Tag

Secession

Was the War About Slavery? Blog

Was the War About Slavery?

The Abbeville Institute has partnered with the social media account "Jefferson Davis" to make short, informative, primary source driven videos about the War and secession. The first video in the partnership is published below. If you enjoy it, please share it. https://youtu.be/sgfqvoUJJ2Q
Abbeville Institute
November 3, 2026
Texas’ Declaration of Independence Blog

Texas’ Declaration of Independence

On March 2, 1836, Texas formally proclaimed its independence from Mexico with a declaration of independence at a convention at Washington-on-the Brazos. The event leading to that declaration was a revolution of Mexicans against the increasingly tyrannical governing of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. In 1824, Santa Anna dissolved the Mexican constitution with publication of his Seven Laws, which in…
M. Andrew Holowchak
November 2, 2026
The State that Seceded After the War was Over Blog

The State that Seceded After the War was Over

Kentucky never voted to leave the Union, yet it produced an entire rival government, thousands of Confederate soldiers, and a star on the Confederate battle flag. That contradiction makes it one of the strangest states during the Civil War—a place where roughly 25,000 to 40,000 men fought for the Confederacy while somewhere between 74,000 and 125,000, including approximately 24,000 to…
Jose Nino
October 16, 2026
Lincoln and the Constitution Blog

Lincoln and the Constitution

This is how most Americans see America’s 16th President. But, in reality, so much of what most of us “know” about Abraham Lincoln is not only untrue, but a mockery of the truth. Why does this matter? It matters because much of what is wrong with America today—and especially our out-of-control central government—can be traced back to Lincoln’s time and…
Valerie Protopapas
October 12, 2026
The Melancholy Conclusion Blog

The Melancholy Conclusion

On March 1, 1836, the delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos met in an unfinished building in near-freezing weather, and they appointed a committee of five to write a declaration of independence. The committee, chaired by George Childress, brought back a finished draft within a day. Historians suspect Childress had written much of it before he arrived. The convention adopted it on March…
Daniel Miller
October 8, 2026
A More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union? Blog

A More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union?

A review of  Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America (University of Kansas Press, 2023) by Peter Radan As with all creditable works of scholarship, Peter Radan begins with a question, why was a war required to end slavery in the United States when it was ended by legal means elsewhere? The answer…
John Devanny
September 9, 2026
Stop with the Drive By History Blog

Stop with the Drive By History

Originally published at Ms. Esposito's Substack. At best, you were not told the whole story. At worst, you were deliberately lied to. Either way, you have it wrong. Nashville, Tennessee For more than a century and a half, Americans have been trained to repeat one sentence. One slogan. One simplified conclusion. “The war was only about slavery.” Say it enough…
Mindy Esposito
August 19, 2026
What if South Carolina Really Seceded to Protect Slavery? Blog

What if South Carolina Really Seceded to Protect Slavery?

From the Jefferson Davis X Account. (Let’s Play Devil’s Advocate and Watch the Whole Argument Collapse Anyway) Look, I’ll bite. Let’s pretend—just for the sheer entertainment value—that South Carolina’s secession in December 1860 was nothing but a cold-blooded plot to safeguard the institution of slavery. No states’-rights talk. No tariff gripes. No constitutional compact theory. Just pure, unadulterated slave-power paranoia.…
Abbeville Institute
August 7, 2026
States Rights and Federal Powers Blog

States Rights and Federal Powers

When debating the causes of the War to Prevent Southern Independence, sometimes a Southern partisan will argue the Confederacy fought for "States’ Rights." Partisans on the other side will almost always respond that it was states' rights to own slaves. An immediate objection to this was that States did not own slaves, people did. The second and more substantive objection…
Jonathan White
August 5, 2026
Declarations of Independence: Meanings and Memory Blog

Declarations of Independence: Meanings and Memory

The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is an appropriate moment to reflect upon how far Americans, both elites and regular people, have strayed from the principles of the movement for American independence from Britain. At its worst, the popular culture will celebrate the country’s “birthday” with celebrity entertainers performing in “kitschy” Hollywood…
John Devanny
June 29, 2026
Was Jefferson Wrong? TEXIT Argues No Blog

Was Jefferson Wrong? TEXIT Argues No

The republicanism that Thomas Jefferson envisaged has never enrooted in America. Over its many decades, it has moved increasingly away from a model of thin, decentralized government, where the states are sovereign—a model at least that Jefferson hoped would slowly emerge, beginning with his two terms as president—to thick, centralized government where the federal government is sovereign and economic measures…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 8, 2026
Calculating the Value of Union Blog

Calculating the Value of Union

At our March 2026 conference on the Declaration of Independence, Daniel Miller, President of the Texas Nationalist Movement, explained how he asks one simple question when confronted by doubters and naysayers on secession: If your State was currently independent and with all that you know about the current government in Washington D.C., would you join the Union today? He said…
Brion McClanahan
May 15, 2026
Reluctant Secessionist Blog

Reluctant Secessionist

Secession, grasped in its political sense, is typically defined as a formal withdrawal of one body, qua political state or qua a nascent political state, from another political state of which it is a member. The reason for withdrawal is customarily that what bound the lesser body to the larger political state is no longer binding or that the relationship has become parasitic or toxic. The paradigmatic illustration is the secession of 11…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 28, 2026
WIRED’s Hit Piece on Secession Left Out Everything That Matters Blog

WIRED’s Hit Piece on Secession Left Out Everything That Matters

Originally published at TexianPartisan.com. This morning, WIRED published “Don’t Listen to Anyone Who Thinks Secession Will Solve Anything” by Ryan D. Griffiths, a political science professor at Syracuse University hawking his new book The Disunited States. The article is a greatest-hits compilation of every lazy argument against self-determination — the Russia smear, the India/Pakistan analogy, the Texas v. White citation,…
Daniel Miller
March 25, 2026
The Wrong Conclusions Blog

The Wrong Conclusions

This article addresses the actions of eleven Southern States in the middle of the 19th Century vis a vis the actions presently taking place in and by a number of States and urban areas including the motives and legality of such actions by both groups involved. This small study is being done in order to address what has become a…
Valerie Protopapas
February 23, 2026
Minnesota Confederates? Blog

Minnesota Confederates?

Originally published at Reckonin.com Public officials in Minnesota - governor, attorney general, and mayor - are resisting enforcement of legitimate immigration law and encouraging their citizens to physically interfere with federal law enforcement. They have absurdly and perversely used States’ Rights arguments to justify their actions. There has even been ridiculous mention of the 10th Amendment which has been a…
Clyde Wilson
February 17, 2026
Two Secessionists Blog

Two Secessionists

Most Americans continue to believe that Southerners invented secession (and nullification) as a defensive tactic to preserve slavery, and by "most Americans" I include so-called "conservatives" like Francis Sempa at The American Spectator and Hayden Daniel at The Federalist. According to this narrative, secession and nullification were little more than treasonous and petulant responses to justifiable federal laws. Both Sempa…
Brion McClanahan
February 2, 2026
The Declaration and Decentralization

The Declaration and Decentralization

The Declaration and Decentralization Jefferson's Declaration of Independence celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026, and no document is more misunderstood and misrepresented in American history. For many Americans, the Declaration symbolizes the "proposition nation" that "all men are created equal." But the real key to understanding the Declaration is the final paragraph which established thirteen "free and independent States." The…
Abbeville Institute
November 14, 2025
The Secession Alternative for Red Counties in Virginia Blog

The Secession Alternative for Red Counties in Virginia

For Virginia, the Mother of States and Statesmen, things are looking bleak.  Even during the darkest moments of the War between the States, Virginians had the Army of Northern Virginia, led by the remarkable General Lee, along with Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and others, to give them hope that their difficulties would give way to better times.  Together they were,…
Walt Garlington
November 12, 2025
Robert E. Lee’s Refusal to Commit Treason Blog

Robert E. Lee’s Refusal to Commit Treason

Originally published at the Alabama Gazette. In a rare case of self-inflicted torture, I watched some of Maine Senator Angus King’s questioning of Pete Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Defense (now War). Various topics were covered, including the renaming of bases. King falsely accused Robert E. Lee of committing treason by resigning from the U.S. Army and siding with his State…
John M. Taylor
November 10, 2025
A Short History of the South, Part 3 Blog

A Short History of the South, Part 3

Originally published at Reckonin.com The War for Southern Independence, 1861-1865  Americans generally miss the point in considering the great war of 1861-1865. The simple fact is that it was an unprovoked war of invasion, conquest, and exploitation of some Americans by a minority party in control of the federal machine. The invasion does not fit any of the requirements of…
Clyde Wilson
November 6, 2025
State Sovereignty? Blog

State Sovereignty?

