Review Posts

Grant a Better General Than Lee? No.

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 Wolverton
April 14, 2020
Blog

No Longer Looking for a Few Good (Southern) Men

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. Yarbrough
April 13, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 212

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 McClanahan
April 11, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part I

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 McClanahan
April 10, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part I

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 Wilson
April 9, 2020
Blog

The South in Arms…What Might Have Been

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 Marquardt
April 8, 2020
Review Posts

Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee

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 Leigh
April 7, 2020
Blog

The South Lives Yet

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 Kumar
April 6, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 211

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 McClanahan
April 4, 2020
Blog

Never Trumpers Like Joe Biden and Hate the South

Thoughtful Southerners of a conservative and traditional bent have known since the 1980s that the old Conservative Movement which began back in the 1950s with the publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, and then with the inauguration of William F. Buckley’s National Review, has no room for them, no room for their writers (unless those authors pass a rigorous…
Boyd Cathey
April 2, 2020
Blog

The Strange Career of Segregation

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 Trotter
April 1, 2020
Review Posts

Roots of a Revolutionary Ideology

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. Gamble
March 31, 2020
Blog

Richard Weaver, the Coronavirus, and the Strenuous Life

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. Watkins
March 30, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 210

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 McClanahan
March 28, 2020
Blog

#TakeEmDown Comes to Yankeetown

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 Sanchez
March 27, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part XV

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 Wilson
March 26, 2020
Blog

The Duty of the Hour

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 Kumar
March 25, 2020
Review Posts

Individual Responsibility and Guilt

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 Gordon
March 24, 2020
Blog

Can the Southern Tradition Save America?

“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 McClanahan
March 23, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 209

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 McClanahan
March 21, 2020
Blog

Violence Breeds Violence

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 Black
March 20, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part XIV

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 Wilson
March 19, 2020
Blog

Federalists Still Attack Calhoun

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 Clark
March 18, 2020
Review Posts

Kentucky Hobbits

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 Agajanian
March 17, 2020
Blog

All the Fake News That’s Fit to Print

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 Leigh
March 16, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 208

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 McClanahan
March 14, 2020
Blog

The Economy, Stupid

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 Marquardt
March 13, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part XIII

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 Wilson
March 12, 2020
Blog

A Forgotten Spiritual Hero

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 Stokes
March 11, 2020
Review Posts

The Myth of the Lost Cause

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. Whatley
March 10, 2020
Blog

A Skeleton in the Yankee Progressive Closet

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) Pederson
March 9, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 207

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 McClanahan
March 8, 2020
Blog

Bernie Sanders and Simon Legree: Real and Imaginary

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. Yarbrough
March 6, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part XII

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 Wilson
March 5, 2020
Review Posts

A Mass for the Resurrection

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 McClanahan
March 3, 2020
Blog

An Environmental Right

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 Kumar
March 2, 2020
Blog

Statues in Peril

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 Moffatt
February 28, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide Part XI

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 Wilson
February 27, 2020
Blog

To Guard the Precious Dust of the Martyred Dead

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 Anderson
February 26, 2020
Review Posts

The Recovery of History

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 Potts
February 25, 2020
Blog

Low Hanging Fruit

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. Mitcham
February 24, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 206

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 McClanahan
February 22, 2020
Blog

Confederate Christmas

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 Marquardt
February 21, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part X

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 Wilson
February 20, 2020
Review Posts

How to Study History

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 Wilson
February 18, 2020
Blog

Reconsidering William Henry Harrison

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 McClanahan
February 17, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 205

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 McClanahan
February 15, 2020
Blog

Finding Dixie

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 Lawter
February 14, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part IX

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 Wilson
February 13, 2020
Blog

Secession and Its Discontents

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 Devanny
February 12, 2020
Review Posts

Small is Still Beautiful

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 Sale
February 11, 2020
Blog

The Washington Post Publishes Fake News

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 Leigh
February 10, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 204

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 3-7, 2020 Topics: Two Americas, Southern tradition, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-204
Brion McClanahan
February 8, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part VIII

10. Spielberg’s  Lincoln (X)  Spielberg’s Lincoln.   Life is short.  Although I am a devoted   if amateur student of Hollywood’s treatment of the great American War of 1861-65, I intended to spare myself the ordeal of Spielberg’s Lincoln.   However, the honoured editor of America’s bravest and best journal (Tom Fleming of Chronicles) instructed me to go.  I have always found such…
Clyde Wilson
February 7, 2020
Blog

If You Can’t Blame the Confederacy, Secede!

American political theater has become the most entertaining show in town. Trump refuses to shake hands and Pelosi rips up his script. This is red meat for the duly indoctrinated in the mainstream political parties, but in case you thought that Trump's impeachment and subsequent acquittal would calm the waters and draw the final curtain on a five-month Greek comedy,…
Brion McClanahan
February 6, 2020
Review Posts

Two Visions of America

A review of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Encounter Books, 2019) by Wilfred M. McClay. Two Visions of America What is America? If America is a place, then it will have a history like other places. People will do things, those things will have consequences, other people will be pleased or embittered or indifferent, and…
Jason Morgan
February 4, 2020
Blog

Silent Sam and Inconvenient History

All across the Southland today efforts have been mounted by “woke” social justice warriors—in most cases spearheaded by violent and destructive mobs composed of radicalized Millennials—to tear down or at least remove all monuments to Confederate veterans. But removing monuments to those who fought and died in 1861-1865 is just a first step in a broad national effort, a national…
Boyd Cathey
February 3, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 203

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Jan 27-31, 2020 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, the War, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-203
Brion McClanahan
February 1, 2020
Blog

Crisis of Conservative Making

The Harvard Law Review has published a proposal for supposedly enhancing a better democracy than that which the Federal (not really) government now oversees. The proposal has no official name but is born, it would appear, from the same milieu as the French Revolution i.e, power to the people—that is, the mob. Harvard Review proposes what effectively amounts to a…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 31, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part VII

9. Confederate Hollywood  From the beginnings to rather recent times portrayals of Confederates have been a mainstay of American cinema.  After all, the Confederacy is a rather large and interesting slice of American history.  Given the virulent malice today against everything Confederate, it might surprise many folks to see that during Hollywood’s Golden Age an astounding number of major stars…
Clyde Wilson
January 30, 2020
Blog

Rebuilding from the Rubble

‘ . . . you know onlyA heap of broken images . . .’--T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land I.  Destruction The description of the South as a land that has fallen into desolation is familiar to many.  Sometimes this historical reality is presented to us in unfamiliar ways, however.  For instance, in his short story ‘Jericho, Jericho, Jericho’, originally…
Walt Garlington
January 29, 2020
Review Posts

The Craggy Hill of Slavery

A review of It Wasn't About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Regnery History, 2020) by Samuel Mitcham On a huge hill, Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will Reach her, about must and about must go, And what the hill’s suddenness resists, win so. John Donne, Satire III As John Donne so correctly informs…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
January 28, 2020
Blog

Walker Percy’s Homage to Robert E. Lee

The novelist Walker Percy was inescapably Southern by virtually any measure. Born May 28, 1916 in Birmingham, he lived briefly in Athens, Georgia following the death of this father, grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, and lived most of his adult life in Louisiana, in New Orleans and Covington. Both the culture into which he was born, and the fatherly—as well…
Thomas Hubert
January 27, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 202

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Jan 20-24, 2020 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Political Correctness, the War, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-202
Brion McClanahan
January 25, 2020
Blog

PBS’s Poisonous Reconstruction Series

Caught a tweet tonight from Professor Henry Louis Gates, the Executive Producer of this PBS mini-series on "Reconstruction." He was jubilant that the series had won a Columbia/Dupont Award for Journalism. I checked out the other 2020 Award winners: NPR, CNN, Nation Magazine. All leftist outlets. NPR is high quality. Nation, depends on the writer. CNN is pretty worthless--Clinton News…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
January 24, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part VI

8. The War for Southern Independence (continued): Fantasy and Fraud Scorcese’s Gangs of New York (2002) Martin Scorcese, in an interview, candidly described his Gangsof New York, as an “opera.”  He had been asked whether the event s portrayed were true to history.  I took his reply to mean that the events of the movie were selected and organized for…
Clyde Wilson
January 23, 2020
Blog

