Tag

Confederate Monuments

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The 518

The names, below, are a few of the 375,000 Confederate soldiers about whom Union soldier and president of the United States, William McKinley, said: . . . every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
February 1, 2023
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Our Hate Confederates Moment

The Confederacy makes up a sizable and interesting chunk of American history. Not only interesting but often regarded as admirable.  Admiration for the Confederacy’s brave struggle against great odds and its noble leaders has lasted for generations and is worldwide. Its admirers have even included some of the best of the men who fought against it. Wiping the Confederacy from…
Clyde Wilson
January 23, 2023
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A Jewish Perspective on the Arlington Confederate Monument

The Advisory Committee on Arlington National Cemetery has recommended the removal of the 32-foot-tall memorial to Confederate veterans buried there on the grounds that it is “riddled with racist iconography” and perpetuates the Lost Cause narrative. The following letter was sent today to the Committee. — JAB On March 19, 1841, at the consecration of its new synagogue in Charleston,…
Jack Schewel
November 15, 2022
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The Arlington Confederate Monument

The Naming Commission has recommended the removal of the Arlington Confederate Monument. This would not only be a historical travesty and a barbaric leveling of art, it would lay waste to the very message the monument was intended to convey: fraternity, healing, and reconciliation. Tell your Representative you want to stop this heinous act of cultural destruction. https://youtu.be/IwST0QslHLs
Abbeville Institute
November 9, 2022
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Statesmen vs. Vandals

In the 20th century, there was no doubt that that section of the country most patriotic, most “American” and most “Christian” in its moral values was the South. Also called “The Bible Belt,” the states of the South had more flags, more patriotic displays and more pride in America and its institutions than any other region in the nation. Percentage-wise,…
Valerie Protopapas
November 1, 2022
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The Stranger in Gray

Outside of Portland, Maine, sits the small town of Gray. During the Civil War, the population was around 1,700 residents. While Gray has experienced growth, the area gives the vibe of a typical small American town. Though Maine is one of the least-populated states in the nation today, surprisingly, Mainers played a pivotal role in the U.S. Civil War, seeing…
David Crum
September 26, 2022
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Removing The Confederate Memorial At Arlington Isn’t About Racial Reconciliation, It’s About Political Power

Amid the steady stream of horrible economic news this week you might have missed a rather bland headline from the Associated Press: “Panel advises removal of Confederate statue at Arlington.” The news itself, that an independent commission charged with renaming U.S. military bases with Confederate names has recommended the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be dismantled and removed, might seem painstakingly…
John Daniel Davidson
September 21, 2022
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Jefferson Davis on Robert E. Lee

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

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

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

Delivered at the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Park for the Confederate Memorial Day remembrance held April 30, 2022. Thank you for taking time today to consider the deeds and lessons of our long-dead ancestors. When Confederate commemoration began, it was a memorial to people who were known to those living.  Today, it is unlikely that there is a person here…
Martin O'Toole
May 12, 2022
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A Suburb to Nothing

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

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

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

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

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

The routine removal of Confederate statues signifies a new stage in the evolution of political progressives. Their vision for a new order that can provide social justice for the so-called oppressed is becoming a secular religion. Assaults on statues are symptomatic that the new faith is working to destroy traditional values. The birth of a new religion—even a secular one—is…
Philip Leigh
October 11, 2021
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Our Marxist Revolution

Thomas Carlyle said that it takes men of worth to recognize worth in men (1). Among the many worthy men across Western Civilization who recognized the worth of General Robert E. Lee was Sir Winston Churchill who summed it up, saying Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains in the annals…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
October 4, 2021
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“Shrines The Heart Hath Builded”

My wife, Elizabeth, comes from a village called Greenwich in northern New York state. Among the keepsakes preserved by her family is a box of letters from her great-great uncle Reuben Stewart, a young draftee who served in the 123rd New York regiment as it marched through the South, leaving a trail of desolation, suffering, and death. One of those…
Barton Cockey
September 27, 2021
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Terrorists with Planes and Cranes

A lot has happened in the last 20 years.  Reflecting on the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, aka the “Twin Towers” 20 years this week puts recent  history into new perspective. What did the Twin Towers represent to the terrorists?  Perhaps their view of the essence of America - Capitalism. The first terrorist salvo – Yankee soil.  New York. …
Lola Sanchez
September 24, 2021
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Lee Memorial Ode

