Many Southerners are familiar with James “Ron” Kennedy and his brother, Walter “Donnie” Kennedy, who are prolific writers and staunch defenders of (what is left of) Southern tradition and heritage….
Read More
The happy land of Caannan may be a Biblical story, but for some of us, it truly was fact. Growing up on the land my ancestors settled in the 1850s…
Sometimes readers will ask me: “Why did you write on that? What were you trying to say?” My response has always been that just about everything I attempt to convey, to…
“When we talk about the War it is our history we are talking about, it is a part of our identity. To tell libellous lies about our ancestors is a…
I once wrote an article on the problems arising from what I termed “group condemnation.” I believed that in attempting to warn people of dangers lurking in the culture, those…
My name is Tom Daniel, and I’m a happy guy. I’m naturally optimistic, and I love talking about all the good things that come from the South. I get discouraged…
Seventy-six years ago, on May 8, 1945, at 2301 hours, Central European Time, World War II in Europe officially ended. Although the war would continue in the Pacific Theatre for…
For Christmas, I gave my granddaughter a compilation of Eudora Welty’s novels. She’s an avid reader and tore into the book as soon as she unwrapped it. The short stories,…
Continued from Part 3. “And of all the officers or men whom I ever knew he came (save one other alone) the nearest in likeness to that classical ideal Chevalier Bayard…And…
In the early 1870s, a young pre-law student at Howard College was inspired by classmate and future wife, Mamie Friend. James Alan Bland would listen to the homesick sentiments of…
Continued from Part I. “He [Lee] was a superb specimen of manly grace and elegance…There was about him a stately dignity, calm poise, absolute self-possession, entire absence of self-consciousness, and…
Any fool can write history, and many do. Please do not assume that I mean by this statement to vaunt the “expert” and slight the amateur. In writing history the…
A white house sits on the outskirts of a small town in upstate South Carolina. It is modest in both size and appearance, and rather old, and in front of…
Editor’s Note: This speech was delivered before the Senate on March 12, 1910, at the dedication of John C. Calhoun’s statue in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. Address…
As part of its campaign to pander to the important and urgent needs of African-Americans with extremely divisive yet ultimately performative identity politics,[1] the Biden-Harris administration has announced that it…
These past several years, we Americans have been living in an accelerating anti-cultural vortex. Day by day the Yankee juggernaut gains steam. Once content with carpetbombing Hanoi and Baghdad, the…
“Dear me, what’s the good of being a Southerner?” asks one of the characters on the very first page of Henry James’ nineteenth-century novel The Bostonians. Though this question may…
I have written here before about my beloved hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama. Forgive me if you’ve read this before, but Tuskegee was unique among small rural Southern towns because of…
Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked? Ecclesiastes 7: 13 Scott Howard, in his book The Trans-gender Industrial Complex, says on pages 164-5:…
It was a late night in Boone County, Arkansas when me and my newly married wife attended a party not far from our home in Lead Hill. The ol’ boy…
A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard;…
If these were normal times, we’d all be unpacking our Mardi Gras gear right about now. Purple, yellow, and green would be everywhere, and I would be writing about how…
I am not from where I live, yet I have a deep fear that where I live won’t be where I live for very much longer. The god of progress…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 25-29, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Slavery, Southern History, Southern Music, Southern Culture
From Eternity into Time Mighty the Wizard Who found me at sunrise Sleeping, and woke me And learn’d me Magic! Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the…
Rock ‘n Roll may be the most significant cultural export in American history. There is no doubt that American culture, for good and bad, has had an enormous impact on…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 11-22, 2021 Topics: Reconciliation, Southern Politics, Southern Culture, Southern History
The old saying: “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God” certainly applies to me. I’m an ethnic Southerner who was raised in the north – but who, for…
In May of this year, George Floyd died; seven months later, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) removed its statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson from its prominent position at the…
I saw a pile of household goods on the side of the road a couple of days ago, as I was picking up a friend to take him to the…
