Tag

Southern Culture

The Sicilians Who Built a Little Palermo on the Mississippi Blog

The Sicilians Who Built a Little Palermo on the Mississippi

Popular memory of the great Italian migration to the United States almost always settles on the crowded tenements of Manhattan, Boston, or Philadelphia. Yet a different stream of Italians flowed along the muddy bends of the Mississippi River, far from the northern tenement districts. That world had a distinct character. Historian Jessica Barbata Jackson captures it in a single sentence…
Jose Nino
November 11, 2026
Southern Cultural Literacy for America Blog

Southern Cultural Literacy for America

What are some songs or books that you think all Southerners should know? Cultural literacy is the ordinary process by which a population acquires a language of thought through the forms already belonging to it. Those forms are the songs, stories, images, and phrases that circulate in the ordinary life of a place. Everybody knows the Mona Lisa. Everybody knows…
Tom Daniel
November 6, 2026
The South as a Christian Civilization Blog

The South as a Christian Civilization

Let me begin by quoting from a book entitled, The Attitude of the Northern Clergy Toward the South, published in 1942. Its author, Chester F. Dunham, wrote: Southern Christianity, or the theological position of Southern Christian Churches, was thoroughly orthodox. Religion in the South, by and large, supported the civilization, culture, and social order south of the Mason Dixon line.…
Karen Stokes
October 29, 2026
The Hand on the Throttle Blog

The Hand on the Throttle

Southern railroad songs are often treated as a musical celebration of trains: their speed, their whistles, and the power of a locomotive moving through the landscape. The cultural connection is in the songs and in the life the songs come from. The South had more single-track, light-rail, and newly built lines than the Northeast in the decades after the Civil…
Tom Daniel
October 28, 2026
Good Southern Reading Blog

Good Southern Reading

Originally published at Reckonin.com Here are some good books published in fairly recent years that you may not have encountered. Perrin Lovett, The Substitute and Aurelius and Other Tom Ironsides Adventures. I am tempted to call Tom Ironsides a Southern James Bond, but he is a much better man and more relevant to our times than Bond. Once a CIA…
Clyde Wilson
October 27, 2026
Our Heritage is Our Haven Blog

Our Heritage is Our Haven

We hear it from the haters of our heritage all the time. Old times in Dixie must be forgotten and never remembered. We’re not in sync with modern America, or to a large extent with the modern American South. Yet we must ask why this modernity deserves our allegiance. It is crucial today, more than ever, for Southerners to embrace…
John Vinson
October 26, 2026
The Poles Who Quietly Helped Build the American South Blog

The Poles Who Quietly Helped Build the American South

Ask most Americans who built the South and the answer drifts toward the British Isles. English planters claimed the Tidewater, Scots-Irish settlers cleared the backcountry, and Irish laborers dug the canals. Tucked inside that familiar story runs a quieter thread spun by people from the lands of modern Poland, and it stretches from Jamestown to Texas, New Orleans, Baltimore, and…
Jose Nino
October 23, 2026
The Devil’s Box Blog

The Devil’s Box

Do you have a piano in your church? An organ? A guitar? A bass and drum set? A pedal steel? I’ve visited a lot of churches all over the South covering more denominations than I can count, but I have never once encountered a fiddle in any of them. The fiddle has probably acquired more theological baggage than any other…
Tom Daniel
October 22, 2026
The Southern Tradition, Techno-Totalitarianism, and Our Temu-Faustian Bargain Blog

The Southern Tradition, Techno-Totalitarianism, and Our Temu-Faustian Bargain

“My wish is simply to live my life as fully as I can…And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.” —Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (1990) “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world…
James Rutledge Roesch
October 19, 2026
A Question of Skulls Blog

A Question of Skulls

Even here in Charleston, the city celebrated so lovingly in its pages, Owen Wister’s Lady Baltimore (1906) seems to be the subject of a discreet silence. For some time I was puzzled by this, for the novel has lost little if any of its original charm. While DuBose Heyward's sentimental Porgy is daily fodder for every horse-and-buggy tour guide on…
Jack Trotter
October 14, 2026
Appalachian Murder Ballads Blog

Appalachian Murder Ballads

October is a time when folks put a skeleton on the porch and call it a personality. Plastic gravestones, jack-o-lanterns, spider webs, fog machines, and a playlist that treats death like a party favor. However, the Southern mountains don’t need October for that, because they’ve already got the murder ballads. There are songs about a girl who walked into the…
Tom Daniel
October 13, 2026
Music in the House of Lee Blog

Music in the House of Lee

Robert E. Lee did not play an instrument. That single fact, set beside the musical lives of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Jefferson Davis, requires a moment of careful consideration, because it does not mean what it first appears to mean. Jefferson submitted himself to decades of violin practice, treating musical discipline as inseparable from intellectual formation, and understanding that…
Tom Daniel
October 7, 2026
Grandma’s Provincialism Blog

Grandma’s Provincialism

When my paternal grandmother passed away; her departure left me reflecting on her legacy and impact on my cultural understanding of who I am. Grandma was what many call a “Heritage American”. Every branch of her family had resided in the country before many of the Founders were born and were representative of colonial Virginia and the Middle Atlantic. However,…
Cole Branham
October 2, 2026
The Hidden Origins of Mardi Gras Blog

The Hidden Origins of Mardi Gras

On the evening of March 2, 1699—Fat Monday, the night before Mardi Gras—two brothers from the French colony of New France steered a small boat into the muddy mouth of the Mississippi River, hunting for a waterway that earlier expeditions had failed to find and hold. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his younger brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville were…
Jose Nino
October 1, 2026
The Alabama Heathens Blog

The Alabama Heathens

The Alabama Heathens are a Southern rock band from North Alabama in the least marketable sense of the term. They didn’t assemble in a conference room somewhere to look like a region. They formed because some boys from Huntsville, Priceville, and Muscle Shoals kept ending up in the same joints with guitars, and then decided the joints were the whole…
Tom Daniel
September 28, 2026
Saving the Living South Blog

Saving the Living South

Debating 19th-century history, constitutional theory, and the causes of the War Between the States remains a central focus for many Southern commentators. Unpacking the complexities of the 1860s and challenging popular historical myths is a long-standing intellectual endeavor. However, an overwhelming focus on the past has created a dangerous blind spot: while activists spend their energy arguing over historical narratives…
Joshua Gilmer
September 25, 2026
A Criticism Wrought with Praise: Southern Backwardness in the Age of Progress Blog

A Criticism Wrought with Praise: Southern Backwardness in the Age of Progress

“There are great defects in that character—peculiar defects of accident; but there is also the sum of many virtues. The people of the South are brave to a fault; they are generous to credulity, polite, hospitable, cherishing many noble virtues which the commercial spirit of the age has elsewhere outgrown; but they have all the peculiar faults of an untraveled…
Ian Richardson
September 24, 2026
Distorted History Courtesy of “Taliban” Ty Blog

Distorted History Courtesy of “Taliban” Ty

The PragerU video “Was the Civil War About Slavery?”  has floated around for a few years. The speaker is a bald-headed individual reminiscent of the character in The Outer Limits episode entitled “The Sixth Finger”; however, the advanced intelligence level of the character in the show is not a factor in this comparison.  This individual -- Ty Seidule -- is…
John M. Taylor
September 23, 2026
What Was the Lost Cause? Blog

What Was the Lost Cause?

Originally posted at Mindy Esposito's Substack. “That’s just the Lost Cause Myth.” But when I ask someone to tell me what the “Lost Cause Myth” actually was, all I hear is crickets… Still, I get some version of that sentence hurled as an accusation all the time. Sometimes it lands on me. Sometimes I watch it thrown at someone else.…
Mindy Esposito
September 17, 2026
Omnipotent Moral Busybodies Blog

Omnipotent Moral Busybodies

C. S. Lewis wrote that "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own…
Tom Daniel
September 15, 2026
Southern Music is Not a Purity Test Blog

Southern Music is Not a Purity Test

When a life as public as Dolly Parton's closes, the temptation is to sort the woman by the last arguments attached to her name. The internet-fueled predictable reaction is to give her a cultural Judgment Day based on cherry-picked items of discontent while ignoring her contributions to both music and the South as a whole. That is a poor way…
Tom Daniel
September 8, 2026
Two Southerners Who Stayed Southern Blog

Two Southerners Who Stayed Southern

Originally published at From The Desk of Jon Harris On August 25, 2026, Dolly Parton passed away. Six days later, so did Wendell Berry. Both were known for different things. Dolly was an entertainer. Berry was a novelist and activist. But their deaths represent the closing of a chapter for the American South. During their lifetimes, the Kentucky farmer and…
Jonathan Harris
September 7, 2026
A Walk to the Park Blog

A Walk to the Park

The evening sun was flooding in through the two big windows that my feet were pointed towards as I lay on the couch for a nap. I must have fallen asleep around five o’ clock, shortly after getting home from work. I assume it was then since the sun was still high enough to not make closing the blinds necessary…
Ian Richardson
September 3, 2026
From Founders to Politicians Blog

From Founders to Politicians

A review of From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition (Shotwell Publishing, 2026) by Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire, originally published in 2003 by The Foundation for American Education and more recently issued in a new edition by Shotwell Publishing is one of those rare books which does not disappoint the reader who is drawn by the…
Brett Moffatt
August 31, 2026
Whose Portrait on Your Wall? Blog

Whose Portrait on Your Wall?