This piece was originally published in the Confederate Veteran, Vol. 22, Issue 2, 1914. Replies to the inquiry about the lines, “He did not die that day in Lexington; Fame came herself to hold his stirrup while he mounted,” place them as a part of the beautiful “Memorial Ode” by James Barron Hope, written for the laying of the corner…
James Barron Hope
September 13, 2021
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The South’s Monument Man

The Ten Commandments of the Old Testament (Exodus 20:2-17) are the creed of both Christians and Jews, but the Second Commandment posed a special dilemma for Jews in relation to the arts.  This admonition states in part that no one shall make for themselves any  . . . “carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above…
John Marquardt
August 9, 2021
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Monuments

Their carven words all testify Of then and now and future time That these were they who kept the cause Was given them by fathers past And living still in coursing blood. They token men True to lineage. To sons they left high honour and the land, A legacy of action speaking still. Let stone forever warn The men who…
James Everett Kibler
July 23, 2021
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Responding to the Scalawags

If timid and pacified Southerners needed more proof that we are a defeated and occupied people, then indisputable proof was recently provided by the United States House of Representatives. At 7:24 PM June 29, 2021 the House of Representatives passed HR 3005. This legislation requires that all “statues” of Southern “Civil War” heroes be removed from the United States Capitol…
James Ronald Kennedy
July 20, 2021
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Monuments According to Pliny the Younger

“To those who are ignorant of the jurisprudence of their country can have no taste for reasoning…” Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born roughly 61 A.D, to Lucius Caecilius Cilo and Plinia Marcella in a small village in Northern Italy called Como. Pliny became a Politician, a judge, an author, and a revered sage amongst the many…
Justin Pederson
July 16, 2021
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The Star that is Called Wormwood

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountain of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters,…
Enoch Cade
July 12, 2021
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On “Good Uses” for the Confederate Flag

One of my colleagues in the ministry of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) recently wrote that among "good uses" for the Confederate battle flag are "diaper, shop rag, kindling, stuffing for a pillow, burping cloth," and "toilet paper."  In the ensuing discussion - which I was not a part of - he added, "It's a treason/slavocracy flag.  Plain…
Rev. Larry Beane
June 2, 2021
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The Statues Should Stay Up

During the ongoing debate regarding the removal of the monuments honoring Confederate Generals, those in support of the statues often say in defense, “The statues are part of America’s history; we need to learn from history.” While this statement is of course true, I do not believe it is appropriate in this context, as “learning from history” is synonymous with…
Prioleau Alexander
May 14, 2021
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Wokeism is Like Kudzu

Wokeism is a bit like kudzu. It’s not indigenous to the South, but once it starts growing… brother you better believe it will be hard to contain. And soon enough, you’ll wonder what life was like before it infested everything. Kudzu is pervasive south of the James River, which runs through Richmond. Wokeism, alternatively, is less common in the southern…
Casey Chalk
May 6, 2021
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Twitter Historians Distort History, Again.

Marjorie Taylor Greene forced the political left into an apoplectic rage two weeks ago when they discovered she intended to form an “America First Caucus” based on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.” Clearly, this showed that Representative Greene intended to force “white supremacy” on the rest of the United States. After all, she openly displayed her racism by using the term “Anglo-Saxon.”…
Brion McClanahan
April 29, 2021
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Daybreak in Dixie

Daybreak in Dixie:  Poems of the Confederacy by Linda Lee. Privately published, 2019. For those of us who value the history of our Southern people, these are the worst of times.  Public discourse is pervaded by a Cultural Marxist hysteria that wants what we love to be dead, forever.  I rightly use the term Marxist because the campaign against us,…
Clyde Wilson
April 27, 2021
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Racism and Reputation

Two terms that are tossed about with great liberality today are “racist” and “white supremacist.”  Like other words with specific definitions, such as “fascist” and “Nazi,” these labels are losing their specific social, economic, political, and legal meaning, and have essentially become nondescript slurs thrown at anyone a Progressive disagrees with.All of these words are routinely used against those who…
Rev. Larry Beane
March 1, 2021
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VMI Test Case for the Country

In May of this year, George Floyd died; seven months later, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) removed its statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson from its prominent position at the nation’s oldest state-supported four-year military college. The two events – one in Minnesota’s largest city, the other in Virginia’s picturesque Shenandoah Valley – had nothing to do with one another.…
Forrest L. Marion
January 7, 2021
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What 2020 Means for Southerners