Charge! and Remember Jackson

Lieutenant-General Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson was the greatest martyr of our Cause, the first icon of the War for Southern Independence. He was the archetypal Christian soldier; there is infinite wisdom to be gleaned from his life. In death, he has ascended to the status of myth; even in life, as a chaplain once expressed, “Nobody seemed to understand him…when…
Neil Kumar
January 22, 2020
Review Posts

Two Lees

A review of Robert E. Lee at War: Hope Arises from Despair (Legion of Honor Publishing, 2017) by Scott Bowden and The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won (Regnery History, 2015) by Edward H. Bonekemper III. Did Robert E. Lee lose the War for the South? If you believe…
Brion McClanahan
January 21, 2020
Blog

Hindsight Is Not Necessarily 20/20

“If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous ‘wisdom’of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.” Mark Twain “The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the…
Ben Jones
January 20, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 201

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 13-17, 2020 Topics: Southern culture, Southern history, Southern tradition, Southern literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-201
Brion McClanahan
January 18, 2020
Blog

The Cyber Rebel

William Gibson surprises people when they meet him. The writer who coined the terms “cyberspace” and “megacorp,” whose dystopian novels re-invented science fiction in the 80s, and was lauded in The Guardian (UK) as “the most important novelist of the past two decades,” greets people with a slow, easygoing Southern drawl – not the voice one would expect from a…
Mike C. Tuggle
January 17, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part V

Symbols Used ** Indicates one of the more than 100 most recommended films.  The order in which they appear does not reflect any ranking, only the convenience of discussion (T)   Tolerable but not among the most highly recommended (X)   Execrable.  Avoid at all costs  7. The War for Southern Independence (continued):  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly **Searching for…
Clyde Wilson
January 16, 2020
Blog

Education and the South

Theories of education in any land are never easily divorced from the prevailing ideas regarding civics and economics. Education's function, particularly toward the young, will become merely to render them fit to partake in the civic and economic institutions of a nation. Thus its methods and goals will be shaped by these spheres. The end result is a reciprocal relationship…
Robert Hoyle
January 15, 2020
Review Posts

An Aesthetic Feast

A review of An Aesthetic Education and Other Stories (Green Altar Books, 2019) by Catharine Savage Brosman One of the most felicitous occurrences in literature is when a first-rate poet turns his or her talents to the writing of short fiction.  Among those who have done so, turning out first-rate stories, have been William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop,…
Randall Ivey
January 14, 2020
Blog

As the Year 2020 Begins–Southerners Take Stock

As 2020 commences it is perhaps appropriate that we take stock—that we take a look globally at just where we are, politically, culturally, religiously. All our basic and fundamental social institutions are under tremendous stress, if not outright attack, not just legally and politically, but far more insidiously, in how they are defined and how they affect us. Our very…
Boyd Cathey
January 13, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 200

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Jan 6-10, 2020 Topics: Political Correctness, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Impeachment https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-200
Brion McClanahan
January 11, 2020
Blog

Lincoln v. Trump

Not that long ago, it seems, Congressional Democrats were calling the Constitution an outdated impediment to “smart,” progressive government, but lately they are professing their high regard for the founding document and its framers.  “Solemn” and “prayerful,” they feign a reluctance to impeach Donald Trump while conducting a ruthless campaign to disenfranchise the 63 million people who voted for him…
J.L. Bennett
January 10, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part IV

Symbols Used ** Indicates one of the more than 100 most recommended films.  The order in which they appear does not reflect any ranking, only the convenience of discussion (T)   Tolerable but not among the most highly recommended (X)   Execrable.  Avoid at all costs  6. The War for Southern Independence **Gone with the Wind  (1939). What to say about this…
Clyde Wilson
January 9, 2020
Blog

The Ghosts of Impeachment Past

If one bothered to turn back the pages of history it should become quite evident that the 1868 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson bears a most eerie resemblance to the current two-count indictment that has been drawn up against President Trump by the Judiciary Committee of the present House of Representatives. A century and a half ago it was the…
John Marquardt
January 8, 2020
Review Posts

The First Campaign

A review of Lee vs. McClellan, The First Campaign (Regnery Publishing, 2010) by Clayton R. Newell. The title of this work is misleading, since Robert E. Lee never fielded troops against George B. McClellan. In fact, they never met on the battlefields, as McClellan had a unified command structure and ordered his troops about while Lee had to contend with…
John C. Whatley
January 7, 2020
Blog

The Left’s March Through Southern Institutions

A photograph of the University of Mississippi Majorettes graced the cover of the September 24, 1962, issue of the popular national magazine, Sports Illustrated. This national magazine thought nothing of showing college majorettes wearing gray, quasi Confederate, uniforms while carrying numerous Confederate Battle flags. In 1964 the Louisiana State Archives in conjunction with the State Superintendent of Public Education and…
James Ronald Kennedy
January 6, 2020
Review Posts

Christmas

How grace this hallowed day? Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire, Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire Round which the children play? Alas! for many a moon, That tongueless tower hath cleaved the Sabbath air, Mute as an obelisk of ice, aglare Beneath an Arctic noon. Shame to the foes that drown Our psalms of worship with…
Henry Timrod
December 24, 2019
Blog

The Culture War Continues

The culture war rages on. And what a war! There seems to be a new outrage almost every day. "Make it Right," a New York organization dedicated to hunting down and removing all Confederate monuments from public space, has as its symbol an image of the statue of Lee taken down by a crane in New Orleans, and the director…
Donald Livingston
December 23, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 199

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 16-23, 2019 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern symbols, Year in Review https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-199
Brion McClanahan
December 21, 2019
Blog

The Land of Lawless Lawyers

The impeachment hearings are good for humor if for nothing else. They bring out the so-called experts who demonstrate that they are anything but experts. Law professor Pamela Karlan, Standford law professor, and Shelia Jackson Lee exchanged expertise on the Constitution and the Founders' concerns prior to writing it. These two experts immediately opened their mouths and demonstrated that sometimes…
Paul H. Yarbrough
December 20, 2019
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part III

5. Spielberg’s Amistad (1997) If Amistad is not yet a household word like ET or Jurassic Park, it soon will be with the power of Steven Spielberg behind it.  (When I started this review awhile back, that was my first sentence, but I may have been wrong.  Late reports indicate the box office is lagging.)  Amistad is really two movies.…
Clyde Wilson
December 19, 2019
Blog

Is Nikki Haley Trying to Back Pedal on the Confederate Flag?

Back in 2015 when Dylan Roof shot those black folks in their church in Charleston, South Carolina no one was quicker to denounce the Confederate flag than the governor of South Carolina, Nimrata Haley. Almost instantaneously she had the Confederate Battle Flag removed from the capital grounds in Columbia, and she said: “I think the more important part is it…
Al Benson
December 18, 2019
Review Posts

Southern Anticolonialism

A review of Burden of Dependency: Colonial Themes in Southern Economic Thought (Johns Hopkins, 1992) by Joseph Persky An Under-Appreciated Book In 1973, the young economist Joseph J. Persky wrote piece in Southern Exposure with a promising title: “The South: A Colony at Home.” He recalls thinking at the time that he was in “some sort of “vanguard.” I read…
Joseph R. Stromberg
December 17, 2019
Blog

Remembering Hero Richard Jewell — Confederate Flag Supporter

I just finished seeing the movie trailer for the upcoming Warner Bros. Pictures film Richard Jewell produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and scheduled for US release on Friday, December 13th, starring actor Paul Walter Hauser as the title character.  Honestly I can't wait to see this film, and feel that it should have been made years ago. At then…
C.W. Roden
December 16, 2019
Blog

Podcast Episode 198

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 9-13, 2019 Topics: Southern music, Southern literature, Southern film, Southern culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-198
Brion McClanahan
December 15, 2019
Blog

Not Just Whistling Dixie

There are few Southern hearts that still fail to skip a beat or two when a military band strikes up “Dixie,” the de facto national anthem of the Confederacy and the song that has undoubtedly become the one most closely associated with the antebellum South.  This, however, was not the case with the creator of that iconic tune, Daniel Emmett,…
John Marquardt
December 13, 2019
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part II