I’m wearing a shirt with Francis Marion displayed proudly on the back. I have portraits of our region and nation’s folklore and heroes hanging on my walls. I have lapel pins of the same. Other shirts have their quotes on them. Without a concerted effort in doing so, I accumulated images and the words of our region’s mythos. I do…
Matthew Conard
August 27, 2026
Sacred Steel and Southern Rock Blog

Sacred Steel and Southern Rock

I came to Sacred Steel late, and I came to it by accident. I'd been going back through my list of American musical traditions that are actually Southern, checking for anything I'd left out, and Sacred Steel was one of the names that turned up as a gap. I didn't know the tradition at all going in, so I did…
Tom Daniel
August 24, 2026
Dixie in Decay Blog

Dixie in Decay

The following is an abridged summary of the first three chapters of Dixie in Decay (and How to Heal Her) by Elias John Ryan Dixie is in decay. Our tradition of self governance is being flattened by an overreaching federal government. A once vibrant culture is being overridden by technology and mass immigration. Our economy is being corrupted by crony…
Elias Ryan
August 18, 2026
B.F. White and the Sacred Harp Blog

B.F. White and the Sacred Harp

History tends to remember songs, and is considerably less interested in the people who made sure there was somewhere to sing them. Benjamin Franklin White is one of those people. Born in Union County, South Carolina, in 1800, he spent the better part of his adult life in Hamilton, Georgia, where he taught singing schools, compiled tunebooks, presided over conventions,…
Tom Daniel
August 17, 2026
Yankee Way of War Blog

Yankee Way of War

About this time every year, cruise ship historians like to trot out articles justifying the mass slaughter of innocents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America had no choice but to drop the atom bombs, the basic argument goes. Mainstream media coverage in Japan tends to leave the subject, “America,” out altogether. It was war in the abstract that is to blame,…
Jason Morgan
August 14, 2026
Inheriting Gold Blog

Inheriting Gold

Many years ago, I asked myself, “Who am I” then “what do I know about myself?”  That turned into exploration about “who I am,” which in turn, evolved into “where do I come from” and finally “who did I come from?”  I think today people are caught up so much on the first question, that the development of the idea…
Harvey Lee Nix
August 12, 2026
Moses Waddel: The Teacher of the South Blog

Moses Waddel: The Teacher of the South

If anyone in Dixie is worthy of the title ‘Teacher of the South’, it is Reverend Moses Waddel.  A summary of the major Southern figures who attended the academy he established at Willington, South Carolina, as students would be convincing enough: ‘Among the names are William H. Crawford, a pupil in the Appling school and an assistant at Willington; John…
Walt Garlington
August 11, 2026
The Sacred Ordinary Blog

The Sacred Ordinary

There is a habit in modern life of searching for meaning only in the dramatic and flamboyant. We are told to look for fulfillment in great achievements, grand adventures, public recognition, and constant reinvention. The ordinary day, by contrast, is treated as something to escape. Routine is drudgery. Repetition is boredom. Domestic life is confinement. Work is merely transactional. The…
Tom Daniel
August 6, 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
Patrick Henry
Give Me Fiddle Blog

Give Me Fiddle

Patrick Henry, otherwise known as Mister Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death, was a pretty good musician, much like his contemporary, Thomas Jefferson. But Henry did not practice scales. He did not copy violin pieces by hand into notebooks, did not build a personal library of Italian Baroque composers, and did not submit himself to the long discipline of…
Tom Daniel
July 31, 2026
85 Blog

85

Originally published at Reckonin.com I recently turned 85. I really did not expect to last this long. When I turned 70, I wrote a contemplative essay that attracted some attention. For 85, I mostly have only an old man’s boring reflections on how much has changed. I was a teenager before I saw a television and a college student before…
Clyde Wilson
July 30, 2026
Maryland, My Maryland Blog

Maryland, My Maryland

I enjoy studying maps. I especially enjoy maps of the ‘what-if’ scenarios if certain courses in history played out differently, but also the constant debate regarding cultural borders within the US. I frequently analyze the border of the cultural South, as I have cause to believe the South is shrinking faster than most would want to accept. This turf war…
Matthew Conard
July 29, 2026
NASCAR and the Spirit of the South Blog

NASCAR and the Spirit of the South

There is no sport more shaped entirely by its origin in the South than NASCAR. A sport built on southern tradition, southern rebellion, and the spirit of the southern common man. That “spirit” was driven by moonshiners, who were transporting moonshine during the prohibition era. These Appalachian moonshiners were not just driven by rebellion, but by survival. Moonshine was the…
Samuel Gutierrez
July 27, 2026
Emy-Lou Biedenharn: International Singing Sensation Blog

Emy-Lou Biedenharn: International Singing Sensation

In the world today, there are well-known singing competitions on major television stations that help launch singers to national and international fame. For the sweet Southern gal Emy-Lou Biendenharn, born in 1902 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, those were not options.  She had a more difficult path to travel.  Yet walk it she did, and with the typical strength and grace of…
Walt Garlington
July 24, 2026
French Huguenots in Dixie Blog

French Huguenots in Dixie

The colonial South was a stronghold of traditional Protestantism. Although religiously diverse and generally tolerant by the standards of the era, its culture was largely shaped by a distinctly Protestant worldview. Among these Protestant settlers were the French Huguenots, whose presence in the Southeast, though aggregately relatively small, left a notable imprint between 1660 and 1800. The French Huguenots were…
Cole Branham
July 10, 2026
Dabney Was Right About Music, Too Blog

Dabney Was Right About Music, Too

Robert Lewis Dabney stood before the graduating class of Hampden-Sydney College in June of 1882 and told them, with the measured certainty of a man who had already watched one civilization end, that another was ending around them. He was sixty-two years old, a Presbyterian theologian, Stonewall Jackson's chief of staff and biographer, and one of the most unsparing critics…
Tom Daniel
July 9, 2026
Rawlins Lowndes and His Prophetic Warning Against the Constitution Blog

Rawlins Lowndes and His Prophetic Warning Against the Constitution

Rawlins Lowndes was one of the most significant and yet least remembered figures of the American founding era, a South Carolina lawyer, planter, jurist, and governor who became his state's most forceful opponent of the U.S. Constitution during the ratification debates of 1788. He is best remembered for his prophetic warning that if the Constitution were adopted, "the sun, of…
Jose Nino
July 8, 2026
Who’s Affraid of the Dunning School? Blog

Who’s Affraid of the Dunning School?

Reflections on The Dunning School: Historians, Race, and the Meaning of Reconstruction (University Press of Kentucky, 2013) edited by John David Smith and J. Vincent Lowery It is said that history is written by the victors. This assertion is certainly borne out by the current teaching and interpretation of American history. The Reconstruction period is a particular example of the…
Karol Mazur
July 6, 2026
The Paradox of the Lomax Recordings Blog

The Paradox of the Lomax Recordings

Every folk song collector runs into the same problem the moment the recording machine actually starts turning: the song they are capturing has never had one fixed shape, and the machine is about to give it one anyway. A ballad sung on a porch in Kentucky on a Tuesday might run six verses. Sung again on Thursday by the same…
Tom Daniel
June 25, 2026
Whither Leviathan Blog

Whither Leviathan

This is part 2 of my economic lamentations of 21st century America, continuing from my May 18th article ‘Modern Industrialism Is Betraying Us’. On the subject of a nation, I ask myself: what is the purpose of a nation? Is it security, economy, control, binding of a people, or some form of all these things? When so many elements of…
Matthew Conard
June 24, 2026
Across the Rappahannock Blog

Across the Rappahannock

The Confederate Army of 1861 went to war with music built into its structure. Every regiment was required by regulation to maintain a brass band — typically eight to twelve musicians, but authorized up to sixteen — whose duties were not ornamental. They beat the drum calls that moved men out of sleep and into formation before dawn. They played…
Tom Daniel
June 18, 2026
Can Gen Z Save the Southern Tradition? Blog

Can Gen Z Save the Southern Tradition?

Gen Z? Those insane young people on Tik Tok? The ones who are all addicted to the internet and pornography? The overmedicated ones? The ones who talk funny? The ones who embrace far left idiots as heroes and manipulative villains as role models? The generation that never received a biblical education? (Was St Luke on X?) Yes. Those people. My…
Elias Ryan
June 17, 2026
A Welcome Elixir Blog

A Welcome Elixir

Sometimes we need someone else’s eyes to see our blessings. Most of us view the world thru distorted filters. Everyone reading this has a digital colander that sifts facts to console preconceptions. Images from across the country or around the world form or reinforce certitude about ambiguous (and mostly irrelevant) events. Having been manipulated by scenes on our screens that…
JD Breen
June 15, 2026
Forward the Colors! Blog

Forward the Colors!

From the beginning of my brief tenure I have tried to focus on the fact that the Confederate soldier, whose name we are to protect and whose cause we are to vindicate were and are family members. The word “Sons” in our organisation's name means something. It does not mean the offspring of a ancient “birthing parent” or progeny of…
Paul C. Graham
June 11, 2026
After the Cannons Have Cooled Blog

After the Cannons Have Cooled

Southern music is not a single thing. It never has been. What we casually call Southern music is in reality a family of related musical responses to history — responses that look and sound similar on the surface but serve entirely different human purposes. A song written to send men to war is doing something fundamentally different from a song…
Tom Daniel
June 9, 2026
Dixie Book of Days Blog

Dixie Book of Days

The Dixie Book of Days by Matthew Page Andrews, 1912 Like many of us today I receive the most interesting news and event notifications through group chats. In one of such group chats a friend sent a picture of a book with a succinct and articulate paragraph of one of the kindest epitaphs to receive: bravery, honesty, love of truth.…
Matthew Conard
May 29, 2026
Native American Music and the South Blog

Native American Music and the South

Frequently, I have described Southern music as a blending of influences. The interaction between Scots-Irish settlers and enslaved Africans produced a musical synthesis that is audible, traceable, and well documented. One can easily point to specific features to prove it. There are ballad forms, fiddle repertory, banjo construction, and rhythmic sensibility to reasonably identify their origins in Southern music. The…
Tom Daniel
May 27, 2026
What Did Jefferson Mean by “Empire of Liberty”? Blog

What Did Jefferson Mean by “Empire of Liberty”?

The American Revolution, those who were the major movers in it recognized, was an event singular in the history of the world. That the colonies could have both come together in unanimity to uprise against England and win its independence from their mother country through a sanguinary war were sufficiently singular happenings. After winning the war, the problem the Colonists…
M. Andrew Holowchak
May 26, 2026
No One is Coming to Save You Blog

No One is Coming to Save You

Social media has exploded in recent weeks with outrage over the approval of massive corporate data centers. While local residents have overwhelmingly opposed these projects, county commissioners and state legislators have turned a blind eye. Incidents like this fuel a growing sensation that events and institutions are accelerating completely beyond the control of ordinary citizens. The convergence of rapid technological…
Nicole Williams
May 22, 2026
Daniel Donato and Cosmic Country Blog

Daniel Donato and Cosmic Country

What would you call it if you created a band with Buck Owens, Don Rich, Duane Allman, Gram Parsons, Clarence White of The Byrds, and Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead? Daniel Donato of Nashville calls it Cosmic Country, and it might be the most intriguing thing you’ve heard in a long time. Daniel Donato is one of the more…
Tom Daniel
May 20, 2026
Farewell! Blog

Farewell!