During the past couple of months, from shortly after the presidential election until now, seven installments in the MY CORNER series have been picked up and (re)published, and while most of these dealt specifically with the election, an emphasis on the South and the vicious attacks upon it were never far from my thoughts. To forthrightly and openly defend Southern,…
Boyd Cathey
January 4, 2021
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The Elephant in the Room

There are very few human symbols that find absolute approval or, in the alternative, disapproval. Symbols are called that because they represent something far larger than themselves. An unknown symbol is an oxymoron. At present, the symbol that is seemingly most under attack in this country is the Confederate battle flag albeit other flags that represented that short-lived, tragic nation,…
Valerie Protopapas
December 11, 2020
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1619 Plus 2020 Equals 1984

In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” the central governmental agency in his fictitious country of Oceania is the antonymic Ministry of Truth, a body charged with the duty of erasing actual history and then rewriting it to meet what was considered to be more acceptable ideological concepts.  In America today, the same type of inane metaphorical thinking is also taking place,…
John Marquardt
October 12, 2020
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Monument Avenue 1890-2020

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

Sampson County is a large, mostly rural county in southeastern North Carolina. Like most non-metropolitan areas of the state, it tends to be conservative, in fact, a long-time bastion of the modern Republican Party in a sea of traditionally Democratic-voting counties. But Sampson County illustrates what is occurring all over the Southland. And in microcosm in certain ways it symbolizes…
Boyd Cathey
September 30, 2020
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A Land Without Heroes

What if there were 15.3 million dead American soldiers? Imagine it. Legions of the unburied down rows of summer corn, strewn along riverbanks, and discarded on roadsides. And imagine if many of the boys’ bodies had lain there for months or even years, for the fighting was so fierce and the resources so few that only the fortunate lay in…
Duncan Killen
September 15, 2020
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What Lee Said About Monuments in 1869

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

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

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

Often as I work at my computer I keep on the Sirius FM Classical Music Service, “Symphony Hall,” with an occasional switch-over to a Bluegrass channel. Both, I believe, reflect at their finest superior elements of our Western cultural tradition with deep popular roots in our civilization, in the songs and compositions of people—our ancestors—which are inspired by their faith,…
Boyd Cathey
July 15, 2020
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Pietas in the Era of Revolution

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

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

While mobs continue tearing down monuments and shaming elected officials into removing statues of historical significance — from Christopher Columbus to Gen. Robert E. Lee and even Thomas Jefferson and George Washington — Clemson University (which receives over $100 million annually from the State of South Carolina) quietly decided to remove John C. Calhoun’s name from its honors college. Never…
Stewart O. Jones
July 9, 2020
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Waving the White Flag Won’t Save the UDC

“Very late in the war, when defeat seemed inevitable, Northern generals were complaining that the Confederate soldier refused to give in and admit defeat, that Southern women remained indomitable in spirit….” – Dr. Clyde Wilson, “Rethinking the War for the 21st Century,” The Abbeville Review, September 14, 2016 “God bless…ALL who boldly defend the good name and honor of our…
J.L. Bennett
July 1, 2020
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“Let the Rioters do their Worst; I won’t Stand in Their way!”

Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina comes across as a nice man, well-mannered, calm, the kind of man you would want as a neighbor and, yes, as a friend. He seems unthreatening in how he speaks, always with a very slight but perceptible eastern North Carolina accent.  In short, he radiates a down home “you can trust me” charm. Except…
Boyd Cathey
June 25, 2020
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The Shame of Bentonville

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

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

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

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

Increasingly, I try to avoid news-binging, watching assiduously all the compiled, feculent bilge that passes for news reporting these days, those authorized “stories” fed to us like tasteless, industrial-strength pablum to non-rational infants, or more, to non compos mentis inmates of the giant asylum which is what our country is quickly becoming. Viewing just a few minutes of Fox’s coverage…
Boyd Cathey
June 2, 2020
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Confederate Memorials: Speaking to Posterity

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

From Dylann Roof to Harvey Weinstein Many of us predicted it.  The war on American monuments and memorials wouldn’t stop with just stop with Confederate ones.  It wasn’t hard to figure out, but the answer was always, ‘yeah, but they’re not going after Northern “civil war” monuments. And of course we said, “what about the 54th MA Infantry monument” which…
Lola Sanchez
March 27, 2020
Review Posts