The United States of America, bases its legal argument of national union, and national sovereignty over the individual states; on the  premise that the individual states were never individually sovereign nations unto themselves, and that they united to form a sovereign nation or federal state. However,  investigation reveals that the individual states were indeed founded as (thirteen) fully separate sovereign nations,…
Brian McCandliss
August 25, 2025
Would States’ Rights Solve our Issues? Blog

Would States’ Rights Solve our Issues?

I have been a big advocate for decentralized power, which in our American context has been connected to “states' rights;” the most prominent period and example being the American Civil War, where the Southern states resisted centralized federal control and both fought for and applied to their Constitution a strong decentralized states' rights policy. A decentralized Union where sovereignty lay…
Jeb Smith
August 22, 2025
Transforming the Union Blog

Transforming the Union

Lincoln claimed the North was fighting to preserve the Union. However, fighting to preserve a voluntary Union is a contradiction since force is antithetical to voluntary consent. Alexander Hamilton noted: “To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised…Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only…
John M. Taylor
August 19, 2025
What are We Celebrating on July 4? Blog

What are We Celebrating on July 4?

On July 4, Americans will have a day of celebration with cookouts, parades, and fireworks.  Yet how many really understand just what we are celebrating?  Why is there a Pride Month but not an American Patriotism Month? What was actually the purpose of the Declaration of Independence?  What specifically did it state?  Why do our unalienable freedoms that were enshrined…
Carole Hornsby Haynes
July 4, 2025
Secession: The Inalienable Right of a Free People to Leave a Tyrannical Union Blog

Secession: The Inalienable Right of a Free People to Leave a Tyrannical Union

In the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” When that consent is withdrawn—when the government becomes the destroyer, rather than the protector, of life, liberty, and property—then the people retain the right, indeed the duty, to dissolve the political bands which have connected them…
Joe Wolverton
June 13, 2025
The Southern Cause: What Led to Secession Blog

The Southern Cause: What Led to Secession

Originally published at Mises.org It is correct, analytically and logically, to distinguish secession from war. Many states secede peacefully, and it does not logically follow that secession must occasion war. The Southern states of America seceded peacefully, and Lincoln’s subsequent war which followed four months after secession was entirely unnecessary. Hence, Murray Rothbard wrote in his memo to the Volker…
Wanjiru Njoya
June 9, 2025
The Federal Government Did Not Create the States Blog

The Federal Government Did Not Create the States

Originally published at Mises.org One of the statues that was taken down in the 2020 purge of the Southern statues was that of the great American statesman from South Carolina, John. C. Calhoun. The then mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, John Tecklenburg, said that “while we acknowledge Calhoun’s efforts as a statesman, we can’t ignore his positions on slavery and…
Wanjiru Njoya
April 23, 2025
Progressive States’ Rights Blog

Progressive States’ Rights

A review of Progressive States’ Rights: The Forgotten History of Federalism (University Press of Kansas 2024) by Sean Beienburg In The Future of the Past C. Vann Woodward wrote: “Serious history is the critique of myths…”. Practicing history requires honesty and research integrity. Until roughly the 1960s and 1970s, historians and political researchers were able to look at the issue…
Karol Mazur
March 27, 2025
Libertarian Confusion Concerning the Confederate Cause Blog

Libertarian Confusion Concerning the Confederate Cause

Why would a defender of liberty defend the Confederate cause? This question is important in a time when many libertarians insist that the cause of the Confederacy was to defend slavery. If the Confederate cause was slavery, why would a libertarian defend it? A descendant of Confederate veterans may have an obvious reason to defend the Confederate cause as that…
Wanjiru Njoya
March 13, 2025
A Constitution for the Future South Blog

A Constitution for the Future South

Presented at the 2025 Abbeville Institute Conference "The New South and Future South" A green hill… covered with wavering grass… sweeps up to a mighty castle, bright in the summer morning. At the highest parapet of this castle, you stand. A light breeze ruffles your hair. You look out on…ring after concentric ring of ramparts encircling your castle, stretching to…
Terry Hulsey
February 28, 2025
A Matter of Perspective Blog

A Matter of Perspective

For decades academic historians have attributed the causes of the Civil War to  two factors: First was to prevent Southern Secession in order to “Preserve the Union” because a United America was  a role model for the rest of Western Civilization.    Second was to prevent the spread of slavery into the federal territories because the institution was morally repugnant.…
Philip Leigh
February 7, 2025
The Constitution Did Not Cause the War in 1861 Blog

The Constitution Did Not Cause the War in 1861

Many especially Southern historians believe that the Federal Government established by the thirteen independent American States with the ratification of the Constitution of 1788 was directly responsible for the war of 1861, thus destroying the rights and sovereignty of all the existing States and making of them mere “legislative counties” charged with and limited to fulfilling the will of that…
Valerie Protopapas
February 6, 2025
The South’s Forgotten Fire Eater Blog

The South’s Forgotten Fire Eater

A review of The South's Forgotten Fire Eater: David Hubbard & North Alabama's Long Road to Disunion (New South Books, 2020) by Chris McIlwain Establishment historians typically portray Southern history as a cartoonish parade of superficial, racist, self-interested characters dedicated to the preservation of slavery. Every action by Southern political actors requires a discussion about how it relates to the…
Brion McClanahan
January 9, 2025
Jefferson on Secession: Pro and Con Blog

Jefferson on Secession: Pro and Con

Jefferson was always committed to the rights to revolt and to secede. They are of the gist of his Declaration of Independence and his sanction of bottom-up government. Republican government, he often says—especially in three singular letters in 1816—is government by the vox populi (lit., voice of the people). He writes to Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816): Governments are republican…
M. Andrew Holowchak
December 19, 2024
Secession and Reconciliation Blog

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
Secession and Its Doctrine Blog

Secession and Its Doctrine

Excerpt from The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences: Four Periods of American History by Hilary Abner Herbert, 1912. PREFATORY NOTE BY JAMES FORD RHODES “Livy extolled Pompey in such a panegyric that Augustus called him Pompeian, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship.” That we find in Tacitus. We may therefore picture to ourselves Augustus reading Livy’s “History…
Hilary Abner Herbert
October 25, 2024
Coming of the War Between the States: An Interpretation Blog

Coming of the War Between the States: An Interpretation

When Lee surrendered at Appomattox a tall gaunt North Carolinian stolidly stacked arms and fell back into line. He was worn, hungry, and dirty. The insistent Yankees had granted him little time during the past weeks for relaxation. Food had been scarce; the opportunities for cleanliness lacking. He had gone on fighting more from habit than purpose. He had quit…
Avery O. Craven
September 30, 2024
Why Maryland Did Not Secede Blog

Why Maryland Did Not Secede

After Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers on April 15, 1861, to force the seven cotton states back into the Union, four Upper South states—Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas—seceded and joined the Confederacy. They deemed Federal coercion against any state to be an unconstitutional abuse of power. Maryland’s experience underscores the point. The first fatality of the Civil War was…
Philip Leigh
September 16, 2024
The Battle of Secessionville Blog

The Battle of Secessionville

My Talk at the 129th Annual Reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Charleston, South Carolina, July 16, 2024 Good evening and WELCOME to God's Holy City of Charleston, South Carolina, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers come together to FORM the Atlantic Ocean! It's also where the FIRST Ordinance of Secession passed 169 - 0 on December 20,…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
September 6, 2024
Was Jefferson Davis a Traitor? Blog

Was Jefferson Davis a Traitor?

While many Civil War students argue that Jefferson Davis was a traitor, he was never convicted of the crime because Federal prosecutors dropped the case. Specifically, in February 1869 Attorney General William Evarts notified Davis’s counsel that all prosecutors were told to apply nolle prosequi to all his indictments. To be sure, after Lincoln’s April 15, 1865, assassination many Northerners…
Philip Leigh
August 12, 2024
Oh, Say Can You Secede? Blog

Oh, Say Can You Secede?

