Blog

End of an Era

I was saddened to hear that Phil Harris had died. I knew the man. You might say we were old friends. As a matter of fact, we first met in 1954 in Monterey, California. I was attending the Army Language School, learning Russian, and Phil was playing in the Bing Crosby Pro-Am tournament. His professional partner was Dutch Harrison, a…
Thomas Landess
August 17, 2018
Blog

The Sounds of the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia

Because we live in such a hurried time, we hear countless “noises” but have little time to appreciate actual “sounds.” Sound is a sensation that you can feel, not just something you can hear. To understand this idea, consider how some musicians have actually played concerts for the deaf, who cannot hear the music but still feel the vibrations. These…
Michael Martin
August 16, 2018
Blog

Anything Is Nice If It Come From Dixieland

In October 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the executive mansion. This was an unprecedented move. No African-American had ever been asked to dine with the president, and while neither Roosevelt or his staff said much of the event, it was surely done in the spirit of reconciliation and Roosevelt's desire to be "the people's…
Brion McClanahan
August 15, 2018
Review Posts

What Are People For?

A review of What Are People For? by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1990) "We should love life," Dostoyevski once said, "more than the idea of life." It is this concreteness, this rootedness, that seemingly inspirits the life and writings of Wendell Berry, whose most recent collection of essays, What Are People For?, further establishes him as one of the…
Tom Rash
August 14, 2018
Blog

The Southern Muse of Ronnie Van Zant

The 1970’s were an interesting time in the South. The 1970's were the last time Southerners could be Southern without feeling the need to apologize for, or be ironic about, their Southern identity. In fact, in the 1970's, it seemed to actually go a little beyond this. We shouldn’t push this too far, but in 1970’s America there seemed to…
Jeff Rogers
August 13, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 133

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 6-10, 2018 Topics: the War, Political Correctness, Neoconservatives, Reconstruction, Southern Culture, Southern Literature. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-133
Brion McClanahan
August 11, 2018
Blog

The Southern Saga

In the book The Mystery of the Wonder-Worker of Ostrog, the main character, Mladjen, a fictional representation of the modern Serb uprooted from his traditions by the lingering effects of Communism (who is very much akin to many of those inhabiting the New South, shorn of so much of their past by the all-too-present effects of Communism’s alter-ego, Capitalism), has…
Walt Garlington
August 10, 2018
Blog

Causes of the “Civil War”

In a PBS interview seven years ago historian and Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War. “Historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery,” she said before adding, . . . “when the various states announced their plans for secession, they uniformly said that the main motivating factor was…
Philip Leigh
August 9, 2018
Blog

Southward Returning/Sanctuary

Southward Returning To you, Virginia, Tennessee, To Georgia’s red roads, to the past That binds the delta and the sea, Your Southern sons return at last. No more the always going forth From ruin and our old regret, No more the sundering of faiths By some who taught us to forget. For us, the long remembering Of all our hearts…
Donald Davidson
August 8, 2018
Review Posts

The Power of Memory: How to Remember America’s Most Traumatic Crisis

A review of  Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight (Harvard University Press, 2001). In Race and Reunion, historian David Blight recounts the first fifty years after the Civil War in order to describe how Americans of all backgrounds remembered the experiences and lessons of the conflict.  He contends that three distinct visions of Civil War memory…
Josh Phillips
August 7, 2018
Blog

The Death of Historical Accuracy

In case you haven’t heard, there is a new “conservative” film out; it is titled “Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time?” It’s director and screenwriter is Dinesh D’Souza, the somewhat pompous, word-measuring figure who occasionally shows up on Fox to talk in pious tones about “conservatism.” He is the movie producer who, by his own…
Boyd Cathey
August 6, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 132

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 30 - Aug 3, 2018 Topics: the War, Abraham Lincoln, myth-making, Southern culture, Southern history. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-132
Brion McClanahan
August 4, 2018
Blog

Lead Belly’s Southern Roots

Sometime around 1939, Lead Belly sang the song Daddy I’m Coming Back to You, which features the interesting lyrics: “I’m dreaming tonight of an old Southern town, the best friend I ever had...I’ve had my way, but now I’ll stay, I long for you and for home.” The song was a tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, who is often considered one…
Michael Martin
August 3, 2018
Blog

July 4 Comes and Goes, but Doesn’t Square with The Swamp

“Living in Washington, you can't take politics too seriously. I draw the line at honesty. I have no time for political hacks who say things they don't believe because they get paid to.” Tucker Carlson My opinion on Trump’s election is that those who voted for him (by states, as required) was because those people who voted knew, and know,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 2, 2018
Blog

Lost Cause Myth or Yankee Propaganda

Whether it's the Civil War, War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence or Lincoln's War, this extremely important period of American history continues to resonate powerfully over 150 years later. And with American Veterans monuments and artwork being censored and removed throughout the country, some might even say that Reconstruction and the fight over Jeffersonian ideals vs. Hamiltonianism never…
Lewis Liberman
August 1, 2018
Review Posts

The Saints Are Marching On, and On, and On…

A review of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North by Jennifer L. Weber (Oxford University Press, 2007). They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case it is worth much more: 217 pages of them. The text comes wrapped in a handsome dust jacket, colored black and gold and featuring an arresting…
H. A. Scott Trask
July 31, 2018
Blog

Colonel Baldwin Meets Mr. Lincoln

This essay is Chapter 13 in Mr. Taylor's Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation (2016). “I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only way to save the country, but I see my mistake. I visited Washington a few weeks ago, and I saw the corruption of the present administration—and so long as Abraham…
John M. Taylor
July 30, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 131

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 23-27, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern history, Southern politics, Yankee myths https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-131
Brion McClanahan
July 28, 2018
Blog

The Late Unpleasantness: Memory, Meaning and Understanding

The War Between the States is called by many names, the most genteel being “The Late Unpleasantness.”  The low country districts of South Carolina, including the environs of Charleston, is the geographic origin of this title for America’s most bloody and divisive conflict.  There is a deeper significance to the term than a polite and refined attempt to soften an…
John Devanny
July 27, 2018
Blog

The Dukes of “Hazzard”

Following the senseless racial murders at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015, Hollywood’s moonshining Duke boys from fictitious Hazzard County, and more particularly their 1969 Dodge Charger “General Lee,” replete with a Confederate Battle Flag painted on its roof, were placed on the growing list of Southern images to be erased from public view. Not only were scheduled reruns…
John Marquardt
July 26, 2018
Blog

Time for the South to Ban Affirmative Action

The leading authority on this aspect of affirmative action is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (2014), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (by a plurality) that it is permissible for a state to ban affirmative action.  The case arose out of a voter-approved initiative amending the constitution of Michigan that made affirmative action illegal in public education,…
Michael Arnheim
July 25, 2018
Review Posts

Confederates in Mexico

A review of Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico by Mary Margaret McAllen (Trinity University Press, 2014). Leaving forever the land of your fathers is painful, yet many Southerners turned further south, contemplating that choice on the eve of their destruction by the North. With most of their wealth bound to the land, what resource could they find…
Terry Hulsey
July 24, 2018
Blog

Nationally Acclaimed, Locally Detested

The Tricentennial celebration of New Orleans has stirred much interest into different facets of the city’s history. The search for the quintessential old New Orleans novel yields few results. The rich culture of New Orleans makes it one of America’s great cities. The Crescent City has served as muse for a litany of writers, accomplished and rising, yet it remains a near impossible place…
Abbeville Institute
July 23, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 130

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 16-20, 2018 Topics: Neoconservatives, Southern identity, Southern culture, the War New banjo introduction by Barrow Wheary. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-130
Brion McClanahan
July 22, 2018
Blog

The Southron’s Burden

Southerners confronted by Northerners touring our section are made aware of the difference in their speech from ours. They approach us speaking a form of English known outside the United States as "American." We of the South also like to consider ourselves American; however, it has long been an accepted belief that we Southerners have an accent. And not just…
Laurie Hibbett
July 20, 2018
Blog

Bushwacking the Bill of Rights

Last November, when President Bush issued an executive order establishing a system of military commissions to punish non-citizens, I asked myself, as no doubt countless other Americans did, “But what about Ex Parte Milligan (1866)?” Surely George W. and his Dad had studied this landmark Supreme Court decision in the course of those searching discussions of American history they must…
Ludwell H. Johnson
July 19, 2018
Blog

The Americanization of James Iredell

James Iredell was born at Lewes, Sussex County, England. He was the eldest of the five sons of Francis Iredell, a Bristol merchant, and Margaret McCulloh Iredell, originally of Dublin. Young James came to the New World in 1768 because, after his father suffered a stroke in the mid-1760’s, it was necessary for the boy to leave school and accept…
M.E. Bradford
July 18, 2018
Review Posts

Wall Street Journal’s Confederate Animus

A review of Vicksburg: The Bloody Siege that Turned the Tide of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. (Regnery History, 2018). On the eve of the War for Southern Independence an article was published in The New York Times which unequivocally announced why the North had to invade and conquer the South.  The author of the article declared, “The…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
July 17, 2018
Blog

Nathan Bedford Forrest and Southern Folkways

There are many examples of heroism that illustrate spiritedness in America’s history. Indeed, the American Revolution was won because of the indomitable spirit of the Patriots and a growing unwillingness of the British to put down the campaign for independence. The same spirit was present a century later during the War between the States. It is routinely acknowledged that Confederate…
Benjamin Alexander
July 16, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 129

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 9-13, 2018 Topics: Southern independence, Southern culture, Southern architecture, the War, Sam Houston https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-129
Brion McClanahan
July 14, 2018
Blog

I Heard A Voice

They were standing at the ledge. Their view mirrored a panorama of buildings and smoke stacks. Great edifices, heaving asymmetrically, skewed with monster cylinders venting plumes of expended energy. The farms, the land, scarcely discernible, were hiding from the crowding machines in ambient spaces where life of life and lives of lives grappled and struggled for survival. The agrarians had…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 13, 2018
Blog

Sam Houston and Texas Secession

"Lincoln, under no circumstances, would I vote for ... So, I say, stand by the 'Constitution and the Union', and so long as the laws are enacted and administered according to the Constitution we are safe ..." (emphasis added) Letter from Sam Houston to Colonel A. Daly, August 14, 1860 The 1860 Election was still 3 months in the future and…
Vito Mussomeli
July 12, 2018
Blog

Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South

In the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, after Atlanta has been burned and Scarlett O’Hara is fleeing to Tara, there is a scene where she arrives at neighboring Twelve Oaks Plantation to find it burned by Yankee troops and in ruins. The mansion’s once-grand double staircase is open to the night sky, and a cow appears…
Robin Spencer Lattimore
July 11, 2018
Review Posts

America Aflame

A review of America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation, by David Goldfield (Bloomsbury Press, 2011). Whether or not the American Civil War might have been avoided has long been a subject of debate among historians. Some, like Allan Nevins and Charles and Mary Beard, saw the war as “an irrepressible conflict,” in the words of Abraham Lincoln’s…
Stephen M. Klugewicz
July 10, 2018
Blog

Is Dixie A Captive Nation?