Individual Responsibility and Guilt

A review of Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) by Susan Neiman Susan Neiman is a philosopher who has written well-regarded books on Kant and on the problem of evil. Last year she published a book with an unusual title: Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil.  Neiman…
David Gordon
March 24, 2020
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All the Fake News That’s Fit to Print

As explained yesterday, Washington Post reporter Courtland Milloy maligned my “Defending Confederate Monuments” speech presented on Lee-Jackson Day in Lexington, Virginia. He asked that I send him a copy while we were sitting together in the front audience row during the preliminaries. I emailed it before I took the podium. After my speech he thanked me and said, “I will be in touch.” But…
Philip Leigh
March 16, 2020
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Statues in Peril

Statues of heroes are erected to remind us of our past, of their noble deeds, to honour them, and to inspire us. These men served out of a sense of civic duty.  They answered the call of their community or state, used their skills and knowledge to serve their fellow citizens, and returned home to honest toil. Today, greed and…
Brett Moffatt
February 28, 2020
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To Guard the Precious Dust of the Martyred Dead

Today there is a frenzied effort to tear down memorials to the Confederate dead. If you think "frenzied" is too strong a word, take a look at video of the crowds in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who resembled (ironically) a lynch mob as they threw ropes around a metal soldier and dragged it to the ground, all the…
Shane Anderson
February 26, 2020
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The Washington Post Publishes Fake News

On January 21st Washington Post reporter Courtland Milloy wrote an article about my “Defending Confederate Monuments” speech at the January18th Lee-Jackson Day in Lexington, Virginia. His “Lee-Jackson Day with a bit of history and context” article portrays me unfairly. Today’s post responds to one Milloy comment excerpted below: Before giving his keynote speech, Civil War book author Phil Leigh made an offhand remark discounting the role of…
Philip Leigh
February 10, 2020
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Silent Sam and Inconvenient History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silent Sam was a Confederate statue that stood on the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill for 104 years after its 1913 dedication. A student mob toppled it in 2017 for being an allegedly racist symbol. Student hatred had been growing since 2011 when UNC graduate student Adam Domby discovered an outrageously racist incident described by one of…
Philip Leigh
June 7, 2019
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What Did 19th Century Black Americans Think About Confederate Monuments?

One argument used by those wanting to remove Confederate statues is that contemporary blacks had little chance to oppose them when they were erected.  Aside from anecdotal evidence that blacks joined white crowds to observe the dedication ceremonies, one example in Mississippi provides undeniable evidence of explicit high-level black support. In 1890 the Mississippi legislature voted on a bill to appropriate $10,000 for…
Philip Leigh
May 31, 2019
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“An Epic Poem in Bronze.”

On August 22, 2018, Forbes Magazine published an article written by Kristina Killgrove entitled "Scholars Explain the Racist History of UNC's Silent Sam Statue." 1 Two days earlier, the statue had been pulled down by a crowd of students and activists, who saw it as a symbol of "white supremacy" that had no place on the campus of UNC Chapel…
Shane Anderson
May 22, 2019
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Are Confederate Memorials Preventing “Social Justice?”

As a stalwart Southerner who came of age before the 1960s, its hard to believe how much that era has transformed our society. Unfortunately, the majority of today's citizens were born long after that decade, so what they know about decades prior to the 1960s comes from agenda-driven Leftist mainstream media. In previous articles, I have expressed my concern about…
Gail Jarvis
May 8, 2019
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The Leftist Long March, “Silent Sam,” and the REAL Question

Most every Thursday I gather with a group of friends for lunch at some restaurant in Raleigh. Among the group are three PhDs in history, and one who holds two masters degrees in history. All of us are former employees of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (now Natural and Cultural Resources)…and we all share very similar points of…
Boyd Cathey
April 1, 2019
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The American Taliban

You don’t see much on the continued attack and removal of war memorials in the news, but that’s the intent of the left isn’t it?  Do it quietly but totally. These monuments were dedicated by their loved ones not to the "cause" but rather to honor their loved ones who paid the ultimate price with their lives. The American Taliban…
Lee Congleton
March 29, 2019
Blog

Silent Sam: A Personal Experience

Editor's Note: During the height of the Silent Sam protests in the Summer of 2017, Jonathan Harris went to the statue and talked with the people wishing to tear down the monument. This is his story. Maybe it was Southern heritage, the honor of a family name, or Christian conviction. Or perhaps I just needed to prove something to myself.…
Jonathan Harris
March 21, 2019
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Leave Confederate Statues Alone