This piece was originally published at The Imaginative Conservative. A review of The Constitution of Non-State Government: Field Guide to Texas Secession (Shotwell, 2022) by T.L Hulsey “Secession,” writes Robert W. Merry in a recent essay for The American Conservative, “isn’t a word heard in today’s political discourse.” But, he notes, “an extensive poll of 35,307 Americans conducted earlier this…
David Deavel
August 5, 2024
From the Archives–Livingston v. Guelzo Blog

From the Archives–Livingston v. Guelzo

In September 2010, the University of Virginia hosted a debate between Abbeville Institute founder Don Livingston and Professor Allen Guelzo, recognized to be one of the foremost Lincolnian scholars in the United States, on the topic "Is Nullification Constitutional?" Guelzo is as committed to the Lincolnian position of an "indestructible Union" as Livingston is to the compact fact of the…
Abbeville Institute
July 30, 2024
My New Favorite Song Blog

My New Favorite Song

I have a new favorite song.  I discovered it during the promotional build-up to the annual football contest between two worthy academic institutions: The University of Michigan and The Ohio State University. I don’t know whether the song has a title, but it is sung to the tune of “ The Old Grey Mare” (she ain’t what she used to…
Arnie Sidman
July 23, 2024
The (Self)-Righteous Cause Blog

The (Self)-Righteous Cause

It is common in Civil War circles to hear about the so-called “Lost Cause”, variously termed a myth or a narrative. Are those two terms synonymous? Let’s look. Dictionary.com defines myth as: “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” On the other hand, using…
John Scales
July 19, 2024
An Outrage Double Standard? 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
Invoking the Rule of Completeness on Independence Day Blog

Invoking the Rule of Completeness on Independence Day

Political hucksters—both Left and Right—are dusting off copies of the Declaration of Independence in preparation for the July 4th observances.  At most, they are making sure to quote correctly the language of paragraph two which speaks of self-evident truths about liberty and equality. Seldom does a modern rhetorician even glance at the remainder of the document. On this Independence Day,…
William J. Watkins
July 4, 2024
Davis vs. Lincoln Blog

Davis vs. Lincoln

If any further evidence had been required to show that it was the determination of the Northern people not only to make no concessions to the grievances of the Southern States, but to increase them to the last extremity, it was furnished by the proclamation of President Lincoln, issued on April 15, 1861. This proclamation, which has already been mentioned,…
Jefferson Davis
June 20, 2024
When Lincoln Changed the War’s Pretext from “A Question Upon Slavery” Blog

When Lincoln Changed the War’s Pretext from “A Question Upon Slavery”

State Dept. Documents Prove Abolition Neither the Aim Nor the Cause of the Conflict On April 1, 1861, Secretary of State William H. Seward sent President Abraham Lincoln a memorandum entitled “Some thoughts for the President’s consideration.” “My system is built upon this idea as a ruling one,” Seward wrote, “namely that we must Change the question before the Public…
Kevin Orlin Johnson
June 10, 2024
In Memoriam: Jefferson Davis Blog

In Memoriam: Jefferson Davis

To those who were not actors in the events of the period from 1860 to 1865, it is almost impossible to present a complete and vivid picture of the revolution by States which was practically inaugurated by the action of the convention of the people of South Carolina, on December 20, 1860. So much has been done by the war,…
Theodore Gaillard Barker
June 3, 2024
Confederates Weren’t Traitors Blog

Confederates Weren’t Traitors

Professor Williams’ argument (“Naming Commission Historian Rationalizes Name Changes in Campus Talk,” news, May 14) that the Confederate soldier is odious because he committed treason when killing Union soldiers collapses at its premise. He was not a traitor. First, almost 300 officers left the Federal Army during the secession crisis and 270 joined the Confederacy. None were charged with treason. Second,…
Philip Leigh
May 29, 2024
Why “Democracy” Has Failed–And How to Fix It Blog

Why “Democracy” Has Failed–And How to Fix It

Democracy in America has failed. In spite of the lack of any reference to “democracy” in both the American Constitution and its Declaration of Independence, the United States has institutionalized the democratic principle to become its world exemplar, which according to some intellectuals is henceforth to be the sole pattern for all governments on earth. Francis Fukuyama, a neoconservative until…
Terry Hulsey
April 24, 2024
What If Secession Happens Now? Blog

What If Secession Happens Now?

Recently a private polling company called YouGov conducted a survey asking Americans if they advocated the secession of their home state from the United States.  North and South, Democrat and Republican, the distribution was fairly consistent, averaging out to 23 percent in favor of their state’s secession. The survey, as reported on March 6 in the London Daily Mail, didn’t…
Kevin Orlin Johnson
March 11, 2024
Remember the Alamo Blog

Remember the Alamo

I was watching some old true crime story on one of the cable channels recently. Probably a rerun, though I don’t keep up with T.V. and its general blather. As a rule, T.V. is about as entertaining and educational as two goats eating weed grass without disturbing the dandelions. And the “news” is even worse. Anyway, this crime had taken…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 6, 2024
Lincoln on Stilts Blog

Lincoln on Stilts

Thomas DiLorenzo, the President of the Mises Institute, has already reviewed Paul C. Graham’s Nonsense on Stilts: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Imaginary Nation (Shotwell Publishing 2024) in characteristically excellent fashion, but the book is so insightful that some further comments are warranted. It is clear that Graham has a philosophical turn of mind and is a master of linguistic…
David Gordon
February 13, 2024
The Kingdom of Callaway Blog

The Kingdom of Callaway

Any casual student of history will be familiar with the two primary antagonists of the War for Southern Independence: the Confederate States of America and the United States of America rump state.  There was one additional participant, however, of which few are aware: Callaway County, Missouri.  On October 27, 1861, Federal officers representing the United States of America and Colonel…
Trevor Laurie
January 9, 2024
South Carolina Debates the Union Blog

South Carolina Debates the Union

Editor's Note: This 1830 speech from Whitemarsh B. Seabrook shows that South Carolina's commitment to the original Constitution was not solely based on arguments against slavery. Mr. Chairman—I am not aware that I ever attempted to address you with feelings like those which now influence me. The momentous character of the controversy between this state and the federal government, the…
Abbeville Institute
December 19, 2023
The Truth About the Secession Documents Blog

The Truth About the Secession Documents

If the lie did not begin with Ty Seidule, he popularized it in his 2015 Prager U. video: “The secession documents of every single Southern state made clear, crystal clear, that they were leaving the Union in order to protect their peculiar institution of slavery.” This falsehood is repeated regularly by the ignorant and informed alike. Seidule was the head…
Garrick Sapp
November 2, 2023
Secession: Where Does it Stop? Blog

Secession: Where Does it Stop?

A review of  The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) by Victoria E. Bynum The film loosely derived from this book has already been reviewed here by historian Ryan Walters – ably so, since he grew up in Jones County, the “free state” in that title. But the key question raised by…
Terry Hulsey
October 16, 2023
The Man Who Was George Washington Blog

The Man Who Was George Washington

There is nothing more scholastically problematic than attempts to draw comparisons between and/or among the figures of history. Such an effort can be considered even vaguely accurate only if and when the people being juxtaposed are of the same time period. In that case, at least, the circumstances surrounding them may be fairly equitable! But even that is not always…
Valerie Protopapas
October 12, 2023
Divorcing Ourselves from Akhil Reed Amar Blog

Divorcing Ourselves from Akhil Reed Amar

Editor's note: This piece originally ran as a five part series at The Independent Institute. Just a month ago, National Review (the supposed Gray Lady of the Right) ran a piece by Yale’s Akhil Reed Amar entitled Declaring Independence from Thomas Jefferson. The piece is a paean to centralized power imbued with presentism as Amar virtue signals and plays the role of Pied Piper as…
William J. Watkins
September 27, 2023
Jefferson Davis on Trial Blog

Jefferson Davis on Trial

The Boston Daily Adviser, July 25, 1865, stated exactly what was on the line: “If Jefferson Davis is innocent, then it is the government of the United States which is guilty; if secession has not been rebellion, then the North in stifling it as such, has committed a crime.” That the question was even asked tells us that the legality…
Rod O'Barr
September 25, 2023
Stephens’ Reflections on the “Cornerstone Speech” Blog

Stephens’ Reflections on the “Cornerstone Speech”

Rod O’Barr’s recent blog “The So-Called ‘Cornerstone Speech’” The So-Called “Cornerstone Speech” – Abbeville Institute is really excellent. Over the years, the so-called “Cornerstone Speech” by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens has been cited as proof positive that slavery was the cause of the Confederacy. Rod O’Barr did a good job of debunking that, but he omitted one other…
Timothy A. Duskin
September 8, 2023
The So-Called “Cornerstone Speech” Blog

The So-Called “Cornerstone Speech”

The so-called “Cornerstone Speech “delivered March 3, 1861, is one of the go-to documents of purveyors of the “Pious Cause Myth” in modern academia. This choice of title reveals their own deep-seated bias for a fabricated fashionable narrative popular among today’s academics. That narrative claims the War Against Southern independence was “all about slavery.” If you do not believe there…
Rod O'Barr
September 5, 2023
The Tariff as a Motive For Secession Blog

