for to go,And catch the Carolina men,Or bring the rebels low.The scamp had rang'd the countryIn search of royal aid,And with his owls, perched on high,He…
Clyde WilsonApril 30, 2020
Especially in unsettling times, it is helpful for Christians to examine the lives of faithful saints of old, who finished their race well. One brother and father in the faith, today perhaps remembered in Baptist circles and in North Carolina, was Elder Martin Ross. As a young man, Ross served as a soldier in the Continental Army in the war…
Forrest L. MarionApril 29, 2020
A Review of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2019) by Elizabeth R. Varon. Yankee arrogance may be the most dangerous malady on the planet. “Communist engineering” is deadly, to be sure. Before Wuhan, there was Chernobyl, Sverdlovsk, and the Great Leap Forward. But whereas communism has a shelf life, Yankee arrogance never…
Jason MorganApril 28, 2020
Over a century and a half has passed since Confederate States General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant. Yet, despite surrender by one and victory by the other, controversy continues regarding which man better represents the virtues of honor, duty, and American patriotism. For those who believe that might makes right, then…
James Ronald KennedyApril 27, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 20-24, 2020 Topics: John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Political Correctness, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-214
Brion McClanahanApril 25, 2020
A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Goin' Down Slow - Duane Allman When Duane Allman died in 1971, the world lost one of the best slide guitar players in the history of recorded music. By this point, Allman had become famous as part of his Allman Brother Band, but his influence on American music began…
Brion McClanahanApril 24, 2020
EBENEZER COOKE (fl. ca. l 680s--1730s?) of Maryland is a major figure in Colonial American literature. He is best known for the long satirical poem “The Sot-Weed Factor.” (The sot-weed is tobacco, mainstay of the Southern and American economy in the colonial period, and the factor is a figure long familiar in the South---the merchant who sold and exported the…
Clyde WilsonApril 23, 2020
A review of In Defense of Andrew Jackson (Regnery History, 2018) by Bradley J. Birzer I was recently in Nashville, Tennessee, with family, and took the opportunity to visit Andrew Jackson’s home-turned-museum, “The Hermitage.” I have to admit, it was amusing for me to hear the historians whom were interviewed by the museum become outright “historicists” (as the Straussians/Jaffaites would…
James Rutledge RoeschApril 21, 2020
Union and liberty are not two terms most people associate with John C. Calhoun, a figure often linked exclusively with secession and slavery. But a reading of Liberty Fund’s 1992 Union and Liberty, a single-volume collection of Calhoun’s writings and speeches edited by the late Ross M. Lence, reveals a mind most intently focused on investigating and assessing the origins…
John GroveApril 20, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 13-17, 2020 Topics: Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Reconciliation, Southern Poetry, Southern Rock https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/podcast-episode-213
Brion McClanahanApril 18, 2020
A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Blood in the Water - The Jompson Brothers Before Chris Stapleton became Grammy Award winner Chris Stapleton, he was a singer/songwriter from Kentucky who wrote several hits for other musicians and kicked around Nashville as a part of other bands, including the bluegrass outfit The Steeldrivers, a nod to…
Brion McClanahanApril 17, 2020
JOHN COTTON (fl. 1660s – 1720s) was an early settler of Virginia, never to be confused with the awful Cotton family of Massachusetts. In 1814 an anonymous poem about Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (1676) was found among some old mss. and subsequently published. It was long regarded as an anonymous treasure of American colonial literature. Twentieth-century poet and critic Louis…
Clyde WilsonApril 16, 2020
An outlook is bleak when nothing worse can be said than the truth. To this end, there is no 'sugar-coating' the elements of obliteration, subjugation, necrosis and above all, 'Hatred', in all its ugly forms, (physical, racial, social, ad infinitum), that were part of the Civil War/War Between the States', (CW/WBTS), conduct and legacy. That is beyond dispute and this…
Gerald LefurgyApril 15, 2020
