Blog

Fast Money

On a late November evening in 1970, I rolled into the “Big Easy” on an L&N freight with my pockets jingling. Hitching a ride to Canal Street - and letting the morrow “take thought for the things of itself,” as the Scriptures say - I checked into the Sheraton Delta Hotel, got myself cleaned up, then indulged myself in a…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
February 12, 2021
Blog

A Fig for the Constitution

“A fig for the Constitution” if it does not protect our most basic rights was John Randolph’s nineteenth century estimation of the value of the Constitution. In 2021 his words of warning are even more applicable. What power does the Constitution have to protect the First Amendment’s guarantee to peacefully assemble and the free exercise of religion when the government…
James Ronald Kennedy
February 11, 2021
Blog

An Independent Investigation of Racism at VMI?

As one pastor in his sixties mentioned recently, “I would have thought VMI to be one of the last bastions,” meaning, of course, among those institutions most committed to preserving the best of Western civilization, including the rule of law, freedom of expression and religion, and the traditional values that every generation of Americans took for granted until the 1960s.…
Forrest L. Marion
February 10, 2021
Blog

The Last “Insurrection” According to the Political Establishment

The Washington establishment, led by a senile 78-year-old man who can barely speak in complete sentences and seems permanently fighting mad, is hell- bent on labeling virtually all Americans who voted for President Trump –Republicans, Independents, and Democrats — as “insurrectionists.”  They have invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 to justify placing thousands of heavily-armed National Guard (and other) troops…
Thomas DiLorenzo
February 9, 2021
Blog

Hillbilly Thomists

What would you give in exchange for your soul? Bluegrass greats Bill Monroe and Doc Watson asked that question in one of their most memorable live recordings. It’s also the same one posed by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., on one of the tracks of the first album released by the Hillbilly Thomists, a bluegrass band of Dominican friars from…
Casey Chalk
February 8, 2021
Podcast

Podcast Episode 247

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Feb 1-5, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-247
Brion McClanahan
February 6, 2021
Blog

Reforming the Southern Man

I am not from where I live, yet I have a deep fear that where I live won’t be where I live for very much longer. The god of progress bears down on our town like cavalry upon the steppes. There is not a whole lot one can do outside of seeking divine intervention, much like a Magyar farmer in…
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
February 5, 2021
Blog

Defining Southern Conservatism

Southern conservatism is considered an enigma when juxtaposed against the bipartisan political configuration having been imposed upon us since the beginning of the American experiment. The candor of its echoed sentiment as a past relic meets the ears of many contemporary Americans with halted sails as its message could never penetrate their intellect. When the essence of its subject is…
Brad Pond
February 4, 2021
Blog

What Can Be Done?

The year 2020 was brutal for the friends of the South.  Monuments and statues of Southerners, not just Confederates, disappeared from the urban areas of the Southand beyond.  The lockdowns imposed by the authorities weighed heavily upon the region’s and the country’s remaining small farms and small businesses.  In larger urban areas such as Atlanta, what the lockdown did not…
John Devanny
February 3, 2021
Blog

Followin’ the Cotton

(Mrs. Holley was the third generation of a Southern family in California.  She wrote this on being able to return permanently to the South.) The cotton fields grow row after row, we saw them from Grandad's back seat,The twins and I arms and legs stuck together in the dawg days summer heat. The cotton fields grow row after row, we…
Ruth Ann Holley
February 2, 2021
Blog

President Without A Party

A review of President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU Press, 2020) by Christopher Leahy “His Accidency.” That’s the nickname given to John Tyler, earned, as it were, because of the way he became vice-president (no one else wanted the job) and president (William Henry Harrison died after just over a month in office). Fair enough. Those…
Joe Wolverton
February 1, 2021
Podcast

Podcast Episode 246

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 25-29, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Slavery, Southern History, Southern Music, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-246
Brion McClanahan
January 30, 2021
Blog

From Eternity into Time

From Eternity into Time Mighty the Wizard Who found me at sunrise Sleeping, and woke me And learn’d me Magic! Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the valley, In early summers, Over the mountain, On human faces, And all around me, Moving to melody, Floated The Gleam…              - Tennyson, “Merlin and the Gleam” (7)   When I…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
January 29, 2021
Blog

The Bad Theology of America’s “Original Sin”

Slavery, we are repeatedly told, is America’s “original sin.”  But unlike the effects of Biblical original sin, there is no possible atonement.  The Left and its racial Grievance Factory will never let original sin be blotted out or separated from American politics.  In the words of Yale historian David Blight, there exists a “the living residue” connected to African slavery…
William J. Watkins
January 28, 2021
Blog

Rock ‘n Roll has a Southern Accent

Rock ‘n Roll may be the most significant cultural export in American history.  There is no doubt that American culture, for good and bad, has had an enormous impact on global culture, and Rock ‘n Roll is one of our most iconic contributions.  Around the world, people don’t hear Rock ‘n Roll and think of Switzerland or Brazil or Thailand. …
Tom Daniel
January 27, 2021
Blog

The Abraham Lincoln Problem

America has a Lincoln problem. Professor Tom DiLorenzo explains why our nearly deification of "Honest Abe" presents a fundamental problem for our understanding of both the American past and the American present https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOC9gkJmnZM&feature=youtu.be
Thomas DiLorenzo
January 26, 2021
Blog

The Wind

I find myself sitting on the bank of a lake, not far from where I grew up. Being in an extremely rural and poor area of Arkansas, we hang on to things quite a bit longer than most, both literally and figuratively. In the 1960s, there was a thriving vacation destination in my home county, known as the ‘Wildlife Club.’…
Travis Holt
January 25, 2021
Podcast

Podcast Episode 245

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 11-22, 2021 Topics: Reconciliation, Southern Politics, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-245
Brion McClanahan
January 23, 2021
Blog

The New Face of “Liberation”

It is a sad thing that it should fall to a junior representative from New York to tell the truth about the South’s position in national politics and culture. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has done so by saying that our states are oppressed, and that there can be no national healing until we are liberated. In this she was right in what…
Tom Hervey
January 22, 2021
Blog

American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God

The old saying: “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God” certainly applies to me. I’m an ethnic Southerner who was raised in the north – but who, for the past 25 years (with the exception of my three year educational exile to the permafrost of Fort Wayne, Indiana) has lived in the Deep South.  In fact, for the…
Rev. Larry Beane
January 21, 2021
Review Posts

Conservatism and the Southern Tradition

A review of Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (All Points Books, 2018) by Sir Roger Scruton. There is no such thing as conservatism, according to Sir Roger Scruton’s 155-page monograph, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition. That is, there is no unified theory of conservatism because it is always localized to a time, a place, and a…
Duncan Killen
January 20, 2021
Blog

A Good Reason to Honor Robert E. Lee

Yesterday’s melee in Washington provides good reason to honor Robert E. Lee because he demonstrated how he maintained dignity in defeat while convincing many resentful Southerners to reconcile with their former enemies. At the end of the War Between the States in 1865 he had as much reason as any Southerner to reject reconciliation, but he didn’t do that. To…
Philip Leigh
January 19, 2021
Blog

Whatever Happened to History?

According to a recent poll, 72 per cent of Americans think that we are now in the “worst” period of American history.  Polls are dubious things and the great historian John Lukacs has questioned whether there really is any such thing as “public opinion.” But this poll simply supports what we already knew about pervasive historical ignorance, which is exhibited every…
Clyde Wilson
January 18, 2021
Blog

The Yankee Quarantine of Southern Blacks

Legendary financier J. P. Morgan once said: “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” His meaning is that our public explanation is a noble one whereas our real reason is self-serving. Any adult knows that the maxim applies to politicians, about whom Robert E. Lee said, “They are among the most…
Philip Leigh
January 15, 2021
Blog

Pretenses

You might call it propaganda, state lies, fraud, illusions or delusions. I prefer pretenses which afford the peddler thereof and the hapless fool who buys into them just the degree of deniability so that they can pretend that what is represented or misrepresented is respectable and a touchstone for the common weal. 1. America was founded: The country which we…
Robert Peters
January 14, 2021
Blog

The Tarnished Tarheel

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 phantasmagorical image of slave life in the South has long been regarded as one of the sparks that ignited the War Between the States.  However, a now almost forgotten anti-slavery polemic by the North Carolina abolitionist Hinton Rowan Helper did far more to inflame the nation at that time than did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”  In fact,…
John Marquardt
January 13, 2021
Review Posts

Deep Water

A review of Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain (LSU Press, 2019) by Thomas Ruys Smith In Deep Water: the Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain prominent Mississippi River scholar Thomas Ruys Smith examines the literature surrounding the Mississippi River from the late 19th to the early 20th Century. Smith analyzes Mississippi River…
Jason Stewart
January 12, 2021
Blog

A Southern Critique of Radical Chic

“The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence,” observed Southern Gothic author and native Georgian Flannery O’Connor. But what about those weaknesses that don’t? Well, then the offender may require rebuke, and, depending on the gravity of the offense, and the character of the offender, that might range somewhere between a polite reprimand to being run…
Casey Chalk
January 11, 2021
Podcast