The Tariff as a Motive For Secession

Pious Cause apologists often dispute the claim that the South generated most of the federal revenue in the antebellum period. Yet a prominent Northern paper certainly believed that the South generated more than half of the tariff revenue that funded the federal gov’t. If the South was allowed to secede, the Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860, lamented: “In one single…
Rod O'Barr
August 16, 2023
Secession and Economics Blog

Secession and Economics

The following are some interesting historical tidbits from primary sources (emphasis added): Gabriel Manigault (1809-1888) was a South Carolina lawyer, author, and planter. He was a signer of the Ordinance of Secession, and he served in the South Carolina Ordnance Department with the rank of colonel. In a letter found in his family papers, Manigault writes urgently to Colonel James…
Karen Stokes
July 20, 2023
The South in the Digital Age Blog

The South in the Digital Age

In 2013, Edward Snowden gained international notoriety by exposing the vast spying capabilities and information network of the National Security Agency. Snowden was born in North Carolina, had a family history of civil service, and became a whistleblower when he realized that the government was using the guise of terrorism defense for “...economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation.” (1)…
Michael Martin
July 6, 2023
July 4 is About History Blog

July 4 is About History

The Hope is Southerners Will Recall. The Greater Hope is That Yankees Will Learn. Occasionally, if you tune your ears toward the radio or television with the constant chat and talk, you will pick up certain casual remarks such as just happened to be carried by David Webb the other day.  “We had a ‘Civil War’ and then moved on,”…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 4, 2023
Anti-Commandeering in Practice Blog

Anti-Commandeering in Practice

One effective way States can resist unconstitutional encroachments from the general government is through the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine. James Madison articulated this idea in Federalist Number 46. He said States could obstruct “unwarrantable measures” emanating from “the federal government” through “refusal to co-operate with the officers of the union.” In recent years States have successfully used this rationale to defend themselves…
Jonathan Harris
June 29, 2023
Rethinking Fort Sumter Blog

Rethinking Fort Sumter

Many prevailing assumptions about the War to Prevent Southern Independence are questionable summary judgments more akin to propaganda than careful understanding. This is certainly true of the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861.  It is assumed that “firing on the flag” was a justification for all patriots to rush to the defense of America and inaugurate a war…
Clyde Wilson
June 26, 2023
A Glaring Consistency Blog

A Glaring Consistency

While other interests come and go, I believe the permanence of my obsession with Dixie is rooted in its manifestation of enduring principles, to which I am stubbornly loyal. Despite the Abbeville Institute’s dedication to the Southern tradition in its entirety, our study seems to hover around the Confederacy and the War for Southern Independence, and for good reason.  In…
Julie Paine
June 19, 2023
Legal Justification of the South in Secession Blog

Legal Justification of the South in Secession

From Confederate Military History, Vol I, 1899. The Southern States have shared the fate of all conquered peoples. The conquerors write their history. Power in the ascendant not only makes laws, but controls public opinion. This precedent should make the late Confederates the more anxious to keep before the public the facts of their history, that impartial writers may weigh…
J.L.M. Curry
May 12, 2023
An Honorable Cause Blog

An Honorable Cause

America is now governed as an ever more centralised nation/state with an increasingly imperialist and left-authoritarian character.  But America as a society and a people is no longer coherent. A people, according to St, Augustine, are those “who hold loved things in common.”  By that reading Americans are not  a people. A recent poll indicates that 44% of Southern people…
Clyde Wilson
May 9, 2023
A Righteous Cause at San Jacinto Blog

A Righteous Cause at San Jacinto

The Battle of San Jacinto was brief (less than a half-hour) and decisive. Santa Anna and his Mexican army were decisively defeated a few miles east of what is now Houston, Texas. It became known as Sam Houston’s “retreat to victory.” It essentially cleared the way for Texas as an independent republic. The Texans had recently declared independence (March 2,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 5, 2023
The “Confederates Were Traitors” Argument is Ahistorical Blog

The “Confederates Were Traitors” Argument is Ahistorical

Supporters of the Erasure & Destruction Commission, aka Renaming Commission, are fond of displaying their ignorance regarding the legal framework of the United States under the Constitution. Never is their misguided misapprehension more evident than when they declare that the Confederates were “traitors”. The charge is so unarguably counterfactual as to be absurd. While forgiveness (not forgetfulness) should be our…
Lloyd Garnett
May 4, 2023
Defining American Sovereignty Blog

Defining American Sovereignty

I. Introduction The debate over secession and states' rights has been a contentious issue in American history, dating back to the colonial period. From the earliest days of the Republic, some states argued that they had the right to nullify federal laws they deemed unconstitutional and even to secede from the Union if the federal government became too oppressive. This…
Evan Matthew Gelobter
March 1, 2023
America’s Real Peculiar Institution Blog

America’s Real Peculiar Institution

From the 2005 Abbeville Institute Summer School. When John C. Calhoun spoke of slavery as “the peculiar institution,” he didn't mean to say that there was anything peculiar about slavery, as it has been interpreted since. He only meant to say that slavery was peculiar to the Southern States in the same sense that whaling fleets were peculiar to New…
Clyde Wilson
February 13, 2023
Left Libertarians, Dobbs, and the Ninth Amendment Blog

Left Libertarians, Dobbs, and the Ninth Amendment

Interest in the Ninth Amendment has been renewed with the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), in which the Court held that the Constitution contains no fundamental right to abortion.  Many abortion proponents have turned to the Ninth Amendment in criticizing the decision.  For example, Damon Root at Reason described the decision as “an   …
William J. Watkins
November 16, 2022
Do Motives Matter? Blog

Do Motives Matter?

A friend of mine translated a book on Lincoln written by Karl Marx in which her first installment was a refutation by Marx of the European press’s contention that the assault by the North on the South was not about slavery but economic and political power. Of course, one cannot divorce the issue of slavery from either consideration, but Marx…
Valerie Protopapas
October 24, 2022
We’ve Been Lied To Blog

We’ve Been Lied To

Much of what we’ve gotten from our “history” books has been wishful myth. Those who are the victors in wars and other world situations get to write the “history” books, in which they make themselves look good and their enemies look bad. The bad things they’ve done are either ignored or swept under the rug while their enemy’s faults are…
Al Benson
October 6, 2022
Southern Resistance to the European Concept of Sovereignty Blog

Southern Resistance to the European Concept of Sovereignty

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. So, our friend Don Livingston asked me to bring a European perspective on the problems of the Southern decentralist tradition. Today, I want to address what I would call, “What They Were Up Against: The Modern State and Federalism.” One of the greatest errors of mainstream Anglo-American political studies, from the history of…
Marco Bassani
October 3, 2022
Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 2 Blog

Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 2

By early January 1861, South Carolina had seceded from the Union and stood alone as an independent republic. In the ensuing weeks, six additional Southern States would follow suit. Lame-duck President James Buchanan did nothing to stop the dissolution of the Union, mainly because he did not believe he had any authority to coerce a state, but also preferring to…
Ryan Walters
August 9, 2022
Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 1 Blog

Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 1

In 1859 the Union of American States entered the final stages of its greatest crisis, one that would eventually split the country in two. America was then a young republic but growing larger and stronger with each passing year. Yet North and South were growing apart, seeing the world through a different lens. The North was more industrial, while the…
Ryan Walters
August 2, 2022
The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals BlogReview Posts

The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals

A review of The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals (Regnery History, 2022) by Samuel Mitcham The valor of the Confederate Army is one of the greatest stories in American history. Southerners needed brilliant leaders because they faced such overwhelming odds. They were outnumbered four to one and outgunned a hundred to one. The author’s purpose of the book is to make…
Jeff Wolverton
July 21, 2022
A View of the Constitution BlogClyde Wilson Library

A View of the Constitution

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. St. George Tucker is a significant member of the Revolutionary generation, the Founding Generation, and he was looked to by Jefferson and Madison as the judge of Jeffersonian democracy, the man who saved the judiciary from false doctrines in his View of the Constitution and his other writings. Tucker’s View was published in…
Clyde Wilson
July 18, 2022
Setting Lincoln Straight Blog

Setting Lincoln Straight

On March 7, 1862, Lincoln sent to congress and congress passed a joint resolution offering pecuniary aid to any State that would initiate gradual emancipation. However, no funding had been passed, only a declaration of intent. The offer fell on deaf ears in all the slave States, including those still in the Union. This prompted Lincoln to call a meeting…
Rod O'Barr
June 10, 2022
Common Cause and Common Fate Blog

Common Cause and Common Fate

Mr. President--I fully concur with the gentleman from Montgomery, in the propriety of immediately passing the resolution now under consideration. All the powers of the State of Alabama should be pledged to aid in resisting any attempt to coerce a seceding State back into the Union. Sir, the Southern States recognize the right of secession. It constitutes the very essence…
Lewis M. Stone
April 20, 2022
The War of Secession Blog

The War of Secession

A line from Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” In the case of the great American conflict of 1861, the name by which it has become generally known is, of course, the "Civil War." This term was, however, only occasionally used during the war, such as Lincoln’s reference in his 1863 Gettysburg Address that the country was “engaged in a…
John Marquardt
April 12, 2022
Lincoln, Putin, and Yankee Hyopcrisy Blog

Lincoln, Putin, and Yankee Hyopcrisy

At the writing of this article, the ongoing struggle between Ukraine and Russia has most people’s attention.  While prayerfully hoping for a peaceful settlement of this conflict, it is difficult to overlook the actual hypocrisy of the Federal government and U. S. media as they deal with the reported issues such as “saving the union,” “secession,” and “war crimes.”  It…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
March 23, 2022
A War to Free the Slaves? Blog

A War to Free the Slaves?