A review of Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian (Regnery History, 2012) by Edward Bonekemper, III. I don’t think a person of sound mind and impartial understanding of the so-called Civil War could get past the second paragraph of the introduction of Edward H. Bonekemper III’s book Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian without realizing that…
Joe WolvertonApril 14, 2020
The Commandant of the Marine Corps has decreed that all symbols of the Confederacy be removed from Marine Corps bases. Even, at least, the General class of officers in the Marine Corps has caved to political correctness. Every time there is a soldier with an eyepatch or missing limb put before the cameras, one’s heart and respect go out to…
Paul H. YarbroughApril 13, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 6-10, 2020 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, War for Southern Independence https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-212
Brion McClanahanApril 11, 2020
A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Almost everyone in the United States is quarantined, and while many are working from home, it seems that most people have a bit more time on their hands. What should you be listening to during the COVID apocalypse? Southern music, of course, and if you are a rock fan,…
Brion McClanahanApril 10, 2020
A Series By Clyde Wilson If the South would’ve won, we’d’ve had it made." --Hank Williams, Jr., of Alabama “The South’s gonna do it again."--Charlie Daniels of North Carolina 1 INTRODUCTION This collection is made, not from the viewpoint of a critic of literature, but that of a student of history interested in how the experiences of the Southern people…
Clyde WilsonApril 9, 2020
Literature, be it works of fact or fiction, might well be described as a window through which the reader is invited to view the world as the author chooses to see it. Between fact and fiction though there is a third world in which the writer is granted literary license to transform the two other worlds into the fantastic realm…
John MarquardtApril 8, 2020
A review of The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee (Forge Books, 2006) by Thomas Fleming Fleming uses this 2006 fictional courtroom drama to formulate arguments for his 2013 Disease in the Public Mind non-fiction book identifying the causes of the Civil War. The story is set in early June 1865 when Robert E. Lee is secretly tried by a military commission…
Philip LeighApril 7, 2020
I recently wrote that “our South still exists, and not only in our own hearts; dotted throughout the former Confederacy lie pockets of that Edenic idyll our ancestors fought so bitterly to preserve.” On a spring drive from Columbia, South Carolina to Bentonville, Arkansas through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, God intervened to show me just such a place. As I…
Neil KumarApril 6, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 30 - April 3, 2020 Topics: Southern Tradition, Segregation, Progressivism, Richard Weaver https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-211
Brion McClanahanApril 4, 2020
The government is not going to rescue all the businesses that go under as a result of the Corvid-19 virus panic. It doesn’t matter how much money is printed, printed money is not real, It is a fiction of the mind insofar as legal tender. The only business survivors will be the giants, Wal Mart, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Most of…
Paul H. YarbroughApril 3, 2020
In the beginning, there was no segregation, certainly not in the sense that we commonly use that term today. Consider in evidence our Southern distinctiveness, which is rooted in a folk culture compounded of black and white influences: our modes of speech; our rich cuisines and rites of conviviality; our varied and original musicality; our arts and crafts; our story-telling…
Jack TrotterApril 1, 2020
A review of Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) by Bradley C.S. Watson At the height of the Progressive Movement in 1914, William P. Merrill published a poem he called “The Day of the People Is Dawning.” The liberal Presbyterian minister and ally of Andrew Carnegie’s world peace movement bid farewell to…
Richard M. GambleMarch 31, 2020
In Ideas Have Consequences (1948), Richard Weaver described comfort as the god of modern man. Even in our post-modern times, mass man continues to kneel at the altar of comfort though he occasionally does obeisance to lesser gods such as equality and wokeness. Weaver’s writings challenged man to exchange the ease promised by technological advancement for a strenuous and romantic…
William J. WatkinsMarch 30, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 23-27, 2020 Topics: Political Correctness, the Southern Tradition, Southern Film https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-210