Podcast Episode 244

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Jan 4-8, 2021 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern Heroes, Southern Tradition, Nationalism, Neoconservatives https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-244
Brion McClanahan
January 9, 2021
Blog

A (Maryland) Southern Hero

Early in the civil war President Lincoln had Federal Troops occupy the State of Maryland.  Though the power vested only with the US Congress, Mr. Lincoln also took it upon himself to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus (the right of trial) throughout Maryland and eventually throughout the entire Union.   Mr. Lincoln also authorized his military commanders to imprison and…
Paul Callahan
January 8, 2021
Blog

VMI Test Case for the Country

In May of this year, George Floyd died; seven months later, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) removed its statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson from its prominent position at the nation’s oldest state-supported four-year military college. The two events – one in Minnesota’s largest city, the other in Virginia’s picturesque Shenandoah Valley – had nothing to do with one another.…
Forrest L. Marion
January 7, 2021
Blog

Meditations on a Couple of Old Postcards

I saw a pile of household goods on the side of the road a couple of days ago, as I was picking up a friend to take him to the store. It was a blighting image that I gazed on with disdain. I asked him what was that, and he said his neighbor was cleaning the house, and it was…
Cliff Page
January 6, 2021
Blog

Trimming Ourselves to Fit the World

“Black identity-mongers…are creating a phoney history and phoney traditions as escapes from very real problems of drugs, violence and social degeneration in the ghettos of the 1990s.” So wrote black columnist and philosopher Thomas Sowell in 1995. In 1991, amid internal strife, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) finally found something to unite them. It was…
Joshua Doggrell
January 5, 2021
Blog

Who Owns America Now?

From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5G4NWbkjJA&feature=youtu.be
John Devanny
December 28, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 243

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Dec 14-18, 2020 Topics: 2020 in Review, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-243
Brion McClanahan
December 19, 2020
Blog

The Blundering Generations and the Crisis of Legitimacy

Crises of legitimacy are rarely resolved without some resort to violence. The European experience in the seventeenth century is generously populated with examples: The English Civil War, Le Fronde I and II, The Thirty Years War, The Great Deluge that rocked Eastern Europe and the Polish Commonwealth. Even the Glorious Revolution, that peaceful coup launched by Anglicans and Whigs against…
John Devanny
December 18, 2020
Blog

Virginia and Alabama

Lexington, Virginia January 2002 Driving up, then down the mountain hairpins into Lexington,By daylight, moonlight, headlight (only one),I smell the moist ancient earth rising up to greet meThis January evening that seems almost like spring.Incredible! Time has collapsed around me. I sit on a wooden bench on the lawn of the Holiday Inn ExpressIn shirt sleeves accompanied only by Jack…
Thomas Hubert
December 17, 2020
Blog

The South in Retreat

Editor's Note: This lecture was delivered at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Carey Roberts explores the relationship between the Old Whig faction in the South--e.g. Alexander H. Stephens--and the New Democrats who controlled the region after the War. Roberts concludes that the Jeffersonian vision of America, dominant in the antebellum South, was bulldozed by the Old Whigs…
Carey Roberts
December 16, 2020
Blog

A Grandfather’s Love

Most all of us who were fortunate enough to know our Grandfather has experienced his love. It may be expressed in many ways, whether it be a spoken ‘Well done’ or an ‘I love you’, or by a physical ‘pat on the back’ or a hug. But most expressions of our Grandfather’s love are something we hold close, and will…
Travis Holt
December 15, 2020
Blog

A Red and Blue Divorce?

The red and the blue—states that is-- are as different as the colorless black and white landscapes absent from the color spectrum. The concept of separate states for separate cultures is as old as Canaan and Egypt. The concept of separation for moral law is as old as these two, as well. Today on any given "news" outlet, maps are…
Paul H. Yarbrough
December 14, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 242

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Dec 7-11, 2020 Topics: United States Constitution, Southern Tradition, Secession, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-242
Brion McClanahan
December 11, 2020
Blog

The Elephant in the Room

There are very few human symbols that find absolute approval or, in the alternative, disapproval. Symbols are called that because they represent something far larger than themselves. An unknown symbol is an oxymoron. At present, the symbol that is seemingly most under attack in this country is the Confederate battle flag albeit other flags that represented that short-lived, tragic nation,…
Valerie Protopapas
December 11, 2020
Blog

Identity Politics and the Southern Gentleman

Earlier this year, shortly after the sad and unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I witnessed an especially peculiar example of one of the many thousands (perhaps millions?) of debates on social media regarding race in America. In this case, both of the virtual combatants were white males — one was a young, recent graduate of an Ivy League…
Casey Chalk
December 10, 2020
Blog

Hillfolk History

All-too-often, seemingly buried in the myriad dates and statistics of history, lies the human experience that should do more to make up that history in the first place. These eyewitness accounts and anecdotes seem to speak to us, across the ages, in ways that numbers do not (something historians might want to pick up on, if they want a revived…
Travis Archie
December 9, 2020
Review Posts

James Henley Thornwell and the Metaphysical Confederacy

A review of The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Second Edition; Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1999) by James Farmer The role of religion leading up to the War Between the States is sometimes overlooked. However, there is no question that Christian clergy had a major influence on the Old South, including the politics…
Zachary Garris
December 8, 2020
Blog

The War in the Pacific

The dramatic events leading up to the secession of the Southern States, the tragedy of the War Between the States and the ensuing final act of the South’s Reconstruction period were, for the most part, staged east of the Mississippi River, as well as in the waters surrounding the East Coast.  A lesser part of the drama was played out…
John Marquardt
December 7, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 241

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 30 - Dec 4, 2020 Topics: Abraham Lincoln, Southern Tradition, Southern Music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-241
Brion McClanahan
December 5, 2020
Blog

Appalachian Music and the Phonograph

In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to advance their art.  For example, Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made their composed music sound Russian, and the only way to do this was to become immersed in Russian folk music to see what made it tick.  They studied work songs, play songs,…
Tom Daniel
December 4, 2020
Blog

The Gettysburg Fairy Tale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zksz7mOggqI&feature=youtu.be The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the most iconic speech in American history. Students are required to memorize it, and it has become as important to American political culture as the United States Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. This is unfortunate, because in this speech, Abraham Lincoln invented history and by doing so intellectually nuked the original federal republic.…
Brion McClanahan
December 3, 2020
Blog

Mr. Lincoln’s “Lost Speech”

"May 29, 1856 "Abraham Lincoln, of Sangamon, came upon the platform amid deafening applause. He enumerated the pressing reasons of the present movement. He was here ready to fuse with anyone who would unite with him to oppose slave power; spoke of the bugbear disunion which was so vaguely threatened. It was to be remembered that the Union must be…
Vito Mussomeli
December 2, 2020
Review Posts

Edmund Kirby Smith

A review of General Edmund Kirby Smith C.S.A. (LSU Press, 1992 (1954) by Joseph H. Parks This biography is a must read for any student of the War for Southern Independence in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. It is an informative broad overview of Smith’s life and career, while also humanizes the man who was often subject to heavy criticism during and,…
Wes Franklin
December 1, 2020
Blog

Less Than Five Miles

The life of a man is something that runs deep in all history. Before the war on gender roles, man and woman had a clear, defined boundary that all recognized and respected. Man was the provider, and woman, the nurturer and homemaker. A story and role as old as time. But, what of the physical boundaries of a man? My…
Travis Holt
November 30, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 240

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 23-27, 2020 Topics: New South, Southern music, Southern sports, Southern economics, Southern culutre https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-240
Brion McClanahan
November 28, 2020
Blog

How to Listen to Jazz

When you hear the word “jazz,” what type of music pops into your head?  What do you hear?  You probably hear piano, brass, saxophone, or all of the above.  But do you hear it melodious and catchy, or do you hear it jumbled and chaotic?  There’s a lot of jazz out there that’s very melodious and catchy, and extremely easy…
Tom Daniel
November 27, 2020
Blog

“Fight for Old Dixie!”

This Thanksgiving, the second of three NFL games will feature one of the oldest (albeit moribund) rivalries in professional football history: the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Football Team, previously known as the Redskins. Since the late 1970’s, the Cowboys, who with the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving, have been nicknamed “America’s Team.” Yet Washington, who under woke capitalist…
Casey Chalk
November 26, 2020
Blog

The New South

Edited by Robert Hoyle. A Discourse delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hampden-Sydney College, June 15, 1882, before the Philanthropic and Union Literary Societies. Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and Union Societies, and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Audience: You will credit my expression of sincere embarrassment at this time when you consider that I am attempting a species of…
Robert Lewis Dabney
November 25, 2020
Blog

The South Was Right! (Again)

The South Was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. New Edition for the 21st century.  Shotwell Publishing, 2020. In 1991 the Kennedy brothers first published The South Was Right!, a classic that can be considered a key document in the modern movement of Southern awareness and activism.  With a second edition in 1994, the book has sold an astonishing 180,000 copies.…
Clyde Wilson
November 24, 2020
Blog

Who Owns America Today?