Is the South today a captive nation? Most Southerners would never consider the question—most likely because they would deem the issue to be absurd. But is it inane to ask such a question—is it forbidden in politically correct America to ask such a “confrontational” question? Conservatives would immediately dismiss such rhetorical questions as being unpatriotic or even treasonous—after all, everyone…
James Ronald Kennedy
July 9, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 128

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 2-6, 2018 Topics: Independence, secession, the War, Political Correctness, Southern religion, Southern founding https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-128
Brion McClanahan
July 7, 2018
Blog

The Ministry of ‘Ordinary Means’ and the Kentucky Revivals of 1828

In his important 1994 work, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858, the Rev. Iain H. Murray examined the periods in American church history known as the first and second awakenings. Focusing mainly on the spiritual movements in the North, Murray argued persuasively that in general the First Awakening period of the mid-18th century was characterized…
Forrest L. Marion
July 6, 2018
Blog

Leftist Crazies Don’t Want You to Exist

I try to collect all the business that I must do in Raleigh into one day. One trip a week into North Carolina’s increasingly cosmopolitanized and rapidly de-Southernized capital city is about all I can take these days: it’s become too much like just about any other homogenized, faceless metropolis in any other part of the country. Most of Raleigh’s…
Boyd Cathey
July 5, 2018
Blog

The Spirit of ’61

The bloody conflict of 1861 to 1865 is often called the Civil War, but most Southerners regarded it as a war for independence and self-government. Many if not most Confederate soldiers and officers who fought in it had fathers or grandfathers who served in the first American war of independence, and they were mindful of their heritage. Southerners were proud…
Karen Stokes
July 4, 2018
Review Posts

The Confederate Cherokee

A review of The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew's Regiment of Mounted Rifles by W. Craig Gaines (LSU Press, 2017). When most people think of Confederate Cherokees, the name Stand Watie immediately comes to mind. This book is not about Stand Watie’s troops but about John Drew’s Regiment of Mounted Rifles. It is also not so much about Confederate Cherokees as…
John C. Whatley
July 3, 2018
Blog

Richard Henry Lee

Richard Henry Lee was a patriot, Anti-Federalist, and statesman from his “country,” Virginia.  He led the charge for independence in 1776 and was a powerful figure in Virginia political life.  He served one term as president of the Continental Congress and was elected a United States Senator from Virginia immediately after the ratification of the Constitution.  His role in the…
Brion McClanahan
July 2, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 127

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 25-29, 2018. Topics: Southern history, perception, United States Constitution, Southern culture. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-127
Brion McClanahan
June 30, 2018
Blog

Why the South Erected Confederate Statues

The diagram below graphs the number of Confederate statues erected between 1870 and 1980. Since the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) compiled the data, they suggest the memorials were most frequently put in place during periods of flagrant anti-black sentiment in the South. In short they imply that racism was the prime motive for Confederate monument-building. In truth, however, more…
Philip Leigh
June 29, 2018
Blog

Why the South Needs the Electoral College

The Electoral College, a bulwark of federalism,  is under attack.  Straightforward abolition of the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, which is most unlikely to be passed in the foreseeable future.  But the Electoral College now faces a more serious,  insidious threat from the so-called  National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC,) which purports to operate through the Electoral College…
Michael Arnheim
June 28, 2018
Blog

Shrine of the South

One of the foremost scholars of the Southern Cause lives in New Market, Virginia. He has never written a book, authored a scholarly thesis, or lectured at a university. Instead, he built a museum – a rather impressive museum – dedicated to historical truth and brimming with valuable period artifacts. Having visited just about all the “Civil War” and Confederate…
Louis T. March
June 27, 2018
Review Posts

The Art of the Old South

A review of The Art of the Old South: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture & the Products of Craftsmen (1560-1860) by Jessie Poesch (Harrison Press, 1989). The Art of the Old South encompasses architecture, painting, sculpture, and the products of craftsmen. We are given a tour of a great variety of private and public buildings-from the formal mansions and elegant townhouses that followed…
Jeff Wolverton
June 26, 2018
Blog

Juneteenth: A Celebration of Nothing

On June 19, 1865, Union forces arrived in Galveston, Texas and declared to the population of that state that the Emancipation Proclamation had freed its slaves. Called "Juneteenth," it was initially celebrated in Texas, but it is now recognized in one way or another by 45 states and the District of Columbia. But what is it a celebration of? President…
Timothy A. Duskin
June 25, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 126

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 18-22, 2018. Topics: Dixie, the South in pop culture, Confederate symbols, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-126
Brion McClanahan
June 23, 2018
Blog

The Attack on “Dixie” in Sports and Music

Sound was the first victim of the attack on southern heritage. In October 1971, the University of Georgia’s “Dixie Redcoat Marching Band”  dropped the word “Dixie” from its name and discontinued playing the song “Dixie” after the National Anthem. Many people, even to this day, will argue that “Dixie” was played and perpetuated to uphold white supremacy. But the tradition…
Michael Martin
June 22, 2018
Blog

Why Confederate Monuments Matter

First of all, I wish to state that I teach history. I do not try to erase it, and I do not desecrate graves, like the “politically correct” did in Memphis and elsewhere. I understand why corrupt political nonentities like the mayors of Memphis and New Orleans would want Confederate statues removed. They want to divert the voters’ attention from…
Samuel W. Mitcham
June 21, 2018
Blog

Tom Foolery

There are neither Confederate monuments to be torn down in Japan nor Battle Flags to be lowered . . . but if there were, there could well be some Japanese who might wish to protest such symbols. While my wife Rieko would certainly not be among them, when she was attending high school one of her standard 1953 English text…
John Marquardt
June 20, 2018
Review Posts

Rock and Roll Civil War

When you think of America’s so-called “Civil War”, rock music may not be one of the first things that come to mind. However, as one of the most deadly wars in American history, with Missouri being the 3rd bloodiest of all the states (in terms of war-related deaths and human rights atrocities), the War Between the States continues to resonate…
Matthew Silber
June 19, 2018
Blog

Was Lee a Traitor?

Were Robert E. Lee and the Confederates “traitors” who violated their oaths to the Constitution and attempted to destroy the American nation? Or, were they defenders of that Constitution and of Western Christian civilization? Over the past 158 years those questions have been posed and answers offered countless times. For over a century since Appomattox the majority opinion among writers…
Boyd Cathey
June 18, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 125

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 11-15, 2018 Topics: Treason, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-125
Brion McClanahan
June 16, 2018
Blog

All the News That’s Fit to Print

Fort Sumter was the beginning not only of a bloody conflict, but it forged a generation of war correspondents that would culminate in live action reporting one-hundred and thirty years later. These faltering beginnings by the Civil War correspondents would reach their highest form during the Desert Storm war. During this action, Americans saw on prime time television the missiles…
Norman E. Rourke
June 15, 2018
Blog

Two Southern Presidents in History

It was Wednesday, April 19, 1865. The Confederate States of America lay prostrate under the twin plagues of starvation and despair. Richmond had fallen and Lee’s surrendered Army of Northern Virginia was heading home. Four years of near constant fighting had depleted the South’s resources and killed a generation of its sons. On the military front, General William T. Sherman…
David E. Johnson
June 14, 2018
Blog

Awake for the Living: Lee and the “Feeling of Loyalty”

“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” —Revelation 2:5 The Attack on Confederate Monuments is a subspecies of what Richard M. Weaver called the “attack on memory.”  To understand why the attack on…
Aaron Wolf
June 13, 2018
Review Posts

Is Secession Treason?