In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so because the Southerner has a sense of having been present there himself in the person of one or more of his ancestors. The war filled merely a chapter in his……
Philip Leigh
March 14, 2019
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Crazed Leftists Strike Again

For thirty-one years the North Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has sponsored annually Confederate Flag Day, an event commemorating our state’s rich history and Southern heritage, held in the House of Representatives chamber of the historic 1840 Tar Heel State Capitol. First proclaimed by former Governor James G. Martin in 1988, the day has served as an…
Boyd Cathey
March 11, 2019
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Rescuing Old Joe

Whoever weds himself to the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.    —   William Inge Few realize that Florida was so committed to The War Between the States that she gave more soldiers to repel Northern invaders than she had registered voters. Gainesville was among the towns that responded. As a result, the…
Philip Leigh
March 7, 2019
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Confederaphobes

Presented at the Lee-Jackson Banquet, Finley’s Brigade Camp 1614 - Tallahassee, Florida, 19 January 2019 Prologue It seemed like just another day at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, for the vice chancellor of student affairs, Paula Knudson, until the phone calls, student visitors, and official “hate and bias” reports began to pour in. A truck—a semi-tractor trailer truck to…
Paul C. Graham
February 6, 2019
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Orwell’s America

In the ongoing war against Southern Confederate heritage, we need to be cognizant of the academic pressures against it. As y'all know, UNC Chapel Hill recently tore down Silent Sam. This is going on throughout all the great Southern schools. As a professional scholar, I was a member of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature; the Southern Historical…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
January 31, 2019
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A Cautionary Tale on Monument Protection Laws

When Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo issued a ruling on the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act just minutes before his term expired last week, he upended the entire understanding and meaning of the original Constitution and the relationship between the States, the cities, and the general government. More importantly, though Graffeo's decision will probably--not definitely--be overturned, the ruling provides a…
Brion McClanahan
January 24, 2019
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Southern Conservatives

The South is and always been conservative. But with the constant hammer of political correctness and political falsehood (redundant?) pounded on it, it has waffled among many who brand it as evil. Punchy from the blows, it has sought to defend itself in the wrong places: In presentism and with Republicans. Republican and Air Force veteran Mike Hill, the first…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 18, 2019
Blog

To the Smithsonian…

When one grows old one tends to resent wasting time and there is nothing that wastes time quite so much as efforts to counter the claims and assertions surrounding the American “Civil War” Of course, the first of these is that the conflict was not a “civil war.” But those who insist upon that label continue to do so despite…
Valerie Protopapas
January 10, 2019
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What Are Symbols For?

In 1875, Rev. Moses Drury Hoge stood before 40,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, at the foot of the newly dedicated statue of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and delivered what one historian called the "noblest oration of his later life." He believed that in the future, the path to that statue would be "trodden" by the feet of travelers from "the…
Brion McClanahan
December 21, 2018
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Stone Mountain and the “Monument Man”

When National Socialism came to power in Germany in 1933, it sought an ethnic and cultural cleansing of the country. Jewish culture and art was not considered fully human and underwent a purge. Once Nazi Germany started World War II in 1939, it also sought the same purge for all of Europe. Art considered Germanic was confiscated from all over…
Timothy A. Duskin
November 5, 2018
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A Neoconservative Wakes Up

Pro-Southern writers have long been suspicious of Victor Davis Hanson, given his association with the neoconservative ascendance of the Bush II era.   Yet unlike most of his former colleagues, the California classicist seems to have learned something from the dramatic transformations of recent years.  His book Mexifornia marked his enlistment in the unfashionable cause of border control, in part because…
Jerry Salyer
October 31, 2018
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Reconstructing the New South

“Nashville’s going to be a progressive, diverse city and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Millennials moving from up north and foreigners immigrating from across the border have changed the city’s population and thus changed the city’s way of life – for the better. Nashville isn’t a Southern city anymore and is never going to be a Southern…
James Rutledge Roesch
October 1, 2018
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History as a (Leftist) Weapon

There is a tendency for each generation to assume its opinions are the ultimate correct opinions. But each generation's beliefs are typically modified by succeeding generations. Unfortunately, societal structures are sometimes altered based on contemporary notions that lose credence over time. This is the case with Social Justice Warriors in this generation. They demand that whatever doesn't suit present-day social…
Gail Jarvis
August 30, 2018
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A Battle for Western Civilization and the South