A Review of Wendell Berry’s Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Randall Ivey I have never worked on a farm.  My paternal grandparents did.  They were cotton farmers and dabbled some in tobacco, although their chief means of subsistence was work in the textile plants that used to occupy the South Carolina upcountry like kudzu.  I have gotten…
Randall Ivey
May 19, 2026
Modern Industrialism Is Betraying Us Blog

Modern Industrialism Is Betraying Us

We are near 100 years after I'll Take My Stand emerged into the zeitgeist – a salvo at the leviathan hyper industrial economic system rapidly encroaching into all regions of the United States. The 12 Southern authors could perhaps divine what level of societal destabilization would happen by the year 2030 at the trajectory in 1930, but I'd wager modern…
Matthew Conard
May 18, 2026
The Rebel Outlaw Blog

The Rebel Outlaw

There’s much more to the story of Josey Wales than what you saw in the hit movie starring Clint Eastwood. The novel is an underrated gold mine of adventure, Southern history, and human pathos. The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales by Forrest Carter was published in 1972, and later republished as Gone to Texas. The movie The Outlaw Josey Wales was…
Mike C. Tuggle
May 14, 2026
David Allan Coe Blog

David Allan Coe

David Allan Coe died. If you’re looking for a clean, agreeable tribute, this ain’t it. Those are easy to find, and they all follow the same predictable pattern of dates, albums, controversies, and a polite nod about his influences. That kind of writing treats a musician like a museum exhibit: labeled, contained, and ultimately harmless. David Allan Coe was a…
Tom Daniel
May 13, 2026
The South Will Always Do It Again Blog

The South Will Always Do It Again

I live in Alabama, and I see what’s happening to the South with my own eyes. Through the Abbeville Institute, I also stay connected with fellow Southern thinkers, so I read about the same things happening elsewhere. We are not experiencing cultural mass hysteria, because what’s happening is real. Institutional erosion, demographic churn, homogenized media, and the steady replacement of…
Tom Daniel
May 1, 2026
What Makes A Historian? Blog

What Makes A Historian?

Some readers have encouraged me to identify as a historian, despite my not having a degree in history. For a long time, I have been reluctant to do so, thinking it would be both presumptuous and misleading, but I have recently changed my mind. Here is why. I think the very first seed was planted when I was interviewed by…
Jeb Smith
April 21, 2026
Gone With The Wind Blog

Gone With The Wind

Originally published at Reckonin.com At the University of South Carolina is a striking classical Greek building known as the South Caroliniana Library. It was built in 1840 by the outstanding architect Robert Mills and was said to be the first American college building for a separate library. The building anchors one side of the open end of a “horseshoe” of…
Clyde Wilson
April 20, 2026
Jefferson Could Play Blog

Jefferson Could Play

We love to affectionately remember Thomas Jefferson as a mind detached from the body. Many accounts present him as a man of paper, of correspondence, of carefully arranged ideas set down in elegant prose. The familiar image is that of the “Sage of Monticello,” seated at a writing desk, producing language that would echo across the centuries. That image is…
Tom Daniel
April 14, 2026
A Southern Future? Blog

A Southern Future?

This piece was originally published at Reckonin.com Rather than continuing my detailed history of the Southern people I wish to comment on our situation at the moment, 2026, and prospects for the future. We have never been in greater danger of losing our identity as of the South. The population has changed. There are rust belt refugees. Some of these…
Clyde Wilson
April 9, 2026
Cultural Reawakening is Not Impossible Blog

Cultural Reawakening is Not Impossible

Powerful people have conspired to erase Southern culture over the last several decades, many, but not all, of them of Northern extraction.  George Orwell would recognize the methods used.  Many historical truths have been thrown down the Memory Hole, while the honorable men of Dixie – Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, and many others – are subjected…
Walt Garlington
April 6, 2026
The Sound of Southern Easter Blog

The Sound of Southern Easter

The South has produced many distinctive musical traditions, but few are as recognizable or as beloved as the Southern gospel quartet. I’ve written many essays about Sacred Harp and gospel, but I have inexcusably written very little about the Southern gospel quartet. And what better time of year than Easter to celebrate one of the most iconic sounds of the…
Tom Daniel
April 3, 2026
Melungeons Blog

Melungeons

What is a Melungeon? Deep in southern Appalachia, there is a people whose history is clouded with ambiguity, but also intense distinction. Their exact origin is relatively unknown, but they have called these particular mountains home since well before the American War for Independence. The Melungeon (pronounced Meh-Lun-Jin) people are a historically distinct group whose roots lie in the rugged…
Cole Branham
April 1, 2026
The Heroic Fr. Mullon Blog

The Heroic Fr. Mullon

Originally published at MostCertainlyBeane. I’ve lived in the New Orleans area now for 21 years, and I have been to many of the area’s beautiful churches. But I had not been to historic St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church on Camp Street until yesterday. It is the congregation (and burial place) of a personal hero: the Rev. Fr. James Ignatius Mullon…
Rev. Larry Beane
March 18, 2026
The Case for Christian Localism Blog

The Case for Christian Localism

Originally published at From the Desk of Jon Harris. The reason for favoring the proximate, or local, over the national and international stems from the nature of society itself. Robert Lewis Dabney said that “Government is not the creator but the creature of human society.”1 Instead, society preexists government, and communities make up society. It is on the community level…
Jonathan Harris
March 12, 2026
The Carried Song Blog

The Carried Song

If I were a Yankee, I could likely make an outrageous claim and expect it to be believed on the strength of its articulation alone. Yankees, of course, possess the advantage of literacy, and literacy, in modern cultural shorthand, is synonymous with intelligence. As a Southerner, I don’t enjoy that rhetorical luxury. Everything I say must be prefaced, situated, and…
Tom Daniel
March 11, 2026
Townes Van Zandt Blog

Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt was an American singer-songwriter born in 1944 in Fort Worth, Texas, whose work occupies a quiet but enduring place in Southern music. His songs sit at the crossroads of folk, country, and blues without ever settling comfortably into any of them, largely because he showed little interest in belonging to pre-set categories. Born of Dutch ancestry and…
Tom Daniel
March 6, 2026
Kin & Covenant: America’s Clan Culture Blog

Kin & Covenant: America’s Clan Culture

The American South has always been a collection of tight-knit communities rooted in family. The earliest settlers were often relatives or from neighboring European villages.  From the very beginning, this was the case almost unilaterally in America. Families immigrated together and moved in unified collectives across desired locales across the colonies. The first families of Virginia were mostly descended from…
Cole Branham
March 4, 2026
The South and the American Empire Blog

The South and the American Empire

A Review of Joseph R. Stromberg, The South and the American Empire: Essays (Shotwell Publishing, 2026) Those familiar with the work of Joseph Stromberg know the mastery Stromberg has over the secondary literature in a diversity of academic fields. In the preface, Clyde Wilson states, “Joseph Stromberg is the consummate scholar for all seasons.  . . . is many essays…
John Devanny
March 2, 2026
49 Winchester Blog

49 Winchester

49 Winchester are a Southern band in the oldest, least marketable sense of the term. They are a group that formed because some guys in the same place played music together before they’d ever heard of tours and contracts. They come from Castlewood, Virginia, in the far southwestern corner of the state, an Appalachian region closer in spirit and history…
Tom Daniel
February 26, 2026
Songs of Lament Blog

Songs of Lament

There is a particular kind of song that only appears after history has already banged its gavel and rendered its verdict. While some songs are intended to rally the faithful or stiffen resolve, this is not that kind of song. This song arrives later, once the cannons have cooled, the banners have been folded away, and the surviving population has…
Tom Daniel
February 18, 2026
Jefferson’s True Love Blog

Jefferson’s True Love

On January 1, 1772, Jefferson took as his wife the widow of Bathurst Skelton, Martha Wayles Skelton, at The Forest—the residence of John Wayles, father of Jefferson’s wife. Once married, the two set out for the long ride to Monticello. They drove their carriage in a light snow which became denser as they entered the Virginian countryside of Albemarle County.…
M. Andrew Holowchak
February 15, 2026
It Really Is Blue Blog

It Really Is Blue

Originally published at Reckonin.com If you spend any time at all online, you're aware of the proliferation of artificial intelligence-created content. Tools exist which have made AI now easily accessible, free or cheap to use. This powerful tool is in the hands of the general public with virtually no oversight in place, and as you might imagine, the content being…
Anne Wilson Smith
February 13, 2026
Front Porches Blog

Front Porches

When people talk about the history of American music, they almost always picture a stage, with a spotlight and a performer separated from an audience by footlights and distance. We imagine these grand, almost sacred spaces designed for reverence and applause. Of course, those places definitely matter, but they come late in the story. Southern music did not begin on…
Tom Daniel
February 3, 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
Dolly Parton and Southern Endurance Blog

Dolly Parton and Southern Endurance

Greatness. In Southern music, “greatness” is rarely the result of innovation alone. More often, it emerges from endurance—specifically, the capacity to move through cultural, commercial, and institutional pressure without surrendering. The South has produced countless musicians whose work crossed boundaries of region, genre, race, and class, but far fewer who managed to do so while retaining control over their voice,…
Tom Daniel
January 28, 2026
Why Forrest Encouraged an End to Racial Conflict Blog

Why Forrest Encouraged an End to Racial Conflict

There is no better place to begin understanding the party politics of the post-reconstruction South than with the Fourth of July celebrations organized by the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers in Memphis, Tennessee, 1875. The Pole-Bearers were a “fraternal society,” or mutual aid society, for the welfare and defense of black people. In attendance at this event were various former Confederate…
Wanjiru Njoya
January 27, 2026
Conflicting Visions of America Blog

Conflicting Visions of America

Originally published at the Alabama Gazette. “The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions may be wrong but they are…
John M. Taylor
January 22, 2026
I Don’t Want Christmas to End Blog