The chief conflict in American history was and remains the conflict between the center and the periphery.  Geographically, this conflict plays out as a powerful antagonism between the large, urbanized, metropolitan areas of America and their satellite college and university towns, and the less densely populated small towns and rural areas.  In the political and financial realms, the conflict is…
John Devanny
November 23, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 239

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 16-20, 2020 Topics: Secession, Lincoln Myth, Nationalism, John Brown https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-239
Brion McClanahan
November 21, 2020
Blog

Secession: The Point of the Spear

Secession: The point of the spear aimed at the heart of the American Leviathan – or so I once thought. Certainly secession has been a live idea in Europe for a long time, often under the rubric of “self-determination.” Ludwig von Mises wrote in Liberalism in 1927 that “he right of self-determination... thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular…
Terry Hulsey
November 20, 2020
Blog

The Great Lie and the Real Controversy

The following address was delivered as part of a symposium at the 150th anniversary of the burning of Winnsboro, S.C., in February 2015, sponsored by the Winnsboro Historical Society. It is published here for the first time. By preface, I have one common-sense comment on the manufactured controversy over who burned Columbia. An army who torches and pillages every town…
James Everett Kibler
November 19, 2020
Review Posts

John Brown’s Body

A Review of The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (Uncommon Books, 1993) by Otto Scott. The Leftist political violence that has engulfed the disintegrating American nation for much of the past year traces its origin on the North American continent to the infernal life of the original American terrorist, John Brown. Like the terrorists of today who…
Neil Kumar
November 17, 2020
Blog

The Grand Alliance, a.k.a. The Deep State

The pattern for modern American politics was set by Lincoln and his cronies in the 1850s—1870s, although it took an immense war against other Americans to make it stick.  The pattern involved making the federal government (not the “Union” or the Constitution) the center of power and the fount of good (and goods).  This meant, in everyday terms, that the…
Clyde Wilson
November 16, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 238

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 9-13, 2020 Topics: Decentralization, Southern Tradition, Southern Politics, Education https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-238
Brion McClanahan
November 15, 2020
Blog

Slavery and Emancipation 101

The roots of the myth that slavery was primarily a white Southern institution were planted three decades prior to the War Between the States by the abolitionists in New York and New England.  This myth also included the idea that those same abolitionists of the 1830s had introduced the freeing of slaves in America.   Actually, however, the first seeds…
John Marquardt
November 13, 2020
Blog

We’ll Take Our Stand

It is not often enough, but I do set aside blocks of time to express gratitude to God for all the many blessings He has bestowed on me in my lifetime. There are many things I have missed out on, or simply fouled up royally, but the stars aligned in mid-October and I had the good fortune of being able…
Joshua Doggrell
November 12, 2020
Blog

The Southern Remnant

‘There has always been this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.’ – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ‘In each one of us there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of common sense. The road to totalitarian domination leads through…
James Rutledge Roesch
November 11, 2020
Blog

The False Cause Narrative

While watching a seventy-minute interview with Professor Adam Domby about his book, The False Cause, I was surprised at the number of errors, biased interpretations and even endorsement of "extralegal" conduct by anti-statue mobs. The False Cause focuses on Civil War and Reconstruction memory, particularly involving Confederate memorials. First, and foremost, Domby erroneously proclaims that the signature Confederate statues erected in Southern courthouse squares between…
Philip Leigh
November 10, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 237

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 2-6, 2020 Topics: Southern Culture, Abraham Lincoln, Elections, Reconstruction, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-237
Brion McClanahan
November 7, 2020
Blog

New England Slavers in Colonial America

Like any other economic exchange, the slave trade developed with a supplier, a consumer, and a trader or merchant that brought the two together. African kingdoms that had access to the western seaboard had a product, people, that they could readily be collected and sold based on labor demand, primarily from the new world during this time period. The English,…
James (Jim) Pederson
November 6, 2020
Blog

A [r]epublican in Exile

In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and the first man to hold that office). The two men were drawn to each other immediately and became fast friends for the rest of their lives. In her biography of…
Karen Stokes
November 5, 2020
Blog

The Power of the Powerless

‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.’ – Milan Kundera ‘I personally think…
James Rutledge Roesch
November 4, 2020
Blog

A Fool and His Money are Soon Elected

Will Rogers had a quip for just about any situation, but he loved to talk politics. Rogers was born on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. His father was a Confederate veteran and political leader in the Cherokee nation. At the height of his career, Will Rogers had the number one radio program in America and was the highest paid actor…
Brion McClanahan
November 3, 2020
Blog

It Began With A Lie

“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns and battles and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those…
Valerie Protopapas
November 2, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 236

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 19-30, 2020 Topics: Secession, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-236
Brion McClanahan
October 31, 2020
Blog

The Calhoun Monument Deserved Legal and Historical Protection

As some business owners and residents on King Street described it, “Charleston was raped” on the night of May 30, 2020, as mobs looted and burned the Holy City, turning so-called “peaceful protests” violent. Following numerous calls to remove the John C. Calhoun Monument and repeal the South Carolina Heritage Act, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg took a resolution to the…
Stewart O. Jones
October 30, 2020
Blog

Dumping Dixie Beer

There’s a popular meme floating around the internet that has a middle-aged, pot-bellied, suburban male standing by a charcoal fire with the caption below reading, “I just want to grill for God’s sake!” It has been seen as both an ideal (men just want to go about their weekly business without intrusion by the pet causes of the day) and…
Christopher J. Carter
October 29, 2020
Blog

The Southern (Catholic) Tradition

When asked why he was a Catholic, Southern author Walker Percy liked to provocatively respond, “What else is there?” Savannah-born writer Flannery O’Connor, a Catholic or Irish heritage, once asserted that she was a “hillbilly Thomist,” a nod to Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologiae she piously read. Percy and O’Connor certainly saw no conflict between their Southern identity and their…
Casey Chalk
October 28, 2020
Blog

A Neo-Confederate Prediction of Post-Election America

The political chaos that has accompanied President Trump’s first term will not abate anytime soon. From the Russian Collusion hoax to rioting in the streets to the public policy responses to the Covid-19 so-called pandemic, there appears to be something afoot that does not bode well for the future. Whether the motivation is ideological, economic, official incompetence, or a toxic…
Marshall DeRosa
October 27, 2020
Blog

Zorro and the Southern Tradition

Through the centuries since Jamestown was founded, the South has held certain values, virtues, and ideals in high esteem: Courage, duty, humility, integrity, courtesy, chivalry, gallantry, self-control, reverence, selflessness, strength, wisdom, and a willingness to defend what was right, no matter the odds. To be noble, to be a gentleman, was to exemplify those ideals. Sir Walter Scott’s novels were…
Earl Starbuck
October 26, 2020
Blog

Clarence Jordan and the Southern Tradition

The Southern Tradition is not something easily defined in a few words.  Its specific formulation comes from the work of Richard Weaver as he interpreted the thought of the Nashville Agrarians with significant augmentation by M.E. Bradford.  For my purposes here I will just consider it to be the sum of the myriad ways that southern culture, history, and ways…
Mike Goodloe
October 23, 2020
Blog

How Arizona Seceded From the Union

The United States acquired a vast area of the Southwest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (May 30, 1848), which included all or part of the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, Texas and Utah. As part of the treaty, Mexico agreed to sell the land (more than 1,000,000 square miles) to the United States for $15…
Steve Lee
October 22, 2020
Blog

Hank Williams Was Their Prophet and Tradition Was Their King

The story I’m about to tell is one of the many coming from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Hardscrabble existence was a way of life with our pioneers, and it was no different in my own bloodline. The Holts, James Simpson, and sons settled on a land grant in Newton County, Arkansas in the 1850s. They were some of the…
Travis Holt
October 21, 2020
Review Posts

Secession Becomes Thinkable

A review of American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup (Encounter Books, 2020) by F.H. Buckley When asked whether a state can constitutionally secede from the United States, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia brushed the question aside, saying the matter was settled by the Civil War. He was wrong. A Zogby poll in 2018 found that 39 percent of…
Donald Livingston
October 20, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 235

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 12-16, 2020 Topics: Reconciliation, 1619 Project, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-235
Brion McClanahan
October 17, 2020
Blog

Black Confederates in Reconstruction Newspapers

In an editorial published a little over a year after the Civil War ended, a Georgia newspaper writer expressed regret that the South had not accepted "the aid of the negroes" when it was offered. He even went so far as to say "we were fools" for refusing that help, and then he went even further and credited black Union…
Shane Anderson
October 16, 2020
Blog

Removing Guilt and Shame from the Study of Slavery

Some people come from the “the land down under”.  I come from the land “where old times are not forgotten”.  As historians we must recommit to helping our youth understand our history and realize that without a commanding knowledge of our history, there is no future for a free United States of America. It is natural to fight for your…
Barbara Marthal
October 15, 2020
Blog

A Simple Explanation

What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the war would not have happened. Indeed, it is probable that the circumstances leading up to the war would not have happened. So, what in fact, did happen?! Truth to tell,…
Valerie Protopapas
October 14, 2020
Blog