Part 3 in Clyde Wilson's series "African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective." Read Part 1 and Part 2. In 1798 Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Taylor: “It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and substance.” He added…
Clyde Wilson
March 22, 2022
Robert E. Lee and His Time Blog

Robert E. Lee and His Time

Delivered at the 2013 Abbeville Institute Summer School. What I want to do is thoroughly cover Lee in his time and in ours, and try to understand that transformation. There's more there than meets the eye, and it has to do with our understanding of Lee. If we can understand the transformation as carefully as I hope to take us…
William Wilson
March 8, 2022
Secession Declarations Do Not Prove the War was over Slavery Blog

Secession Declarations Do Not Prove the War was over Slavery

ACADEMIA'S ABSOLUTE PROOF that the War Between the States was fought over slavery is based primarily on the declarations of causes for the secession of four of the first seven Southern states to secede: South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. However, those four declarations prove nothing of the sort. There were 13 Southern states represented in the Confederate government. That…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
February 25, 2022
What We Have to Expect BlogReview Posts

What We Have to Expect

A review of How Radical Republican Antislavery Rhetoric and Violence Precipitated Secession, October 1859 - April 1861 (Abbeville Institute Press, 2022) by David Jonathan White. One of the tragic casualties of America’s long culture war is the distortion of the country’s central event, The War Between the States. During the 1950s, historians such as Avery Craven began to question the…
John Devanny
February 15, 2022
Slavery and Abolitionism as Viewed by a Georgia Slave Blog

Slavery and Abolitionism as Viewed by a Georgia Slave

After 200 years of digesting Enlightenment ideals of natural rights, and reciting a pledge that concludes with “liberty and justice for all,“ it is hard for us to realize there are circumstances when slavery could be considered a “positive good.” John C. Calhoun has lately been excoriated for taking this position. Yet in 1861 an educated Georgia slave named Harrison…
Rod O'Barr
January 12, 2022
How the British Viewed the War Blog

How the British Viewed the War

But most significant of all was the attitude assumed by the Federal Government in dealing with the secession of the South. Long before that secession some of the best observers had clearly pointed out how the influence of climate, and much more the special type of industry and character which slavery produced, had already created a profound and lasting difference…
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
January 11, 2022
Secession Isn’t Treason Blog

Secession Isn’t Treason

A few more words, and we shall be in a condition to answer the question which stands at the head of this chapter. Being a legal question, it will depend entirely upon the constitutional right the Southern States may have had to withdraw from the Union, without reference to considerations of expediency, or of moral right; these latter will be…
Raphael Semmes
December 1, 2021
The Right Side of History BlogReview Posts

The Right Side of History

A review of Robert E. Lee: A Life (Random House, 2021) by Allen Guelzo “How do you write the biography of someone who commits treason?” asks historian Allen C. Guelzo in his new book Robert E. Lee: A Life. It’s a bit of an odd question for a historian to ask. Sure, treason is a terrible crime. But so are…
Casey Chalk
November 23, 2021
A New Civil War? Blog

A New Civil War?

By 1860 our country was so hopelessly divided that it broke up, and only by force was it kept unified. While the North and South had profound political, economic, and moral differences, institutional slavery being paramount, the two halves had a great deal in common, so much so that after the bloodletting and rage subsided, we were able to come…
M.C. Atkins
November 17, 2021
Missouri’s Road to Secession Blog

Missouri’s Road to Secession

Missouri celebrated her 160th anniversary of her secession from the Union on October 28. It was that day, in 1861, that both chambers of the duly elected Missouri legislature passed an ordinance of secession in extra session in Neosho, Missouri. The ordinance was signed by the duly elected governor three days later, on October 31, 1861. Missouri was officially accepted…
Wes Franklin
November 4, 2021
What Did the Founders Intend? Ask a Canadian Blog

What Did the Founders Intend? Ask a Canadian

Critical to the debate regarding the right of secession is where, in the minds of the founders, did sovereignty reside. Were the States sovereign principals and the federal government their created agent? Or was the federal government sovereign and the States its created agents? State sovereignty prevailed for most of the 70 years after the founding, but political prejudice and…
Rod O'Barr
November 3, 2021
On “Southern” Slavery Blog

On “Southern” Slavery

It has become fashionable to bash the South - not only by removing war memorials or looking the other way as they are vandalized, but even in discussions of things like slavery.  It's never just slavery; it's Southern slavery.  The existence of slavery in the North has been whitewashed and sent down the memory hole. Frankly, most of our American…
Rev. Larry Beane
October 28, 2021
Disunion Then and Now Blog

Disunion Then and Now

The delegates who gathered in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, presumptuously shelving that document, concluded their work on the proposed U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.  On another September 17th three quarters of a century later, the quarrels that had commenced at that gathering were to continue in a cornfield at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. One hundred…
J.L. Bennett
October 22, 2021
Break It Up Review Posts

Break It Up

A review of Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union (Little Brown, 2020) by Richard Kreitner Horrors! Richard Kreitner, a neo-Confederate? How will he, in the stable of Leftist The Nation magazine, founded as a successor to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator, ever publish again! One must admire Kreitner’s gift of writing in…
Terry Hulsey
September 14, 2021
Historical Context Explains Secession Blog

Historical Context Explains Secession

That Southern secession was ultimately about independence with or without slavery is easily determined by primary sources. Often I hear that the primary sources I quote in defense of Southern secession are “cherry picked” or “out of context.” Those making these charges will then point to the four Declarations of Causes or The Cornerstone Speech as proof of my lack…
Rod O'Barr
August 12, 2021
Lincoln and the Border States Review Posts

Lincoln and the Border States

A review of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas, 2014) by William C. Harris. William C. Harris has set before him the admirable task of examining whether the border states indeed “unequivocally cast their lot with the Union” in 1861 (page 8). Unfortunately, his political views send him into the issue with one hand…
Terry Hulsey
June 29, 2021
Secession Was Not About Slavery Blog

Secession Was Not About Slavery

Original in the possession of the Minnesota Historical Society. First some context. The South did not secede to “preserve and extend slavery.” Its “pro-slavery“ arguments were not in response to any major political party in the antebellum period calling for emancipation. There was none! Southern secession was a result of 70 years of defending itself against Northern economic exploitation, Northern…
Rod O'Barr
June 11, 2021
A Cascadian Confederacy? Blog

A Cascadian Confederacy?

Nearly two weeks ago, five counties in Oregon voted to approve a measure to secede from the state and join its neighbor Idaho. The counties of Malheur, Sherman, Baker, Grant, and Lake joined Jefferson and Union county who had already voted in favor of similar measures last year. According to greateridaho.org, “the ballot measures are a part of an effort…
Cole Branham
June 4, 2021
Is Secession Treason? Blog

Is Secession Treason?