Symbols Used ** Indicates one of the more than 100 most recommended films. The order in which they appear does not reflect any ranking, only the convenience of discussion (T)   Tolerable but not among the most highly recommended (X)   Execrable. Avoid at all costs                                 3. The Colonial and Revolutionary South Colonial and Revolutionary Southern history does not have a…
Clyde Wilson
December 12, 2019
Blog

The Steel Woods

There’s a Southern accentWhere I come from.The young un’s call it country,And the Yankees call it dumb.                      Tom Petty, "Southern Accents" (Covered by The Steel Woods) Southern rock and "outlaw country" are experiencing a renaissance of late. Undoubtedly influenced by the rash of bubble gum pop country from Nashville, this darker and more authentic working class music speaks to Americans…
Brion McClanahan
December 11, 2019
Review Posts

Real Southern Sport

A review of Maxcy Gregg’s Sporting Journals, 1842-1858 (Green Altar Books, 2019) Suzanne Parfitt Johnson, Editor. Foreword by James Everett Kibler, Jr. The exploration of everyday life in a given historical period is often based upon the letters, diaries, and business ledgers and journals of the past.  Historians in the last four to five decades have also incorporated the findings…
John Devanny
December 10, 2019
Blog

Front Porch Braggin’ Rights

My new neighbor Ozzie, who grew up in the Bronx, thinks that the South is a place “without much culture.”  Ozzie acts as if he is an expert on the subject, even though his Southern experience has been confined to living in the D.C. suburbs for a few years before retiring out here to the Blue Ridge Mountains last year.…
Ben Jones
December 9, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 197

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 2-6, 2019 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-197
Brion McClanahan
December 7, 2019
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part I

A man only has room for one oath at a time.  I took an oath to the Confederate States of America.” John Wayne, The Searchers “We are going to hit the Yankees where it’ll hurt him most---his pocketbook.” Van Heflin, The Raid “I’m sure glad I aint a Yankee.” Randoph Scott, Belle Starr “I ain’t never been ‘round no Yankees…
Clyde Wilson
December 5, 2019
Blog

Something of Value

An excerpt from North Carolina author Robert Ruark’s best known novel reads: “If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them.” Ruark grew up in Wilmington where he learned to hunt and fish with his grandfathers in…
Philip Leigh
December 4, 2019
Review Posts

Dross in the Midst of Wheat: Flawed Arguments Against Common Enemies

A review of  Erasing America: Losing our Future by Destroying our Past (Regnery Publishing, 2018) by James S. Robbins James Robbins’ book, Erasing America, targets the most egregious enemies of the current American culture: the radical Leftists who seek to destroy the past. Although there are strong points to the book, particularly in pointing out the sheer silliness of politically…
Michael Potts
December 3, 2019
Blog

Steel Creek Church and the Airport

Early this past summer the historic Steele Creek Presbyterian Church, near the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, closed its doors for good. The church, the second oldest in Mecklenburg County, having been founded in 1760—nearly 259 years ago—by hardy Scots settlers to the region, merged with another Presbyterian Church in the area, Pleasant Hill. The classic 1889 Gothic-revival style brick structure…
Boyd Cathey
December 2, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Southern Maryland, Part 2

Driving thru Southern Maryland’s rural scenery- farms, woods, and villages, history greets you around every curve. Strong traditions in the heart of the people make it easy to appreciate the deep roots of that tradition. Villages and harbour scenes, rivers and marshland, lighthouses and beaches, historic sites and quiet churchyards; it’s no wonder they say: “Southern Maryland, where time and…
Brett Moffatt
November 27, 2019
Blog

Did Republicans Bribe Voters to Elect U. S. Grant President?

Despite his unrivaled popularity after the Civil War, Republcan Ulysses Grant won the presidency merely three years later in 1868 by a popular vote margin of only 53%-to-47%. In fact, if not for the votes of ex-slaves that had only gained suffrage during the preceding twelve months, he would have lost the popular vote. Thus, he was the choice of…
Philip Leigh
November 26, 2019
Blog

It’s Not Your Flag!

Some wear the color of the sky in the winter Some were as blue as the night They came like a storm with the light of the morn And they fell through the whole day and night Colors flew high and they danced in the sky As I watched them come over the hill Then to my wonder, sticks that…
Michael Gaddy
November 25, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 196

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 18-22, 2019 Topics: Nationalism, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-196
Brion McClanahan
November 23, 2019
Blog

What Religious Statistics Can Tell Us About The War Between the States

The role of religion, specifically evangelical protestant religion in the North, is frequently emphasized by gatekeeper historians in framing the causes and consequences of the War Between the States. This stands today as a sort of creation myth for the recreated Nation. Because survey data on individual religious affiliation and participation is not available for this time period, anecdotal evidence…
James (Jim) Pederson
November 22, 2019
Blog

Lies and Truths of Nationalism

It is disturbing when you see a man like Tucker Carlson, who seems a reasonably objective fellow, painted with the brush of authority by the likes of Virginian Rich Lowry. Lowry, of course, is the editor of the once conservative publication, The National Review. Lowry’s views are aligned with Eric Foner et al—the nationalists. Recently, 11-1-19, on The Tucker Carlson…
Paul H. Yarbrough
November 21, 2019
Blog

Poison Under the Wings

The beginning of the American political order goes much further back than the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.  Political scientists and political theorists are understandably fixated on the Constitution and the convention that produced it.  Eric Voegelin, Willmoore Kendall, and a few others go even further back searching for a continuity in the political symbolization present in some certain select, but…
John Devanny
November 20, 2019
Review Posts

Does the South Exist?

A Review of The Idea of The American South, 1920-1941, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979) by Michael O’Brien. I have an invitation to extend to Michael O’Brien, the British author of The Idea of the American South, 1920-1941. At his convenience, I would like Mr. O’Brien to accompany me to a small establishment (one of those notorious Southern "fighting and…
James J. Thompson, Jr.
November 19, 2019
Blog

Battle for the Old Dominion

With the recent triumph of the Democrat Party in the 2019 statewide elections in Virginia, it will only be a matter of time before an effort is made to rewrite Virginia law concerning "memorials for war veterans." Progressive efforts to topple these monuments have been thwarted by legal obstacles, and now, with a majority in both houses of the Virginia…
Brion McClanahan
November 18, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 195

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 11-15, 2019 Topics: Secession, Southern Tradition, Slavery, Political Correctness, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-195
Brion McClanahan
November 16, 2019
Blog

Capitalizing on the Slavery Racket

Mike Hudson was an investigative journalist for the now-defunct Niagara Falls Reporter in 2014, and looked deeply into city plans to erect a monument to the largely mythological “underground railroad” of the mid-nineteenth century. Hudson wrote in August 2014 that: “City Council approved spending $262,000 to dedicate a park and erect a statue to a woman who by all accounts…
Bernard Thuersam
November 15, 2019
Blog

What the Historic South has to Teach America

Many present-day Southerners—indeed, many of those Americans who call themselves “conservatives”—find it difficult to envisage a time when Southern and Confederate traditions (not to mention noble Confederate veterans like “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee) were acknowledged with honor and great respect. Today it would seem so-called “conservative media” (in particular Fox News and the radio talksters) and Republican politicians…
Boyd Cathey
November 14, 2019
Blog

Confederates Were Not Traitors

Confederate statue critics increasingly argue that the monuments should be torn down because they honor traitors. Among such advocates is Christy Coleman, CEO of the Richmond’s American Civil War Museum. While the most common response to her interpretation is to argue that secession was possibly legal, but a more compelling point is that President Andrew Johnson pardoned the soldiers no later than…
Philip Leigh
November 13, 2019
Review Posts

Nathan Bedford Forrest: The Hero in Fiction

A review of None Shall Look Back (J.S. Sanders, 1992) by Caroline Gordon Thus far the War Between the States has failed to produce an epic like The Iliad, a narrative account of the four-year conflict that would include the exploits of all the heroes of both sides. In fact, few Southern novelists have written fictional accounts of Confederate warriors—…
Jane Brown
November 12, 2019
Blog