The End of Reconciliation

There’s something pernicious with the New York Times’ 1619 Project and its inversion of early Virginia colonial history. The colony of Jamestown isn’t a story of bravery and resilience in the face of disease and death. The House of Burgesses, founded in 1642, is not important as the first bicameral elected assembly in the American colonies. The Old Dominion of…
Casey Chalk
October 13, 2020
Blog

1619 Plus 2020 Equals 1984

In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” the central governmental agency in his fictitious country of Oceania is the antonymic Ministry of Truth, a body charged with the duty of erasing actual history and then rewriting it to meet what was considered to be more acceptable ideological concepts.  In America today, the same type of inane metaphorical thinking is also taking place,…
John Marquardt
October 12, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 234

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 5-9, 2020 Topics: Southern Tradition, Supreme Court, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-234
Brion McClanahan
October 11, 2020
Blog

When Yankees Pack the Court

The 2020 presidential election took a decided turn as it moved into the final six weeks when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, passed away, opening up a seat that would, if filled by a conservative, shift the ideological balance of the High Court, and bringing the issue to the forefront of what is already a raucous…
Ryan Walters
October 9, 2020
Blog

Lawyers and the Lawless Law of the Land

The Supreme Court once again is the headline of the news. Judge Ginsburg died leaving eight judges for the nine-seat court. The so-called media, as usual, portrays SCOTUS as the greatest authority since God gave his law to Moses. But, now, the worship of man’s law begins again in the news. The drainage of all political conversation regarding SCOTUS seems…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 8, 2020
Blog

Gaslighting Dixie’s Stateless People

Since 2015, it has become standard fare for the left to accuse President Trump of “Gaslighting,” meaning that the President uses his position of power to provide false data to confuse and therefore dominate Americans. The term originated from a 1930s Broadway play which was made into a movie “Gaslighting” in 1944 staring Ingrid Bergman. In the movie, the husband…
James Ronald Kennedy
October 7, 2020
Review Posts

Flowering Wisdom

A Review of Chained Tree, Chained Owls, Poems (Green Altar Books, 2020) by Catharine Savage Brosman. This is Catharine Savage Brosman’s twelfth book of poems, and the praise for her work has increased with each new publication. This review will follow suit; and in order to demonstrate-- to point out clearly-- this new level of excellence, it is best to…
William Wilson
October 6, 2020
Blog

Monument Avenue 1890-2020

For the majority of my life I have had an intense interest in the history of the War Between the States. This interest germinated as a result of two very influential places that I became well acquainted with from a young age. The first of these was the land that I have lived on since before my memory was even…
Patrick Seay
October 5, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 233

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 28 - Oct 2, 2020 Topics: Confederate Monuments, Western Civilization, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-233
Brion McClanahan
October 4, 2020
Blog

The Eyes of Our Fathers

Coming from a small, truly united community, I have many places that are dear to me that I often visit. One of these is a small city, located in the town where I grew up. But this is no ordinary city: it’s a resting place for people who have gone on before us. As I walk through Smith Cemetery at…
Travis Holt
October 2, 2020
Blog

California Secession…in 1858?

Antebellum California secession is a little known topic, but the Southern portion of the State nearly broke free from Northern California in the years just before the outbreak of war in 1861. California gained statehood in 1850 with a Senate vote of 34 ayes and 18 nays and a House vote of 156 ayes to 56 nays with Jeremiah Clemens…
Justin Pederson
October 1, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 232

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 14-25, 2020 Topics: Secession, Treason, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, Agrarianism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-232
Brion McClanahan
September 26, 2020
Blog

Industrial Combinations

From The Land We Love, V, no. I (May 1868), 25-34, edited by Joseph S. Stromberg. Combinations for the prosecution of industrial pursuits are the characteristic of our age. They now enjoy almost universal favor, and are extending themselves, in old and new directions, every year. In the delight which is inspired by their efficiency for money-getting, people seem unsuspicious…
Robert Lewis Dabney
September 25, 2020
Blog

The Guns of September

Reminiscences and Ramblings of a Novice Wing-Shooter It was the First of September, 2019 and there I sat, in the pre-dawn twilight, half asleep and fighting the near irresistible temptation, provided by the comfortable blanket of darkness that enveloped me, to “rest my eyes”. I guess that’s what you get for having longtime friends (and, soon-to-be hunting companions) over the…
Travis Archie
September 24, 2020
Blog

Jayber Crow

Not long after I moved my family to Bangkok, Thailand — where we lived for three years — I happened to be walking through a park with an environmental specialist for the U.S. Department of State. I noticed an interesting black bird hopping around nearby. “What’s the name of that curious bird?” I asked my friend. “Hell if I know,”…
Casey Chalk
September 23, 2020
Blog

Henry Miller’s Air-Conditioned Nightmare

Travel writing about the American South is a genre of its own.   One such observer was Henry Miller, who traveled through the South in 1941.  Miller was born in 1891 in New York City and lived almost all of his life there until 1930 when he moved to Paris.  He spent almost all of the years between 1930 and 1939…
Mike Goodloe
September 22, 2020
Blog

Thirty Pieces of Silver

“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts.” Once there was a common theme among our ancestors, and it was a simple one: land is…
Travis Holt
September 21, 2020
Blog

Was Secession Treason?

Recently an acquaintance of mine remarked that the Confederate statue in her hometown should be removed from its present place of honour and relocated to the Confederate cemetery which is presently (and sadly) in a state of neglect. The statue should be moved, she said, because while the boys who fought and died during the Late Unpleasantness deserve to be…
Earl Starbuck
September 18, 2020
Blog

Marxists, Conservatives, and Neocons

Reading an article in the latest Hillsdale College newsletter Imprimis I was shocked by the outrageous comparison of Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson as people fighting to “divide the nation.” The article was adapted from the speech, “American Sports Are Letting Down America,” in an online Hillsdale lesson by prominent black sports columnist,…
Carole Hornsby Haynes
September 17, 2020
Blog

They Were Not Traitors

A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors. It is a lie for two reasons. First, the Confederate states had no intent to overthrow the government of the United States. They seceded merely to form a government of their own. The first seven states that seceded during the winter of 1860-61…
Philip Leigh
September 16, 2020
Blog

A Land Without Heroes

What if there were 15.3 million dead American soldiers? Imagine it. Legions of the unburied down rows of summer corn, strewn along riverbanks, and discarded on roadsides. And imagine if many of the boys’ bodies had lain there for months or even years, for the fighting was so fierce and the resources so few that only the fortunate lay in…
Duncan Killen
September 15, 2020
Blog

As Luck Would Have It

The tiny hamlet of Lake Hill in New York State’s Catskill Mountains was my mother’s hometown, and her ancestors there, the Howlands, could trace their family history to its roots in Fifteenth Century England and to Bishop Richard Howland of Peterborough who officiated at the burial of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587.  During the next century, Henry Howland sailed…
John Marquardt
September 14, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 231

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 7-11, 2020 Topics: Yankees, Cancel Culture, Southern Music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-231
Brion McClanahan
September 12, 2020
Blog

Standing Like a Stone Wall

The City Council of Lexington, Virginia has renamed the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. The new name is Oak Grove Cemetery. The reasons stated were the usual ones. Jackson was a racist who fought for slavery. I hope the males on that council never have to do anything requiring manhood. Lexington Councilman Chuck Smith said the effect on tourism would likely be…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 11, 2020
Blog

Damn Right You Should Listen to the Blues

“The blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man feelin’ bad,” according to “Negro Blues,” penned in 1913. There’s no question about the “feelin’ bad” part. The genre is defined by its twelve-bar tune with the distinctive flatted third and seventh notes on the major scale (producing the “blue” note) coupled with lyrics of misery, injustice, and even sometimes self-loathing. One…
Casey Chalk
September 9, 2020
Review Posts

“You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me”

A review of Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music (University of California Press, 2014) by Nadine Hubbs If I had been told a short while ago that I would soon read a book by the Professor of Women’s Studies and Music at the University of Michigan, I would not have believed it. Had I further been told that the author would…
Joshua Doggrell
September 8, 2020
Blog

The Kwanzaafication of America

Kwanzaa is an invented tradition. Billed as a kind of “black Christmas”—you can even buy Kwanzaa greeting cards at the store and mail them with Kwanzaa stamps—the odd holiday was created out of spite by a certain Ronald Everett in the 1960s in a fit of pique after the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Kwanzaa begins the day after Christmas,…
Jason Morgan
September 7, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 230

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 31 - Sep 4, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern environment, Political Correctness, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-230
Brion McClanahan
September 5, 2020
Blog

Brain Dead Neocons

A recent article in Hillsdale College’s newsletter “Imprimis” compared Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in wanting to “divide the country.”  On a lessor point, it was in a figurative reference to the battle of Gettysburg, which Jackson wasn’t even present at, of course, being dead by then. The article was taken from an online…
Wes Franklin
September 4, 2020
Blog

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee

On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War of Independence. These brave men embodied that irrepressible Southern spirit, that martial valor and moral sublimity that suffused the souls of Dixie and her children for generations upon generations, stretching…
Neil Kumar
September 3, 2020
Blog

