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Reconciliation

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The New South, 1877-1919

Originally published at Reckonin.com Historians have found as a useful periodisation “the New South,” beginning with the withdrawal of the last federal occupation troops and the end of Reconstruction and ending with World War I and the election as President Woodrow Wilson, Southern-born and bred, although not very Southern in most of his thinking. Speaking broadly of this period we…
Clyde Wilson
January 21, 2026
Blog

Debunking Kevin Levin’s Distorted Assault on the Reconciliation Memorial

Kevin Levin's recent Substack screed, "Stop Referring to the Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery as a 'Reconciliation Monument,'" is a masterclass in selective historical cherry-picking, ideological bias, and outright fabrication. Levin, a self-styled Civil War memory expert whose work has been accused of perpetuating an anti-Southern narrative that borders on hostility, peddles the absurd notion that the Arlington Confederate…
Abbeville Institute
August 18, 2025
Blog

Debunking Myths: The True Story Behind Charlottesville’s Lee Statue

Originally published as an essay on X by the "Jefferson Davis" account. In the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, activists and some "historians" propagated a series of claims about the city's Robert E. Lee statue, framing it as a symbol of white supremacy, Jim Crow, and racial intimidation. These narratives often distorted historical facts,…
Abbeville Institute
August 8, 2025
Blog

Reconciliation in Frontier Film

Several weeks ago, I read The Cavalry Trilogy by Michael F. Blake. This short book covers the history of three John Ford Westerns, each starring John Wayne as a cavalry officer in the 1870s and 1880s. All three Westerns, Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950) feature beautiful shots of the southwestern desert, cavalry…
Vaugh Sullivan
June 24, 2025
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White Sulphur Manifesto

Editor's note: In 1868, former Union General William Rosecrans approached Robert E. Lee about making a statement in support of the Democratic ticket for the 1868 presidential election. The Republicans stirred fear among the Northern electorate that a Democratic victory would destroy race relations and subject black Southerners to harsh treatment at the hands of their former masters. This was…
Abbeville Institute
May 26, 2025
Blog

Make Arlington Great Again: An Open Letter to President Trump

The forthcoming is adapted from a letter which was written to President Donald Trump soon after his reelection. Copies of this letter were also forwarded to Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and many other officials in the administration. The recent renaming of “Fort Liberty” back to “Fort Bragg” augurs well for us. Dear Mr. President: Congratulations, sir,…
James Rutledge Roesch
March 26, 2025
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Donald Trump on Lee and “Reconciliation”

Editor's note: Trump issued this statement on the removal of the Lee monument in Richmond, Virginia on September 8, 2021. He has publicly supported reversing the work of the "Naming Commission", has offered a real reconciliationist assessment of the War and Reconstruction, and could, by executive order, mandate that the Arlington Confederate Monument be restored to its original position.  Just…
Donald J. Trump
November 7, 2024
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Secession and Reconciliation

Modern activist historians think "reconciliation" is a pejorative, but for most Americans in the early 20th century, it was a necessary part of healing. This included histories written by Southerners. We discuss one of those books on this episode of The Essential Southern Podcast. https://youtu.be/ZMkmCr8u7V8
Abbeville Institute
November 1, 2024
Blog

True Reconciliation

In response to an article about the Southern holocaust that occurred during the so-called “Civil War,” I wish to bring forth testimony from a Southern hero who was shunned by the South—or most of it—after he went with Grant in 1872 and Hayes in 1876, finally becoming a member of the Republican Party in that year. Previously, Col. John Singleton…
Valerie Protopapas
October 8, 2024
Blog

The Economic Aspects of the South as a Health and Pleasure Resort

Editor's Introduction: This short essay in The South and the Building of the Nation series highlights the spirit of reconciliation that most Americans embraced by the early twentieth century. Published in 1909, The South in the Building of the Nation offered native Southerners--almost all of whom possessed terminal degrees in their academic fields--a chance to offer a critical yet often…
Andrew Sledd
August 6, 2024
Blog

An Outrage Double Standard?