The Stoning of Stone Mountain

There are really only two basic opinions when it comes to the world’s largest carving on the face of the fifteen million year old granite monolith just outside Atlanta, Georgia . . . revere it as an important chapter in American history or destroy it as a shameful altar to the Ku Klux Klan.  While there are many Americans with…
John Marquardt
November 11, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 194

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 4-8, 2019 Topics: Southern tradition, Confederate monuments, Secession, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-194
Brion McClanahan
November 9, 2019
Blog

Overextending Political Loyalties

One of the two commandments the Lord Jesus Christ gave to His disciples to follow was to love our neighbor as ourselves.  However, in the modern United States of America, we no longer have neighbors.  We either have ideological allies; or we have ideological opponents, who keep us from enjoying the right to say or do this or the right…
Walt Garlington
November 8, 2019
Blog

The Real Reason for “Civil War” Monuments

In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released the “Whose Heritage?” report on the Confederate symbols in the United States.  This report had one thesis: The Confederate monuments, memorials, and namesakes were erected during the “Jim Crow” era to vindicate white supremacy without consideration of other factors.  The report was based on undocumented sources, but the charting of monuments…
Ernest Blevins
November 7, 2019
Blog

Taylor and Jefferson on Secession

One of the most enduring myths of American history centers on the “compact theory” of the Constitution. According to the standard interpretation, Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Republicans invented the “theory” to challenge Federalist control of the general government in the 1790s. This implies that Jefferson and the other Republicans acted in bad faith by playing fast and loose with…
Brion McClanahan
November 6, 2019
Review Posts

The Real Thing

A Review of The Everlasting Circle: Letters of the Haskell Family of Abbeville, South Carolina, 1861—1865. (Mercer University Press, 2019) Edited by Karen Stokes. Participants in the Old South and the Confederacy were conscientious in preserving their documents, as were several succeeding generations.  They knew that their history was important and that it would suffer massive misrepresentation.  As a result,…
Clyde Wilson
November 5, 2019
Blog

What They Don’t Want to Hear

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell “Sure I am this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as…
Ben Jones
November 4, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 193

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 28 - Nov 1, 2019 Topics: Secession, the War for Southern Independence, Copperheads, United States Constitution, Jefferson Davis https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-193
Brion McClanahan
November 2, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Southern Maryland, Part I

The Chesapeake Bay is the heart of Maryland. Except for a couple of remote areas, all of Maryland drains into the Chesapeake or its tributaries.  Most of Maryland’s population is little more than an hour’s drive, or less, from the bay. St. Mary’s City, where Maryland was ‘founded,’ is a few miles from the confluence of the Potomac River and…
Brett Moffatt
November 1, 2019
Blog

How Yankees Fostered Southern Disease

In August of 1862, two years before his infamous ‘March to the Sea’, General William T. Sherman declared, “Salt is eminently contraband.” The Southern leaders’ positioning of the South’s economy as dependent on cash crops created well-known shortages of many sorts. One aspect of this approach concerned the use of money acquired from cash crops to purchase food and salt.…
Vann Boseman
October 31, 2019
Blog

California, the Chinese, and Nullification

J.P. Morgan, tycoon banker and a close friend to President Stephen Grover Cleveland, observed that “a man always has two reasons for the things he does a good one and the real one.” In the case for reconstruction the Republicans who ruled the senate majority knew they needed to do something to prevent the reseating or readmitting of Southern senators…
Justin Pederson
October 30, 2019
Review Posts

The Secession Movement in the Middle States

A review of The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973) by William C. Wright (WCW) "Historical writing during the Civil War and immediately after noted the existence of these men. As the years passed, however, historians came to accept the view that Lincoln had the full support of the North prior to the attack…
Vito Mussomeli
October 29, 2019
Blog

What Jefferson Davis Would Tell Us Today (And Why It Matters)

In our turbulent times it is increasingly evident that our government is disconnected to the citizens of the republic. Rather, what we behold is a zealous managerial class, an elite buried deep in an aggressive bureaucracy which is, essentially, a “government within a government.” It is an unelected, self-perpetuating oligarchy that offers the illusion of popular participation, and the chimerical…
Boyd Cathey
October 28, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 192

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 21-25, 2019 Topics: Political Correctness, Reconstruction, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-192
Brion McClanahan
October 26, 2019
Blog

A Southern Poetry Sampler

The Soiling of Old Glory by Stanley Forman When I See That Flag Flying by John Parker When I see that flag flying I see my people dying Defending their land From its invasion. When I see that flag waving I feel my people's craving For the short-lived Independence which That flag took away. When I see that flag blowing…
Abbeville Institute
October 25, 2019
Blog

To the Southern Soldiers

Heartbroken, I have learned that my beloved Bentonville, Arkansas, has been attacked. The Confederate monument that rests in the center of our town square has been defaced. The carpetbaggers that have lately inundated Bentonville have chosen to eradicate part of our history; our history, not theirs. James Henderson Berry served as a second lieutenant with the 16th Arkansas Infantry, losing…
Neil Kumar
October 24, 2019
Blog

Behind Enemy Lines

Just before Christmas of 1860, the chain of events that was to soon to lead the nation into four bloody years of undeclared war began with South Carolina exercising its constitutional right to leave the Union and revert to its original status as a sovereign entity.  Six of South Carolina’s neighboring States quickly followed her out of the Union and…
John Marquardt
October 23, 2019
Review Posts

A Confederate Dialogue

A review of The Lytle-Tate Letters: The Correspondence of Andrew Lytle and Allen Tate (University of Mississippi Press, 1987), Thomas Daniel Young and Elizabeth Sarcone, eds. Considering Allen Tate’s well-documented contrariness, the four-decade-long friendship of Tate and Andrew Lytle must be considered one of the great creative acts in the lives of both men. That the two men could keep…
Tom Rash
October 22, 2019
Blog

The South Starts Here

You know, as a kid who grew up without electricity, a telephone or indoor plumbing, it continues to amaze me that I posted a picture of a sign in front of a gas station/store down on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, added some thoughts of my own, and several hundred thousand people saw it and shared it and debated it…
Ben Jones
October 21, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 191

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 14-18, 2019 Topics: Southern tradition, Thomas Jefferson, Agrarianism, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-191
Brion McClanahan
October 19, 2019
Blog

“My Countrymen”

Charles Francis Adams was the grandson and son of former-Presidents John and John Quincy Adams. It ​is therefore of little surprise he himself embarked on career and life of public prominence as an educator, ​newspaperman, politician, statesman and historian. Yet, while he never assumed the high offices which the ​chieftains of his famed family did, the great contributions which Adams…
Gerald Lefurgy
October 18, 2019
Blog

The Myth of Tom and Sally

In 1993 the Washington Post published an article on research being conducted by an accomplished Richmond lawyer named Robert Cooley. According to this article, among many additional details in regard to the subject, Cooley had been working with scholars for years to examine land deeds owned by the descendants of Thomas Jefferson, for the purpose of investigating specifically what land…
H.L. Dowless
October 17, 2019
Blog

What Price Prosperity?