I Don’t Want Christmas to End

I Don’t Want Christmas to End, the 2021 Christmas album by Zach Williams, doesn’t feel as much seasonal as it feels Southern. Recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Zach Williams’ first full-length holiday record does a lot more than borrow the iconography of classic American music as it absorbs the essence of the iconic studio that shaped American…
Tom Daniel
January 20, 2026
Regional Roots in a Global Age Blog

Regional Roots in a Global Age

In the twenty-first century, global interconnectedness has become the dominant paradigm of social, economic, and political life. Cosmopolitan ideals, such as global citizenship, transnational governance, and the celebration of universal human rights, have been championed as markers of progress and modernity. Yet, this enthusiasm for a borderless world often comes at the expense of local and regional identities, which are…
Clifford A. Bates, Jr.
January 16, 2026
Economic Problems of the Southeast Blog

Economic Problems of the Southeast

Originally published at Folkchain.org The remains of the Dutch-owned American ENKA plant cover the land in Lowland, Tennessee, like a steel skeleton picked clean. The smokestacks rise red against the sky, two of them, maybe a hundred fifty feet high. The parking lot has cracked enough to let a little wilderness in, an archipelago of grass and weeds pushing up…
Chase Steely
January 12, 2026
Uncomfortable Truths for the Righteous Cause Myth Blog

Uncomfortable Truths for the Righteous Cause Myth

The following are uncomfortable truths for "Righteous Cause Mythologists:" 1. Africans created, organized, and supplied the international slave trade without any European involvement or direction, and Northers profited heavily from the institution. 2. Southerners established most of the early abolition societies in the United States. 3. "Jim Crow" segregation developed in Connecticut and was pervasive in New England in the…
Brion McClanahan
January 9, 2026
An Open Letter to the University of the South Blog

An Open Letter to the University of the South

The University of the South appears poised to remove many, if not all, Confederate names and images from its campus and memory because they may smack of Southern treason/secession and slavery. Such removal is a poorly conceived idea. First, secession (i.e., "independence") is probably the one, true and great gift that America has offered Mankind. Second, slavery is an American,…
W.E. Shofner
January 6, 2026
The Foreign Policy Wisdom America Ignored from John C. Calhoun Blog

The Foreign Policy Wisdom America Ignored from John C. Calhoun

Few American statesmen traveled a more remarkable foreign policy journey than South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun (1782-1850). The young War Hawk who promised to conquer Canada in four weeks became the elder statesman warning that conquest would destroy the republic itself. Such a foreign policy transformation would seem foreign to present-day public officials, who are completely enthralled by the…
Jose Nino
January 5, 2026
What Does it Mean to be “Southern”? Blog

What Does it Mean to be “Southern”?

What does it mean to be “Southern”? This question has vexed Americans since the founding. Every American knew that sectional differences existed. George Mason, for example, worried that the “Eastern States” would plunder the agricultural States further south. He drafted an amendment that would have prevented “navigation laws,” i.e. protective tariffs, for that reason. Gouverneur Morris openly suggested that if…
Brion McClanahan
December 30, 2025
Eggnog Nationalism Blog

Eggnog Nationalism

Originally published at Folk Chain of Memory. Winter often brought reprieve in the wars of the past, but not in the Eggnog War. Unlike the fashionable moral ambiguities peddled by our gender-ambiguous storytellers, this war permits no compromise. Here we find no fashionable shades of gray. We’re not flipping houses. The Eggnog Question divides as clearly as foundations, rock against…
Chase Steely
December 24, 2025
Liberty and the Plow: Defending Our Rights Against Federal Overreach Blog

Liberty and the Plow: Defending Our Rights Against Federal Overreach

Originally published at Medium.com By Agricola, a Freeholder of the Republic “Liberty is preserved not by distant power, but by limits placed upon it.” As a third generation agrarian in the Western United States, I inherit not only the soil worked by my family but also the principles they instilled in me — chief among them, the sanctity of private…
Darcy Lammers
December 23, 2025
A Vaudeville of Devils Blog

A Vaudeville of Devils

This piece was originally published at A Memoir of the Occupation. (Wars in the age of mass democracy are waged over ideas, a wise man once said (maybe Collingwood, though I can’t find the quote). So, yes: I’m happy to grant that slavery was a cause of the War Between the States. Or, rather, the portrait of slavery conjured by…
Enoch Cade
December 22, 2025
The Matrix, MAGA, and the Southern Tradition Blog

The Matrix, MAGA, and the Southern Tradition

As with many technological developments in American history, such as the internet itself, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being introduced with little occasion for the populace to be informed as to its potential impact or any opportunity for them to weigh in with their concerns.  Such is life in the Republic of Technology, aka The Machine.  Rather, the entire debate is…
Mike Goodloe
December 19, 2025
The Forgotten Voyagers Blog

The Forgotten Voyagers

In the shadowed corners of American history lies a story rarely told, a narrative of colonists who crossed an ocean twice to forge communities in the swamps and plains of the Deep South. These were the Isleños, a people whose very name whispers of distant shores and forgotten tongues. The Spanish word for "Islander" would come to identify an entire…
Jose Nino
December 18, 2025
Modern Yankees Use the Historical Propaganda Model Created by the Soviet Communists Blog

Modern Yankees Use the Historical Propaganda Model Created by the Soviet Communists

It is verboten in most places across the United States to say anything favorable about Southerner leaders who either personally embodied or fought to defend – with pen, sword, or by political means – authentic Southern tradition.  The institutions of the Left (media, academy, Hollywood) and the Right (talk radio, governments of Red States and counties/parishes, Fox News) seem to…
Walt Garlington
December 15, 2025
A Few Southern Reflections Blog

A Few Southern Reflections

Originally published at Reckonin.com. Before the War for Southern Independence the main theme of American government was republican virtue and honour. The defeat of the Confederacy established a new main theme - making money. That was the most important result of the War. Compare Lee and Grant. Or the real characters of Jeff Davis and the corporate lawyer and tricky…
Clyde Wilson
December 11, 2025
Weaver’s Lessons for the Modern Right Blog

Weaver’s Lessons for the Modern Right

First published at The Daily Economy. The modern American right could stand to gain from the insight of Richard M. Weaver. Weaver, a twentieth-century conservative of the Southern tradition, perceived the dangers of radical ideologies as well as the extent to which American thinking offered the viable alternative. Amid the disagreements and controversies of our present moment, today’s various libertarians,…
Justin Madura
December 4, 2025
Commander-in-Chief and Journalistic “Wisdom” Blog

Commander-in-Chief and Journalistic “Wisdom”

I feel saddened (actually just mystified) at the accepted notion that the president is elected as commander-in-chief of the country. Somehow the sages of journalism have interpreted, as a result of some extracurricular activities of various presidents over the years, that because the term CIC is present in Article 2 and since the president’s duties fall under this same article,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
December 3, 2025
A Short History of the South, Part 4 Blog

A Short History of the South, Part 4

Originally published at Reckonin.com “Reconstruction,” 1865-1877 Through most of the 20th century, American historians of every stripe (except Communists) agreed that “Reconstruction” was an ugly period in our history - a regime of corruption, tyranny, bad leadership, and dangerous deviation from American principles. Honest historians found a vast treasury of evidence for this interpretation that is available but now ignored.…
Clyde Wilson
December 1, 2025
Time Will Tell Blog

Time Will Tell

Time Will Tell: Collected Poems of David Middleton (2025) The publication of David Middleton’s collected verse, from 1973 to the present year, in 362 pages, is a hallmark event in Southern culture.  It is also a significant event in American literature. But you will not see much attention to either of these facts. The great literary journals founded by great…
Clyde Wilson
November 13, 2025
Defending Dixie’s Land Blog

Defending Dixie’s Land

Are you interested in knowing the actual history of your country, or are you content with the propagandized version the winners of wars conjure up to feed school children? When it comes to the story and tradition of the U.S. South, and especially the events surrounding the Civil War (1861–1865), you may need to brace yourself. What you think you…
Abbeville Institute
October 29, 2025
Northern Noticing Blog

Northern Noticing

The vindictive attacks on the South and her history are nothing new. For generations, Southerners have been chastised and ostracized by mainstream politics, media, and academia. For just as long, many Northerners have been convinced of Yankee lies and propaganda concerning the War for Southern Independence, its causes, and “Proposition Nation-Righteous Cause” puffery. This extended itself into all subsequent history…
Cole Branham
October 28, 2025
Ain’t That America? Blog

Ain’t That America?

Just when it looked like things might be taking a more positive turn for Dixie with the restoration of the Reconciliation Monument in Arlington Cemetery, along come other events to remind us that hatred of the South has not waned much at all. Woke Leftist artists have created vile ‘re-imaginings’ out of once beautiful artwork honoring Southern heroes, mostly because…
Walt Garlington
October 24, 2025
A Short History of the South, Part 2 Blog

A Short History of the South, Part 2

Originally published at Reckonin.com We can only paint in very broad strokes a period that was marked by a vast expansion of the South and the U.S. in territory, population, economy, and culture. The Era of Expansion is an apt name. A major aspect of this period is the westward movement. New States admitted to the Union: 1790s: TN and…
Clyde Wilson
October 21, 2025
Building Upon a Southern Ethnos Through True Faith Blog

Building Upon a Southern Ethnos Through True Faith

Delivered at the 3rd annual conference of the The Philip Ludwell III Orthodox Fellowship. The theme of our gathering today seems a hefty one, so I’m gonna take a stab at connecting the dots between some of those points and my particular focus, while always keeping in mind the Fellowship’s guiding mission as described by co-founder Clark Carlton: “to facilitate…
Dissident Mama
October 20, 2025
The Humble Optimism of Robert E. Lee Blog

The Humble Optimism of Robert E. Lee

There is much that has been and still can be said of General Lee’s character. It is probably to the benefit of all modern readers that we explore and attempt to understand Lee, as our own era has more frequently been concerned with deconstructing the past rather than holding up honorable men to emulate and admire. Following a brief perusal…
Justin Madura
October 17, 2025
A Short History of the South, Part 1 Blog

A Short History of the South, Part 1

Originally published at Reckonin.com Introduction There is a vast and often contradictory literature describing and explaining the South. Various theories have been put forth to describe Southern distinctiveness. We might note that the greater part of this literature is written by outsiders who have found the South to be a problem—either the South was evil or it had by some…
Clyde Wilson
October 16, 2025
A Tribute to Robert E. Lee Blog