Brion McClanahanMarch 28, 2020
From Dylann Roof to Harvey Weinstein Many of us predicted it. The war on American monuments and memorials wouldn’t stop with just stop with Confederate ones. It wasn’t hard to figure out, but the answer was always, ‘yeah, but they’re not going after Northern “civil war” monuments. And of course we said, “what about the 54th MA Infantry monument” which…
Lola SanchezMarch 27, 2020
21. Faulkner in Film Southern viewers must naturally be interested in what Hollywood has done with America’s greatest 20th century writer, William Faulkner of Mississippi. **Intruder in the Dust (1949). Perhaps the most faithful of all Faulkner’s work on film, and a realistic portrayal of Southern life in the early 20th century. An old lady (Elizabeth Patterson) and two boys,…
Clyde WilsonMarch 26, 2020
The first thing I learned about Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest was that he had twenty-nine horses shot out from under him in battle; in my fifth-grade social studies class, I remember thinking to myself that the most dangerous thing one could be was one of Forrest’s horses. The unconquerable Tennessean was bold, severe, and uncompromising in the discharge of his…
Neil KumarMarch 25, 2020
A review of Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) by Susan Neiman Susan Neiman is a philosopher who has written well-regarded books on Kant and on the problem of evil. Last year she published a book with an unusual title: Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. Neiman…
David GordonMarch 24, 2020
“Where you gonna be when half of California riots? Where you gonna run to when the lights go out? I won’t be hangin’ out in California, I won’t try it. Buddy I’ll be up and headed South.” Jamey Johnson The Wuhan virus has sparked a renewed interest in the Southern tradition. No one is saying that, but it’s true. Donald…
Brion McClanahanMarch 23, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 16-20, 2020 Topics: Political Correctness, John C. Calhoun, Agrarianism, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-209
Brion McClanahanMarch 21, 2020
Estimates of the number of South Vietnamese civilian casualties during the U.S. war in Vietnam vary. A U.S. Dept. of Defense estimate put the numbers at 1.2 million, including 195,000 killed. In 1975, a U.S. Senate sub-committee put the total at 1.4 million casualties, including 415,000 killed. The majority of those killed were women and children. In 1995, the Vietnamese…
Norman BlackMarch 20, 2020
19. Our Speech The experts will tell you that there is more than one Southern accent. This is true, but they all gather together as a marker of Southern that has been widely recognised for a long time---like barbecue. For Hollywood a Southern accent usually is outre’, a sign of ignorance or villainy as discussed in preceding chapters. On the…
Clyde WilsonMarch 19, 2020
John C. Calhoun was the last eloquent political philosopher to stand against the ideology and intentions of the Federalists. He was the last to stand firmly in the halls of the Senate and articulate exactly what it would mean to allow power to become centralized under an unconstrained federal government. He died in 1850. His words are ignored and personage…
Barry ClarkMarch 18, 2020
A review of The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot (Ignatius Press, 2014), by Jonathan Witt and Jay W. Richards. Russell Kirk often said that his true formation as a conservative had more to do with reading the novels of Sir Walter Scott than anything else. We also know from James Kibler’s work,…
Garrett AgajanianMarch 17, 2020
As explained yesterday, Washington Post reporter Courtland Milloy maligned my “Defending Confederate Monuments” speech presented on Lee-Jackson Day in Lexington, Virginia. He asked that I send him a copy while we were sitting together in the front audience row during the preliminaries. I emailed it before I took the podium. After my speech he thanked me and said, “I will be in touch.” But…
Philip LeighMarch 16, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 9-13, 2020 Topics: The Lost Cause Myth, Southern Film, Righteous Cause Mythology https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-208
Brion McClanahanMarch 14, 2020
Just as the Earth revolves on its axis each day and travels around the Sun in an equally regular pattern, so has world history tended to be cyclical in nature throughout the centuries, with many episodes seemingly being repeated countless times over. In many cases the basic cause behind such recurring cataclysmic events as war, radical changes in political systems…