A review of With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era by William A. Blair (University of North Carolina Press, 2014) and Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis by Cynthia Nicoletti (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Was the act of secession in 1860-61 treason? This is one of the more important and lasting questions…
Brion McClanahan
June 12, 2018
Blog

Southern Cultural Genocide

  The quote below indirectly warns about the implications of Confederate statue removals and the censorship of Southern interpretations regarding the Civil War and Reconstruction. Kundera is presently a French novelist born in Brno when the city was located in Czechoslovakia. He lived through both Nazi and Communist totalitarianism before fleeing to France in 1975. His books were banned in…
Philip Leigh
June 11, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 124

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 4-8, 2018 Topics: West Virginia myth, war crimes myth, Pilgrims myth, Righteous Cause Myth, incorporation myth https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-124
Brion McClanahan
June 9, 2018
Blog

First Amendment Establishment

The Phoenix, Arizona city council has been forced by self-declared “Satanists” to cease opening its meetings with prayer. The Arizona Republic reports the details of the events leading to this decision: “Followers of the Satanic Temple, a group promoting religious agnosticism, had been scheduled to give the prayer at the council's Feb. 17 meeting. News of the planned Satanic invocation…
Joe Wolverton
June 8, 2018
Blog

The Cult of the Lost Cause

History is the propaganda of the victorious. - Voltaire According to an explanation of “The Lost Cause” from the web site of the Virginia Historical Society: Former Confederates crafted a historical interpretation of the Civil War to reconcile the prewar society they admired and the devastation that accompanied southern defeat. The “Lost Cause” narrative was developed by former Confederates who…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
June 7, 2018
Blog

Redeeming the Time

Picture it. A book store in Madison, Wisconsin, in the mid-’90s. Quite the unlikely place you’d expect to be exposed to the true history of the Pilgrims being totalitarian religionists, not the freedom-seeking refugees in funny hats, bonnets, and buckled-shoes we hear about in grade school. This took place at a book signing and lecture, not given by a historian,…
Dissident Mama
June 6, 2018
Review Posts

War Crimes Against Southern Civilians

Originally published at amazon.com, 30 September 2009. A Review of War Crimes Against Southern Civilians by Walter Brian Cisco (Pelican, 2007). Walter Brian Cisco is lifelong scholar of American Civil War history, a professional writer, and researcher with many respected publications on the subject including States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, Taking a Stand: Portraits from…
Stephen Hendrick
June 5, 2018
Blog

Confederate West Virginia

Confederate West Virginia has always been an enigma. A bright fellow riding through Monroe County was intrigued by the Confederate monument in a field near Union. This biker-hiker-writer Michael Abraham wondered why. For clues, he went straight to local historians ‘Bud’ Robertson and Stuart McGeehee. In his thoughtful book, The Spine of the Virginias (2010, Pocahontas Press; Blacksburg, Virginia) he…
Frank Ball
June 4, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 123

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 28-June 1, 2018 Topics: Treasury of Virtue, Confederate monuments, Political Correctness, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-123
Brion McClanahan
June 3, 2018
Blog

The Wrong Side of History

I've always been fascinated by those tricky slogans politicians and social activists use to dupe the public. These cleverly crafted catchphrases are short, simple, easily understood and tend to stick with people. A currently popular catchphrase is “The wrong side of history” which has been defined as: “Having policies or practices that are perceived as not progressive or enlightened; behaving…
Gail Jarvis
June 1, 2018
Blog

Lee the Philosopher

Our culture has, of late, become rather fixated on the idea that every historical figure in our past should have anticipated how moral worldviews would evolve after his or her death. Now, clearly, this is impossible. Picasso and Hemingway, to take two great artists who were also generally terrible people, could not (and should not) have thought about how their…
R.M. Stangler
May 31, 2018
Blog

Defending the Monuments

After the Charleston shooting in 2015, all across the old Confederacy memorials, monuments, flags and other symbols of the South’s Confederate history came under renewed and severe assault. It seemed that the last vestiges of that heritage might be swept away in a paroxysm of politically-driven outrage and media-hyped efforts to purge the landscape of those symbols. In many ways…
Boyd Cathey
May 30, 2018
Review Posts

Cracks in the Treasury of Virtue

A review of Division and Reunion: America, 1848-1877, by Ludwell H. Johnson, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978. 301 pages; and The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement, by Otto Scott, New York: Times Books, 1979, 375 pages. It was Flannery O'Connor who remarked, in one of her short essays, that people will believe anything about the…
Clyde Wilson
May 29, 2018
Blog

The Only Way to Drain the Swamp

“When you are up to your hindquarters in alligators—it is hard to remember that your intentions were to drain the swamp.”  This old country-boy saying seems most appropriate for President Trump as he attempts to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. The continuing efforts of the ruling elite in Washington to destroy a lawfully elected president because “their” anointed candidate…
James Ronald Kennedy
May 28, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 122

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 21-25, 2018 Topics: Yankees, Nationalism, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-122
Brion McClanahan
May 26, 2018
Blog

Star Wars and Gone With The Wind

Given that the Star Wars franchise seems to have degenerated into yet another vehicle for the transmission of political-correctness, it seems a little ironic that the newest installment of the series will revolve around the one character with an undeniable connection to the South -- Han Solo.  George Lucas's wisecracking smuggler borrowed some of his best lines from the cynical…
Jerry Salyer
May 25, 2018
Blog

White Knights of the North

When the majority of people think of the Ku Klux Klan, there undoubtedly comes to mind a relic of post-Confederate racism that has now morphed into dangerous groups of rabidly anti-Black Southerners dressed in white hoods, burning crosses and waving Confederate Battle Flags. However, the real story of the White Knights of the Invisible Empire, as they were also referred…
John Marquardt
May 24, 2018
Blog

An Appeal to Southern Graduates

This spring thousands of graduates coming out of the high schools and colleges across the South will be hearing a similar message: Go far!  Dream big!  Succeed!  Break the mold! But we hope they will not listen to it.  We hope they will do the opposite: Stay home, dream small, be content, be unknown. The duty of the young is…
Walt Garlington
May 23, 2018
Review Posts

Killing the Incorporation Doctrine

A review of The 14th Amendment and the Incorporation Doctrine by David Benner (Minneapolis: Life and Liberty Publishing Group, 2017) Even though I have always been a strong advocate of states’ rights and sovereignty, and for safeguarding the federal system, the “incorporation doctrine” had always troubled me. What is meant by the “incorporation doctrine”? The application, by the federal courts,…
Ryan Walters
May 22, 2018
Blog

Texas Vs. The Pacific Coast: Explaining The Yankee Mindset

I recently traveled to Texas to speak about South Africa, at the Free Speech Forum of  the Texas A & M University. To travel from the Pacific Northwest all the way to College Station, Texas, without experiencing more of the Lone Star State was not an option. So, after driving from Austin eastward to College Station (where I was hosted…
Ilana Mercer
May 21, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 121

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 14-18, 2018 Topics: Southern tradition, Yankees, Confederate symbols, Jeffersonianism, Southern identity https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-121
Brion McClanahan
May 19, 2018
Blog

On Remaining Humble in Modern Academia

After reading Richard Weaver’s monumental work Ideas Have Consequences last semester I was struck with one characterization of the “ideal man” that has since been shaping the way I look at my own academic future. For a young seminary student like myself pursuing “Christ-likeness” was a given, but my eyes were never fully open to what that meant in relation…
Jonathan Harris
May 18, 2018
Blog

Confederate Monuments and Racism

When New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu succeeded in removing three Confederate monuments, he said those three statues to Lee, Beauregard and Davis represented “terrorism.” “. . . hey were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city,” he added. Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio…
Thomas J. Crane
May 17, 2018
Blog

Yankee Sanctification

“It was my first introduction to damn Yankees,” my oldest sister remarked of her first semester at James Madison University in the fall of 1982. It was here, at this university nestled in the mountains of Virginia and named after one of the state’s most famous sons, that her Northern dormitory suite-mates were horrified by such flagrant abuse of their…
Dissident Mama
May 16, 2018
Review Posts

Death by Taxes

A review of For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams (Madison Books, 2001). Why can’t American Presidents learn that if you raise taxes on the American people they will vote you out? George Bush crashed because he raised taxes, and Bill Clinton will go down as soon as the people get…
William J. Quirk
May 15, 2018
Blog

Southern Identity in the 21st Century

What exactly does it mean to be a Southerner in the 21st Century? Is it spending countless hours finding out who your Confederate ancestor is and joining up with the local Sons of Confederate Veterans? Or is it driving around town with a Confederate flag bumper sticker on the back of your pickup truck? Or maybe it’s being “that guy”…
Lewis Liberman
May 14, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 120

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 7-11, 2018. Topics: Southern culture, Southern history, the War, "Memory Studies" https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-120
Brion McClanahan
May 12, 2018
Blog

That Embarrassing Analogy

Is there a genuine analogy between the secession of South Carolina from the USA and the secession of Lithuania from the USSR? Or between the actions of Lincoln and Gorbachev? The press either ignores the parallels or asserts that the two secessions are somehow different. Of course they're different; but an analogy stresses what different things have in common. World…
Sheldon Vanauken
May 11, 2018
Blog

Donald Davidson Revisted

Mel Bradford has argued that no individual has exerted more influence upon the development of a profession of letters this century in the South than Donald Davidson. The poet, essayist, and social critic is well known to most literary scholars and historians of the South; however, Davidson’s critique of the Southern experience remains largely unappreciated. Several years ago the author…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
May 10, 2018
Blog

In Search of the Real Abe Lincoln

No one interested in American history can escape Abraham Lincoln. Over the years the outpouring of books, articles, essays, and poems has been enormous, so much so that this form of activity is sometimes referred to as “the Lincoln industry.” With all of this attention devoted to one man, how can there be a “Lincoln puzzle”? Surely all Americans know…
Ludwell H. Johnson
May 9, 2018
Review Posts

Making the Southern Canon

A review of Fifty Southern Writers After 1900: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Ed. by Joseph M. Flora and Robert Bain. Greenwood Press, 1987. A few years ago, before I had been sold upriver to Clemson, some colleagues and I were busily devising a graduate reading list for the Ph.D. program in English at the University of Southern Mississippi. (I had been…
Mark Royden Winchell
May 8, 2018
Blog

Confederate Dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK9z0zwThtw The Confederate Dead (1867) By Latienne From the broad and calm Potomac, To the Rio Grande's waves, Have the brave and noble fallen — And the earth is strewn with graves, In the vale and on the hill-side, Through the wood and by the stream, Has the martial pageant faded, Like the vision of a dream. Where the reveille…
Brion McClanahan
May 7, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 119

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 30-May 4, 2018 Topics: Southern conservatism, Yankees, Neoconservatives, Northern secession, the French Revolution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-119
Brion McClanahan
May 5, 2018
Blog