A Tribute to Robert E. Lee

On this day (Oct. 12) marks the anniversary of the death of General Robert E. Lee CSA, Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He graduated from West Point without a single demerit. He fought with high distinction & courage in The Mexican-American War. He served his nation as West Point Superintendent. Many of his cadets would go on to…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
October 14, 2025
Black Slaveholders: O, the Irony Blog

Black Slaveholders: O, the Irony

A review of Larry A. McCluney, Jr., Paradox of Freedom: A History of Black Slaveholders in America (Scuppernong Press, 2025) While working several years ago, a Black friend informed me that she was taking her family to a reunion at a plantation in the Cane River area of Northwest Louisiana.  As a longtime resident of north Louisiana, I understood something…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
October 13, 2025
Thomas and Randolph Blog

Thomas and Randolph

Unsurprising it would be to find that many persons, decently familiar with Thomas Jefferson (and that includes Early American historians), were unaware that he had a brother. Biographers sometimes passingly mention Randolph early in a Jeffersonian biography inasmuch as Thomas, as the older brother, was saddled with the task of choosing between a tract of land on the Rivanna River…
M. Andrew Holowchak
October 10, 2025
The Sorrow Singer Blog

The Sorrow Singer

In the South, a funeral isn’t just a formality. It’s a moment when music becomes memory, and memory becomes something you can hum for the rest of your life. —Tom Daniel My memory puts on a coat of gray, A keening tweed that moans just like a choir, A dirge-like gabardine that knows the way Of tears, a worsted wool,…
Maura H. Harrison
October 1, 2025
The Southern Conservative View of Equality Blog

The Southern Conservative View of Equality

Originally published at Mises.org. “You just can’t attack Lincoln and get away with it—you just can’t.” Hearing these words, spoken in front of a portrait of Lincoln at the Rockford Institute in 1989, is my first memory of Mel Bradford. That remark, delivered in an accent characteristic of the Texas-Oklahoma border that was his home country, reflected the wounds of…
Wanjiru Njoya
September 30, 2025
South Carolina was Not an Oligarchy Blog

South Carolina was Not an Oligarchy

In the heated political rhetoric of the mid-19th century, Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) famously lambasted South Carolina's government in his 1856 speech "The Crime Against Kansas," portraying it as an oligarchy where political power was confined to an elite few, specifically requiring legislators to own "a settled freehold estate and ten negroes." This claim, however, was a deliberate distortion of…
Abbeville Institute
September 22, 2025
Reunion with the Dead Blog

Reunion with the Dead

Hey, there!  Hey!  I remember you!  You Will McMillan, ain’t you?  That’s right.  Me and you went to Compton High together.  But you probably don’t remember me.  We wasn’t close or nothing.  Knew each other to say hey when passing, but that’s about all.  You was a brain.  Always had your face in a book.  Always reading and studying.  Not…
Randall Ivey
September 18, 2025
Calhoun, Reagan, and States’ Rights Blog

Calhoun, Reagan, and States’ Rights

Not long ago, California governor Gavin Newsom condemned President Trump's nationalization of California's National Guard units, characterizing it as an attempt “to usurp state authority and resources.”  Newsom went on to accuse Trump of “inflaming fear in the community, inciting fear and violence, and endangering state sovereignty.”  While nationalist-leaning conservatives are quick to compare the governor to Jefferson Davis, the…
Jerry Salyer
September 17, 2025
Why Did Jefferson Write the Notes on the State of Virginia? Blog

Why Did Jefferson Write the Notes on the State of Virginia?

Thomas Jefferson in his 1821 never-finished autobiography, writes of the motivation for and the history behind his only book Notes on Virginia: Before I had left America, that is to say in the year 1781. I had received a letter from M. de Marbois, of the French legation in Philadelphia, informing me he had been instructed by his government to…
M. Andrew Holowchak
September 16, 2025
The Drawl and the Song Blog

The Drawl and the Song

At a recent Abbeville Conference, I tackled a subject that’s been hiding in plain sight all along - the Southern accent. I’ve lived in Alabama almost my whole life, so I’m definitely familiar with the Southern accent. Now it’s true that my wife and I lived in Iowa for three years, but we actually kind of liked it up there.…
Tom Daniel
September 3, 2025
The Genius of Thomas Jefferson Blog

The Genius of Thomas Jefferson

The question “Was Thomas Jefferson a genius?” might seem awkward to anyone who has spent any time studying Jefferson, for it admits an obvious answer: He was. I have consistently maintained that he was one of the most gifted thinkers of his day—“gifted” because of his Edison-like penchant for and persistency at hard study and hard work. He had an…
M. Andrew Holowchak
August 15, 2025
The Sabbath and Slavery Blog

The Sabbath and Slavery

No topic of importance in the Old South may be handled rightly without dealing with the Peculiar Institution, slavery. The holy Sabbath was no exception. Embedded in the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment (according to Protestant enumeration) – to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy – called for a weekly day of public worship and rest from secular…
Forrest L. Marion
August 6, 2025
Havin’ A Large Time Blog

Havin’ A Large Time

Reporter Bill King discusses his decade of work covering the Southern music scene from 1976-1986. We're havin' a large time. You can pick up his book, Large Time: On the Southern Music Beat, 1976-1986, and enjoy more detailed stories. https://youtu.be/cxMqZTfhqSM The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily the views of the Abbeville Institute.
Abbeville Institute
July 30, 2025
Music and the Soul Blog

Music and the Soul

Originally published at Reckonin.com Most of the music we hear in modern life is of the pre-recorded sort, mass produced by corporations. One might argue that the large-scale production and distribution of music has some upsides - we can experience a wider variety of musical styles, and the work of the most talented artists can be appreciated by everyone regardless…
Anne Wilson Smith
July 29, 2025
This Night is My Departing Night for Here No Longer May I Stay: The Celtic South Blog

This Night is My Departing Night for Here No Longer May I Stay: The Celtic South

Originally published at A Memoir of the Occupation. At the summit of ancient Irish literature stands Táin Bó Cúailnge, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley. It is the story of Queen Medh of Connacht and Cúchulainn, mightiest of the Knights of the Red Branch sworn to the service of King Conchobar of Ulster, and the war they fought over the…
Enoch Cade
July 25, 2025
Understanding the Doctrine of State’s Rights Blog

Understanding the Doctrine of State’s Rights

Originally published at Mises.org One hundred sixty years after the war for Southern independence, great confusion is still caused by the claim that the South fought for their independence and for “states’ rights.” What does the doctrine of “states’ rights” mean in this context? The dictionary definition is easily understood: “the rights and powers held by individual US states rather…
Wanjiru Njoya
July 24, 2025
Southern Food and Family Blog

Southern Food and Family

You might be Southern if you think a salad means something held together by Cool Whip. In the South, we don’t just eat meals. We remember. We gather. We keep our people’s memories alive one bite at a time. As a big man that loves to eat, I’m concerned that we don’t talk nearly enough about Southern food. Every Abbeville…
Tom Daniel
July 23, 2025
The “Egghead” Got it Right Blog

The “Egghead” Got it Right

The Democratic Party nominated Adlai Stevenson for President of the United States twice, once in 1952 and again in 1956. He is often described as a sacrificial lamb, cannon fodder for Dwight Eisenhower in a contest of David and Goliath, except in this case, Goliath won. Stevenson never fared well with the press and could not capture the popular imagination…
Brion McClanahan
July 10, 2025
Joint Salvation Blog

Joint Salvation

South Carolina author Perrin Lovett’s recent Christian novel Judging Athena (Shotwell Publishing) has attracted international attention. Below, Lovett is interviewed about the book. This interview/review was originally published at LiteraryTitan.com Judging Athena follows a humble and kindhearted research assistant who meets a curator at an art gallery, and what begins as a chance encounter over a necklace for a young…
Abbeville Institute
July 9, 2025
Gettysburg Blog

Gettysburg

One personal annual tradition I have is to watch the classic war film Gettysburg.  I have been a Civil War buff for longer than I can remember, so long that I don’t remember when my interest started.  One of the first books I remember reading was Mary Williamson’s Confederate Trilogy for Young Readers, published by the (sadly) now defunct Sprinkle…
Samuel Ashwood
July 2, 2025
The Disappearing South Blog

The Disappearing South

There is a peculiar stillness in the late afternoon air of the South, a pause that speaks not only to the settling heat but to a deeper, more troubling quiet. It is the silence of a culture slowly slipping beyond reach, not through violence or sudden upheaval, but rather by the gentle erosion wrought by time, change, and migration. As…
Gabriel Ward
July 1, 2025
Where are Your People Buried? Blog

Where are Your People Buried?

“Where y’all from” once meant “where are your people buried?” Buried, in turn, implies place, a postage-stamp of sod or swamp or forest, a landscape secured by name, by generations, by labor and blood and memory. That, as we know, is unacceptable for a polity predicated the free flow of capital and labor. “Local attachment,” much less “familial,” interferes with…
Enoch Cade
June 27, 2025
Realism and Hope: Overcoming the Distorted Past in the Works of Faulkner Blog

Realism and Hope: Overcoming the Distorted Past in the Works of Faulkner

Introduction In 1942, William Faulkner brought an end to the peak of his writing career when he published the short story cycle Go Down, Moses. His peak began thirteen years earlier in 1928 when he began writing The Sound and the Fury, the novel which earned him a place among the top writers of the time. Renowned Faulkner critic André…
John Walker
June 26, 2025
Reconciliation in Frontier Film Blog

Reconciliation in Frontier Film

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

George Wallace Reconsidered

This piece was originally published at The Old South Repository. “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Those six words, burned into every high-school textbook, reduce George C. Wallace to a cartoon villain. They hide the inconvenient reality that the same man paved Alabama’s roads, built her community colleges, raised teacher salaries, and, in the twilight of his career, asked forgiveness…
John Slaughter
June 23, 2025
Government, of the People…That’s a Riot! Blog

Government, of the People…That’s a Riot!