And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crimeAre pronest to it, and impute themselves…Tennyson, from Idylls of the King (1) The US Supreme Court, in Texas vs. White, ruled that secession from the Union was unconstitutional. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, in 1869, wrote the majority “opinion of the court.” His opinion was not that of Thomas Jefferson, the…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
June 3, 2021
Bad History Masquerading as an Appeal to Peace and Piety: A Response to Allen Guelzo’s “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause” Blog

Bad History Masquerading as an Appeal to Peace and Piety: A Response to Allen Guelzo’s “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause”

It is a testimony to the prevalence of anti-Southern sentiment that The Gospel Coalition (TGC), one of the most prominent evangelical parachurch entities, has provided a platform for such sentiments by publishing an article entitled “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause.” Written by the prominent Princeton University Professor Allen Guelzo, this piece was published in the “Bible and Theology”…
Tom Hervey
May 24, 2021
A Primer on Secession Review Posts

A Primer on Secession

A review of  Secession, State & Liberty, (Transaction, 1998) edited with an introduction by David Gordon. If there is a single book you should read on the subject of secession, Secession, State & Liberty is the one. Best of all, this collection of essays is entirely free, here: https://mises.org/library/secession-state-and-liberty The key point of the book is the demonstration that secession…
Terry Hulsey
May 18, 2021
Only A House Divided Within Itself Will Stand Blog

Only A House Divided Within Itself Will Stand

On the Ingraham Angle recently, guest, Craig Shirley offered an opinion that should cheer the people who have read (best seller) The South Was Right.  Even those who haven’t read it but understand that the 1776 “founding” drivel of the Eric Foner socialist-mindset historical revision, is just that: drivel. Shirley, who is the author of five books on Ronald Reagan…
Paul H. Yarbrough
April 7, 2021
Secession’s Magic Numbers, Part One Blog

Secession’s Magic Numbers, Part One

A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard; ISBN: 978-0-14-312202-9, Penguin, September 25, 2012, 384 pages. American Nations is simply the most brilliant book I have ever read on American history. Almost every page is compact with some…
Terry Hulsey
February 23, 2021
A (Maryland) Southern Hero Blog

A (Maryland) Southern Hero

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

A Red and Blue Divorce?

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

Secession: The Point of the Spear

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

How Arizona Seceded From the Union

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

Secession Becomes Thinkable

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

A Simple Explanation

What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the war would not have happened. Indeed, it is probable that the circumstances leading up to the war would not have happened. So, what in fact, did happen?! Truth to tell,…
Valerie Protopapas
October 14, 2020
California Secession…in 1858? Blog

California Secession…in 1858?

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

Was Secession Treason?

Recently an acquaintance of mine remarked that the Confederate statue in her hometown should be removed from its present place of honour and relocated to the Confederate cemetery which is presently (and sadly) in a state of neglect. The statue should be moved, she said, because while the boys who fought and died during the Late Unpleasantness deserve to be…
Earl Starbuck
September 18, 2020
They Were Not Traitors Blog

They Were Not Traitors

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

The Fire Eater

Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural civilization; one of the first and most intense Southern nationalists; and the man who fired the first gun at Sumter and ended his own life in grief when the civilization…
Neil Kumar
August 26, 2020
Gouverneur Morris in 1812 Blog

Gouverneur Morris in 1812

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

Violence Breeds Violence

Estimates of the number of South Vietnamese civilian casualties during the U.S. war in Vietnam vary. A U.S. Dept. of Defense estimate put the numbers at 1.2 million, including 195,000 killed.  In 1975, a U.S. Senate sub-committee put the total at 1.4 million casualties, including 415,000 killed. The majority of those killed were women and children. In 1995, the Vietnamese…
Norman Black
March 20, 2020
An Environmental Right Blog

An Environmental Right

I started my political journey on what I thought to be the Left. Books like Klein’s The Shock Doctrine resonated with me, as did films like American Beauty and Revolutionary Road. My favorite childhood films were Atlantis and The Iron Giant. All of these works are part of a long line of salient critiques of the deracinated culture of consumption…
Neil Kumar
March 2, 2020
Secession and Its Discontents Blog

Secession and Its Discontents

The American story is a story of secession, or better still secessions.  The first permanent settlements of Europeans in North America were the result of a series of secessions from primarily the British Isles.  Religious motive, political persecution, economic distress all play their part in impelling movement from the homeland into a new world, and it does so with a…
John Devanny
February 12, 2020
Small is Still Beautiful Review Posts

Small is Still Beautiful

A review of Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered (ISI Books, 2006) by Joseph Pearce. There’s not too much that’s actually wrong about this book, other than it proves itself totally unnecessary. Obviously from the title you know that it is based on Fritz Schumacher’s great classic of 1973, and it does a lot of quoting from…
Kirkpatrick Sale
February 11, 2020
If You Can’t Blame the Confederacy, Secede! Blog

If You Can’t Blame the Confederacy, Secede!

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

Lincoln v. Trump

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

The Left’s March Through Southern Institutions

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

Poison Under the Wings

The beginning of the American political order goes much further back than the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.  Political scientists and political theorists are understandably fixated on the Constitution and the convention that produced it.  Eric Voegelin, Willmoore Kendall, and a few others go even further back searching for a continuity in the political symbolization present in some certain select, but…
John Devanny
November 20, 2019
Confederates Were Not Traitors Blog

Confederates Were Not Traitors

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

Taylor and Jefferson on Secession

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

The Secession Movement in the Middle States

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

Town Line, C.S.A.

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

Secession Hypocrisy

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

The Limits of a Politics of Tolerance

Secession, nullification, and interposition, like the poor, we shall always have with us. These are as American, indeed more American, than apple pie and baseball. Our new federal union, outlined in the Constitution written at the Philadelphia Convention and ratified by the independent states in their separate conventions, was barely out of the gate before the first constitutional crisis hit…
John Devanny
June 10, 2019
The Procrustean Constitution Blog

The Procrustean Constitution

We have seen how Mississippi, with its campus free speech bill, totally ignored its own State constitution in favor of federal 1st Amendment arguments.  Now Texas is doing likewise in response to the San Antonio City Council’s decision to reject Chick-fil-A’s request to be a vendor in the San Antonio International Airport.  The opposition to this decision rests mostly on…
Walt Garlington
May 15, 2019
The Southern Critique of Centralization Blog

The Southern Critique of Centralization

The Southern political tradition, in practice and theory, is one of its most valuable contributions to America and the world. The one constant theme of that tradition from 1776–through Jefferson, Madison, John Taylor, St George Tucker, Abel Upshur, John C. Calhoun, the Nashville Agrarians, Richard Weaver, M. E. Bradford, down to the scholars of the Abbeville Institute–is a systematic critique…
Donald Livingston
January 28, 2019
We the People of South Carolina…. Blog

We the People of South Carolina….

William Plumer Jacobs (1842-1917), a native of Yorkville, South Carolina, was a Presbyterian minister and scholar whose entire life has been called “a singular consecration to work and service in behalf of his fellow men.” He is closely identified with the town of Clinton, where he pastored a church and founded the Thornwell Orphanage and the Presbyterian College of South…
Karen Stokes
December 20, 2018
What Does the Fracturing of the American Identity Mean for the Southern Tradition? Blog

What Does the Fracturing of the American Identity Mean for the Southern Tradition?

The Abbeville Institute conducted three conferences this year on the fracturing of American national identity and what means for the Southern tradition and the Southern people. The general public knows America is coming apart and that they're anxious about it, but most don't understand why because our political leaders and the national media generally suppress its origins. We wanted to…
Donald Livingston
December 17, 2018
Defusing a Second Civil War Through Peaceful Secession? Blog

Defusing a Second Civil War Through Peaceful Secession?

Secession? Nullification? A second Civil War in the presently not-so United States of America? According to a historic and highly fascinating Abbeville Institute event that took place November 9 and 10, 2018 in Dallas, Texas, a number of influential American thinkers, political figures and activists gathered to discuss how peaceful secession and nullification could very well be one of the most important…
Matthew Silber
November 15, 2018
The Southern Political Tradition is Winning Blog

The Southern Political Tradition is Winning

Nationalist Jeff Sessions gets canned and a nullifier takes his job. This is actually an odd twist of fate. A friend of mine knows Sessions personally, and he continually expressed disappointment at Sessions's actions as AG. Jeff Sessions is from Alabama and is named after two famous Confederate heroes, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard.  His replacement, Matthew Whitaker, hails from…
Brion McClanahan
November 14, 2018
From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters Review Posts

From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters

A review of From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by James Rutledge Roesch. Mr. James Rutledge Roesch is doing God’s work with the publication of his book, From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South.  Riding to the sound…
John Devanny
October 30, 2018
Could “Calexit” Create a Left-Right Confederacy? Blog

Could “Calexit” Create a Left-Right Confederacy?

“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” The 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump produced the wedding of Bible Belt social conservatives and a flamboyant New York Billionaire with a legitimately questionable history of less than “Christian” moral social values. But the wedding of these “strange bedfellows” appears to be working out quite well—at least for the time being. As presidential politics…
James Ronald Kennedy
October 22, 2018
A Red and Blue Coalition? Blog

A Red and Blue Coalition?