The Essex Junto

It was the purchase of Louisiana, therefore, which gave impetus to a plan which had been creeping upon New England, aided and stimulated by the Essex Junto. They agreed that the inevitable consequences of the annexation of this vast territory would be to diminish the relative weight and influence of the Northern section; that it would aggravate the evils of…
Charles Raymond Brown
May 4, 2018
Blog

The Sensory Poetry of Dubose Heyward

Dubose Heyward once described himself as a “synthetic Charlestonian.” Having been part French Huguenot and part English Cavalier, he was a direct descendant of South Carolina’s Thomas Heyward Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Born in Charleston in 1885, he was a major part of the Southern Literary Renaissance and wrote extensive poetry and fiction. Southern identity came…
Michael Martin
May 3, 2018
Blog

How the Neocons Destroyed Southern Conservatism

No discussion of Southern conservatism, its history and its relationship to what is termed broadly the “American conservative movement” would be complete without an examination of events that have transpired over the past fifty years and the pivotal role of the powerful intellectual current known as Neoconservatism. From the 1950s into the 1980s Southerners who defended the traditions of the…
Boyd Cathey
May 2, 2018
Review Posts

The Last Gasp

A review of The Last Hurrah by Kyle S. Sinisi (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). General Sterling Price’s attempt to liberate Missouri from Union occupation in late 1864 was the last gasp of the Confederacy. Price was a late convert to secessionism and President Jefferson Davis suspected his loyalty. There were also unsubstantiated rumors that unknown people intended to overthrow Davis and put…
John C. Whatley
May 1, 2018
Blog

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite

The old adage “history repeats itself'' refers to striking similarities between past events and contemporary events. Consequently, historical accounts of past events not only help us understand what has happened but also better understand what is happening. This insight is badly needed at this time. Unfortunately, knowing the public has a weak grasp of history, some portrayals of past events…
Gail Jarvis
April 30, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 118

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 23-27, 2018 Topics: the War, Lincoln, Historical Myths, Confederate Memorial Day https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-118
Brion McClanahan
April 28, 2018
Blog

The United States of Despotism?

In an era in which serious concerns are discussed regarding police abuse, government surveillance, standing armies, increasing division and strife and the potential loss of constitutional rights, American Bastille details the accounts of the imprisonment and sufferings of approximately 70 people at the hands of the State (including pastors, Judges, U.S. Senators, Doctors, Farmers, Editors, Foreign Ministers and women) from…
Lewis Liberman
April 27, 2018
Blog

Save the Souls of the Lords of Gray– in Eleven Stanzas

Oh! Save the souls of the Lords of Gray. Donned their swords and scabbards. Rode into cause valiant to pray. Ever still they cease from marching forth; Holding their cause against a vile North. Men in gray suits though equal in stripe, Bare their hearts and sinew. Defend the world against the snipe, They bleed into soul far from Lord’s…
Paul H. Yarbrough
April 26, 2018
Blog

Unlearning “Fake History”

An African-American columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has opined that it is time to unlearn the “fake history” of slavery and “The Lost Cause” that ostensibly has been taught in schools in Virginia and the South. I am an advocate for the Truth in all things, and I am not opposed to his premise, although much “fake history” comes from…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
April 25, 2018
Review Posts

Knights of the Golden Circle

A review of Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War by David C. Keehn (LSU, 2013). “Maybe,” “Likely,” “It seems that.” Those are hardly the words of an author certain of the truth of his thesis, but these are indeed the words David C. Keehn uses in his book, Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire,…
Joe Wolverton
April 24, 2018
Blog

The Pickens Plot

When the Pacific phase of World War Two began in December of 1941, Great Britain’s main bastion of power in Southeast Asia was its eighty-five thousand man army behind the fortifications at Singapore, the so-called Gibraltar of the Pacific. The problem was, however, that all the island’s massive protective firepower faced the Straits of Singapore rather than the Malay Peninsula…
John Marquardt
April 23, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 117

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 16-20, 2018. Topics: Reconciliation, Political Correctness, the War, Southern Culture, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-117/s-E63oJ
Brion McClanahan
April 21, 2018
Blog

Southern Themes in The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton published The Outsiders in 1967 at the age of eighteen. It’s a coming of age story that is widely read within schools and takes place in Oklahoma in 1965. The novel focuses on two rival groups, the Greasers and Socs, who are divided by their social status. The Greasers are described as wilder, having longer hair, and being…
Michael Martin
April 20, 2018
Blog

The Marseillaise of the South Plays On, For Now

As the 2018 legislative session was winding down in Annapolis, the Senate passed a bill retiring the Old Line State’s Confederate call to arms, but that bill was to die in committee in the House of Delegates. So, once again, though “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” has been archived, “My Old Kentucky Home,” “updated,” “Maryland! My Maryland!”—some would say…
J.L. Bennett
April 19, 2018
Blog

Modern Heresy

Essayist William Deresiewicz recently lamented that modern college students, and college life in general, have become "profoundly unintellectual." The "snowflake" generation is the byproduct of educational institutionalization. Will this be on the test, and will I get a study guide? Deresiewicz should also indict the faculty and administration who encourage this "unintellectual" environment. This results in a crop of students…
Donald Livingston
April 18, 2018
Review Posts

Zombies No More: Secession, Nullification, and the Academy

A review of Nullification and Secession in Modern Constitutional Thought. Sanford Levinson, ed. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2016. The undead walk among us still, or so asserts Sanford Levinson, the editor of an important collection of essays on nullification and secession.  Levinson and company are as mainstream a group political scientists, law professors, and historians as one might…
John Devanny
April 17, 2018
Blog

A Bloodless Victory

Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, is known as the place where the “Civil War” began. The South is normally portrayed as the aggressor, the side which fired the “first shot,” and is thus given the blame for starting the war. The whole truth is, however, that the governments of South Carolina and the Confederate States of America made repeated…
Karen Stokes
April 16, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 116

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 9-13, 2018. Topics: Political Correctness, the New South, the War, Thomas Jefferson, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-116
Brion McClanahan
April 14, 2018
Blog

Jefferson the President

Of all the presidents of the United States, none save Washington and Lincoln have inspired half so much historical writing as Thomas Jefferson. Books and articles by the score have dealt with the Sage of Monticello in one or another of his myriad aspects— Virginian, statesman, philosopher, scientist, farmer, architect, rationalist, theologian, slaveholder, apostle of liberty, author of the Declaration…
Forrest McDonald
April 13, 2018
Blog

Victor Davis Hanson Hates the Confederacy…and the South

“Conservative” writer and classicist Victor Davis Hanson hates the Confederacy and the South; he has demonstrated this repeatedly in recent years through his articles published in National Review (where he is a senior contributor) and in other venues (see, for example, “Sherman’s War,” November 9, 1999; “California Goes Confederate,” Jewish World Review, February 9, 2017;  “The Strange Case of Confederate…
Boyd Cathey
April 12, 2018
Blog

When Historians Lie

Eminent historian Dr. Clyde Wilson in one of his many books on American history expresses this sentiment about the "old-style history:" History is not an expression of abstract laws, or the record of progress. It is a description of the actions of men, of life, which in turn is an expression of the (partly unknowable) mind of God. The historical…
Jonathan Harris
April 11, 2018
Review Posts

The Unknown Confederate West

A review of The Civil War in the American West by Alvin M. Josephy (Vintage, 1993). As the “history” books to which government school students are subjected begin to deal with the War of Northern Aggression, they tend to make little mention of those states and territories west of the Mississippi, with the exception of Missouri and Kansas. Missouri, so…
Al Benson
April 10, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 115

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 2-6, 2018 Topics: the New South, Agrarianism, Confederate Monuments, World War II https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-115
Brion McClanahan
April 7, 2018
Blog

Okinawa Confederate Flag

Five days ago I posted an article citing Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed that stated the first American flag to fly over the conquered Japanese fortress at Shuri Castle during the World War II battle of Okinawa was the Confederate battle flag. Sledge, who was present, wrote: Earlier in the morning . . . Marines had attacked eastward into the rains of…
Philip Leigh
April 6, 2018
Blog

The Arkansas Traveler

It was Tuesday evening, September 16th, and people all across America were settling down for the first performance of a new CBS comedy and music program.  Rather than watching the show on fifty-inch TV screens with names like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, since the year was 1941, they would be gathered in front of AM radio sets bearing such then…
John Marquardt
April 5, 2018
Blog

Reconsidering William Jennings Bryan

When William Jennings Bryan died in 1925, H.L. Mencken wrote a scathing eulogy stating: “There was something peculiarly fitting in the fact that last days were spent in a one-horse Tennessee village, and that death found him there. The man felt home in such scenes. He liked people who sweated freely, and were not debauched by the refinements of the…
Michael Martin
April 4, 2018
Review Posts

I’ll Take My Stand

A review of I'll Take My Stand by Twelve Southerners (LSU, 2006). In this age where the homogenization of our culture is nearly complete, thanks largely to widespread media and rampant industrialism, I'll Take My Stand remains as fresh and relevant as the day it was published more than seventy years ago. Instead of indulging in reactionary daydreams or nostalgia,…
Randall Ivey
April 3, 2018
Blog

New Orleans Remains in Crisis After Historic Monuments Removed

An international organization recently released a ranking of the 50 most dangerous cities in the entire world. Four of the world's most dangerous cities are located in the United States; Detroit, Baltimore, St Louis, and New Orleans. As Mitch Landrieu's two terms as New Orleans mayor ends, he leaves behind a city characterized by rampant crime, unsafe streets and neighborhoods…
Gail Jarvis
April 2, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 114

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar. 26-30, 2018. Topics: the New South, Southern Culture, Hank Williams, Confederate Symbols https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-114
Brion McClanahan
March 31, 2018
Blog