The unrest and riots in California have been underwritten by the clods of political planning such as California’s own governor, the useless idiot Gavin Newsom, who blows hard with demands that Donald Trump arrest him. Newsom, of course, wants confrontation for political gains from the glory hallelujah Democratic party. Arm in arm with the girly-screamer Mayor Karen Bass they could…
Paul H. Yarbrough
June 16, 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 World the Slaveholders Made Blog

The World the Slaveholders Made

A Review of Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made (Vintage Books, 1971). European history is replete with examples of anti-capitalist sentiment on the political right. Nineteenth-century opponents of the market economy and bourgeois mores in Great Britain and on the Continent squarely blamed the decline of tradition, community, and natural hierarchy on the Industrial Revolution. The reduction of…
Grant Havers
June 6, 2025
The Destruction of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Blog

The Destruction of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation

In 1985, Daniel Jordan—a Ph.D. in history from University of Virginia—became president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and runs Monticello. He would preside over Monticello for the next 24 years, during which time Thomas Jefferson’s life and legacy would be radically transformed through information made readily available by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Under his guidance, TJF created a…
M. Andrew Holowchak
May 27, 2025
Nottoway Blog

Nottoway

The South lost another cultural jewel. On May 15, Nottoway, the largest antebellum plantation home in the South, burned to the ground. The fire reportedly started in one of the second story bedrooms, but the cause of the blaze is still under investigation. And while it appears to be an accidental electrical fire, in our current political climate, arson can…
Brion McClanahan
May 22, 2025
M.E. Bradford: In Memoriam Blog

M.E. Bradford: In Memoriam

Originally published in the Fourth Quarter 1992 edition of Southern Partisan. I’m always amazed at how wisely good people face death, how perfectly they focus their attention at the end. 1 got a call from Mel Bradford the night before he was to undergo open-heart surgery; and we talked for a few minutes about the huge number of these operations…
Thomas Landess
May 16, 2025
Springtime of Renewal in Serbia, but What of Dixie? Blog

Springtime of Renewal in Serbia, but What of Dixie?

The European Christian country of Serbia may be considered something of a sister of Dixie’s.  Both peoples have followed similar paths:  After attaining a solid Christian identity and unity, both faced an horrible cataclysm:  The Serbs were conquered by the Muslim Turks in the 14th century and remained their vassals until the 19th century; the South was subjugated to the…
Walt Garlington
May 9, 2025
Building Conservatism Blog

Building Conservatism

"I have never subscribed to the idea, apparently held by some, that conservatism is only a brake on somebody else's engine. Such persons seem to think that a conservative has done his job when he has issued a warning against going too fast." -- Richard Weaver, In Defense of Tradition (The Prospects of Conservatism). Recently I’ve began to read a…
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
May 6, 2025
I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton… Blog

I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton…

Recently someone posted on Facebook that they had recently purchased a DVD copy of the 1948 picture-show (“picture show” being Southern for the Yankee appellation “movie”) Song of the South. SS being the award-winning partial animation of tales written in the 19th Century by Joel Chandlor Harris about animal characters and their personification of Southerners. Probably Southerners from Georgia, since…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 5, 2025
The Sede Vacante of Southern Tradition Blog

The Sede Vacante of Southern Tradition

Pope Francis was, at most, a peripheral figure in the story of the South.  Though the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination, his influence has largely remained on the Catholic fringes of our cultural sphere – Texas, Cajun country, Florida, Maryland, Savannah, and in pockets of many of our larger cities.  I primarily heard about Pope Francis and his…
J. Shaw Gillis
May 1, 2025
Calhoun: American Statesman Blog

Calhoun: American Statesman

With the ideology of “wokeness” pervading much of our society, it is nearly impossible to have a meaningful conversation about Southern history, the War to Prevent Southern Independence, or the great statesmen of the South on any public forum without being tagged with one of the Left’s favorite sobriquets. Not long ago I saw an exchange on Twitter about John…
Ryan Walters
April 29, 2025
Whiskey Men Blog

Whiskey Men

Originally published at In The Shadow of Red Rock As the New Year 1930 dawned across the hills, it seemed prohibition had made little difference to the tough and resilient mountaineers of my home. The cat and mouse game of whiskey men and revenuers seemed to be less-covered by the papers as of late, but it undoubtedly was still being…
Travis Holt
April 24, 2025
Calhoun’s Lesson for Europe Blog

Calhoun’s Lesson for Europe

The Union, next to our liberty, most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and by distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union – John C. Calhoun In A Disquisition on Government John C. Calhoun sought support for his political concepts among European solutions that had developed…
Karol Mazur
April 22, 2025
American Refugees Blog

American Refugees

A Review American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Migration from Blue States to Red States (Encounter Books, 2023) by Roger L. Simon Your eyes do not deceive you: the South is growing in population. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, since 2020 domestic migration trends have led to five of the top seven destination states being in the…
Thomas Ellen
April 21, 2025
The South Remembers: Corsicana, Texas; Raymond, Mississppi Blog

The South Remembers: Corsicana, Texas; Raymond, Mississppi

The Republicans used the heartbreaking murder of black Southerners by white Southerner Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina to ally with the Democrats in their long-awaited attack on the memory of the Western people. Perhaps they thought that by throwing the South to the wolves, they’d save their own hides. So Nimarata Haley, then the governor of South Carolina, courageously…
Enoch Cade
April 16, 2025
Jefferson on the Possibility of White Slaves and Black Masters Blog

Jefferson on the Possibility of White Slaves and Black Masters

Sholars today typically refer to Query XIV of his Notes on the State of Virginia as evidence of Jefferson’s racism. Jefferson states that Blacks were likely inferior in imagination, beauty, and intelligence, and more bestial and hasty in romance, but added that such sentiments must be taken cum grano salis—at least, until such time as they can be made objects…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 10, 2025
The Cultural Cleansing of VMI Blog

The Cultural Cleansing of VMI

Author's Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this piece are strictly my own. I do not presume in any fashion to speak for the Abbeville Institute or VMI. I severed all of my connections with VMI (except for the Class of 1967) when she removed "Stonewall" Jackson’s statue from the parade ground. Just before unleashing his thunderbolt on Hooker’s flank at…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
April 9, 2025
Green Men and Green Churches Blog

Green Men and Green Churches

A modern prophet from England, Paul Kingsnorth, has made the comment in a number of his essays that he appreciates how the ancient churches in England look as if they grew out of the soil itself rather than were constructed by human hands.  If one looks into Southern life, he will find that our churches share a strong resemblance to…
Walt Garlington
March 24, 2025
Conservatism’s Womb Blog

Conservatism’s Womb

Almost four years ago I wrote an article regarding Tucker Carlson. The article was posted in “The Abbeville Institute” and described his attitude, as he had stated, regarding the South and its history with the Confederate States of America. My opinion was that Carlson (and I still have this opinion) is an intelligent conservative but misguided regarding the South’s Cause.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 20, 2025
A Confederate Apology Blog

A Confederate Apology

A longer version of this essay was published at Rev. Beane's substack. I’ve made no secret about my views on a controversial period of American history: when thirteen states seceded from the American Union, formed a confederation, adopted a constitution, were invaded, were conquered, and were forced back into the Union - a Union transformed by the experience into a…
Rev. Larry Beane
March 19, 2025
Red Pill Without Roots Blog

Red Pill Without Roots

This piece was originally published at The American Reformer. The Crisis of the Modern Right The greatest internal threat to genuine conservatism stems from modern ideological impulses that seek to reduce all human activity to simple precepts meant to explain the entirety of human existence. Today, this primarily takes the form of a neutralist liberalism masquerading as conservatism. In the…
Jonathan Harris
March 14, 2025
Porches Blog

Porches

The Village of Saline, Bienville Parish, North Louisiana At My Late Maternal Grandparents’ House The sand and gravel road, smooth asphalt now, Passes beside the church and sunken stones Of kin both dead and living yet awhile In memories of one who left and stayed. I slow down for those fields recalled and seen— The cultivated, fallow, undisturbed— Shift my…
David Middleton
March 6, 2025
The South During Reconstruction Blog

The South During Reconstruction

From the Author's Preface of E. Merton Coulter, The South During Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1947). AMERICANS have generally called the fifteen years following the Civil War the Reconstruction period, and writers in this field until recently have let the reconstructing processes crowd out of their narratives everyday developments in the lives of the people. This custom has been especially true of…
E. Merton Coulter
March 4, 2025
Last Train to Dixie Blog

Last Train to Dixie

Last Train to Dixie by Jack Trotter.  Shotwell Publishing, 2021 It is a fact that usually, if not always, the most important books receive little attention or appreciation when they first appear. There are several reasons for this. American publishing is a commercial entertainment enterprise not intended for knowledge or thought. Publishers, “peer reviewers,” critics, and standard shallow “scholars,” are…
Clyde Wilson
March 3, 2025
Livin’ in the DMV Blog

Livin’ in the DMV

Colin Woodward, author of American Nations, identified eleven regional and rival cultures overlapping state boundaries that shapes American culture and politics. The work is insightful, bringing to mind the European observation that America is a continent, not a country. Woodward’s work has its limitations. One of these limitations is how to deal with the Megalopolis known as the District of…
John Devanny
February 26, 2025
The Southern Cadence Blog

The Southern Cadence

We all have an idea that when we hear Southern Music, we know it, but what is it? What is it about Southern music that makes it stand out from other types of American music or music from around the world? How do you know it when you hear it? How do you explain to somebody the difference between the…
Tom Daniel
February 25, 2025
We Are All Saint Oncho Now Blog

We Are All Saint Oncho Now

Since the end of the War, with the Yankees in the ascendancy, the dominant ideas in the union have been mainly change, innovation, progress, and their near-of-kin.  Sultan Donald the Magnificent re-confirmed this in his Inaugural Address in January: ‘And, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation. Americans are explorers, builders,…
Walt Garlington
February 19, 2025
“A Most Uncertain Response to the Declaration of Independence . . . .” Blog

“A Most Uncertain Response to the Declaration of Independence . . . .”