On June 20, 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Crawford: “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in union, I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’” Jefferson thought secession can be a good thing. Lincoln in his first inaugural presented secession as something always bad: “Secession,” he said, “is…
Donald Livingston
October 15, 2018
Nullification and Secession: Solutions or Talking Points? Blog

Nullification and Secession: Solutions or Talking Points?

Many of us in the South have maintained our faith in the Constitutional right of nullification and secession despite the efforts of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets. But is the talk about nullification and secession an earnest effort to put forward solutions to an out of control, Deep State, supreme federal government or is it merely an exercise in heady political…
James Ronald Kennedy
September 3, 2018
Colonel Baldwin Meets Mr. Lincoln 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
Sam Houston and Texas Secession 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
Two Southern Presidents in History 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
Is Secession Treason? 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
The Only Way to Drain the Swamp 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
That Embarrassing Analogy 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
The Essex Junto 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
Knights of the Golden Circle 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
Zombies No More: Secession, Nullification, and the Academy 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
Foundering Inventions 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
Through a Lens Darkly 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
Slavery and the War 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
The Extreme Northern Position 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
The Winds of Change Blog

The Winds of Change

This isn’t 1990. The Winds of Change have stopped blowing.  When the Soviets present a more docile response to self determination than a “western democracy,” the situation is bad. How painful is it to pine for the days of passive Soviet resistance to secession? Images and videos of the jack-booted thugs bulldozing their way through crowds of peaceful voters (including firemen…
Brion McClanahan
October 4, 2017
Red States for California Secession Blog

Red States for California Secession

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has given the green light for CalExit proponents to begin collecting signatures for a California secession ballot initiative in the 2018 general election. This is good news. California is the logical place to begin having a conversation about secession, and every red state American should be actively supporting the proposal. As California goes, so goes…
Brion McClanahan
August 3, 2017
General Lee Figured It Out Blog

General Lee Figured It Out

This piece was originally printed at Fred On Everything. “The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.” Robert E. Lee The man was perceptive. Amalgamation of the states under a central government has led to exactly the effects…
Fred Reed
July 7, 2017
Re-Humanizing Johnny Reb Blog

Re-Humanizing Johnny Reb

“…You said he's a Confederate general. They're the bad guys. And he's probably racist… We're going to raise our kids here. I don't want some Confederate General ghost teaching them his racism…” Yep… a “bad guy”… a “racist”… a boogeyman… That’s what Hollywood, mainstream media and a large part of American society and politics think of your Confederate ancestor. This…
Travis Archie
June 28, 2017
The AP Gets It Wrong…Again Blog

The AP Gets It Wrong…Again

In a recent column for the Associated Press, entitled “Old South monument backers embrace Confederate Catechism”, writer Jay Reeves opines that that those of us who seek to remember the Confederacy and Southern culture are reading from a different history book than the rest of the “nation”. He acknowledges that “indeed they are”, and then references the “decades old” Confederate…
Carl Jones
June 26, 2017
A Question of Sovereignty Review Posts

A Question of Sovereignty

Although the nation recently recognized the 150th anniversary of the end of the War of Northern Aggression, we are still plagued with questions about the legality of secession, issues and inquiries that unfortunately may never end. In exchanges on social media over the years, I have argued our principles as passionately as anyone can, while kindly, but at times very…
Ryan Walters
April 4, 2017
Let the Bear Flag Go Blog

Let the Bear Flag Go

A large portion of California wants to secede. That’s a good thing. American conservatives should not only applaud the move, they should be doing everything possible to help them find the door. Image a world without Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Diane Feinstein, or Kamala Harris; where Democrats would not start the presidential election cycle with nearly one quarter of the…
Brion McClanahan
February 27, 2017
The Small Nation Manifesto Review Posts

The Small Nation Manifesto

A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from power. Leopold Kohr Breakdown of Nations We the small nations and aspiring small nations of the world find it increasingly difficult to escape the clutches of the largest, wealthiest, most…
Thomas Naylor
February 1, 2017
Never the North, Always the South Blog

Never the North, Always the South

"I think every heritage has things that are good about it, every heritage has things that are harmful about it," replied Representative Tom Price recently to a question from Senator Tim Kaine. "And I'm happy to answer the specific question. I think slavery was an abomination." Price was being interviewed for Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Health and Human…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 31, 2017
Calexit: California, Adios! Blog

Calexit: California, Adios!

It seems that out in California an impressively large number of people are petitioning for a referendum on secession.  While I don’t think much of their motive, I say more power to them. The motivation is, of course, fear by California leftists and foreigners that the 2016 federal election has deprived them of the excessive influence they have exercised over…
Clyde Wilson
January 30, 2017
Robert E. Lee: American Hero Blog

Robert E. Lee: American Hero

Several years ago, leftist blowhard Richard Cohen at the Washington Post wrote that Robert E. Lee “deserves no honor — no college, no highway, no high school. In the awful war (620,000 dead) that began 150 years ago this month, he fought on the wrong side for the wrong cause. It’s time for Virginia and the South to honor the…
Brion McClanahan
January 19, 2017
A State of Mind Blog

A State of Mind

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, which began with the epic demand, “ That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”   After a month of heated deliberation, the Congress finally adopted Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence which…
John Marquardt
January 5, 2017
See ya–Signed C.S.A. Blog

See ya–Signed C.S.A.

A fellow by the name of Marcus Ruiz Evans was on Fox’s Tucker Carlson program recently. He offered his stance on secession vis-à-vis California’s consideration. His position stood apropos for the Golden Bears because the Supreme Court in its Texas vs White decision of 1869 had offered a loophole bearing on the people’s consent to secede. This bears, of course,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 2, 2017
“Rational People” Now Want Secession Blog

“Rational People” Now Want Secession

 According to Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, secession is now being advocated by "rational people, not the fringe."This is an insult to all rational people.Rational people for generations have supported secession, including every scholar at the Abbeville Institute. But now that idiot Leftists in California, Oregon, and Washington are for it, somehow secession has become "rational."I think George Washington, Thomas…
Brion McClanahan
December 7, 2016
A Miscarriage of Justice Review Posts

A Miscarriage of Justice

"Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway in 1775. Wise words from the wisest of America’s Founders, yet ninety years later the very government that Franklin helped create disregarded his wisdom, fell prey to those very passions, and trampled the constitutional rights of its own citizens in order to help quench what seemed an…
Ryan Walters
December 5, 2016
Save Federalism, Save the Electoral College Blog

Save Federalism, Save the Electoral College

Discussing immigration and sanctuary cities, Bill O'Reilly began speaking of the coming clash of two "sovereignties", the States individually and the national government, but never got to finish his sentence. Speaker Gingrich interrupted to say, "there is one sovereignty" in America and that's the national government. "The Civil War settled the sovereignty question." Unfortunately, the Speaker is correct. We need…
Vito Mussomeli
December 1, 2016
Trump Wins–Secession Back in Style Blog

Trump Wins–Secession Back in Style

 Only days after Donald Trump’s victory there were already calls for secession arising from liberal controlled states of California and Oregon. While such calls may be an over-reaction, it does help to make a point that has been urged from the very beginning of our original Republic of Republics.Patrick Henry warned the people of Virginia about the dangers of entering…
James Ronald Kennedy
November 22, 2016
Rebel Redux Blog

Rebel Redux

Rumblings of open rebellion were in the air . . . a certain group within the state had felt for some time that their state’s wealth and resources were being unfairly used by the federal government to subsidize other areas of the nation.  Moreover, it was deemed that the social values of these other areas were in direct conflict with…
John Marquardt
November 14, 2016
Why No Southern Nationalism? Blog

Why No Southern Nationalism?

In the Partisan's last issue, I raised the question of why the United States has not been troubled in this century by regional nationalisms of the sort that are currently disturbing most other industrialized countries. In particular, I asked, why has there not been a serious version of Southern nationalism? Answering my own question, I suggested that (1) the outcome…
John Shelton Reed
November 11, 2016
#Calexit Blog

#Calexit

Donald Trump won and California wants to secede. Mises Institute President Jeff Deist tweeted during the election: "look for the Dems to discover the virtues of secession, nullification, and states rights." It didn't take long for leftists to realize the value of secession. Within hours of Trump's stunning victory (a victory yours truly predicted as early as February this year),…
Brion McClanahan
November 10, 2016
Nullification vs. Secession? Blog

Nullification vs. Secession?