Trump’s Aluminum Tariff: A Teachable Moment

President Trump’s proposed ten-percent tariff on refined aluminum yields a teachable moment for Southern history students. Historical analysis of the industry reveals an echo of the Northern tariff policies that angered Southerners during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the South was generally a raw materials exporter and feedstock supplier to Northern manufacturers. Tariffs during the era usually…
Philip Leigh
March 30, 2018
Blog

With Friends Like That…

The recent Klan activities in Forsyth County, Georgia and Summerville, South Carolina make it more and more difficult for those of us who are trying to keep the battle flag flying and Dixie in the repertoire of bands around the region. You saw them on your television screen: angry little clusters of the ignorant, assembled in front of the ravenous…
Thomas Landess
March 29, 2018
Blog

30 Years From Hank Williams

This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1985. Hank Williams has now been dead longer than he lived. And outside of a hundred or more fine songs, his thrity-year-old memory survives best among some of his cousins down in Georgiana, Alabama, about sixty miles south of Montgomery. Among them are Taft and Erleen Skipper (Taft’s daddy and…
Bill Koon
March 28, 2018
Review Posts

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

A review of Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States: The Attack on Leviathan by Donald Davidson (Transaction Books, 1991). August 18, 1993 will mark the centennial of Donald Davidson’s birth. On April 25 of that year, he will have been dead a quarter of a century. During his lifetime Davidson was considered the most minor of the major Fugitives,…
Mark Royden Winchell
March 27, 2018
Blog

Stony Creek and Virginia History

On an abnormally warm early Spring day, I took a 150 mile motorcycle ride from Portsmouth to Stony Creek, Virginia. It is where my Great Great Grandpa, Randolph Page, was captured by Federal Forces in 1864. He rode with the SC 6th Insurgent Cavalry (Aka: the Dixie Raiders). His unit fought in nearly every major engagement in Virginia from 1862,…
Cliff Page
March 26, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 113

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 19-23, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern culture, the New South, Reconstruction, Yankees https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-113
Brion McClanahan
March 24, 2018
Blog

His Truth is Marching On

Social activist Julia Ward wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861, the same year that Henry Timrod composed his “Ethnogenesis” (the poem which kicked off part 2 of this series). In it, she penned that God will use His “terrible swift sword” to bring judgment upon “condemners” and “crush the serpent with his heel.” The wicked this New…
Dissident Mama
March 23, 2018
Blog

States’ Rights

Most modern historians reject any suggestion that the South fought the Civil War over states’ rights. They insist that the only states’ rights the South cared about, “as neo-confederates are loath to admit,” was slavery.  (According to Wikipedia, “neo-confederate is a term that describes the views of who use historical revisionism* to portray the and its actions in the Civil War…
Philip Leigh
March 22, 2018
Blog

Streety

John Randolph of Roanoke with his dogs on the floor of Congress. There was a little dog down the street from us named Streety. My brother and I hadn’t got our own dog yet; that was five or six months in the future. So, we had adopted Streety as our own--though many in the neighborhood had done the same. He…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 21, 2018
Review Posts

Southern Horizons

A review of Southern Horizons: The Autobiography of Thomas Dixon (IWV Publishing, 1994). The name of Thomas Dixon today is little remembered, North or South, but seventy years ago Dixon was one of the most prominent and controversial public figures in the country. The discovery and publication of his autobiography ought to be considered a significant event in the cultural…
Stephen P. Smith
March 20, 2018
Blog

The Lost Tribes of the Irish in the South

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I am speaking but the plain truth when I tell you that I would rather be here tonight facing an assemblage of men and women of Irish blood and Irish breeding than in any other banquet hall on earth. For I am one who is Irish and didn't know it; but now that I…
Irvin S. Cobb
March 19, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 112

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 12-16, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern culture, Southern literature, Abraham Lincoln, 20th century Southern history https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-112
Brion McClanahan
March 17, 2018
Blog

Parallel Lines Of Division

The complex issues which have and continue to divide America’s North and South have a long and at times violent history, as well as having involved an extensive list of differences.  Almost a century before the War Between the States and even prior to the establishment of a formal geographic boundary roughly dividing the two sections along the thirty-ninth parallel,…
John Marquardt
March 16, 2018
Blog

Calley’s Civil War

In November 1970, Lt. William Calley (a Florida native born in 1943) went on trial for his life. He was being court-martialed by the U.S. military for his participation in the My Lai Massacre and was accused of killing twenty-two civilians. Even though twenty-six officers participated and an estimated five hundred South Vietnamese were killed, Calley was the only man…
Michael Martin
March 15, 2018
Blog

Tom’s Comedy Club

There was a social order at Tom’s Service Station.  It wasn’t posted on the wall.  The “Welcome Wagon” didn’t slip it into the baskets they gave to the newcomers.  It wasn’t revealed as part of an initiation along with the rumored secret handshake. But the old men who held court on the long bench outside of Tom’s knew.  And the…
Frank Clark
March 14, 2018
Review Posts

Two Against Lincoln

A review of Two Against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition (University Press of Kansas, 2017) by William C. Harris In a speech before the Senate in 1863, James A. Bayard of Delaware stated that “The truth will out, ultimately…though they may be voted down by the majority of the hour, though they may not…
Brion McClanahan
March 13, 2018
Blog

Sacred Harp Singing

If I was forced to give an example of at least one good thing we got out of the Puritans, I would quickly point to Sacred Harp singing.  Sacred Harp is a traditional, primitive method of church singing still favored in the Deep South, and it even comes complete with several different annual conventions.  Brion McClanahan and others have written…
Tom Daniel
March 12, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 111

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 5-9, 2018. Topics: the War, Maryland, the U.S. Constitution, Southern Founders, 2nd Amendment, Political Correctness, Southern Culture. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-111
Brion McClanahan
March 10, 2018
Blog

This is why the Founding Generation Crafted the 2nd Amendment

With the current heated debate over gun rights and the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution (which serves to affirm our natural rights…rights we have whether the State recognizes them or not), I thought it might be interesting to talk briefly about the Battle of Athens. If you’re like a lot of people, you probably haven’t heard about this…
Lewis Liberman
March 9, 2018
Blog

The Barbarians at the Gates

Since the 1960s, the interpretation of Southern history and the War Between the States put forth by most of the news media and academia is largely a fraud. It is driven by the racist identity politics of the Democrat Party and not historical truth. If Southern history was interpreted objectively as it was before 1960, instead of with liberal political…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
March 8, 2018
Blog

The Little Town with the Big Heart

If you travel I-20 east from Jackson, Mississippi, somewhere about 20 miles short of Meridian you’ll see a sign: Hickory Exit. This sign is one almost ad infinitum of green signs along a monster interstate that has sucked the life out of localism, particularly important throughout the South. But should you drive into downtown from old Highway 80, you’ll see…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 7, 2018
Review Posts

Founding Intentions

A review of Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution by M.E. Bradford (Georgia, 1993). Since the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, numberless books re-examining the document and the convention that made it have issued forth from commercial publishing houses and university presses. While some of them are excellent and make important contributions in the…
W. Kirk Wood
March 6, 2018
Blog

Confederate History of the Maryland Flag

It is near impossible to express any admiration of the antebellum South without incurring the wrath of the perpetually offended mob, online or otherwise.  Even acknowledgment in the accomplishments of those men once universally and unequivocally admired by all Americans, such as Washington, Jefferson, and Lee, now brings the occasional sneer or mark of condemnation from “polite” society.  Unfortunately, for…
Reverdy Johnson
March 5, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 110

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 26- Mar 2, 2018 Topics: the War, Confederate symbols, Southern culture, Yankees, Spencer Roane https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-110
Brion McClanahan
March 3, 2018
Blog

The New England Pharisees

“Religion, taking every mortal form But that pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven!” — From “Ethnogenesis,” by Henry Timrod South Carolinian Henry Timrod penned these words in February 1861 at the meeting of the First…
Dissident Mama
March 2, 2018
Blog

The Pseudoscience Attack on the South

The term “science” is applied rather loosely today. In some cases what we call science might be more appropriately labeled pseudoscience. The field of sociology comes to mind. It is more politically correct that scientifically objective, and you would be hard put to find a sociologist who doesn't hold Leftist political views. Sociological theories, questionable to begin with, are being…
Gail Jarvis
March 1, 2018
Blog

Who’s Going to Fill Their Shoes?

When I was very young, I recall my father telling me of George "No-Show" Jones, a country music legend. The moniker, I was told, was given after Jones failed to play a concert in some town in Texas. He was said to be seen riding a motorcycle in the opposite direction of his "postponed" performance, with a very attractive blonde…
Christopher J. Carter
February 28, 2018
Review Posts

Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States

A review of Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States (Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) by Gene Kizer, Jr. In all my growing up years I was taught that the War Between the States was fought over slavery. That's what the "history" books, so called, told us and it is certainly what the "news media" has screamed…
Al Benson
February 27, 2018
Blog

Spencer Roane

“It has been our happiness to believe, that in the partition of powers between the general and State governments, the former possessed only such as were expressly granted, or passed therewith as necessary incidents, while all the residuary powers were reserved by the latter.” Spencer Roane Had one-time friends John Adams and Thomas Jefferson not had such a high-profile and…
Joe Wolverton
February 26, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 109

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 19-23, 2018 Topics: the War, Reconstruction, North over South, Southern politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-109
Brion McClanahan
February 24, 2018
Blog

A City Upon a Hill

Recently, Business Insider editor, MSNBC contributor, and public-radio personality Josh Barro called the left’s war on American culture “annoying.” He explained that “Liberals have supplanted conservatives as moralizing busybodies.” New York Magazine‘s Jonathan Chait even tweeted support of Barro’s “sensible thoughts,” calling out the Democrats’ supposedly new-found misadventure of “liberal sanctimony.” Funny that in all his talk condemning such “moralizing,” neo-liberal Barro went on to further pontificate about the Dems suffering “from a cultural disconnect…
Dissident Mama
February 23, 2018
Blog