What Lee Said About Monuments in 1869

A frequent argument against Confederate monuments is a “sound bite” of a quote from General Robert E. Lee in 1869 in some variation to “I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war.”   The time of the event and the Monument Movement is significant.  Understanding this connection changes the meaning of the "sound bite" entirety.  Here's the…
Ernest Blevins
September 2, 2020
Blog

Requiem For A Quiet Man

Growing up in the Arkansas Ozarks, I early on found out I had a love for history; the history of my people. It was passed down to me in short snippets, in stories told between the older generations that revolved around love, tragedy, learning experiences, or sometimes just comedic encounters or sayings. My Grandfather would often quote an older man…
Travis Holt
September 1, 2020
Blog

General Orders No. 9

Have any of you all heard about the film, "General Orders No. 9" ? It's a visual & musical tone poem—an experimental film which appeared in 2011. The filmmaker, Robert Persons, took 11 years to make it. It concerns his musings about the Deep South, mostly Georgia, but also includes abutting parts of Mississippi & Alabama. This strange film struck…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
August 31, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 229

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 24-28, 2020 Topics: Cancel Culture, Political Correctness, Yankees, Confederate Monuments https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-229
Brion McClanahan
August 29, 2020
Blog

A Monument Worthy of a Hero

Eight-tenths of a mile down a dead-end Arkansas gravel road, at that dead end, past two neglected old cattle guards and in the back pasture is not where you’d expect to find a hero, much less a monument to him and his men. But, alas! There he is, lying in all of his humble glory. There are no official monuments…
Travis Archie
August 28, 2020
Blog

Of Apostates and Scapegoats

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
August 27, 2020
Blog

The Fire Eater

Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural civilization; one of the first and most intense Southern nationalists; and the man who fired the first gun at Sumter and ended his own life in grief when the civilization…
Neil Kumar
August 26, 2020
Review Posts

New Confederate Territory

A review of Cleburne: A Graphic Novel (Rampart Press, 2008) by Justin S. Murphy and others. The graphic novel is a major feature of literature in these times.  Southerners can indeed be happy that the Confederacy has entered this field in grand style.  Murphy is a nationally notable animator, writer, publisher, composer, and prize-winning dramatist from Florida.  As a youth…
Clyde Wilson
August 25, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 228

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 17-21, 2020 Topics: Southern history, Political Correctness, Cancel Culture, Language, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-228
Brion McClanahan
August 22, 2020
Blog

Idiotic Idioms

Identity Politics is changing our language in order to advance its agenda. One example is “people of color.” Hemingway would have convulsed at such a laborious construction. Does its nearly Global use today  suggest  that “people of whiteness” should also be adopted for consistency? While the simpler “colored people” technically has the same meaning, perhaps its potential racist connotation can…
Philip Leigh
August 21, 2020
Blog

The Shaping of Modern American History

The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are constantly under attack from those on the left and the mainstream historical establishment for leading the charge of promoting the “lost cause myth” of the Civil war. Defenders of popular history and the “righteous cause” narrative disparage any attempt to justify the Confederate Cause with the pejorative “Lost Cause Myth.” Their mantra…
Kevin Flynn
August 20, 2020
Blog

The Fire That Failed

I’ve never written of this episode in the history of Marion County, Fla., but then, I don’t think anyone else has either.  However, so much time has passed, with most of the witnesses long gone, I feel it’s time to mention it for posterity’s sake. Back in the late 1960s, there was a very active chapter of the Weathermen in…
Joscelyn Dunlop
August 19, 2020
Blog

The Simple Things

I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They raised their families, fought in the war, battled famine and drought and came out ahead, leaving their children small, improved farms. They taught them the joy of being independent, finding…
Travis Holt
August 18, 2020
Blog

“False Story” Historiography

“Madam, don't bring your sons up to detest the United States Government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities and make your sons Americans.” -Lee writing to a Southern mother, with a heart wrenching of hatred towards the North. Source: Proceedings & Debates, 2nd Session of the Seventy-First Congress, United States of America, Vol. LXXII-Part 8, United…
Gerald Lefurgy
August 17, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 227

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 9-13, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, Yankees https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-227
Brion McClanahan
August 15, 2020
Blog

Jeff, Judas, and Mr. James

During the War of Northern Aggression not every Southerner was on board for the Cause. Not every Yankee was opposed to the Cause. The numbers, apparently, from the action of four years of massacre and bloodshed indicate that each of the other sides saw few who crossed over. So be it. Or so it was. Records are probably not available…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 14, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XIII

A series by Clyde Wilson MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR (1798-1859) of Texas moved from his native Georgia to the Texas Republic in 1835. He took a conspicuous part in the Texas War of Independence and was cited by Sam Houston for outstanding bravery at the Battle of San Jacinto. Lamar served in the Texas government and followed Houston as President. He…
Clyde Wilson
August 13, 2020
Blog

America Without the South

A Yankee is a creature without a civilization. Having no people, no breeding, no past, he roams the earth by instinct, tearing down the civilizations built by others who, unlike him, lovingly cultivate human society. Being unwelcome in England due to his penchant for religious terrorism, the Yankee was exiled across the sea where he immediately set about destroying the…
Jason Morgan
August 12, 2020
Blog

Missouri’s War

A Review of Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War (Amazon, 2019) by James Michael Pasley. Ordinarily, I don’t endorse novels. As a general rule, I don’t even read them. But after my wife suggested I read Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War, I couldn’t put it down, so I decided to make an exception…
Samuel W. Mitcham
August 11, 2020
Blog

The Remnant, Part III

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of Hosts had left to us a…
James Rutledge Roesch
August 10, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 226

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 3-7, 2020 Topics: Black Southerners, Confederate Monuments, Southern Literature, Southern Poetry, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-226
Brion McClanahan
August 9, 2020
Blog

Knead to Know

Today we are besieged with raucous cries on both America’s streets and its social media platforms, as well as by all too many in the halls of government, to bring to an end what is now termed “systemic racism.”  To bring this amorphous demand about, we are led to believe that the systems that formed the very foundation upon which…
John Marquardt
August 7, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XII

A Series by Clyde Wilson THEODORE O'HARA (1820-1867) of Kentucky. "The Bivouac of the Dead" is often thought of as related to The War of 1861-1865. Like the "Star-Spangled Banner" it was confiscated for the North. Theodore O'Hara was a Confederate officer. (He was with Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston when he was fatally wounded.) He wrote the poem about 1850…
Clyde Wilson
August 6, 2020
Blog

Free Black Slaveowners

Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), known as “The Father of Black History,” was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, the son of former slaves. He received his doctorate from Harvard, rose to prominence as a writer and historian, and was the editor of The Journal of Negro History. He is best known for establishing Black History Week, which evolved into Black…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
August 5, 2020
Review Posts

Words of Wisdom

A review of Southern Scribblings (Red Mill Publishing, 2020) by Brion McClanahan In an age in which error, falsehood, and perversion are regaled by the politically correct, neo-Marxist as being America’s new normal, Brion McClanahan’s new book, Southern Scribblings, provides Southerners with a compass pointing them back to the tradition of virtue, honor, and the American principles of constitutionally limited…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 4, 2020
Blog

The Remnant, Part II

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us…All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are…
James Rutledge Roesch
August 3, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 225

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 27-31, 2020 Topics: Secession, Southern Literature, Southern Music, Political Correctness, Confederate Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-225
Brion McClanahan
August 1, 2020
Blog

Gouverneur Morris in 1812

Northern secession was openly in the political brew again. Eleven (11) years before, Jefferson had cautioned New England's desire to secede while accepting their sovereignty to choose as they wished. Since then extensive changes had come about. Jefferson was retired and Hamilton deceased. Our landmass more than doubled with the Louisiana territory. 2 more States, Ohio and Louisiana, were added…
Vito Mussomeli
July 31, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XI

A Series by Clyde Wilson EDGAR ALLAN POE,  Part 2 Sonnet – To Science Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!   Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,   Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,   Who wouldst not leave him in his wanderingTo seek for treasure…
Clyde Wilson
July 30, 2020
Blog

The Colored Sacred Harp

I have written here before about the history and mechanics of Sacred Harp singing, shape-notes, and Singing Schools.  James Kibler has delivered some truly excellent talks about Singing Billy Walker and the origins of Amazing Grace as an original tune called New Britain in Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, and I strongly urge you to listen to his presentations.  Listen…
Tom Daniel
July 29, 2020
Blog

The Atlantic Gets It Wrong, Again

I don’t have time to detail everything the piece in question gets wrong, because it's a lot. I’m sure this will be fodder for Abbeville posts for a long time, so I’m going to focus on the Constitutional issues. Stephanie McCurry writes: “In late February 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, the seven breakaway states formed the C.S.A.; swore in a president,…
Aaron Gleason
July 28, 2020
Blog

The Remnant, Part I

How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me. And if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me. If indeed you exalt yourselves against me, and plead my disgrace against me, know then that God has wronged…
James Rutledge Roesch
July 27, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 224

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 20-24, 2020 Topics: The War, Abraham Lincoln, Black Confederates, Southern Poetry, Southern Art https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-224
Brion McClanahan
July 25, 2020
Blog