The news media rarely, if ever, focuses on the impact on society and culture the price of economic growth. Nor do politicians.   This begs the question, what price is extracted from society and culture in the pursuit of economic growth, in particular, when the central and state governments along with the central bank play key roles, namely in the of…
Nicole Williams
October 16, 2019
Review Posts

The Bard of Kentucky

A review of Wendell Berry: Port William Novels and Stories (Library of America, 2018), Jack Shoemaker, ed. The long shelf of fiction by Wendell Berry—overshadowed by the colossal green canopy of his poetry and agrarian essays—has been brought into the light by the Library of America. Wendell Berry: Port William Novels and Stories, the first of two volumes that will…
Rafael Alvarez
October 15, 2019
Blog

Stranger in a Strange Land

I recently relocated--with any luck, temporarily--to a sprawling metroplex of a city of almost seven million, within an even more massive state. I’d believed I understood globalism and loss of identity. I thought I had made an uneasy peace with the reality of modernism and destruction of memory.  I had no idea.  Not only is there no regional culture here—one of…
Leslie Alexander
October 14, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 190

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 7-11, 2019 Topics: Jeffersonian Tradition, United States Constitution, Black Confederates https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-190
Brion McClanahan
October 12, 2019
Blog

St. George Tucker’s Jeffersonian Constitution

One could argue that there are two basic visions for America: the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian. The former is nationalist, calling for centralized power and an industrial, mercantilist society characterized by banking, commercialism, and a robust military. Its early leaders had monarchical tendencies. The latter vision involves a slower, more leisurely and agrarian society, political decentralization, popular sovereignty, and local…
Allen Mendenhall
October 11, 2019
Blog

What the Newspapers Said: The Black Confederate “Myth” Examined

Where did the belief in the "black Confederate soldier" originate? Did it begin in 1977, after the success of the television mini-series Roots caused people to reevaluate race and slavery during the Civil War? Were stories of these men absent before then, as one of many historians who tackles this topic claims? Is it accurate or indeed fair to describe…
Shane Anderson
October 9, 2019
Review Posts

Ode to Father Abraham

A review of Lincoln (Simon and Schuster, 1995) by David Herbert Donald Professor David Herbert Donald of Harvard University, a son of Mississippi and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is one of the most prominent historians of the late twentieth century. His biography of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts—probably the most sanctimonious politician in American history— earned that statesman the label…
Kevin R.C. Gutzman
October 8, 2019
Blog

Whatever Happened to Democracy?

Those of us whose experience goes back a way into the last century, can remember when “democracy” was the main theme of American discourse.  A million tongues proudly and repeatedly declared that America was the Democracy, exemplar and defender of that sacred idea to all the world.  Hardly anyone dared to question that sentiment.  It saw us through two world…
Clyde Wilson
October 7, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 189

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 30 - Oct 4, 2019 Topics: Southern Tradition, Political Correctness, Neoconservatives, United States Constitution, Federalism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-189
Brion McClanahan
October 5, 2019
Blog

How the Neocons are Helping Destroy Western Civilization

Every now and then an acquaintance who reads what I write will ask me: “Boyd, why are you so critical of writers and commentators—Neoconservatives—like Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Shapiro, Brian Kilmeade, and those who appear on Fox News? Why do you seem so condemnatory of articles and essays that show up in, say, National Review or The Wall Street Journal?…
Boyd Cathey
October 4, 2019
Blog

The South and “Red Flag” Laws

These days, we see many politicians pushing relentlessly for gun control. In the wake of recent mass shootings, several so-called “conservatives” have shown their true colors by demonizing gun owners and misrepresenting the facts on the issue. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called critics of red flag laws “libertarians” and stated that “the Second Amendment is not a suicide…
Michael Martin
October 3, 2019
Blog

Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

The 150th season of college football serves as a reminder of the intersection between sports and local communities. While the nationalization of sports media outlets brings games and analysis to every living room in America, fan culture retains a very distinct regional and local flavor. College football is one of the greatest testimonies to the endurance of localism in America…
Brian Koss
October 2, 2019
Blog

Gunston Hall Boxwoods

George Mason, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, was happiest at home, either in the fields and woods, with a good book by the hearth, or entertaining neighbors and family.  Living close to the soil, time was measured by the rhythms of nature. The flow of the seasons brought different activities: planting and harvesting, fishing and hunting, visiting neighbors in…
Brett Moffatt
September 30, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 188

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 23-27, 2019 Topics: Reconstruction, Establishment History, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-188
Brion McClanahan
September 28, 2019
Blog

Pointing out Neocon Errors

Conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager has become a YouTube success with his five-minute videos on politics, history, religion and culture. They’ve been viewed 2.5 billion times and he gets thousands of emails daily. About eighty percent are hosted by prominent experts that include prime ministers, Nobel Prize winners, professors and other credentialed authorities. Prager is an especially effective advocate…
Philip Leigh
September 27, 2019
Blog

Reconstructing the Reconstruction

A book condemning the left-wing bias of one of the most widely read and educationally used histories of the United States was recently written by Mary Grabar who received her Ph.D in English from the University of Georgia and went on to teach at various Georgia institutes of higher learning, including Emory University in Atlanta. The focus of her book,…
John Marquardt
September 26, 2019
Blog

The South’s Gifts to Posterity

What does the South have to offer that is valuable to humanity, to civilization? In 1939, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman proposed an answer to this question in his book The South to Posterity. He subtitled it An Introduction to the Writing of Confederate History, but it was something more than that. In presenting the works of Confederate…
Karen Stokes
September 25, 2019
Review Posts

Capitalism and Forced Labor

A review of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books, 2014) by Edward Baptist Recent polling of the millennials’ attitudes toward socialism suggests that higher education on the postmodern campus has better prepared graduates to denounce capitalism than to defend it. Undergraduate enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid speaks to the point.…
Robert L. Paquette
September 24, 2019
Blog

Guelzo Uncovered

I recently read a report of a professor who declared that he had come sadly to the conclusion that the Founding Fathers had been all wrong in the government they created.  I don’t remember the name or place of this professor.  Whether he had ever contributed anything to scholarly knowledge was not stated, but is doubtful.  He probably suffers from…
Clyde Wilson
September 23, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 187

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sep 16-20, 2019 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern history, Southern identity https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-187
Brion McClanahan
September 21, 2019
Blog

A Love of Place

Southerners love home. This is true of many people throughout history, but place has, in part, defined the South. The earliest settlers to what became the South championed its Utopian physical qualities: warm weather, a long growing season, bountiful plant and animal life. Bad weather, disease carrying insects, and dangerous wildlife were annoyances to be tolerated if not overcome. Southern…
Brion McClanahan
September 20, 2019
Blog

Mass Barbecue is the Invasive Species of Our Culinary Times

This article originally appeared on www.TheAmericanConservative.com.  Copyright 2019 From the colonial era well into the 20th century, large public barbecues were an institution across the South, from the Chesapeake eventually to Texas. Although these occasions could be linked to campaigns or celebrations of one kind or another, they could also be just an excuse for people to get together, to…
John Shelton Reed
September 19, 2019
Blog

The Defense of Southern History

From late 1983 until its fitful demise in the early 2000s, I served as a contributing editor, adviser, or just simply a contributor to the old Southern Partisan magazine. Although a last issue came out in 2009, the quarterly had pretty much ceased regular publication a few years before that, largely due to internecine South Carolina politics and personalities. The…
Boyd Cathey
September 18, 2019
Review Posts

American Empire

A review of American Empire: A Global History (Princeton, 2018) by A.G. Hopkins From the beginning, America has been a house divided. As Andrés Reséndez details in The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America, the North American continent has, since long before the arrival of Europeans, been a place of dominion and servitude. The influx of…
Jason Morgan
September 17, 2019
Blog

False Idols? Looking at America’s Founders with a Clear Eye

Increasingly, America’s past is becoming a lightning rod for contemporary ideological struggles. Colleges, highways and Democratic Party fundraising dinners are being renamed, monuments destroyed or desecrated, and a general suspicion seems to be growing of the value of anything emanating from America’s first century, soiled as it is with the stains of racism and slavery. This trend is a cause…
John Grove
September 16, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 186

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 9-13, 20-19 Topics: Reconstruction, Political Correctness, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-186
Brion McClanahan
September 14, 2019
Blog

Who Won Reconstruction?

Prager U and the American Battlefield Trust recently teamed-up to sponsor this six minute video by Princeton University's Dr. Allen Guelzo who claims that “the North won the Civil War but the (white) South won Reconstruction.” The photo below taken forty-five years after the Civil War shows the true economic conditions of Guelzo’s supposed Southern victors. There was little change in their…
Philip Leigh
September 13, 2019
Blog

Guelzo’s Reconstruction Gaffe

Professor Allen Guelzo has a new video at Prager U “explaining” the “good, bad, and ugly” of Reconstruction. Anyone that has watched a Prager U video knows where this is headed. I laughed through the entire six minutes. Guelzo has a history of South hating rhetoric, and he is a Lincolnian’s Lincolnian. This guy never met a war he didn’t…
Brion McClanahan
September 12, 2019
Blog

Town Line, C.S.A.