Washington and Lee: Southerners

Abbeville Institute scholar Dr. William Wilson presents a talk on the congruity between Washington and Lee at our 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkgsJc9KCyQ
William Wilson
February 22, 2018
Blog

Judas and Jeff

  Judas failed in his purpose because he failed to recognize the coming of Christ for what it was: The coming of God with His presentation, gift, of grace. Judas followed Christ, as an apostle, never seeming to understand why Christ came or even who He was, thus carrying him to treachery and his own death and condemnation by God…
Paul H. Yarbrough
February 21, 2018
Review Posts

Souls of Lions

A review of R. E. Mitchell. Souls of Lions (Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse LLC, 2014). Very seldom do I review novels, even historical ones. But R. E. Mitchell’s volume, Souls of Lions, after just a few pages, captured my attention and kept me glued to my couch seat for several days until I had finished it…and with its surprising and fascinating…
Boyd Cathey
February 20, 2018
Blog

“True Grit” as a Reconstruction Story

Although labeled a Western, True Grit is also a novel about Reconstruction in Arkansas and the Indian Territory that would become eastern Oklahoma. The Reconstruction aspects are more evident in the novel, which turns fifty years old this year, than in the movies. The story is about fourteen year old Mattie Ross who leaves her mother, sister and little brother at home…
Philip Leigh
February 19, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 108

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 12-16, 2018. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern poetry, Southern literature, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-108
Brion McClanahan
February 17, 2018
Blog

Lies James Loewen Tells Us

Propaganda. It’s a well-known word defined as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” And, I might add, used for the purpose of demonizing and destroying one’s enemies. The South has had more than its fair share of time in the crosshairs of Yankee propaganda, and…
Ryan Walters
February 16, 2018
Blog

Northern Lies about the Burning of Columbia

When you hear or read about the burning of Columbia, General Sherman’s principal target in South Carolina, you are often told that the origin of the fire is a historical mystery that can't be conclusively solved, or that the fires were actually initiated by the evacuating Confederate troops, or even by the citizens of Columbia themselves—none of which is true.…
Karen Stokes
February 15, 2018
Blog

Southern Art and Design Doesn’t Matter…Unless You’re on the Left.

For as many years as I’ve been an artist, I’ve seen numerous Southerners, Christians, libertarians and other traditionalist-minded folks wring their hands over people subscribing to this or that tenant of leftist ideology, but then turn around and market their own ideas in just about the most boring manner possible. Because if there’s anything the left has done exceptionally well,…
Lewis Liberman
February 14, 2018
Review Posts

“‘Finished in Beauty’ and in Memories”: Catharine Savage Brosman’s Book of Hours

A review-essay on A Memory of Manaus: Poems by Catharine Savage Brosman. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2017. A Memory of Manaus, Catharine Brosman’s eleventh full-length collection of poetry, confirms her rightful place in the front rank of contemporary American poets. Working skillfully in both traditional forms and in tightly controlled free verse, Brosman is among that very small number…
David Middleton
February 13, 2018
Blog

The South’s Stockholm Syndrome

The Stockholm Syndrome is a condition where captives or hostages develop a psychological attachment and loyalty to their captors.  Psychologists often describe this syndrome as a “survival strategy.”    This strategy is employed by captives when all hope for returning to a normal life appears to be lost.  By befriending one’s all-powerful captors, life is preserved within the new “normal” order. …
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
February 12, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 107

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 5-9, 2018 Topics: Southern film, Southern humor, Southern literature, Political Correctness, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-107
Brion McClanahan
February 10, 2018
Blog

Gator McKlusky

Everyone wanted to be Southern in the 1970s. The rejuvenated interest in Southern music from bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlies Daniels, and the Allman Brothers (and the unknown Southern influence in the "Motown" sound) was just one component of a larger pro-Southern, working class, populist movement. Southerners had been made consciously Southern again after over a decade of national attention,…
Brion McClanahan
February 9, 2018
Blog

Purging Graveyards for Progress

Yes, give me a land with a grave in each spot And names in the graves that shall not be forgot; Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb-- There is grandeur in graves--there is glory in gloom The new Kulturekampf, having already eyed and attacked the more visible elements of Dixie identity in prominent places across…
Christopher J. Carter
February 8, 2018
Blog

Georgia Scenes

When Georgia Scenes came from an Augusta, Georgia press in 1835, the literary world realized (to varying degrees) that here was a new kind of book. It took a discerning critic like Edgar Allan Poe to recognize so immediately that its “verisimilitude” was an outstanding trait. What was so radically new about the work was its author’s intention not to…
James Everett Kibler
February 7, 2018
Review Posts

Remember Mississippi

A review of Remember Mississippi: How Chris McDaniel Exposed the GOP Establishment and Inspired a Revolution (WND, 2017) by Ryan S. Walters. Ryan S. Walters, who is book review editor for Abbeville Institute and editor of Mississippi Conservative Daily, has produced a highly readable biography of his close friend, Chris McDaniel. For those who may not remember, McDaniel is the…
Paul Gottfried
February 6, 2018
Blog

In the Eye of the Beholder

Once upon a time in America, in a far different and far more gentle age, it was possible for four young men from Memphis, Tennessee, to appear at a performance in a Northern city dressed as Confederate officers and sing a song entitled “Save Your Confederate Money Boys, the South Shall Rise Again” without being booed off the stage. Not…
John Marquardt
February 5, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 106

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 29-Feb 2, 2018. Topics: Sectionalism, Secession, Southern Economics, the War, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-106
Brion McClanahan
February 3, 2018
Blog

Killed for the Flag

Anthony Hervey was born in Water Valley, Mississippi in 1965. He grew up in Oxford, served in the military for a short period, then went on to the University of Mississippi, where he studied sociology and Afro Studies. He then traveled to London, England where he studied Race & Ethnicity at the University of London and served as an intern…
Michael Martin
February 2, 2018
Blog

Southern Speech

A little while ago, I spent some time at Colonial Williamsburg as a tourist. While my wife was getting dressed for dinner our first evening, I happened to watch a short film on TV entitled Portrait of a Patriot, which, I learned, was piped into all of the area hotels and motels. Briefly, the film is set in and around…
Roger W. Cole
February 1, 2018
Blog

The Plundered South

Address by Sam H. Jones, Governor of Louisiana to the Southern Farm Bureau Training School, Monroe, La., August 18, 1943 The history of mankind relates many stories where superior military force has conquered nations of superior civilization. In the wake of overwhelming brute force the great citadels of culture and economic and social progress have fallen never to rise again.…
Sam H. Jones
January 31, 2018
Review Posts

On the Brink of War

A review of Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis, (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). Shearer Davis Bowman presents a comprehensive view of the events leading to the secession of the southern states. Bowman (p. 12) explores “what Americans on the eve of the Civil War believe about themselves and the world…
Jonathan White
January 30, 2018
Blog

Sectionalism Returns

Recently Michael S. Greve of George Mason University Law School wrote an insightful article which contends that sectionalism has reared its head again. This new sectionalism is dividing the states along the lines of economic interests, which also happen to be aligning nicely with current ideological and partisan fault lines as well. Professor Greve rightly points out that the states…
John Devanny
January 29, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 105

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 22-26, 2018 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, the War, Abraham Lincoln, Jack Jouett, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-105
Brion McClanahan
January 27, 2018
Blog

Christian Persecution in Missouri

Modern American society seems to have little understanding of what really happened before, during and after the War Between the States. To see evidence of this one need look no further than the shocking success in eradicating and censoring Southern monuments and artwork, the names of various buildings and roads, or even symbols of Southern history itself. And while some…
Lewis Liberman
January 26, 2018
Blog

The Midnight Ride that Saved Jefferson and Henry

Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of — Jack Jouett? Jouett’s mission, like that of his more famous fellow horseman, was to warn American patriots of the approaching attack by British regulars. While most people have heard of Paul Revere and his ride, forever memoralized by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, there are few who…
Joe Wolverton
January 25, 2018
Blog

The Lies and Hypocrisy of the Civil War

More than 150 years after the Civil War, the nation is engulfed in controversy over statues of people who fought for the Confederacy. Many people want the statues taken down. The statues, they say, depict men who were slaveowners, slavery proponents, and traitors. Those who want the statues to stay in place are said to be racists. The feelings run…
Jacob G. Hornberger
January 24, 2018
Review Posts

Confederaphobes

A review of Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic by Paul C. Graham (Shotwell Publishing, 2017). In a brilliant new book on one of the most important topics of our time, Paul C. Graham, the co-founder of Shotwell Publishing, tackles the recent nationwide effort to eradicate every vestige of the Confederacy from our public life. It’s a new psychological condition that he…
Ryan Walters
January 23, 2018
Blog

Memphis and the Assault on Our Western Christian Inheritance

The city fathers of Memphis have been engaged in police state tactics and patently illegal actions, taking down the historic statues honoring General Nathan Bedford Forrest and President Jefferson Davis and the bust memorializing Captain Harvey Mathes of the 37thRegiment Tennessee troops. Despite the Tennessee Heritage Law and the decision of the Tennessee Historical Commission which should have prevented such…
Boyd Cathey
January 22, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 104

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 15-19, 2018 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, Southern Education, Robert E. Lee, Chesty Puller https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-104
Brion McClanahan
January 20, 2018
Blog

“Chesty” Puller and the Southern Military Tradition

Lewis Burwell Puller is a Marine Corps legend and American hero. Nicknamed “Chesty” for his burly physique, he was one of the most combat-hardened leaders in military history and saw action in Haiti, Nicaragua, WWII, and Korea. The winner of five Navy Crosses and many other medals, he will always be remembered as a fierce warrior and proud patriot. One…
Michael Martin
January 19, 2018
Blog

A College Boy’s Observation of General Lee

A few years after General Lee accepted the presidency of the then Washington College, I was sent to be entered in the preparatory department, along with an older brother who was to enter college. The morning after we reached Lexington we repaired to the office of General Lee, situated in the college building, for the purpose of matriculation and receiving…
John B. Collyar
January 18, 2018
Blog

“White Privilege” or “Yankee Privilege?”