Donald Trump’s MAGA base (which includes many of the Southern people) is galvanized like never before after the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life.  Two things in particular have annealed them to the former president as it regards this traumatic incident:  the tough guy image of a man who ‘took a bullet for America’ and the vitriol of his opponents. But…
Walt Garlington
July 17, 2024
Blog

John Tyler, Son of Virginia

From the Confederate Veteran, January 1916: John Tyler, distinguished Virginian and tenth President of the United States, has received fitting, though long-deferred, honor from the country he served. Fifty-three years after his death the United States government has erected a handsome monument at his last resting place, in the shades of beautiful Hollywood Cemetery, at Richmond, Va., that sacred and…
Abbeville Institute
July 3, 2024
BlogPodcast

Arlington Reconciliation

Ep. 13: How did Americans think about the Arlington Confederate or Reconciliation monument in 1914? They clearly told you, and it isn't what the woke cancel culture folks want you to believe. https://youtu.be/UGPyhKLXIY8
Brion McClanahan
June 29, 2024
Blog

Dirty Work and Decoration Day

In 1853, a newly elected, twenty-six year old State representative stood to defend his "Negro Exclusion" bill against bitter attacks by anti-slavery legislators in his State. He made this a centerpiece of his campaign in 1852, railed against "Negro equality" and supported the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. The bill found support from the majority of the people of his State,…
Brion McClanahan
May 27, 2024
Blog

Never Reconciled: Boston’s Revenge

“Then the Lord said unto me, out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.”  Jeremiah. 1:14. Harvard University has a memorial to all its students who were killed in military service, including several Nazis. The only omission is of  some Americans---Confederates. I know of about a dozen Confederate generals who attended Harvard,…
Clyde Wilson
May 13, 2024
Blog

David Blight, Neo-Confederate

Editor's Note: On May 9, 2023, Art History Professor Erin Thompson published a piece at The Nation gleefully announcing that Arlington Cemetery will finally be rid of its "racist" Confederate monument. The piece is indicative of the current level of scholarship by modern mainstream academics. Most of it centers on Tweets that attacked her public joy--also through a Tweet--at the…
Abbeville Institute
May 15, 2023
Blog

Memorials to a Lie

Reconcile: verb – 1st definition: restore friendly relations between; cause to coexist in harmony. Reconciliation: noun –1st definition: the restoration of friendly relations. For years, many beautiful Confederate monuments and sculptures have come under attack and been dismantled and possibly even destroyed. The one presently in the WOKE culture’s cross-hairs is a monument erected in our “national cemetery” – otherwise known as the purloined property of…
Valerie Protopapas
March 8, 2023
Blog

Testimony on Northern War Crimes

In response to an article about the Southern holocaust that occurred during the so-called “Civil War,” I wish to bring forth testimony from a Southern hero who was shunned by the South—or most of it—after he went with Grant in 1872 and Hayes in 1876, finally becoming a member of the Republican Party in that year. Previously, Col. John Singleton…
Valerie Protopapas
December 14, 2022
BlogMedia Posts

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
Blog

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
Blog

Robert E. Lee: Educator and Conciliator

Robert E. Lee considered reconciliation and education to be his highest duties after the War. While many other Confederate leaders left the United States, Lee remained in Virginia and worked to heal the wounds of the War. He turned down political positions and refused to capitalize on his name, and instead accepted a position as President of Washington College to…
Philip Leigh
April 21, 2021
Podcast

Podcast Episode 245

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

The End of Reconciliation

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

Calming the Rage

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

“My Countrymen”

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

Lee and Reconciliation

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

Respect Across the Bows

'The Journalist & The General' Thomas Morris Chester, the war correspondent in the Eastern Theater for the Philadelphia Press paid homage to General Robert E. Lee on his return from Appomattox and arrival in Richmond, Virginia in 1865. Chester was the only Black American figure to serve in this role for a major newspaper on either side. (1) Chester's account…
Gerald Lefurgy
April 11, 2019
Blog

Reconstruction and Recreation

2019 marks the 150th anniversary of U.S. Grant’s inauguration as President of the United States. It also has sparked a renewed interest in Reconstruction, particularly the notion that America failed to capitalize on an “unfinished revolution” as the communist historian Eric Foner describes the period. This general description of the 1860s has been used by both radical leftists like Foner…
Brion McClanahan
April 8, 2019
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