In his recent book, Call Sign Chaos : Learning To Lead, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis cited what he termed the current “tribalism” in America as the greatest threat to the nation’s future.  Mattis stated in the book that “We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our…
John Marquardt
September 11, 2019
Review Posts

To Die in Chicago

A review of To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas (Pelican, 1999) by George Levy The dead are buried somewhere in Chicago and there are over 4,000 of them—that much we know. Treatment was just as harsh in most other Northern prison camps - worse in Elmira. But at least they keep better track of the corpses produced.…
David Wade
September 10, 2019
Blog

The Revolt Against Christian Civilization: The Southern View

Southerners, of all Americans, have been the most acute and the most persistent in their analyses of what has ailed and threatened our culture, certainly since the end of the War for Southern Independence. Only consider a Robert Lewis Dabney or an Albert Bledsoe in the years immediately after that conflict. Then, more recently, recall the Southern Agrarians centered in…
Boyd Cathey
September 9, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 185

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Sept 2-6, 2019 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern conservatism, populism, secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-185
Brion McClanahan
September 7, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Virginia, Part III

The Colonial Parkway connects Jamestowne and WIlliamsburg with the third leg of Virginia’s HIstoric Triangle-Yorktown.  The colonial period of history had its beginning at Jamestown, its maturity at Williamsburg, and approached its end at Yorktown. The Colonial Parkway leaves Williamsburg and passes between the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown and Naval Supply Center on the York River on its way to…
Brett Moffatt
September 6, 2019
Blog

Secession Hypocrisy

Leaders of every nation do what they think is in their countries’ immediate best interest and explain their actions with words that seem relevant at that moment. If future actions conflict with previous explanations, forgetfulness remediates the problem. As a result, history includes a record of hypocrisy and is an endemic part of national leaders’ behavior. For the U.S. national…
Norman Black
September 5, 2019
Blog

The War Between the Dreams

Old slave and planter graves a flight apart For thrushes eating seeds of grass and yew, The unmarked plots and plots with dates and names Too weatherworn to trace and know in stone, Bones sinking toward a spring no well can reach, 600,000 dead for whom the War Has long since ended and will never end, The blue and gray…
David Middleton
September 4, 2019
Review Posts

Real Conservatism

A review of The Southern Tradition: The Achievements and Limitations of Southern Conservatism (Harvard, 1994) by Eugene Genovese The notion of a Southern polit­ical tradition can be understood as conservative, complete, and consistent with its roots. Eugene Genovese’s The Southern Tradition poignantly articulates these qualities from the perspec­tive of a Marxist gone conserva­tive—a Southern conservative, indeed. Elucidating Genovese’s understanding of…
Won Kim
September 3, 2019
Blog

Southern Populism and the South’s Agrarian Identity

In what passes for political and cultural discourse today, the term “populist” is something of a pejorative, conjuring up images in the mind of the cultural and academic elite of dangerous folks with pitchforks and guns riding about in pick-up trucks looking for an uprising to foment.  This of course is nonsense.  What the tsars of public opinion describe as…
John Devanny
September 2, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 184

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 26-30, 2019 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition, Southern heritage https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-184
Brion McClanahan
August 31, 2019
Blog

Don’t Remove Confederate Monuments

This essay was presented at the 2019 Abbeville Institute Summer School on the New South. In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so because the Southerner has a sense of having been present there himself in the person…
Philip Leigh
August 30, 2019
Blog

What if the South had Its Own Congress?

On May 17, 2019, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 5: Equality Act—better known as the Trans-Gender Equality Act. The “peoples” House thus spoke on behalf of the American people. The vote was not even close! The final vote was 236 Yes, 173 No, and nine not voting. We can, therefore, conclude that 58% of the American people…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 29, 2019
Blog

Rediscovering Heritage

Lack of attachment to culture, heritage, and tradition is the death of a nation. As a child, I had very little in-depth knowledge of my family’s history. Most of my extended family had died from old age by the time of my birth except for my maternal grandfather, Nelson Pace and great aunt, Mary Paul Pittman Smyrl, both natives of…
Nicole Williams
August 28, 2019
Review Posts

The C.S.A.

A review of The C.S.A. Trilogy (Independent, 2018) by Howard Ray White. A beautiful thought experiment for Southerners. The year is 2011, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Confederate States of America.    Celebrants are gathering in the capital, Davis, located where Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee come together. Confederates have every reason to celebrate. They have a free, prosperous,…
Clyde Wilson
August 27, 2019
Blog

Louisiana’s Warrior Governor

Louisiana is a state accustomed to incredibly incompetent and corrupt public officials, especially in the governor’s office. Some of my fellow Louisianans will be surprised to know that one of their former chief executives was a model of competence, ability, courage, and self-sacrifice. One Pulitzer Prize-winning historian even suggested that, had the South recognized his talents earlier, the results of…
Samuel W. Mitcham
August 26, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 183

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 19-23, 2019 Topics: Secession, Political Correctness, Slavery, Strom Thurmond, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-183
Brion McClanahan
August 24, 2019
Blog

Lee and Reconciliation

In 1866, a year after taking the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant had reason to consider and comment on the political landscape. At the head of what was likely the most powerful national armed force on the planet, Grant would voice an altering measure of both satisfaction and disappointment of America's attempt to…
Gerald Lefurgy
August 23, 2019
Blog

The Psychosis of Slavery

When most Americans hear the word slavery today, their minds instantly conjure up only images of either a black African in chains or a group of such people toiling away in the fields of some Southern plantation.  This distorted, even psychotic, mental picture of an institution that is as old as civilization itself is now, of course, being used not…
John Marquardt
August 22, 2019
Blog

Strom Thurmond, the “Dixiecrats,” and Southern Identity

This essay was presented at our 2019 Summer School on The New South. James Strom Thurmond, or Strom, was born on December 5, 1902 in Edgefield, South Carolina. This historic county was also the home of Francis Hugh Wardlaw, the author of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, and Preston Brooks, who caned Charles Sumner in 1856. These three are…
Michael Martin
August 21, 2019
Review Posts

Grant’s Failed Presidency

A review of U.S. Grant's Failed Presidency (Shotwell Publishing, 2019) by Philip Leigh There was a time in recent memory when thoughtful people consistently ranked U.S. Grant's presidency as one of the worst in history. The scandals, military Reconstruction, the mistreatment of the Plains Indian tribes, and the poor economy during the 1870s wrecked his reputation. That all began to…
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2019
Blog

Is Political Separation in Our Future?

In a recent column, “Nationalism vs. Secession: Should America Break Up? (July 27), I included references to an essay I had published at THE UNZ REVIEW (July 26), and then which was picked up nationally by a number of other Web magazines, including LewRockwell (July 29) and The Abbeville Institute (August 2). For that essay “Nationalism vs. Secession,” I added…
Boyd Cathey
August 19, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 182

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Aug 12-16, 2019 Topics: Reconstruction, Monuments, Southern Religion, New South, G.K. Chesterton https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-182
Brion McClanahan
August 17, 2019
Blog

Contextualizing Southern Heritage

A semantic technique that has worked well for political types is renaming things to make them more acceptable to the public. This has occurred countless times in our society. Here are two examples from the past. Beginning with our first President, we had a cabinet post called Secretary of War. But in the late 1940s, this designation was changed to…
Gail Jarvis
August 16, 2019
Blog

G.K. Chesterton and Old Dixie

Before there was any New England in the North, there was something very like Old England in the South. Relatively speaking, there is still - G. K. Chesterton Within Christian and conservative circles, the great English writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) is widely considered one of the most important authors of the Twentieth Century. As a poet, novelist, mystery writer,…
Garrett Agajanian
August 15, 2019
Blog

Where the Grapes of Wrath are Stored

This essay was presented at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Fundamentalism is often viewed as the most Southern of religions. Yet this is not so.  It was an alien seed planted in ground razed by war and harrowed by Reconstruction.  The harrowing, or Reconstruction if one prefers, was not merely an updating of the constitutional and political…
John Devanny
August 14, 2019
Review Posts

Punished with Poverty

A review of Punished with Poverty: The Suffering South-Prosperity to Poverty & the Continuing Struggle (Shotwell, 2016) by James Ronald and Walter Donald Kennedy This is one of the most important works of American history that  has appeared in many a year.  If enough Southern people could absorb the lesson of this book, it would bring about a complete reorientation…
Clyde Wilson
August 13, 2019
Blog