John MarquardtMarch 13, 2020
18. World War II and Other Wars “To deliver examples to posterity, and to regulate the opinion of future times, is no slight or trivial undertaking; nor is it easy to commit more atrocious treason against the great republic of humanity, than by falsifying its records and misguiding its decrees.” –Dr. Samuel Johnson American wars are started by bankers and…
Clyde WilsonMarch 12, 2020
Daniel Baker (1791-1857) is all but forgotten today, but in the first half of the nineteenth century this Presbyterian minister was a well-known and profoundly influential evangelist in America. Born in Midway, Georgia, he was educated at Hampden Sydney College in Virginia and at Princeton. He held several pastorates, including one in Savannah, Georgia, but spent most of his life…
Karen StokesMarch 11, 2020
A review of The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won (Regnery History, 2015 ) by Edward Bonekemper The late Edward H. Bonekemper III had a bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College and a master's degree in American history from Old Dominion University. He also had a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. He retired…
John C. WhatleyMarch 10, 2020
The common impression about the Klan is that it is a Southern anti-Black White Supremacist group and that the group’s characteristics and methods have been consistent since its inception. As anyone with more than a superficial knowledge of history knows, this is far from true, yet modern historians and commentators, many of the neo-conservative variety, seemingly purposely perpetuate these myths. …
James (Jim) PedersonMarch 9, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 2-6, 2020 Topics: Secession, Southern Tradition, Agrariansim, Conservation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-207
Brion McClanahanMarch 8, 2020
Bernie Sanders wants to bring back slavery. This raises the question: can he have the 13th Amendment repealed? Who says that it hasn’t already been repealed? Bernie says, among other Communistic pronouncements, that “health care is a right.” Well, if that is so, then someone: doctor, nurse, medic, etc must provide it. That is unless Bernie, the Commie, means that…
Paul H. YarbroughMarch 6, 2020
16. EXECRABLES. The Worst Movies about the South: A Small Selection The competition here is fierce. We can only provide a sample of some of the worst. A few examples out of a vast field, many of them presenting a ludicrously distorted South. (X) The Southerner (1945). This movie was made by a famous French director while a refugee in…
Clyde WilsonMarch 5, 2020
A review of Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence (ISI Books, 1999) edited by Herbert Agar and Allen Tate In graduate school, I was assigned by the resident “New South” historian I’ll Take My Stand by Twelve Southerners as my final paper. I eagerly accepted the project. This was in my back-yard, so to speak. I had read…
Brion McClanahanMarch 3, 2020
I started my political journey on what I thought to be the Left. Books like Klein’s The Shock Doctrine resonated with me, as did films like American Beauty and Revolutionary Road. My favorite childhood films were Atlantis and The Iron Giant. All of these works are part of a long line of salient critiques of the deracinated culture of consumption…
Neil KumarMarch 2, 2020
Statues of heroes are erected to remind us of our past, of their noble deeds, to honour them, and to inspire us. These men served out of a sense of civic duty. They answered the call of their community or state, used their skills and knowledge to serve their fellow citizens, and returned home to honest toil. Today, greed and…
Brett MoffattFebruary 28, 2020
15. Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Southerners: Films for the Family The major movie stars of the 1930s through the 1970s came from the East and Midwest. Nevertheless, there was a strong presence of native Southerners in the top ranks: Oliver Hardy, Ava Gardner, Randolph Scott, Joseph Cotten, Jeffrey Hunter, Miriam Hopkins, John Payne (an almost forgotten Virginian star of film…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 27, 2020
Today there is a frenzied effort to tear down memorials to the Confederate dead. If you think "frenzied" is too strong a word, take a look at video of the crowds in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who resembled (ironically) a lynch mob as they threw ropes around a metal soldier and dragged it to the ground, all the…
Shane AndersonFebruary 26, 2020