White privilege has become a major leftwing talking point and justification for a plethora of progressive initiatives that can best be described as reverse racial discrimination. White privilege is the mirror image of white supremacy.  Both are evil ideas based upon race consciousness linked to a political ideology that denies the value of the individual. White supremacy is the outward…
James Ronald Kennedy
January 17, 2018
Blog

The Elite vs. The Deplorables

For most of our nation's two and a half century history, newspapers were the essential source of public opinion. Although newspapers expressed political preferences, regional newspapers did provide other sides of stories, as well as a variety of editorial opinions. But as the 1950s drew to a close, the public began getting its news from a few television networks. Reporters…
Gail Jarvis
January 15, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 103

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 8-12 2018 Topics: Northern studies, the Constitution, 14th Amendment https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-103
Brion McClanahan
January 13, 2018
Blog

Remembering St. George Tucker

Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin. All of these Founding Fathers are well known and need no first names. Tucker, however, that’s a surname of a member of the Founding Generation that isn’t familiar at all and definitely needs a first name and what a first name it is: St. George! St. George Tucker is a man whose name has been…
Joe Wolverton
January 12, 2018
Blog

The North and Hitler

In 1933, General Smedley R. Butler blew the whistle on an attempt by American fascists to overthrow president Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this speech he detailed the following: “I appeared before the congressional committee, the highest representation of the American people, under subpoena to tell what I knew of activities which I believed might lead to an attempt to set…
Michael Martin
January 11, 2018
Blog

They Took Their Stand in Dixie

Advance the flag of Dixie For Dixie’s land we take our stand To live or die for Dixie And conquer peace for Dixie Anyone singing the above lyrics from the patriotic Confederate song of 1861, “Dixie to Arms,” would today, as with its earlier counterpart “Dixie,” be considered most politically incorrect and would probably ignite a firestorm of protest demonstrations…
John Marquardt
January 10, 2018
Review Posts

Government by Judiciary

A review of Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment by Raoul Berger (Second Edition; Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997). Also available online. Raoul Berger was a legal historian who did not fear challenging academic consensus. His 1977 contrarian work Government by Judiciary argued that the Supreme Court radically departed from the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, citing…
Zachary Garris
January 9, 2018
Blog

The North Busy Rewriting History

The following is an excerpt from a 1946 pamphlet dedicated to the Public Schools of North Carolina by the Anson Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy in honor of its author, Dr. Henry Tucker Graham of Florence, South Carolina.  Dr. Graham was the former president of Hampden-Sydney College and for twenty years the beloved pastor of the First Presbyterian Church…
Bernard Thuersam
January 8, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 102

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 1-Dec 31 2017. Topics: Year in review, the Southern tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-102
Brion McClanahan
December 23, 2017
Blog

Christmas at Greenpoint

Well, the old mill closed down on us Tuesday night at 6 P.M. for the rest of the week, so as to give us a holiday for Christmas, which came this year on December 25th inst. And so when I came out of the shop and started home it was sunset, and all back to the west was the prettiest…
Clinton Martin Bissell
December 22, 2017
Blog

Florida Cowboys

Reading on the Abbeville site articles about the South and the West, I was reminded of my newspaper piece on Florida as the Wild Wild (South) East, which had a popular run.  It was inspired by a Frederic Remington article describing his adventures in Florida with cowboys in the 1880s.   Our county (Marion, named for Gen. Francis Marion) was as…
Joscelyn Dunlop
December 21, 2017
Blog

The North’s Colonial Empire

The Setting Postcolonial studies have been all the rage for many decades. A great number of contributors to the field have come from India and their work wrestles (in part) with the socio-psychological situation of Indian bureaucrats in the British Raj. These functionaries were, after all, Indians of some kind working for His Majesty’s Government – not the one in…
Joseph R. Stromberg
December 20, 2017
Review Posts

Foundering Inventions

A review of Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution by Harry Jafffa, (Regnery, 1994). When Professor Harry Jaffa, in his new book Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question, refers to Abraham Lincoln as the “greatest interpreter of the Founding Fathers,” one must wonder whose Founding Fathers he has in mind. From the outset…
William J. Watkins
December 19, 2017
Blog

Why the South Won the Civil War

Fred Douglas Young, Richard M. Weaver, 1910-1963: A Life of the Mind. University of Missouri Press, 1995. 217; Joseph Scotchie, editor, The Vision of Richard Weaver. Transaction Publishers, 1995. Early in the fall of 1939, while driving over "the monotonous prairies of Texas" to begin a third dismal year at Texas A & M with its "rampant philistinism, abetted by…
David Middleton
December 18, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 101

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 11-15, 2017 Topics: Southern culture, George Mason, original intent, political correctness, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-101
Brion McClanahan
December 16, 2017
Blog

Look Away

A bit of free verse to address our current situation, which is probably not as good as I think it is.  It marshals various lines from Donald Davidson’s poems.  As Faulkner said, all of us writers are really only failed poets. You, Mel Bradford, told Of remembering who we are. A time has come When answers will not wait. But…
Clyde Wilson
December 15, 2017
Blog

Thomas Benton Smith, The Boy General

At the Battle of Nashville, on 16 December 1864, the Tennessean’s brigade, fought valiantly, but Brigadier General Thomas Benton Smith soon found himself surrounded on three sides by Federal troops. A bullet had pierced the skull of Colonel William M. Shy, the commander of Smith’s original regiment, the 20th Tennessee Infantry. He had fallen, fighting to the last, and holding…
Jeff Wolverton
December 14, 2017
Blog

Hate the South Week

‘Just a post, just a post, just a post on a blog, just a post, just a post, and the war has begun’ (To the tune of “Sloth,” Fairport Convention, ca. 1978) General Uncivil Background Blessed as we are -- so the economists say (they never lie) -– with relentless, inescapable digital bother and cyber-mania, any one of us might…
Joseph R. Stromberg
December 13, 2017
Review Posts

The World They Made Together

A review of The World They Made Together, Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia, by Mechal Sobel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1987 I In America, in 1607 the first successful British settlement began in a land they called Virginia. Within a few decades another people began arriving, taken from their homes in Africa. Both peoples arrived…
Vito Mussomeli
December 12, 2017
Blog

George Mason and Original Intent

Every fact bearing upon the character and service of the statesmen whose genius created a model form of human government should receive a warm greeting from those who are proud of the growth, progress, and prosperity of the republic. The harmonious working of the component parts which enter into the life of the country is to-day the result of the…
Fitzhugh Lee
December 11, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 100

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 4-8, 2017 Topic: Special Interview with the President of the Abbeville Institute, Don Livingston https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-100
Brion McClanahan
December 9, 2017
Blog

“White People” Food?

A July 2017 article from Buzzfeed.com, the hallmark of all popular wisdom of our time, was entitled, “15 Things You'll Understand If You've Ever Eaten At A White Friend's House.” In the article, a series of snarky memes and illustrative pictures were meant to communicate the idea that “white people” don’t know anything about “spicing up” their food. In other…
David Harris
December 7, 2017
Blog

Monuments and Reconciliation

With the election of Rutherford B. Hayes by a one vote margin in the Electoral College, the Compromise of 1877 ended the era of Reconstruction in the minds of the people.  As Southern States were re-admitted into the Union, Federal troops stood down or returned to the North.  From about 1885 to 1924, before and after the 50th Anniversary of…
Cliff Page
December 6, 2017
Review Posts

Gettysburg Rebels

A review of Gettysburg Rebels: Five Native Sons Who Came Home To Fight As Confederate Soldiers, by Tom McMillan, Regnery, 2017. In 1912, the renowned publisher of books on The War for Sothern Independence, Neale Publishing Company of New York, released Fighting by Southern Federals, written by Charles C. Anderson. He argued that more than 600,000 Southerners fought for the…
Bill Potter
December 5, 2017
Blog

Through a Lens Darkly

There is an old saying in the theater that when one is acting the part of a butler in a play, the actor tends to regard it as a play about butlers.  This manner of observing personages and events, both past and present is, of course, a sad fact of life within many levels of modern society.  All too often,…
John Marquardt
December 4, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 99

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, November 27-December 1, 2017. Topics: the War, slavery, secession, war crimes, Southern literature, political correctness. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-99
Brion McClanahan
December 2, 2017
Blog

Kansas University Honoring War Criminals?

After the rousing success of Kansas University’s redesigned football uniforms in honor of Jennison’s Jay-hawkers of 1861, a competing Kansas university also recently unveiled a special-edition football uniform in commemoration of the atrocities of that bloody time. Planned for an upcoming series of games, the uniform features blue pants with yellow stripe and bloodied saber, and a blue jersey styled…
Lewis Liberman
December 1, 2017
Blog

“No Other Gods Before Me.”

From its port side northern Kentucky’s foremost tourist attraction looks exactly like a real vessel, a big one, with a ramp fitted along it to take on animals and supplies.  From bow to stern it is 510 feet long, about as long as a modern missile frigate, and the designers have gone to great lengths to make the structure appear…
Jerry Salyer
November 30, 2017
Blog

Cane Fighting

For five days in May, 1856, Charles Sumner delivered a speech entitled The Crime Against Kansas. For those five days, he continuously slandered South Carolina and its senator, Pierce Butler. Regarding South Carolina, Sumner stated: “If we glance at special achievements, it will be difficult to find anything in the history of South Carolina which presents so much of heroic…
Michael Martin
November 29, 2017
Review Posts

Pickett’s Charge — The Last Attack at Gettysburg

A review of Pickett’s Charge – The Last Attack at Gettysburg by Earl J. Hess (UNC Press, 2001). When I was still on active duty with the U.S. Army, the true “Gettysburg” book was Professor Coddington’s The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (1968). But his book was about the entire battle and command and not the attack. Hess mentions several others,…
John C. Whatley
November 28, 2017
Blog

Slavery and the War

The recent apoplexy over White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly’s comments about Robert E. Lee and the Civil War have revealed on ongoing problem in the thinking of many Americans when it comes to history and politics in general – the inability to see any issue or event in anything but the most oversimplified terms.  In the particular context of the…
Michael Armstrong
November 27, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 98

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 13-17, 2017. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern culture, Robert E. Lee, secession, John C. Calhoun, the Deep North https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-98
Brion McClanahan
November 18, 2017
Blog

Calhoun’s Meaning that “Slavery is a Positive Good”?