Revisionism

Does anyone remember United States Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.? I mean, for something other than being the son of The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and for being sentenced to 30 months in jail for violating federal campaign finance laws. Well, I do. It was Jackson, Jr who, in 1999, amended an appropriation bill for the Department of Interior.…
Andrew P. Calhoun
August 12, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 181

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 5-9, 2019 Topics: Land, Southern Tradition, United States Constitution, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-181
Brion McClanahan
August 10, 2019
Blog

The Statue of Liberty is Falling to Pieces, and I’m Glad

I don’t like the thing. I hate what it stands for, and I respect the givers even less than I respect the gift. Most of the problems we face today can be traced to the Statue of Liberty. If we’d just send it back to the French, crime in the streets would disappear, we’d have a surplus in the federal…
Thomas Landess
August 9, 2019
Blog

No Eulogies

In I Kings 21, we see that Naboth did not feel that he had the right to sell the family land no matter how much money King Ahab offered. The land was not his except as a trust from his forefathers to the generations yet unborn." ~~RJ Rushdoony We have come to the place were every year another noble Southern…
Robert Hoyle
August 8, 2019
Blog

The Case for the Confederacy

This essay was originally published in The Lasting South (Regnery, 1957). Recently when Bertrand Russell was a speaking-guest of the Richmond Area University Center, its director, Colonel Herbert Fitzroy, drove the philosopher from Washington to Richmond over Route One. After some miles the usually voluble Russell grew silent, and nothing would draw him out. Then, as if emerging from deep…
Clifford Dowdey
August 7, 2019
Review Posts

A Historical and Constitutional Defense of the South

A Review of A Historical and Constitutional Defense of the South (1914) by Captain John Anderson Richardson Captain Richardson was a member of the 19th Georgia, experienced the war and its aftermath, and wrote this work in 1914.  The Sprinkle Publications edition was printed in 2010, and was edited by H. Rondel Rumburg, who also wrote a forward to this…
Brett Moffatt
August 6, 2019
Blog

Economic Reconstruction

Mr. Leigh presented this paper at the 2019 Abbeville Institute Summer School on The New South. Historians have reinterpreted Civil War Reconstruction over the past fifty years. Shortly before the Centennial it was commonly believed that the chief aim of the Republican-dominated Congress was to ensure lasting Party control of the federal government by creating a reliable voting bloc in…
Philip Leigh
August 5, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 180

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 29 - Aug 2, 2019 Topics: Federalism, Nationalism, Decentralization, Southern history, Virginia, Anti-imperialism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-180
Brion McClanahan
August 3, 2019
Blog

Is it Time for America to Break Apart?

There is a question that increasingly arises, uncomfortably, in our conversations…from brief exchanges at work at the water cooler, at home with family, after church on Sunday, with our email messages to friends and associates. To watch any amount of television news these days, to switch back and forth between, say, CNN and Fox, and to listen to their interpretations…
Boyd Cathey
August 2, 2019
Blog

The United States is Not a Nation

Earlier this month, prominent names in the conservative movement gathered in Washington, DC, for a conference on “National Conservatism.” Speakers included such luminaries as Tucker Carlson, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, John Bolton, Michael Anton, Rich Lowry, Yuval Levin, and Josh Hawley. Representing the academy were F.H. Buckley, Charles Kesler, Amy Wax, and Patrick Deneen. Other conservative writers and thinkers participated…
Allen Mendenhall
August 1, 2019
Blog

Colonial Slavery

In 1715, Colonial Governor Charles Craven remarked that his front line troops in the fight against a hostile American Indian tribe comprised "two hundred stout negro men." Just five years prior, Indian agent Thomas Nairne wrote that the colonial militia in this same colony possessed "a considerable Number of active, able, Negro Slaves; and the Law gives everyone of those…
Brion McClanahan
July 31, 2019
Review Posts

Jeffersonians Against Imperialism

J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, 1966 and The Price of Empire, 1967 Robert C. Byrd, Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency, 2004 Known and celebrated as a “liberal” during the Vietnam War era, Fulbright was actually a quite independent-minded public figure.  In some respects he represented a remnant of the Southern Democratic Jeffersonian tradition, and he…
Clyde Wilson
July 30, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Virginia’s Historic Triangle, Part II

George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson trod the roads of this area as the colony of Virginia grew. George Mason, James Madison and Richard Henry Lee sat in the public houses debating political events. British royal governors, the comte de Rochambeau, Marquis de Lafayette and the Baron von Steuben were just a few of the many Europeans passing across…
Brett Moffatt
July 29, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 179

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute July 22-26, 2019 Topics: Southern history, African-American Southern history, Monuments, Southern literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-179
Brion McClanahan
July 27, 2019
Blog

Confederate Monuments and Racism?

As noted in earlier posts, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and many academic historians are promoting a false narrative that the Confederate statues erected between 1900 and 1920 were celebrations of white supremacy. In reality, the statues were built because the old veterans were dying-off, which is why there was also a simultaneous surge in Civil War memorial-building in…
Philip Leigh
July 26, 2019
Blog

Song of the South and the Assault on Culture

Most of us, even the youngest, have heard of the magnificent Disney film, “Song of the South,” originally released in 1946. And certainly we are familiar with its hit song, “Zip-a Dee Doo Dah.”  Some of us have seen this partially animated classic, or recall seeing it years ago, even though it is officially unavailable at present. Disney refuses to…
Boyd Cathey
July 25, 2019
Blog

Allen Tate’s Confederate Ode: Who are the Living and the Dead?

 Then Lytle asked: Who are the dead? Who are the living and the dead? Allen Tate, “The Oath” Over the decades since its first publication in 1927 Allen Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead” has probably received more critical and popular attention than any of his other poems. Tate himself alludes to some of it in his own commentary on the…
Thomas Hubert
July 24, 2019
Review Posts

The Barber of Natchez

Review of The Barber of Natchez (LSU, 1954, 1973) edited by Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom Hogan. Author's Note: In 1938 a trove of documents dating from 1793 -1937, "over 60 volumes of account books, "nearly 1400" financial and legal documents, bound and unbound volumes of "rare antebellum newspapers" including 2 editions unknown before, "over 400" sheets of 19th century…
Vito Mussomeli
July 23, 2019
Blog

Black Southern Support for Secession and War

Sooner or later any student of the War for Southern Independence will run across discussion of "black Confederates," which may well be the most controversial topic related to the war. From an objective standpoint it might seem odd that there is any controversy at all. The South had a large black population in 1861, mostly slave but some free, and…
Shane Anderson
July 22, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 178

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 15-19, 2019 Topics: Southern symbols, Northern hypocrisy, Jim Kibler https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-178
Brion McClanahan
July 20, 2019
Blog

The Neo-Confederate SCOTUS Justice

On February 4, 2002, a current member of the United States Supreme Court gave the following remarks at Loyola University, in New Orleans: a tribute to Judah P. Benjamin, a former U.S. Senator who resigned and took part in the secession of Louisiana.  He was quickly appointed to a cabinet post by President Jefferson Davis: first as Attorney General, and subsequently…
Rev. Larry Beane
July 19, 2019
Blog

Defending the South Against Fake News

I had some correspondence with an editor of the Post and Courier this week when I sent them a letter for publication in response to their July 6, 2019 editorial "Don't let extremists define our national symbols." As a result, I saw an opening to send some valuable Southern history to this newspaper and I jumped on it. Their editorial…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
July 18, 2019
Blog

The Land of Lincoln Bans Confederate Railroad

Illinois’ Governor J.B. Pritzer has banned the Southern rock band Confederate Railroad from the Illinois State Fair because of the band’s name and Confederate flag on their logo. He said that the administration bars using resources to promote symbols of racism. Well, kiss my grits. Let’s look at the state fair’s “Land of Lincoln.” “The land of Lincoln” is the…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 17, 2019
Blog

A History Lesson for Ted Cruz

I am always annoyed when a conservative political leader attacks Southern heritage. I don’t know why because with the present-day crop of cowardly politicians, it is becoming routine, but I am. Unwittingly or not, these modern day Scalawags adopt the “politically correct” line, even though they know (or should know) that political correctness is nothing more than a euphemism for…
Samuel W. Mitcham
July 15, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 177