A Review of Old Times There Should Not Be Forgotten (Shotwell Publishing, 2020) by Leslie R. Tucker If I were to classify my own regional sense of identity, I would say I am a Tennessean born and bred first; second, a North Carolinian by adoption; third, a Southerner, and finally, an American. Like Leslie Tucker, I am disturbed by the…
Michael PottsFebruary 25, 2020
Several months ago, I attended a speech given by Paul Gramling, the commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to the Northeast Louisiana Brigade of the SCV at the Lieutenant Elijah H. Ward Camp in Farmerville, Louisiana. In his oration, Mr. Gramling declared that the hoopla about removing the Confederate monuments was not really about the Confederate monuments. “We are…
Samuel W. MitchamFebruary 24, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Feb 17-21, 2020 Topics: Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-206
Brion McClanahanFebruary 22, 2020
It was Thursday, Christmas day of 1862, and the guns at Fredericksburg had fallen silent just ten days before with over ten thousand Union soldiers of the Army of the Potomac and half that number of Confederates from the Army of Northern Virginia lying dead or wounded beyond the city. That night, a twenty-one year old cannoneer from Richmond, Lieutenant…
John MarquardtFebruary 21, 2020
12. Southerners in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries **The Yearling (1946). This is an all-time favourite about family life on the Florida frontier and a troublesome pet deer. Seldom noticed is that the father, Gregory Peck, is a former Confederate soldier. The film is based on the novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Another fine Rawlings book about her…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 20, 2020
A review of How to Study History When Seeking Truthfulness and Understanding: Lessons Learned from Outside Academia by Howard Ray White Howard White has written a dozen or so highly original books on the War Between the States (Bloodstains, The C.S.A. Trilogy, and others). In the midst of a very successful career as a chemical engineer, he was drawn to the…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 18, 2020
Who was the greatest president in American history? Ask this question to a group of people who are cynical of the imperial presidency and at least one person will answer William Henry Harrison, the man who died one month after taking office. Who could be better than a president who impacted the office in such a minimal way and who…
Brion McClanahanFebruary 17, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 10-14, 2020 Topics: Secession, Immigration, Southern Film https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-205
Brion McClanahanFebruary 15, 2020
Fear not. Dixie lights are merely hiding under a bushel, as it says in the song we teach our children in Sunday School. Grass roots are sprouting. “Woke” tries to get her toe in the door, but in small Southern towns memories and traditions are strong. Here are five examples. In my small Southern town, the first sentence of the…
Barbara LawterFebruary 14, 2020
11. Post-bellum and Westerns There are two interesting, important, and little noticed features of films about the South in the period after the War for Southern Independence. First, until recent times they generally portray the mainstream view of “Reconstruction” as corrupt and oppressive that prevailed before the Marxist coup in American history writing. Carpetbaggers are shown as vicious, greedy, and…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 13, 2020
The American story is a story of secession, or better still secessions. The first permanent settlements of Europeans in North America were the result of a series of secessions from primarily the British Isles. Religious motive, political persecution, economic distress all play their part in impelling movement from the homeland into a new world, and it does so with a…
John DevannyFebruary 12, 2020
A review of Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered (ISI Books, 2006) by Joseph Pearce. There’s not too much that’s actually wrong about this book, other than it proves itself totally unnecessary. Obviously from the title you know that it is based on Fritz Schumacher’s great classic of 1973, and it does a lot of quoting from…
Kirkpatrick SaleFebruary 11, 2020
On January 21st Washington Post reporter Courtland Milloy wrote an article about my “Defending Confederate Monuments” speech at the January18th Lee-Jackson Day in Lexington, Virginia. His “Lee-Jackson Day with a bit of history and context” article portrays me unfairly. Today’s post responds to one Milloy comment excerpted below: Before giving his keynote speech, Civil War book author Phil Leigh made an offhand remark discounting the role of…
Philip LeighFebruary 10, 2020
Recent Comments