On Monday night, August 20, 2018, approximately 200 to 250 raucous demonstrators gathered in a mob on the campus of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and proceeded to tear down the century-old statue, “Silent Sam,” a monument memorializing the over 250 university students who fought and died during the War Between the States. University police, whose primary goal is…
Boyd Cathey
August 23, 2018
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Silent Sam and Me

In September of 1961, I left my job at a basket factory in Wilmington, North Carolina and hitch-hiked up to Chapel Hill to become a student there. I followed in the path of UNC’s very first student, a boy named Hinton James, who had famously walked those roads up from Pender County back in 1789. As befits the first student…
Ben Jones
August 22, 2018
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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A People Without Honor

Back in my days as a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, I and some fellow graduate students were involved tangentially, very tangentially, in the great Confederate flag debate in Columbia, SC.  During the 1990s the  Confederate flag flew over the capitol in Columbia, SC.  Various civil rights groups began to snipe at the flag, viewing it as…
John Devanny
October 13, 2017
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Why Were Confederate Monuments Built?

In the wake of the current controversy over Confederate monuments, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has created a timeline that has made its way around the worldwide web like wildfire.  It purports to show that two spikes in the building of the monuments coincide with occurences of racially-charged historical eras, such as the rise of the Ku Klux Klan…
Michael Armstrong
October 11, 2017
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The Marxist Campaign to Transform America

The present feverish campaign to remove Confederate monuments and other symbols which offend certain loud groups  in our society began in earnest back in 2015, after the murder of several black parishioners in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. But that movement dates back much longer. Its real origins go back to the 1960s and early 1970s, and the triumph of…
Boyd Cathey
October 6, 2017
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Eliminating Dixie Means Eliminating America

A few years ago Stephen Fry, English actor, writer, and comic, hosted a televised tour of America, traveling from location to location in a London cab. His junket into the “Deep South” was introduced this way: “For years, I've been intrigued and bewitched by what seems to be America's most charactable region. A place of cotton, courtesy, Gospel music, mint…
Gail Jarvis
October 5, 2017
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The New War on the South’s Patrimony

In the news late today, on a nice summery afternoon in early September, I saw live on television a crane removing the large statue of General Robert E. Lee from a park in Dallas. I had to switch channels immediately because I was so upset and fed up with these imbecile journalists bleating the left-wing party line about the nobility…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
October 2, 2017
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A Monumental Folly

The gentle wave of what had been termed “monumania” that rolled over the South and parts of the North during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries was one which saw the dedication of numerous monuments in memory of the Confederacy and its heroes. That long dormant wave has now suddenly turned into a manic tsunami dedicated to the tearing…
John Marquardt
September 11, 2017
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AHA Revisionism

On 28 August 2017, the American Historical Association (AHA) issued a “Statement on Confederate Monuments” that presumed to speak for the entire American historical profession on the issue of whether these monuments should remain or if they should be removed from public spaces. Unfortunately this “statement” is little more than historical establishment claptrap disguised as highbrow intellectual discourse—par for the…
Brion McClanahan
September 6, 2017
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If You Think So, Say So

This is the gravestone of my great-great-great grandfather, Benjamin Parks Middleton, located in the Bethel Baptist Church cemetery between the towns of Hazelhurst and Georgetown in Copiah County, Mississippi. He was a farmer from that area and, to my knowledge, was not a slave-owner. Benjamin served as a private in the 6th Mississippi infantry unit of the Confederate States Army…
Houston Middleton
September 1, 2017
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“Furl That Banner”

During the past few decades, there has been an ever-growing sentiment throughout the Unites Sates to erase from the public mind, if not from American history itself, all vestiges of the Confederate States of America, and in particular, all memorials dedicated to the heroes, leaders and symbols of the Lost Cause. Following the senseless murder of a number of African-American…
John Marquardt
August 24, 2017
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What Confederate Monument Critics May Not Know

In 1958 a nearly forgotten thirty-four year old Texas author named William Humphrey debuted his first novel, Home From the Hill, to widespread praise. Legendary director Vincente Minnelli released a film version only two years later. Both the book and the movie are highly rated by Amazon customers. The novel begins as follows: Early one morning last September the men squatting on the Northeast corner…
Philip Leigh
August 4, 2017
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We Long to be Free!