The Statue in the Glade

   ‘Only such men could tell what once could be,   Hear what we hear, see what we see.’    Donald Davidson, “Late Answer: A Civil War Seminar” The wind is all but silent in the pinesAround a glade whose light comes down from fire,Not filtered or aslant through needle, cone, A heightened brightness passing as it stays. And there, alone,…
David Middleton
July 24, 2020
Blog

Black Confederate Sharpshooters

One of the more interesting things about the Civil War is the primary evidence, from Union accounts, that show black men serving as sharpshooters for the Confederacy. Unfortunately today you have men such as Kevin M. Levin, among others, who ignore or gloss over these accounts. In a 2015 article by Ernie Suggs, of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, states “Boston-based historian…
Wayne Pease
July 23, 2020
Blog

Why the Civil War Wasn’t About Slavery

From the 1870s to the late 1950s, there was an unofficial truce between the North and South. Each side recognized and saluted the courage of the other; it was conceded that the North fought to preserve the Union and because Old Glory had been fired on, and the Southerner fought for liberty and to defend his home; the two great…
Samuel W. Mitcham
July 22, 2020
Blog

Legend and Lies at Gettysburg

The Legend of the Speech Abraham Lincoln’s dedicatory speech of the memorial cemetery at Gettysburg “Gettysburg Address” has, like its author, achieved a kind of apotheosis. The soldiers,  about whom it was written and to whom the memorial itself was dedicated, are virtually forgotten.  Observers today consider the Gettysburg Address the American political creed, a “prose poem” of the triumph…
Christopher Kirk
July 21, 2020
Blog

Civilization in the Balance

I am not a great fan of President Andrew Jackson.  Yet this equestrian statue (erected in 1852, five years after its commissioning), in front of the White House, is one of the most important pieces of sculpture in the world.  You see it was created by an American sculpture Clark Mills, in his studio and bronze foundry he established in…
Cliff Page
July 20, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 223

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 13-17, 2020 Topics: Yankees, Cancel Culture, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-223
Brion McClanahan
July 18, 2020
Blog

1619 Lies Matter

The dogs of racial war were released this May in Minneapolis by the senseless death of George Floyd, a black man, under the knee of Derek Chauvin, a white police officer.  Even though Chauvin had a long record of misconduct, the charges against him had been mainly disregarded by the local authorities, including former prosecutor, now Senator and failed Democratic…
John Marquardt
July 17, 2020
Blog

The Real Legends and Lies of the “Civil War”

I caught a snatch of news the other day that, even with all that is happening in our time, stunned me. It seems that Hollywood is gearing up its machinery to produce entertainment about “Confederate War Crimes.” This so contradicts the historical record that it can represent nothing but willful ignorance, dishonesty, and malice.  For Hollywood, anything they don’t like…
Clyde Wilson
July 16, 2020
Blog

19th Century Fake News

While Fake News may be a new term, the concept has a long history.  We have been taught that a free, independent, and ethical press is essential for a free society to function and thrive; however, in practice, the American press has typically been far from these ideals. The press has been most malicious in times of crisis, acting not…
James (Jim) Pederson
July 14, 2020
Blog

Pietas in the Era of Revolution

Pietas, the most Roman of virtues, referred to the duty owed to one’s country, parents, kin, and ancestors.  It is from pietas that patriotism, not nationalism, springs forth.  It is a virtue once esteemed by Americans, for once upon a time Americans were formed by classical learning, and most especially they were formed in their political and literary imaginations by…
John Devanny
July 13, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 222

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 6-10, 2020 Topics: Southern music, Southern tradition, Political Correctness, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-222
Brion McClanahan
July 11, 2020
Blog

Landscape

The sun, a single red eye, burnt what was left of the earth, holding everything beneath it in a heavy, never-dimming glare.  It never left the sky, not even in those hours once reserved for night and the stars. The land lay red and uneven under it like flayed flesh, gorges deep and hills steep.  Almost nothing remained, all flora…
Randall Ivey
July 10, 2020
Blog

Can Liberty Survive the Marxist Purge?

While mobs continue tearing down monuments and shaming elected officials into removing statues of historical significance — from Christopher Columbus to Gen. Robert E. Lee and even Thomas Jefferson and George Washington — Clemson University (which receives over $100 million annually from the State of South Carolina) quietly decided to remove John C. Calhoun’s name from its honors college. Never…
Stewart O. Jones
July 9, 2020
Review Posts

The Seventeenth Amendment and the Siren Song of Democracy

A Review of The Road to Mass Democracy: Original Intent and the Seventeenth Amendment (Routledge, 2017) by C.H. Hoebeke On April 8, 1913, the requisite three quarters of the State legislatures kneecapped themselves, surrendering to “the people” their authority to elect Senators of the United States. The ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which provided for the direct popular election of…
Neil Kumar
July 8, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Charlie Daniels Edition

Charlie Daniels is dead. Just a shade over three years ago, I wrote this piece in honor of his birthday. The South has lost one of its greatest bards, and Dixie is worse for it. Daniels recorded arguably his best album, Fire on the Mountain, at Capricorn studios, the Peach State's famous recording studio in Macon. Unlike FAME or Muscle…
Brion McClanahan
July 7, 2020
Blog

Leave Calhoun Alone

Perhaps no American thinker has suffered more in recent days than John C. Calhoun, whose work and personage are often dismissed by his critics for a single phrase attributed to him, diminishing the careful and complicated analysis he deserves. Critics of Calhoun simplistically suggest his statecraft and thought, as well as his critique of America, serve a single purpose: the…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
July 6, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 221

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 29-July 3, 2020 Topics: Political correctness, Confederate monuments, Abraham Lincoln, the War, Southern culture, Dixie https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-221
Brion McClanahan
July 4, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Dixie Version

The Orwellian nightmare known as 2020 continues. Not only are Confederate monuments and symbols under attack, seemingly benign references to anything Southern are now considered "racist." Real estate listings that use the term "master bedroom" are being changed because the term is a reference to slavery, as does the word "plantation." The State of Rhode Island is considering changing its…
Brion McClanahan
July 3, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part X

A series by Clyde Wilson EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809--1849) of Virginia was the great creative genius of 19th century American literature in poetry, fiction, and criticism. Although accidentally born in Boston and spending part of his foreshortened life earning a living in New York, Poe was, and unequivocally considered himself to be, a Southerner. In all his career he was…
Clyde Wilson
July 2, 2020
Blog

Waving the White Flag Won’t Save the UDC

“Very late in the war, when defeat seemed inevitable, Northern generals were complaining that the Confederate soldier refused to give in and admit defeat, that Southern women remained indomitable in spirit….” – Dr. Clyde Wilson, “Rethinking the War for the 21st Century,” The Abbeville Review, September 14, 2016 “God bless…ALL who boldly defend the good name and honor of our…
J.L. Bennett
July 1, 2020
Blog

The Deep Identity of the South

Editor's Note: The Abbeville Institute does not endorse or support the views of Alexander Dugin on race, religion, or government, and Mr. Garlington offers his philosophical positions on identity in the broad concept of the term. The Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin lists three kinds of identity in his book Eurasian Mission – diffused, extreme, and deep.  The diffused identity is…
Walt Garlington
June 30, 2020
Blog

The Problem With Lincoln

“The problem with Lincoln is the problem with America,” said my friend Clyde Wilson when I asked him for a blurb for my new book, The Problem with Lincoln (Regnery, 2020).  That in fact is the theme of the book, written seventeen years after my first book on the subject, The Real Lincoln (TRL), as I shall explain.  A secondary…
Thomas DiLorenzo
June 29, 2020
Blog

Tucker and the Confederacy

Tucker Carlson, a man who had revealed himself as a reliable reporter/journalist over the years, in my opinion, stumbled recently. His nightly show, like most, has been confronted with the contemporary left-wing anarchic news happenings. Anarchy brings with it, anarchic news.  By its very nature, bestial conduct becomes the news story of the moment(s). And for the most part fake…
Paul H. Yarbrough
June 24, 2020
Blog

A Voice of Reason

Today, as it was a hundred and sixty years ago, America stands on the edge of an ever-widening chasm of cultural, ideological, political, racial and sectional divisions.  In 1860, there was at least one prominent voice of reason that cried out to end the nation’s mad rush into the abyss, that of Charles Mason of Iowa.  Mason was a Northern…
John Marquardt
June 23, 2020
Blog

The Shame of Bentonville

Bentonville is the lovely little town in Northwest Arkansas that I have spent nearly my entire life in. At the heart of Bentonville, in the center of our town square, there has rested a Confederate monument for the last 112 years, honoring the Southern soldiers who, carrying on the spirit of their Revolutionary fathers and grandfathers, gave their lives for…
Neil Kumar
June 22, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 220

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 15-19, 2020 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Symbols, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-220
Brion McClanahan
June 20, 2020
Blog

Calming the Rage

I am desperately trying to sooth a despaired and troubled heart.  What’s the source of my despair?  The stuck record that is playing in my mind, repeating this question.  How do we help our fellow citizens to understand that we cannot make sweeping changes and decisions in our society while being caught up in a blinding fog of emotional rage? …
Barbara Marthal
June 19, 2020
Blog

Rewriting the History of “Calhoun University.”