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 8-12, 2019. Topics: Republican Party, Southern tradition, Southern conservatism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-177
Brion McClanahan
July 13, 2019
Blog

Dabney’s Warning for the New South

Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898) defended the South both during and after the War Between the States. During the war, this professor of theology left his work at Union Theological Seminary to serve as chaplain for the Confederacy in 1861 and then as chief of staff to General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in 1862. After the war, Dabney made it one of…
Zachary Garris
July 12, 2019
Blog

The War Power is All Power

A bill to establish a Bureau of Freedmen’s Affairs was introduced in the House of Representatives on February 17, 1864, by Massachusetts Republican Rep. Thomas D. Eliot. Democrat Rep. Samuel S. “Sunset” Cox of Ohio responds to the bill, in part, below. www.Circa1865.org   The Great American Political Divide The War Power is All Power “Mr. Cox said: “Mr. Speaker .…
Bernard Thuersam
July 11, 2019
Blog

Republican Revisionists

There is a modern notion among the Republicans and their most vocal acolytes such as Dinesh D’Souza and Mark Levin that the Republicans are the healers and the Democrats are the racists. One political party and its advocates invent as much as the other. These two devotees calling themselves conservatives, strain to blame the Democrat party for slavery, Jim Crow…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 10, 2019
Review Posts

Know Dixie, Know America

A review of Conserving America (St. Augustine Press, 2016) by Patrick J. Deneen Man has been created by God in such a way that the larger the object of his love the less directly attached he is to it.  His heart needs particular passions; he needs limited objects for his attraction to keep these firm and enduring … I am…
Jerry Salyer
July 9, 2019
Blog

An Okie From Muskogee

As someone who grew up during the decade of the 1960’s, I am paying attention when I hear those on the Left talking of the events which took place 50 years ago. I was born in Dallas, Texas, but my family moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, when I was four. I lived in Northern Virginia during that decade. At the…
Timothy A. Duskin
July 8, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 176

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 1-5, 2019 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-176
Brion McClanahan
July 6, 2019
Blog

Conan the Southerner?

“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to bear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high…
Joel T. Leggett
July 5, 2019
Blog

Civil War PC is Mental Imprisonment

Each of us tends to be a prisoner of our own experience. In a World with billions of people, we experience only a tiny part. Thus, we rely upon our imaginations to complete a mental picture that results in our “worldview,” meaning our personal conception of the World. Moreover, our imaginations are fed by the narratives we learn from academics,…
Philip Leigh
July 4, 2019
Blog

In Memory of Andrew Lytle (1902-1995)

The poem was written shortly after Mr. Lytle's death in 1995. I intended it to be part of an expanded edition of Poems from Scorched Earth, thus continuing the meditation on fire--in both its destructive and regenerative powers. The fire that he loved to stoke was an image of his eternal energy and his gift for conviviality. --J.O. Tate No…
James Everett Kibler
July 3, 2019
Review Posts

How to Be a Conservative and the Southern Tradition

A review of How To Be a Conservative (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2015), by Sir Roger Scruton. It is highly unusual for any political leader to articulate any sort of learned political philosophy that underscores their beliefs or policy actions in any legislative chamber at the local, state or Federal level.  This, despite the existence of organizations such as the Abbeville Institute,…
Nicole Williams
July 2, 2019
Blog

Say It Ain’t So, Joe!

Joe Biden is at it again.  The longtime senator from Delaware, former Vice President of the United States, and current Democratic presidential nomination front-runner recently confirmed his reputation as a human gaffe machine by admitting, in public, that he maintained cordial relations with Southern segregationist colleagues in the Senate forty-five years ago.  After acknowledging that he’s “old-fashioned” compared to “the…
Houston Middleton
July 1, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 175

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 24-28, 2019 Topics: Southern history, Southern statesmen https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-175
Brion McClanahan
June 29, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Virginia’s Historic Triangle

Virginia’s  Historic Triangle: Jamestowne, Williamsburg and Yorktowne encompasses the first permanent English settlement in America, the most important colonial capital, and the last major military engagement of the American War for Independence.  John Smith, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe trod the paths on Jamestown Island. Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, James Madison, Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee walked the…
Brett Moffatt
June 28, 2019
Blog

The Place of Nathaniel Macon in Southern History

Many who are well acquainted with Southern history are almost entirely unfamiliar with the historical character of Nathaniel Macon. He is often mentioned by the best of authors as a North Carolinian, as a Georgian, or simply as a Southern Democrat. His share in the political development of the South is but vaguely known, yet every southern state has either…
William E. Dodd
June 27, 2019
Blog

The South Carolina Federalists

Original material for Southern history has been so scarce at the centres where American historiographers have worked, that the general writers have had to substitute conjecture for understanding in many cases when attempting to interpret Southern developments. The Federalists of the South have suffered particularly from misrepresentation and neglect. Their Democratic-Republican contemporaries of course abused them; the American public at…
Ulrich B. Phillips
June 26, 2019
Review Posts

Dabney on Fire

A review of Dabney on Fire: A Theology of Parenting, Education, Feminism, and Government (2019) by Zachary Garris, ed. During his lifetime, Southern theologian and writer Robert Lewis Dabney was most notably known for his 1866 biography of General “Stonewall” Jackson (The Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson) and for his post-war apologia for the Southern cause, A…
Boyd Cathey
June 25, 2019
Blog

Secessionville

Battle of Secessionville Commemoration Address by Gene Kizer, Jr. on the battle site at Fort Lamar Heritage Preserve on James Island in Charleston, South Carolina June 15, 2019. This was a memorial service honoring the 157th anniversary of the brilliant Confederate victory of June 16, 1862. The Battle of Secessionville was an extremely important battle because, if the Confederates had…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
June 24, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 174

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 17-21, 2019 Topics: Southern history, R.L. Dabney, Federalism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-174
Brion McClanahan
June 22, 2019
Blog

Make America States Again

I am honored to speak at the graduation from high school of these young men and women who were once my students and who are now my friends. We’ve grown so close, in fact, I’ve decided to graduate with them! Over the last few weeks, as the day of my departure grew near, many of these dear friends have thanked…
Joe Wolverton
June 21, 2019
Blog

Washington’s Money

Congress has a far greater number of wealthy people than the general population.  Consequently, the bureaucrats that Congress has created by their legislation also have brought unto themselves great wealth. Much of their wealth comes prior to serving in Congress it can be said. But much more from assets to the immediate temptation of graft and corruption euphemistically referred to…
Paul H. Yarbrough
June 20, 2019
Blog

Was Dabney a Prophet?

The writings of Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898) often read like prophecy. After the War Between the States, Dabney wrote essays on a variety of cultural and political issues, both in defense of the South and as an assault on progressivism. Along the way, he made predictions regarding the secularization of public schools, the future of feminism, and the decline of…
Zachary Garris
June 19, 2019
Review Posts

American Diplomacy Under Tyler and Polk

A review of American Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk (Johns Hopkins, 1907) by Jesse S. Reeves. Both as an interesting chapter in the history of the diplomacy of the United States, and as dealing with an important and but recently exploited period of our national politics, Dr. Jesse S. Reeves’s American Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk is a timely and…
St. George Sioussat
June 18, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 173

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 10-14, 2019 Topics: Democracy, Southern Political Tradition, Agrarianism, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-173
Brion McClanahan
June 15, 2019
Blog

Democracy vs. Aristocracy in Virginia in 1830

There is in some of our libraries a certain book which the writer of this article ventures to believe is not gener­ally as familiar as it should be to the student of politics. For himself, he chanced one day, several years ago, to blow the dust from off its time-worn binding and nine hun­dred dreary-looking pages of fine print, to…
Jeffrey R. Brackett
June 14, 2019
Blog

Ten Things You Don’t Know About Robert E. Lee

To those Americans who revere him—sadly, a dwindling number these days—Robert E. Lee is still much a “Marble Man”: the noble face of the antebellum South, the tragic embodiment of the Lost Cause, the “perfect” man, as a contemporary deemed him. Even his admirers are unaware of the some of the more interesting details of the life of this very…
Stephen M. Klugewicz
June 13, 2019