John C. Calhoun–valedictorian of his class at Yale, Vice President, Secretary of War, and Senator–was one of the greatest statesmen America has produced. Margaret Coit wrote a favorable biography of him in 1950 that won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1959, a Senate committee, headed by John Kennedy, ranked him among the five greatest senators in American history. Calhoun wrote one…
Donald Livingston
November 17, 2017
Blog

The Extreme Northern Position

If you listen to the modern historical profession, Southern secession in 1861 represented "treason." David Blight, Professor History at Yale University, has made this belief the part of the core of his attack on Confederate symbols. If we should not take them down because they represent "white supremacy," then they should be removed because Southerners were "traitors." Traitors to whom…
Brion McClanahan
November 16, 2017
Blog

Lee, Kelly, and the Marxists

You would think that David Duke had somehow been elected president. Or, maybe in this topsy-turvy, Alice-in-Wonderland period of history we are living through, that that reactionary “bad guy” Vladimir Putin had somehow actually taken over the White House. The editorial din, the screams of outrage seemed to drown out all other news. Surely, the very fate of the republic…
Boyd Cathey
November 15, 2017
Review Posts

James Madison: Son of Virginia

A Review  James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation by Jeff Broadwater (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Speaking at the celebration of the completion of the restoration of Montpelier, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “Montpelier restored is certainly beautiful but is in no sense the most fitting memorial to James Madison. If you’re looking…
Joe Wolverton
November 14, 2017
Blog

Is the South Celtic?

There is a popular theme embraced by many that the uniqueness of Southern culture is explained by its “Celtic” origins in opposition to the “Anglo-Saxon” foundations of the North.  This thesis has been expressed strongly in such works as Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, Jim Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, and James…
Clyde Wilson
November 13, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 97

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 6-10 2017. Topics: Reconstruction, Jewish Confederates, Southern weather, Southern literature, Southern culture. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-97
Brion McClanahan
November 11, 2017
Blog

A Little Change in the Weather

We hear endless accounts today concerning the dire effects of global climate change, as well as the horrific devastation caused by the recent hurricanes that have mainly struck the Southern states. However, if one studies the five billion years of Earth’s climatic history, it should soon become evident that climate change has been an ongoing cyclical occurrence during the latter…
John Marquardt
November 10, 2017
Blog

Jewish Confederates

The Jewish people have endured much throughout their long history, yet have always continued to hold on to their religious and cultural identity. Finding a safe harbor from persecution was perhaps the main justification for the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Yet before this monumental event, amidst the often tumultuous sea of the diaspora, there did briefly…
Jonathan Harris
November 9, 2017
Blog

A Changing Reconstruction Narrative

  Those who have read his Count of Monte Cristo can readily appreciate the wisdom of Alexander Dumas who wrote, “The difference between treason and patriotism is a matter of dates.” Similarly, Civil War era historical interpretations are a matter of dates. Consider the example of President Ulysses Grant.  While the many corruption scandals during his presidency cannot be denied, modern biographers and…
Philip Leigh
November 8, 2017
Review Posts

Southern Tales of Glory and Woe

A review of A New England Romance: And Other Southern Stories by Randall Ivey (Shotwell Press, 2016). Randall Ivey’s book of Southern stories will make you laugh, cry and nod your head in recognition of delightful characters you feel you have known forever, or at least most of your life. This is especially true if you are lucky enough to…
Patricia Woods
November 7, 2017
Blog

An Expired Narrative

Portraying a furtive agenda as a benevolent endeavor has occurred frequently throughout our history. Unscrupulous politicians have been able to hoodwink the public because it takes a while for their fraudulence to be discovered; Sometimes decades. The Reconstruction of Southern states is a classic example of this phenomenon. There were rational, well-thought out strategies put forth for re-admitting Southern states…
Gail Jarvis
November 6, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 96

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 30 - Nov 3, 2017 Topics: Southern religion, Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Southern Humor, Southern Founding, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-96
Brion McClanahan
November 4, 2017
Blog

A Note on Southern Humor

William Faulkner said much about Southern writing when he called Henry James "the nicest old lady lever met.” He indicated, of course, the sense of humor that the region has always had. And he indicated his disregard for the kind of psychological drama that identifies the target of his joke. If James liked to have a character weep seriously over…
Bill Koon
November 3, 2017
Blog

Citizen Lee

At the time of his death, was Robert E. Lee a man without a country? No, the Gray Fox of the Confederacy was not like the naval officer in Edward Everett Hale's novel who cursed his country. Lee’s country, before and after the War Between the States, was the United States of America, a republic he served with valor and…
William Freehoff
November 2, 2017
Blog

The Fighting Gamecock: Thomas Sumter

Thomas Sumter in his encounters with the Indian na­tions enters the pages of recorded history. He had prob­ably been present at the fall of Fort Duquesne and in the campaign across the Ohio River and had learned some­thing of the red man during this early service. In any case, he was chosen to accompany Lieutenant Henry Timberlake to treat with…
M.E. Bradford
November 1, 2017
Review Posts

Lincoln vs. Davis

A review of Brian R. Dirck, Lincoln and Davis: Imagining America, 1809-1865 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2001). Mr. Dirck’s comparative analysis of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis promises much.  Friendly reviewers have found his work “intellectual history at its most stimulating,” or “psychologically sophisticated.”  Alas, I confess that I do not see it.  To be fair to Mr.…
John Devanny
October 31, 2017
Blog

The Antebellum South in the Reformation Tradition

On October 31, while many parents whisk their little ones from house to house in the pursuit of temporal tasty treats, a large portion of Christendom will be observing the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, a movement which arguably changed the very course of Western Civilization up through the present. Many Protestant denominations, seminaries, churches, and para-church organizations are…
Jonathan Harris
October 30, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 95

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 23-27, 2017. Topics: Abraham Lincoln, the United States Constitution, Slavery, Political Correctness, Confederate Monuments, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-95
Brion McClanahan
October 28, 2017
Blog

The Evil South

Not to be outdone by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s brilliant idea for a new post-Game of Thrones show exploring the drama and high-stakes tension of an alternate America where slavery still exists (which can be read here and here), Keltag Hagrinax and J.X. Parnohack of the hit series Shame of Crones also recently unveiled details of their new show at the Galactic Imperium News…
Lewis Liberman
October 27, 2017
Blog

Slavery and the Confederacy

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected…
Kirkpatrick Sale
October 26, 2017
Blog

The Invention of the Appalachian Hillbilly

In our politically correct culture where even the mildest criticism of a societal group can earn someone the label of racist, it remains open season on rural America.  When Barack Obama famously spoke of rural Pennyslvanians in 2008 as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them" and are prone to "anti-immigrant…
Michael Armstrong
October 25, 2017
Review Posts

Shredding the Constitution to Save the Union

A review of Liberty & Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism by Timothy S. Huebner (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016). Timothy S. Huebner’s new synthetic account of the Civil War and Reconstruction melds military history, political history, constitutional history, and black history in telling the tale of the most popular subject in American history. Published by one…
Kevin R.C. Gutzman
October 24, 2017
Blog

A Black Advocate for Confederate Monuments

Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article about eighty-eight year old Nelson Winbush who is a Florida black man and proponent of Confederate monuments. His grandfather, Louis Napoleon Nelson, was a Tennessee slave who followed his master and sons into the Confederate military. Initially Louis was a cook but later became a rifleman and a chaplain under the command of cavalry leader Nathan…
Philip Leigh
October 23, 2017
Podcast

Podcast Episode 94

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 16-20, 2017 Topics: The War, Political Correctness, Nat Turner, Federalism, Abraham Lincoln, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-94
Brion McClanahan
October 21, 2017
Blog

American History Textbooks vs. Reality

Donald Trump made the following statement at a recent rally in Phoenix, Arizona on August 22: “In the proud tradition of America's great leaders, from George Washington -- please, don't take his statue down, please. PLEASE! Does anybody want George Washington's statue? No. Is that sad? To Lincoln, to Teddy Roosevelt, I see they want to take Teddy Roosevelt's down,…
Michael Martin
October 20, 2017
Blog

Demonizing the South to Purify the Nation

Victor Davis Hanson is one of the most lauded and applauded historians of the “conservative establishment.” Honored by President George W. Bush, a regular writer for National Review, spoken of in hushed and admiring tones by pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, Hanson is rightly regarded as a fine classicist and military historian, especially of ancient warfare. But like…
Boyd Cathey
October 19, 2017
Blog

Nat Turner: Terrorist

As the old cliché goes, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” The phrase has been around forever, it seems, and sometimes it can be true, I suppose. There are always exceptions to every rule. But most of the time, a terrorist is simply a terrorist, a person who uses extreme violence and fear to achieve a political or…
Ryan Walters
October 18, 2017
Review Posts

“A Real Personage-And Not an Odd Name Merely…”

A Review of States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, by Walter Brian Cisco, Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1991. “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”-Psalm 90:12 (KJV) Of all types of literature, I enjoy reading biographies.  As a man, I profit from biographies of men whose…
Barry Kay
October 17, 2017