On the 21st of this June, Americans celebrated the 228th anniversary of the nation’s Constitution, making it the world’s oldest existing governing body of laws. It was then that our founding fathers met in their effort to form a union more perfect than the one under which the thirteen sovereign states had been operating since 1781, the original Articles of…
John Marquardt
October 13, 2016
Rethinking the War for the 21st Century Review Posts

Rethinking the War for the 21st Century

(13th Annual Gettysburg Banquet of the J.E.B. Stuart Camp, SCV, Philadelphia) ****How Should 21st Century Americans Think about the War for Southern Independence? **** We human beings are peculiar creatures, half angel and half animal, as someone has said. Alone among creatures we have a consciousness of ourselves, of our situation, and of our movement through time. We have language,…
Clyde Wilson
September 14, 2016
The Great Divide–And Secession? Blog

The Great Divide–And Secession?

Of all the phenomena the 2016 election year has demonstrated, none is greater than the proof that this nation is deeply and probably irretrievably split into two political camps with very, very little in common. It is more than blue states and red states, it goes deeper: it is truth, jobs, security, and intelligence on one side and lies, coddling…
Kirkpatrick Sale
September 12, 2016
Decentralization For Humanity’s Sake Blog

Decentralization For Humanity’s Sake

The Roman historian Titus Livius once called Rome “the greatest nation in the world.”  He wrote those words in a time of moral and political decline, and Livy was hoping by outlining the greatness of the once proud republic, the Roman people would arrest the decline and embrace the principles that had made Rome great.  Livy argued that without understanding…
Brion McClanahan
September 9, 2016
Secession Without Civil War Blog

Secession Without Civil War

Since most modern historians agree that the South seceded to protect slavery they often conclude that the Civil War was "all about" slavery. The inference, however, overlooks the possibility that the Southern states could have been allowed to depart in peace. Within the lifetimes of most readers, for example, the Soviet Union peacefully disintegrated into its constituent countries as did…
Philip Leigh
September 2, 2016
The South as an Independent Nation Review Posts

The South as an Independent Nation

This article was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine in 1997. "Being a Southerner is a spiritual condition, like being a Catholic or Jew." So wrote Richard Weaver in his essay "The South and the American Union" in The Lasting South (1957). The South's experience during the war for its independence, he added, only confirmed this separateness of spirit and…
William Cawthon
September 1, 2016
Do Motives Matter? Blog

Do Motives Matter?

A friend of mine is translating a book on Lincoln written by Karl Marx. Her first installment was a refutation by Marx of the European press’s contention that the assault by the North on the South was not about slavery, but about economic and political power. Of course, one cannot divorce the issue of slavery from either consideration but Marx…
Valerie Protopapas
July 25, 2016
The Free State of Jones: History or Hollywood? Review Posts

The Free State of Jones: History or Hollywood?

Hollywood has struck again with another “Civil War” movie that, unsurprisingly as it may seem, does not do justice to the real Southland or the Confederacy.  The latest episode is an epic by director Gary Ross, “Free State of Jones,” starring Matthew McConaughey as the film’s hero, Newt Knight. “Free State of Jones” tells the story of a Knight-led rebellion…
Ryan Walters
July 12, 2016
A Book for a Southerner’s Bookshelf Blog

A Book for a Southerner’s Bookshelf

Recently a commencement speaker exhorted graduating students to "be on the right side of history." The commencement speaker used the phrase 'be on the right side of history' to mean actively supporting social trends that are currently in fashion. But 'the right side of history' also implies that there are right and wrong sides of history. Indeed there are different…
Gail Jarvis
July 7, 2016
Brexit: Dividing the Indivisible Blog

Brexit: Dividing the Indivisible

REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth In his first Inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln explained his moral justification for invading the Southern States. Plainly, he said, “the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.” He reasoned that if a State can lawfully secede from the Union, so can a part of that part and a part of that part, on down to one…
Donald Livingston
June 28, 2016
More Secession Theology: Thomas Smyth of Charleston Blog

More Secession Theology: Thomas Smyth of Charleston

Lately there has been mention of Dr. Thomas Smyth in two Abbeville Institute blog and review posts, namely, “The Theology of Secession” by M. E. Bradford, and “What Lincoln's Election Meant to the South” by Bradley J. Birzer. Having written about this Charleston clergyman in an upcoming book, I thought our readers might be interested in learning a little more…
Karen Stokes
June 23, 2016
What Lincoln’s Election Meant to South Carolina Blog

What Lincoln’s Election Meant to South Carolina

This essay was originally published at TheImagninativeConservative.org and is republished here by permission. The finest of gentlemen founded South Carolina, informants assured the famous London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, upon his arrival in Charleston in April, 1861. “It was established not by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the North the standard of Torquemada, and breathed…
Bradley J. Birzer
June 16, 2016
The Theology of Secession Review Posts

The Theology of Secession

At the very deepest level there is a central truth about the War Between the States which is now, even by the best of Southerners, almost never mentioned, although their forefathers had once spoken of its importance continuously. Indeed, they put emphasis upon it long after the War was over. From 1850 until 1912, this explanatory assumption was a commonplace…
M.E. Bradford
June 14, 2016
Long Live the Flags of Dixie! Blog

Long Live the Flags of Dixie!

This piece was originally printed at AntoniusAquinas.com. On May 19, the House of Reprehensibles passed a proposal that would essentially ban the display of Confederate flags from national cemeteries.  The amendment was added to a Veteran Affairs spending bill. Not surprisingly, House Speaker Paul Ryan allowed the measure to be voted upon in hopes of not disrupting the appropriations process. …
Antonius Aquinas
May 31, 2016
Betrayed by Yankees Perverting the Constitution Blog

Betrayed by Yankees Perverting the Constitution

Originally published at Circa1865.com. The presidential messages of Jefferson Davis were filled with assertions of the South’s legal right to secede and form a more perfect union, and determine its own form of government to the letter of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Not losing sight of this, even in early 1865, one Confederate congressman stated that “This is a war…
Bernard Thuersam
May 20, 2016
Texas Secession? Blog

Texas Secession?

It may not get anywhere at all, but there are a number of people in Texas trying to get the official state Republican Party to debate the issue of secession at the party convention on May 12-14. The movement got started by the Texas Nationalist Movement, a group that's been around for more than a decade, involved mostly in trying…
Kirkpatrick Sale
April 25, 2016
Is the Mississippi State Flag “Anti-American”? Blog

Is the Mississippi State Flag “Anti-American”?

United States District Judge Carlton Reeves is considering a lawsuit by Mississippi attorney Carlos Moore to rule that the Mississippi State flag is unconstitutional because it is “anti-American,” meaning it symbolizes secession and slavery. I leave aside the contorted legal reasoning that might support such a suit, namely whether Moore has standing to sue, if this is a judicial not…
Donald Livingston
April 15, 2016
McWhirter Tries to Strike Back Blog

McWhirter Tries to Strike Back

My recent piece on James Ryder Randall, "At Arlington", touched a nerve, at least with Christian McWhirter.  I spent some time in "At Arlington" discussing his March Time magazine piece, and thus he was compelled to reply. McWhirter begins by wondering when the "neo-Confederate crowd" would respond to his article.  It only took him one sentence to use the tired pejorative "neo-Confederate"…
Brion McClanahan
April 12, 2016
Death is Mercy to Secessionists Blog

Death is Mercy to Secessionists

William T. Sherman viewed Southerners as he later viewed American Indians, to be exterminated or banished to reservations as punishment for having resisted government power. They were subjects and merely temporary occupants of land belonging to his government whom they served. The revealing excerpts below are taken from “Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama,” published in 1872: Headquarters, Department of…
Bernard Thuersam
March 21, 2016
Real Federalism: Switzerland Blog

Real Federalism: Switzerland

With each visit to Switzerland, my understanding and appreciation of the political economy of the country becomes deeper and more nuanced. The Swiss people have been incredibly successful in evolving a philosophy, culture and political structure which, limits the potential power of a centralist, nationalist and statist administration through the adoption of a federal system and other policies which distribute…
Harry Teasley
March 11, 2016
The Abolitionist Secessionist? Review Posts

The Abolitionist Secessionist?

“To live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.”-Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner was a Boston legal scholar and philosopher during the nineteenth century. What makes this man of Massachusetts valuable to the legacy of the Southern tradition is that Spooner was a consistent proponent of Jeffersonian Classical Liberalism*. There are two characteristics that are…
Matt De Santi
March 8, 2016
Stonewall Jackson Review Posts

Stonewall Jackson

  This essay is excerpted from the Preface to Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997) by James I. Robertson, Jr. Thomas Jonathan Jackson’s walnut bookcase at the Virginia Historical Society contains six shelves filled with the volumes he collected. Almost in the center of the case stand three works side by side. The one in I he…
James I. Robertson, Jr.
January 21, 2016