On June 13, 2020, Clemson University president Jim Clements proclaimed, “this was an important day for Clemson-a historic day for Clemson.”  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It was but another victory for historical revisionists and “presentism.”    On the day before, University Trustees voted 13-0 to remove John C. Calhoun’s name from the University’s Honors College because he…
Andrew P. Calhoun
June 18, 2020
Blog

Virginia Liars, Locusts, and Native Sons

Like locusts eating out the sustenance of farmers and agrarians, the once-proud land called Virginia is in philosophical and spiritual rot. The disease that is the deep state, progressivism, liberalism, Antifa, Blacks Lives Matter (because others don't?); or any of the other dogmatic, villainous human species swimming in their own waste, has spread like the black plague of Europe. Pitiful…
Paul H. Yarbrough
June 17, 2020
Blog

An Interview with Clyde Wilson, Part III

“Southerners who still value their heritage but don’t know what to do about it in such a hostile environment. They are our audience.” DM: What is your best short answer to people who say the War for Southern Independence was all about slavery and nothing but slavery? Should we come at this from an offensive posture, rather than being defensive,…
Clyde Wilson
June 16, 2020
Blog

Those Cowardly Tigers

In a gosh attempt at virtue signaling, the Clemson University Board of Trustees has unanimously voted to remove John C. Calhoun's name from the school’s Honors College. This decision came after former Tiger football stars Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins joined a petition campaign which declared: “To maintain the name is to convey Clemson University's continued indifference toward a history…
William J. Watkins
June 15, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 219

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 8-12, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, political correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-219
Brion McClanahan
June 13, 2020
Blog

Old Virginia Weeps

Last week Governor Ralph Northam announced his plan to remove the iconic statue of Robert E. Lee from Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. This step will be the beginning of an ambitious leftist Taliban undertaking that calls for the removal of four other statues of Confederate heroes, including that of Jefferson Davis. The now endangered statues have long been beloved…
Paul Gottfried
June 12, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part IX

A series by Clyde Wilson EDWARD COOTE PINKNEY (1802-1828) of Maryland was born and partly raised in England where his father, William Pinkney, was the U.S. Minister.  After publishing a good deal of poetry, he attempted to join the Mexican Navy during that country’s war of independence. From this venture Pinkney returned home to Baltimore, his health shattered.  He continued…
Clyde Wilson
June 11, 2020
Blog

Agents of the World-Spirit

The Great Men of History: What part do the so-called “Great Men of history” play in history and cultural evolution? The answer is double-edged, for it requires an understanding of the distinction between the temporal process of “history” (“a chronological series of events each of which is unique”) and the temporal-formal process of “evolution” (“a series of events in which…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
June 10, 2020
Blog

Defund Academia, Not the Police

Since 1960, the racist identity politics of the left has politicized and degraded American history in academia and the news media. One of the problems with academia is that, in a metaphorical sense, it is inbred. It is so liberal, the 33 wealthiest colleges in the last election gave Hillary Clinton $1,560,000. They gave Donald Trump $3,000. Over 90% of…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
June 9, 2020
Blog

An Interview with Clyde Wilson, Part II

I hope you all enjoyed Part 1 of my interview with Dr. Clyde Wilson. In this installment, the Carolina lion talks about his years in Chapel Hill, decimates modern higher “education,” explains his journalistic background, discusses his seminal academic work, gives Calhoun his due, and even offers some advice to today’s students. DM: Was your bachelor’s degree in journalism? And…
Dissident Mama
June 8, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 218

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute June 1-5, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern symbols, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-218
Brion McClanahan
June 6, 2020
Blog

Emancipate This!

A Japanese neighbor of ours in Tokyo, a former university professor, has written a number of books on American and Western humor, with some of his material covering the witticisms of Abraham Lincoln.  One such example was drawn from an 1858 Illinois debate with Senator Stephen Douglas in which Lincoln attempted to deflect Douglas’ charge that he was two-faced by…
John Marquardt
June 5, 2020
Blog

God’s Country Shall Not Be Damned

In Memory of Dr. Neil Compton, Arkansas Hero, 1912-1999 Neil Compton of Bentonville, Arkansas, my beloved hometown, stands as a paragon of civic virtue. Born in Falling Springs, western Benton County, he lived with his family on Upper Coon Creek until the age of eleven, when he moved to Bentonville upon the election of his father, David, as Benton County…
Neil Kumar
June 4, 2020
Blog

American Girondins

Who should Americans blame for the iconoclasm on display during the "protests" in virtually every American city this past weekend? Not the Left. They are the easy targets, and not without culpability. The washed up hippies teaching in American classrooms at every level have certainly been a major component of the cultural Marxism that now saturates American society. But they…
Brion McClanahan
June 3, 2020
Blog

An Interview with Clyde Wilson, Part I

I first met Dr. Clyde Wilson in February 2018 at an Abbeville Institute conference in Charleston. I had been reading his many works since I began becoming more intellectually curious about Southern tradition, the War, Reconstruction, and the New South, my own Confederate ancestry, and what it all means for the world today. Once you crack the veneer of the…
Dissident Mama
June 1, 2020
Blog

The Electoral College is not a Liberal Arts College

It is an established principle of the current political class, made up of mostly of abhorrent political party office seekers and bureaucrats that the Electoral College is not just obsolete, but apparently a fool’s errand.  The Democrats, for now, are at the forefront of this thought. But then what can be expected of a group of people who think 16-year-olds…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 30, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part VII

Ramblin’ Man - Allman Bros https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1xjl00sbao This was the biggest hit for the Allman Brothers and it led Lynyrd Skynyrd to Sweet Home Alabama. Every Southern rock outfit wanted to recreate the magic of Ramblin’ Man. The tune was written by Dickey Betts and was one of the last AB songs to feature Berry Oakley on bass. Homesick – Atlanta…
Brion McClanahan
May 29, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part VIII

A series by Clyde Wilson RICHARD HENRY WILDE (1789--1847) of Georgia gave up a successful career as lawyer and Congressman to pursue the Muse in Europe. This poem, though perhaps out of fashion, was praised by Byron and was long immensely popular in the English-speaking world. The Yankee black-face minstrel show impresario Stephen Foster "appropriated" some of the lines and…
Clyde Wilson
May 28, 2020
Blog

Expertitis

Watching events unfold as the non-pandemic/pandemic worked its way across the fruited plain has been an eye-opening experience.  For those of us who have been warning Americans that the Constitution is nothing but a paper barricade against tyranny, we are vindicated—but this is not a source of joy.  Many years ago, I had a good friend who loved cigarettes and…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
May 27, 2020
Blog

French Conservatives and the Southern Tradition

Part of the blood that flows through the veins of the Southern ethnos is French blood, both of the high-born that settled in places like New Orleans and the plainer folk like the Cajuns of Acadiana and the Huguenots of South Carolina.  This being so, and it also being the case that all true sons and daughters of the South…
Walt Garlington
May 26, 2020
Blog

Confederate Memorials: Speaking to Posterity

Should it be asked, why then build this monument? The answer is, they do not need it, but posterity may. It is not their reward, but our debt. - Jefferson Davis So said the former President of the Confederate States in a letter regretfully turning down an invitation to speak at the laying of the cornerstone for the Confederate Monument…
Shane Anderson
May 25, 2020
Blog

The Janitor in Chief as Lord of the Cosmos

Once upon a time, somewhere near here, there were thirteen sturdy proprietors. They lived within haling distance of one another and things weren’t so bad. There was a fourteenth proprietor as well, a rascally fellow called Vermotte, but no one liked him or visited him. Anyway, a couple of these householders got a bad case of Condo-maniacal Vision and began…
Joseph R. Stromberg
May 22, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part VII

A series by Clyde Wilson WASHINGTON ALLSTON (1779--1843) of South Carolina was one of the most important of early American painters.  The first two poems were written in response to his first viewing of major artistic works in Italy. On a Falling Group in the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, in the Cappella Sistina How vast how dread, o'erwhelming, is…
Clyde Wilson
May 21, 2020
Blog

Remember Missouri

People remember Missouri as a Union rather than a Confederate state.  Even those who are not offended by the memory of the Confederacy are either unaware Missouri seceded from the Union or refuse to recognize Missouri’s secession because it was not done “properly.”  Considering the attitudes and underhanded politics common in the 1860s, what exactly does proper mean?  When most…
Jason Welch
May 20, 2020
Review Posts

The Age of Entitlement

A review of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties (Simon and Schuster, 2020) by Christopher Caldwell In his recently (2020) published book The Age of Entitlement, Christopher Caldwell, a northeast “intellectual” boldly proclaimed something that few Southerners would dare to say. He declares that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created, “a rival constitution, with which the original…
James Ronald Kennedy
May 19, 2020
Blog

Old Hope

      When the sick brain with crazy skill                Weaves fantasies of woe and ill. Returning nostalgically for a moment to the presidential debacle—excuse me, "campaign”—of 2003-4, let us recall the headline on the front page of the Nov. 5, 2003 Washington Post which read, "Rivals Demand Dean Apology." An apology, that is, for a remark made by the then…
Jonathan Chaves
May 18, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 217