The interesting thing about the relationship of post-colonial American literature to the events of 1776 is the way in which a pious regard for the nation’s founders and for the enterprise which they set in motion has, among our writers, co-existed with a most uncertain response to the Declaration of Independence itself and to the loftiest aspirations which gather upon…
M.E. Bradford
February 3, 2025
Go Away and Think Blog

Go Away and Think

The first quarter of this century has been marred by cancel culture, a consequence of an ideology pursued by reformers who call themselves “progressives,” believing themselves morally superior to others.  By this ideology, each person in the world is categorized into oppressive or victim groups, largely based upon race, without regard to individuality.  It is a staggeringly ignorant way to…
Charles Roberts, MD
January 29, 2025
Jefferson’s “Religion” Blog

Jefferson’s “Religion”

In one of my recent videos, a viewer from Abbeville asked whether Thomas Jefferson was a deist or a theist. This essay answers that question. There has been and continues to be overwhelming confusion apropos of Jefferson’s religiosity. That is, in large part, due to Jefferson, whose behavior invites contradictory assessments of it. He attended worship and participated in prayers…
M. Andrew Holowchak
January 24, 2025
The Two Funerals of Jimmy Carter Blog

The Two Funerals of Jimmy Carter

This past week, I, along with the rest of the nation, watched the funeral service for President Jimmy Carter and followed along as his remains were transported around the country for his final goodbyes and honors.  I was born well after Carter’s Presidency, so I never grew up with any baggage regarding his Presidency nor Governorship.  I knew him at…
J. Shaw Gillis
January 22, 2025
Lee the American Blog

Lee the American

It is now fourteen years since the publication of “Lee the American,” but the interest in at any rate the subject of the book seems by no means to have diminished. The colossal struggle of the European War, with all the passions and sacrifices involved in it, has made the American Civil War in general seem not perhaps less important,…
Gamaliel Bradford
January 20, 2025
The Land They Loved Blog

The Land They Loved

A review of The Land They Loved, Vols. I and II (Shotwell Publishing, 2022, 2024). Clyde N. Wilson, known rightly as the dean of southern historians today—the most learned, the most honest—has a marked literary bent, which he has turned to the service of his homeland. Under the collective title The Land They Loved, he has assembled two volumes of…
Catharine Savage Brosman
January 15, 2025
Crossing the River With My RC Blog

Crossing the River With My RC

When I was a young boy, circa six or seven, there were no monstrous interstate highways slashing across the land. The land was beautiful, or as I probably thought, at the time, natural. Interstate highways are about as natural as was Sherman’s march through Georgia. They are federal (Yankee) spending, creating great slashes through private property (eminent domain is Grendel;…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 1, 2025
A Christmas Day in Charlotte Blog

A Christmas Day in Charlotte

"A merry Christmas and a happy New Year!" These be immortal words. They suggest happy firesides and blazing logs; the joy of little children; the repeated handshake; the ready offering of charity; the deepening of love; and a sweeter showing of spiritual life. As the words are written, the voice of the cow bell and the tin horn and the…
Charles Henry Smith
December 25, 2024
Moravian Star Blog

Moravian Star

In an effort to be unique, a new ubiquity has consumed Christmas decorations across the nation – inflatable snowmen glow in every front yard, multicolored neon lights clash dramatically at property lines, and Santa’s feet stick upright out of chimneys.  In stark defiance to this trend, the city of Winston-Salem, with its demure Christmas decorations, features prominently in Southern Living…
J. Shaw Gillis
December 24, 2024
The Southern Gentleman Who Dominated Chess Blog

The Southern Gentleman Who Dominated Chess

As the secession crisis intensified in the last years of the 1850s, the most famous Southerner known on the European continent was likely not Maryland-born Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, nor Mississippi senator and future president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, nor South Carolina poet and novelist William Gilmore Simms. Rather, that honor would almost certainly go to…
Casey Chalk
December 18, 2024
It’s a Daniel’s Clothing Christmas Blog

It’s a Daniel’s Clothing Christmas

We give gifts at Christmas because we were given a gift. My grandfather, John T. “Tyson” Daniel, opened Daniel’s Clothing in Tuskegee, Alabama on May 5, 1939. Originally, he moved to Tuskegee from Montgomery in 1931 at the age of 26 to open a Singer Sewing Machine store, and he was a door-to-door salesman in Tuskegee for the Singer Corporation.…
Tom Daniel
December 16, 2024
The Simple Life Blog

The Simple Life

'Tis an old question, revived by a letter that wondered why anybody could be content to stay in Charlotte or smaller places when New York, Boston and other larger cities offer so much more broadening influences and so much greater facilities for ambition. The letter came from a man who has lived in New York only a year or so…
Isaac Erwin Avery
December 9, 2024
Local Signs and Wonders Blog

Local Signs and Wonders

A review of Local Signs and Wonders: Essays about Belonging to a Place (Mercer University Press, 2024) by Richard Rankin. Richard Rankin’s ancestral homestead, founded in the 1760’s, is located about twenty miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina. This book is an exploration of what could be called the two dimensions of stewardship: local and cosmic. Stewardship in the local…
Caryl Johnston
December 6, 2024
Getting to Know Thomas Jefferson Blog

Getting to Know Thomas Jefferson

As editor-in-Chief of the inaugural issue of the now-defunct theme-based journal, The Journal of Thomas Jefferson’s Life and Times, I was asked to write the feature, introductory essay, which I titled “‘A silent execution of duty’: The Republican Pen of Thomas Jefferson.” It was a daunting task, as I aimed to introduce the journal by constructing an essay that would…
M. Andrew Holowchak
December 5, 2024
Country Music in the 20th Century Blog

Country Music in the 20th Century

A review of Southern Story and Song: Country Music in the 20th Century (Shotwell, 2024) by Joseph R. Stromberg Readers who have enjoyed the articles posted here at Abbeville by Joseph R. Stromberg will be as excited as I was to learn he’d written a book about country music. This excellent book explores the rich cultural tapestry of Southern music,…
Tom Daniel
December 2, 2024
Love Thanksgiving? Thank Virginia Blog

Love Thanksgiving? Thank Virginia

When most Americans think of the “First Thanksgiving,” they think of the Pilgrims in Plymouth who sat down for a Harvest Festival meal with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The Pilgrims had arrived on the Mayflower in November of 1620 and nearly a year later celebrated the abundance of provisions that God had provided. The Thanksgiving tradition recalls to memory…
Sean McGowan
November 28, 2024
Summertime and the Livin’ Is Easy Blog

Summertime and the Livin’ Is Easy

Originally published in Southern Partisan in 1979. Some forty years ago, H. L. Mencken and one of his cronies set out to study the “level of civilization” in each of the (at that time) forty-eight states. They put together a variety of quantitative indicators of health, wealth, literacy, governmental performance, and so on, and triumphantly announced in the American Mercury…
John Shelton Reed
November 21, 2024
The Comical Tragedy of “Kumbaya” Blog

The Comical Tragedy of “Kumbaya”

In the Low Country of South Carolina and the coastal regions of Georgia, the Gullah people are everywhere because they never left. Although there were significant numbers of Gullah who migrated out of the South at the turn of the 20th Century, the multitudes who stayed replaced them quickly and remained isolated. Their customs, dress, arts, language, and music still…
Tom Daniel
October 29, 2024
More than Politics Blog

More than Politics

What should we make of the exodus of millions of Americans from blue states to red ones, primarily in the South? In 2021, North American Van Lines reported that the Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Arizona, and Texas were the top destinations for movers, and the top five states for departures were Illinois, California, New Jersey, Michigan, and New York. Is this…
Casey Chalk
October 9, 2024
I’ll Take My Stand Blog

I’ll Take My Stand

Thomas H. Landess walked among Giants. He wrote and talked about them too. It was April of 1968, and he had gathered a few at the University of Dallas for a reunion under the banner of the Southern Literary Festival. It was a reunion of the surviving Southern Agrarians—Andrew Lytle, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren—Lyle Lanier…
Chase Steely
October 7, 2024
Country People and Country Party Blog

Country People and Country Party

A review of Continuities: The South in a Time of Revolution (Shotwell Publishing, 2022) by John Devanny Dr. John Devanny writes from within an outlook quite unknown to most of today’s Americans. His focus is on the South’s origins and history, its variety and complexity, and its differences from its historical antagonists headquartered in New England. As the preface by…
Joseph R. Stromberg
October 4, 2024
Ghosts of Grandeur Blog

Ghosts of Grandeur

Historic Southern antebellum homes are disappearing, and those that still remain are being reinterpreted by activist historians. Author Mike Kitchens joins us to talk about his book "Ghosts of Grandeur" and the current woke assault on Southern home museums and historic sites. https://youtu.be/7WE9RdCkFY8
Abbeville Institute
August 21, 2024
Thomas Jefferson on Educating Republican Citizens Blog

Thomas Jefferson on Educating Republican Citizens

After publishing my book, Thomas Jefferson: Uncovering His Unique Philosophy and Vision (2014)—which had three chapters each on Jefferson’s political philosophy, his moral thinking, and his philosophy of education—I realized that I had far from exhausted what could be said on each of the subjects. Thus, I began the first of a trilogy of books on the philosophy of Thomas…
M. Andrew Holowchak
August 20, 2024
Thoughts Among Ruins Blog

Thoughts Among Ruins

This, Warren, is our trouble now: Not even fools could disavow Three centuries of piety Grown bare as a cottonwood tree (A timber seldom drawn and sawn And chiefly used to hang men on), So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age. -Allen Tate It is on the hunt where the martial prowess is sharpened, where…
Thomas Ellen
August 19, 2024
Pawleys Island Blog

Pawleys Island

My maternal grandmother grew up on a South Carolina beach and has passed her love of the beach on to her grandchildren. Ever since I can remember, my family has spent a week on Pawleys Island in South Carolina. We would fly from Arizona to spend two or more months between our grandparents’ home in Virginia, Pawleys Island in South…
Vaugh Sullivan
August 14, 2024
A Hill and a Holler Blog

A Hill and a Holler

Some memories are a story just waiting to be told.  And memories of family make some of the best stories.  Some of my favorite memories revolve around travel, those family outings where we hit the not so dusty trails of Dixie.  Actually, many modern highways were the byways, the pioneer trails of yesteryear.  Our travel often included extended family, with…
Brett Moffatt
August 8, 2024
How Liberal was Thomas Jefferson’s Liberalism? Blog

How Liberal was Thomas Jefferson’s Liberalism?