An Address given on the Occasion of the Observance of Confederate Flag Day Raleigh, North Carolina | 03 March 2017 SEVEN SCORE AND SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new union, freely chosen and legally adopted by eleven Southern States with the consent of the people, and expressed through their chosen delegates in solemn assembly;…
Paul C. Graham
August 2, 2017
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Leave the Monuments Alone: An Artistic Perspective

This essay was originally printed in the comments section of the Apollo Magazine article "Dismantling America's Monuments to White Supremacy" by Kristen Teen. The removal and desecration of images of enemies of the state was an accepted part of Roman political life, a formal public dishonour named as damnatio memoriae, and the destruction of built and material culture of a…
Juliette Peers
July 19, 2017
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Is the Confederacy Obsolete?

This article was originally published in Southern Partisan magazine in 1994. The past—what we believe happened and what we think it means—can be a very slippery customer. Even the recent past can be elusive. In the early 1950s, when I was a student at Johns Hopkins, C. Vann Woodward gave an amusing but provocative talk called "Can We Believe Our…
Ludwell H. Johnson
June 23, 2017
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The Real Reason Confederate Symbols are Attacked

This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan Magazine in 1994. By the 1970s, all vestiges of legal discrimination in the South had been eliminated. Indeed, affirmative action programs, minority entitlements, and special considerations in the marketplace have given blacks a solid place at the table of mainstream American life. A new black middle class, driven by the work ethic and…
Thomas Landess
June 22, 2017
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The Ad Too Hot to Print—Progressive Censorship in Action

The promise of “Freedom of the Press” becomes meaningless when large national “Progressive/Liberal” conglomerates maintain a virtual monopoly on access to newsprint within a given geographical area. Their virtual monopoly provides them with the opportunity to highlight the words and actions of their fellow Progressives while denying those who were slandered or attacked the opportunity to respond. The Nazi Minister…
James Ronald Kennedy
June 21, 2017
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Why Does the Left Really Despise the Confederacy?

The South and its history are currently under assault, the most aggressive and far-reaching that we have ever seen, at least up to this point.  The monuments are gone in New Orleans and seem to be headed for extinction in Virginia and Maryland too.  And of course the flag is always under attack and that campaign is growing by the…
Ryan Walters
June 19, 2017
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New Orleans is Ground Zero

The social justice jihad to eliminate “white supremacy” was spawned by the successful eradication of Confederate memorabilia. Americans were not overly concerned about the disparagement of Confederate heroes but when the disparagement was turned against the Founding Fathers and Western Civilization in general, they began to take notice. The public finally realized they weren't witnessing isolated incidents but a well-coordinated…
Gail Jarvis
May 5, 2017
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Where Will the Attacks End?

Confederate Flag Day Address Oakwood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia March 4,2017 I had the honor of delivering the keynote address in 1994 at the Last Capitol of the Confederacy in Danville when we dedicated the monument to the Third National Flag. Much has changed since. Enemies of traditional culture have succeeded in removing that monument. The City Council of Charlottesville recently…
Patrick McSweeney
May 4, 2017
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Confederate Monuments

The latest Crusade of the Progressives and other Politically Correct to remove all Confederate monuments from the face of the earth reminds me of a recent article by one Patricia Sullivan from the Washington Post concerning the Confederate statue in Alexandria, Virginia, and the Alexandria City Council’s unanimous vote to relocate it. The article also noted that others spoke with…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
April 10, 2017
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Arlington–A Milestone in History

By Dr. Simon Baruch From The New York Sun: Amid the silent heroes who rest in honored graves on beautiful Arlington's historic summit was enacted on November 12, 1912, a scene the grandeur of which will illumine the pages of history for all time, modest though it seem among contemporary events. On that day was laid the foundation of a…
Simon Baruch
October 7, 2016
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The Tuskegee Confederate Memorial

For anyone with a casual knowledge about Alabama’s juicy and active history, the words “Tuskegee” and “Confederate” seem to be an odd match. Tuskegee, Alabama is the site of Booker T. Washington’s visionary Tuskegee Institute, the home of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, and the location of the first integrated public high school in Alabama. And yet, the center of town…
Tom Daniel
March 7, 2016
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ISIS Punks and USA Vandals

This article was originally published at the Fleming Foundation. When the Islamic State blows up the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, the UNESCO (the cultural arm of the United Nations) condemns the act as a war crime.  UNESCO’s director-general declared that in destroying ancient monuments, IS was “seeking to deprive the Syrian people of its knowledge, its identity and history.”…
Thomas Fleming
September 3, 2015