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 11-15, 2020 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition, Southern literature, Southern music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-217
Brion McClanahan
May 17, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part VI

Hot 'Lanta - Allman Brothers Band https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWSoo3bLhIc The typical standard jazz composition that would be played by Miles Davis or John Coltrane is exactly the same type of composition as “Hot ‘Lanta.”  It begins with the melody (which is repeated), moves into a section where everyone takes turns improvising (Duane Allman melts off your face), and then concludes with a…
Tom Daniel
May 15, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part VI

A series by Clyde Wilson FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1779-1843) of Maryland.  The story is well known how Key composed "The Star-Spangled Banner" after he witnessed the repulse of the British attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbour in 1814. It casts an interesting light on the official U.S.  national anthem when one notes that Key's grandson, Frank Key Howard, was…
Clyde Wilson
May 14, 2020
Blog

Blackstone’s Influence on American Political Philosophy

The question before us, ‘how did the writings of Blackstone influence American political philosophy, and what evidence for this influence is seen in Tocqueville's observations of American political life?’ is perhaps best quantified with qualifiers such as influence ‘upon whom’, ‘for how long’, ‘to what extent’. If we accept a genealogy of ideas from Blackstone’s conception of positive law reinforcing…
Barry Clark
May 13, 2020
Blog

How Secession and War Divided American Presbyterianism

Presbyterianism has a rich legacy in American history. The Presbyterian church was founded in Scotland by John Knox (d. 1572), a disciple of John Calvin. Along with the Dutch Reformed and New England Puritans, the Presbyterians brought Reformed theology to the New World. Scottish and Irish immigrants introduced Presbyterianism to the American colonies in the 18th century, and the first…
Zachary Garris
May 12, 2020
Blog

Mixing It Up

Allen Mendenhall interviews John Shelton Reed. AM:  John, I really appreciate this interview.  Your latest book is Mixing It Up: A South-Watcher’s Miscellany.  I noticed that you dedicated the book to Beverly Jarrett Mills.  She was helpful to me over recent years, and I wish I had known her much earlier and far longer. I sense that she and others, like…
Allen Mendenhall
May 11, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 216

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute May 4-8, 2020 Topics: Southern culture, Southern literature, Southern music, Confederate States Constitution, Neoconservatives https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-216
Brion McClanahan
May 9, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part V

A series by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Loan Me a Dime - Boz Scaggs Boz Scaggs rose to prominence after teaming with Steve Miller in the late 1960s on his first two albums. That led to a record contract and a date with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section in Florence, Alabama in 1969. He knew where to…
Brion McClanahan
May 8, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part V

A series by Clyde Wilson Homage to Revolutionary Heroes DOLLEY PAYNE MADISON (1768—1849) was the wife of President James Madison.                              Lafayette Born, nurtured, wedded, prized, within the pale Of peers and princes, high in camp---at court--- He hears, in joyous youth, a wild report,Swelling the murmurs of the Western gale,Of a young people struggling to be free!   Straight quitting…
Clyde Wilson
May 7, 2020
Blog

Why No Confederate Supreme Court?

The Confederacy never organized a Supreme Court because her founders generally interpreted the U. S. Constitution strictly. Over the years they had seen that the U. S. Supreme Court tended to make rulings, and assume jurisdictions, that strengthened and enlarged the Federal Government. As a component of that Government they realized that the Court had a natural tendency to increase its authority.…
Philip Leigh
May 6, 2020
Review Posts

The Graces of Flannery O’Connor

A review of Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Friends (Convergent Books, 2019) edited by Benjamin Alexander. One of the more agreeable and important books about literature to emerge recently is Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends, edited by Benjamin Alexander who recently retired from teaching literature…
Henry T. Edmonson III
May 5, 2020
Blog

Victor Davis Hanson and “Southern Racism”

The political structure in the United States is often portrayed by the media and its guests via a histrionic history of federalism. However, it seems, no historian or commentator can speak without referencing Southern (and only Southern) racism. And history is always linked, era to era, as Conservative vs Liberal vs Southern. It is often linked as Republican versus Democrats…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 4, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 215

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 27 - May 1, 2020 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Yankees, Southern tradition, Southern literature, Southern music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-215
Brion McClanahan
May 2, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part IV

A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Good Time Feelin' - Dickey Betts Betts’s solo projects were as good (if not better) than most Allman Brothers albums post Duane Allman. “Good Time Feelin’” is a blistering blues rock tune, and this live version is better than any studio recording of Betts and Great Southern. “I can’t…
Brion McClanahan
May 1, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part IV

A Series by Clyde Wilson UNKNOWN WRITER, 1781 The Battle of King’s Mountain 'T was on a pleasant mountainThe Tory heathens lay,With a doughty major at their head,One Forguson, they say.Cornwallis had detach'd himA-thieving for to go,And catch the Carolina men,Or bring the rebels low.The scamp had rang'd the countryIn search of royal aid,And with his owls, perched on high,He…
Clyde Wilson
April 30, 2020
Blog

Plodding Through the “ills of life”

Especially in unsettling times, it is helpful for Christians to examine the lives of faithful saints of old, who finished their race well. One brother and father in the faith, today perhaps remembered in Baptist circles and in North Carolina, was Elder Martin Ross. As a young man, Ross served as a soldier in the Continental Army in the war…
Forrest L. Marion
April 29, 2020
Review Posts

Armies of Deliverance

A Review of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2019) by Elizabeth R. Varon. Yankee arrogance may be the most dangerous malady on the planet. “Communist engineering” is deadly, to be sure. Before Wuhan, there was Chernobyl, Sverdlovsk, and the Great Leap Forward. But whereas communism has a shelf life, Yankee arrogance never…
Jason Morgan
April 28, 2020
Blog

No Comparison Between Grant and Lee

Over a century and a half has passed since Confederate States General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant. Yet, despite surrender by one and victory by the other, controversy continues regarding which man better represents the virtues of honor, duty, and American patriotism. For those who believe that might makes right, then…
James Ronald Kennedy
April 27, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 214

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 20-24, 2020 Topics: John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Political Correctness, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-214
Brion McClanahan
April 25, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part III

A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Goin' Down Slow - Duane Allman When Duane Allman died in 1971, the world lost one of the best slide guitar players in the history of recorded music. By this point, Allman had become famous as part of his Allman Brother Band, but his influence on American music began…
Brion McClanahan
April 24, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part III

EBENEZER COOKE (fl. ca. l 680s--1730s?) of Maryland is a major figure in Colonial American literature. He is best known for the long satirical poem “The Sot-Weed Factor.”  (The sot-weed is tobacco, mainstay of the Southern and American economy in the colonial period, and the factor is a figure long familiar in the South---the merchant who sold and exported the…
Clyde Wilson
April 23, 2020
Review Posts

No Worse Enemy. No Better Friend

A review of In Defense of Andrew Jackson (Regnery History, 2018) by Bradley J. Birzer I was recently in Nashville, Tennessee, with family, and took the opportunity to visit Andrew Jackson’s home-turned-museum, “The Hermitage.” I have to admit, it was amusing for me to hear the historians whom were interviewed by the museum become outright “historicists” (as the Straussians/Jaffaites would…
James Rutledge Roesch
April 21, 2020
Blog

Calhoun and Constitutionalism

Union and liberty are not two terms most people associate with John C. Calhoun, a figure often linked exclusively with secession and slavery. But a reading of Liberty Fund’s 1992 Union and Liberty, a single-volume collection of Calhoun’s writings and speeches edited by the late Ross M. Lence, reveals a mind most intently focused on investigating and assessing the origins…
John Grove
April 20, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 213

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 13-17, 2020 Topics: Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Reconciliation, Southern Poetry, Southern Rock https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/podcast-episode-213
Brion McClanahan
April 18, 2020
Blog

Southern Rock for the Apocalypse, Part II

A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers Blood in the Water - The Jompson Brothers Before Chris Stapleton became Grammy Award winner Chris Stapleton, he was a singer/songwriter from Kentucky who wrote several hits for other musicians and kicked around Nashville as a part of other bands, including the bluegrass outfit The Steeldrivers, a nod to…
Brion McClanahan
April 17, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part II

JOHN COTTON (fl. 1660s – 1720s) was an early settler of Virginia, never to be confused with the awful Cotton family of Massachusetts. In 1814 an anonymous poem about Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (1676) was found among some old mss. and subsequently published. It was long regarded as an anonymous treasure of American colonial literature. Twentieth-century poet and critic Louis…
Clyde Wilson
April 16, 2020
Blog

The All American Perspective

An outlook is bleak when nothing worse can be said than the truth. To this end, there is no 'sugar-coating' the elements of obliteration, subjugation, necrosis and above all, 'Hatred', in all its ugly forms, (physical, racial, social, ad infinitum), that were part of the Civil War/War Between the States', (CW/WBTS), conduct and legacy. That is beyond dispute and this…
Gerald Lefurgy
April 15, 2020
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