Government, Thomas Jefferson all too frequently notes, is for the sake of the wellbeing of all citizens, each considered the political equal of all others and, in consequence, deserving of the same rights. Government, thus, exists for the sake of the wellbeing of all citizens, considered as individuals. Government, he often says, is of and for the people. That noted,…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 24, 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
A Northerner by Birth, A Southerner by Choice Blog

A Northerner by Birth, A Southerner by Choice

When speaking at Abbeville’s “The 1607 Project,” someone from the audience came to me, after my talk—and the Abbeville audience was electric!—and said, “You really mean what you say.” It was a curious sentiment, for by implication, I could conclude that many speakers at that or other conferences merely go about the business of public speaking without investing personally in…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 18, 2024
“Providence” – Divine Intervention in the Life of George Washington Blog

“Providence” – Divine Intervention in the Life of George Washington

There is an old saying that rejects not only the concept of the “randomness” of history but of mankind’s involvement in that history. It identifies situations addressing external forces acting on human beings and in so doing influencing history itself. This maxim states that, “Man proposes but God disposes.” For there is overwhelming evidence of the existence of something other…
Valerie Protopapas
July 15, 2024
A Man of the South Blog

A Man of the South

With Father’s Day 2024 come and gone, I have had the opportunity to consider the coincidence that occurred that weekend – namely my watching two superb westerns from different decades, Anthony Mann’s Man of the West from 1958 and Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales from 1976.  As a longtime aficionado of the western, I should, of course, have already…
Randall Ivey
July 10, 2024
Southern Poetic Wisdom Blog

Southern Poetic Wisdom

When little sister fell down the well, We retrieved her by pulley, rope, and bucket. She, bruised, wet, learned a lesson. Maybe. Doves fly over as hunters blast away; Nothing falls but droppings in one eye. ‘I can’t see Jack-squat, Billy Bob.’ Hook from my fly-cast catches the wife’s ear lobe, And screaming like a banshee, she falls out of…
Thomas Hubert
July 9, 2024
The Sabbath and the Slaves Blog

The Sabbath and the Slaves

Perhaps no topic of importance in the Old South may be handled rightly without dealing with the Peculiar Institution: slavery. The Christian Sabbath, or the Lord’s day – often referred to by Christians in the nineteenth century simply as the Sabbath – was no exception. Embedded in the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment (according to Protestant enumeration) – to remember…
Forrest L. Marion
June 26, 2024
Virginia First: The 1607 Project 1607 ProjectBlogMedia Posts

Virginia First: The 1607 Project

Over the past five years, historians, journalists, and political activists have crafted seemingly conflicting narratives about the American founding. They are "seemingly conflicting" because all three center on the "proposition nation myth" of American history. According to this account, the United States was founded on the idea that all men (and women) were created equal. The "idea of equality" forms…
Brion McClanahan
June 24, 2024
A Meeting of Southern Writers Blog

A Meeting of Southern Writers

This essay by Donald Davidson was originally published in The Bookman in 1932. The footnotes and links are my contributions. Such essays are maps. In reports appearing soon after the event, the gathering of Southern writers held in late October under the auspices of the University of Virginia was variously denominated “house party,” “conference,” “convocation,” or—with even greater reserve—“occasion.” Such…
Chase Steely
June 18, 2024
Thomas Jefferson and the Other (Black) Patrick Henry Blog

Thomas Jefferson and the Other (Black) Patrick Henry

Thomas Jefferson bought the 57-acre tract of land including the Natural Bridge of Virginia in 1774—the year he produced his vitriolic Summary View of the Rights of British America—for a pittance. Except for the bridge, which Jefferson considered to be one of the natural wonders of the world, a mirabile visu, the land around the bridge was not much arable…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 11, 2024
The South and World War II Blog

The South and World War II

Being Southern is a good thing. People around the world have long recognised that. Those who love the South must present a POSITIVE front, celebrate the South, and avoid being simply AGAINST. Nothing can be more irrelevant and counter-productive to the cause of the South than to get wrapped up in ideologies from the ugly history of central and eastern…
Clyde Wilson
June 6, 2024
Polish Confederates and the Principle “For Our Freedom and Yours” Blog

Polish Confederates and the Principle “For Our Freedom and Yours”

The history of Poles' participation in the formation of the American Republic, especially participation in the American War of Independence, has been perfectly documented by Polish and non-Polish researchers. For example, there are extensive biographies of Tadeusz Kosciusko and Casimir Pulaski. Unfortunately the contribution of Poles in the period of the Civil War still remains a topic for broader discussion,…
Karol Mazur
June 4, 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
The 19th Century Ecclesiastical Debate Over Slavery – Part 2 Blog

The 19th Century Ecclesiastical Debate Over Slavery – Part 2

When we dichotomize the 19th century ecclesiastical debate as “Southern “pro-slavery” and Northern “anti-slavery,” it must first be pointed out that these two titles are heavily nuanced in meaning. They did not mean that a virtuous North was committed to the welfare of blacks while an evil South delighted in their human bondage. Neither side believed that slavery abstractly considered…
Rod O'Barr
May 31, 2024
Wendell Berry’s 400-Year-Old Debts Blog

Wendell Berry’s 400-Year-Old Debts

Love of cultivated land is a gift—born not from the unbridled wilds but the furrows of tilled soil. This gift, neither wrought nor feigned, cannot be bought nor swapped like an old mule, but rather, is bestowed upon us as a boon from our shared Agrarian Patrimony. Wendell Berry is a fortunate heir and shares his Southern heirloom generously through…
Chase Steely
May 10, 2024
Wingless Chickens Blog

Wingless Chickens

The great Georgian writer of the mid-twentieth century Flannery O’Connor famously described herself as a “hillbilly Thomist,” a nod both to her Southern origins and her dedication to the medieval theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas. However much yankee intellectuals thumbed their noses at the South, the hillbilly moniker was not a little discordant given the well-educated O’Connor hailed from a…
Casey Chalk
May 1, 2024
Two-Lane South Blog

Two-Lane South

I learned to drive in a pasture. The speed limit didn’t matter; that orange Allis Chalmers tractor could only go so fast on uneven ground. Sweetheart, my grandmother, told too many tales of reckless young boys whose turns on the lumbering machines led to disfigurement and death, so I didn’t try anything too adventurous. That is, until my mother let…
Robert M. Hicklin, Jr.
April 26, 2024
America’s Prophet Blog

America’s Prophet

This piece was originally published at IM_1776.com. Cormac McCarthy died at his home in Santa Fe last Tuesday, June 13 (2023), at the age of 89. He was our greatest living novelist, an apocalyptic prophet and diviner of violence, and will forever stand with the likes of Melville and Faulkner as the chief American mythmaker of his time. Born in…
Lafayette Lee
April 25, 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
The Fasola Fellowship Blog

The Fasola Fellowship

I’m not deaf to the vibrant Country music chatter. Got opinions, but on social media, I made a vow: don't discuss the current thing. Yet, the discourse reminded of something. Donald Davidson was a man of tradition. He liked the old way. Saw a kinship between song meant for singing and verse meant for reading, a stance rare among his…
Chase Steely
April 15, 2024
Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson! Blog

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson!

At the request of friend John Spear Smith (1785–1866, figure below), who named a newborn child after him, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter (21 Feb. 1825) that he pens some one and one-half years prior to his death, offers philosophical advice to the newborn child, Thomas Jefferson Smith. The missive takes the form of an epistolary trilogy: an advisory letter,…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 12, 2024
Yankee Cain and Southern Seth Blog

Yankee Cain and Southern Seth

Southerners have often been mocked for their agrarian simplicity by Yankee-minded folks.  We know the insults well by now:  hicks, hillbillies, rednecks, and so on.  But Dixie should not be ashamed of this.  We ought rather to delight and exult in it. Richard Weaver gives us good ground for doing so in his contrast of the Northern/Yankee and Southern types:…
Walt Garlington
April 11, 2024
Republic or Democracy Blog

Republic or Democracy

Back in 1966, the conservative activist and F.B.I. operative Dan Smoot produced a short film, A Constitutional Republic, Not a Democracy.  Anybody who calls the United States a democracy, he said, is trying to subvert the Constitution of the United States — we’re not a democracy; we’re a republic. Probably because there are supposed to be two political parties here,…
Kevin Orlin Johnson
April 10, 2024
Saving a Remnant Blog

Saving a Remnant

Nothing is more indicative of the ongoing degradation of American  culture than the fate of the once noble Commonwealth of Virginia—not long ago widely admired as the mother of States and Presidents—inseparable from Patrick Henry, Washington, Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Lee and Jackson. Now shallow, opportunistic politicians ignorant of American foundations swarm in every Southern State. In Virginia they have…
Clyde Wilson
April 9, 2024
Soured on the South Blog

Soured on the South

I grew up in Virginia, though my accent, apart from a few words and phrases, is almost indistinguishable from my friends from California, Massachusetts, and Michigan. For many Southerners, especially in the Upper South, all that remains of that once rich linguistic heritage are such expressions as “y’all,” “yonder,” and “if I had my druthers.” For that, we can thank…
Casey Chalk
April 3, 2024
What Did Jefferson Really Look Like? Blog

What Did Jefferson Really Look Like?

A newspaper in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1887 and in 1902 stated that Sally Hemings’ last child, slave Eston Hemings, resembled Thomas Jefferson. Just how that resemblance was established is unclear. Eston Hemings died in 1877; Thomas Jefferson, in 1826. So, the newspaper was reporting that one person that had been dead for 10/25 years resembled another that has been dead…
M. Andrew Holowchak
March 27, 2024
Southern Nationalism Blog

Southern Nationalism

A leftwing scribbler on some website recently called me “a White Nationalist.” He thought that was a conclusive judgment. But I am not now and never have been a “White Nationalist.” I have long been called a Southern nationalist, but that is a different matter. The Southern people are real. White nationalism is merely a Yankee ideology, an abstraction with…
Clyde Wilson
March 19, 2024
A Favorite Southern Trio Blog

A Favorite Southern Trio

A few years back, I came to Louisiana for the first time. Being an Indiana Hoosier, I had no idea what dishes were native to this region, aside from gumbo and crawfish. The first Southern meal my Louisiana family introduced me to was red beans and rice. I didn’t know what to expect, but as soon as I took my…
Arianna Brindle
March 15, 2024