Crises of legitimacy are rarely resolved without some resort to violence. The European experience in the seventeenth century is generously populated with examples: The English Civil War, Le Fronde I…
Most all of us who were fortunate enough to know our Grandfather has experienced his love. It may be expressed in many ways, whether it be a spoken ‘Well done’…
Earlier this year, shortly after the sad and unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I witnessed an especially peculiar example of one of the many thousands (perhaps millions?) of…
The life of a man is something that runs deep in all history. Before the war on gender roles, man and woman had a clear, defined boundary that all recognized…
‘There has always been this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere…
In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and…
‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new…
As some business owners and residents on King Street described it, “Charleston was raped” on the night of May 30, 2020, as mobs looted and burned the Holy City, turning…
There’s a popular meme floating around the internet that has a middle-aged, pot-bellied, suburban male standing by a charcoal fire with the caption below reading, “I just want to grill…
The story I’m about to tell is one of the many coming from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Hardscrabble existence was a way of life with our pioneers, and it…
Since 2015, it has become standard fare for the left to accuse President Trump of “Gaslighting,” meaning that the President uses his position of power to provide false data to…
Coming from a small, truly united community, I have many places that are dear to me that I often visit. One of these is a small city, located in the…
Sampson County is a large, mostly rural county in southeastern North Carolina. Like most non-metropolitan areas of the state, it tends to be conservative, in fact, a long-time bastion of…
This morning a good friend sent me an article from The Imaginative Conservative (easily one of the best “blogs”) that outlined Robert Nisbet’s ten conditions of revolution. The piece is…
Reminiscences and Ramblings of a Novice Wing-Shooter It was the First of September, 2019 and there I sat, in the pre-dawn twilight, half asleep and fighting the near irresistible temptation,…
Travel writing about the American South is a genre of its own. One such observer was Henry Miller, who traveled through the South in 1941. Miller was born in 1891…
“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for,…
What if there were 15.3 million dead American soldiers? Imagine it. Legions of the unburied down rows of summer corn, strewn along riverbanks, and discarded on roadsides. And imagine if…
“The blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man feelin’ bad,” according to “Negro Blues,” penned in 1913. There’s no question about the “feelin’ bad” part. The genre is defined by…
Growing up in the Arkansas Ozarks, I early on found out I had a love for history; the history of my people. It was passed down to me in short…
Have any of you all heard about the film, “General Orders No. 9” ? It’s a visual & musical tone poem—an experimental film which appeared in 2011. The filmmaker, Robert…
I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They…
How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me….
Editor’s Note: The Abbeville Institute does not endorse or support the views of Alexander Dugin on race, religion, or government, and Mr. Garlington offers his philosophical positions on identity in…
“Southerners who still value their heritage but don’t know what to do about it in such a hostile environment. They are our audience.” DM: What is your best short answer…
Allen Mendenhall interviews John Shelton Reed. AM: John, I really appreciate this interview. Your latest book is Mixing It Up: A South-Watcher’s Miscellany. I noticed that you dedicated the book to…
Especially in unsettling times, it is helpful for Christians to examine the lives of faithful saints of old, who finished their race well. One brother and father in the faith,…
On various occasions I’ve made references to Chronicles Magazine and cited articles printed in it. Remarkably, Chronicles is the only print magazine of stature (it is also online) in America which has represented and aired traditionalist…
A review of Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) by Susan Neiman Susan Neiman is a philosopher who has written well-regarded…
“Where you gonna be when half of California riots? Where you gonna run to when the lights go out? I won’t be hangin’ out in California, I won’t try it….
19. Our Speech The experts will tell you that there is more than one Southern accent. This is true, but they all gather together as a marker of Southern that…
A review of The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot (Ignatius Press, 2014), by Jonathan Witt and Jay W. Richards. Russell Kirk often…
16. EXECRABLES. The Worst Movies about the South: A Small Selection The competition here is fierce. We can only provide a sample of some of the worst. A few examples…
15. Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Southerners: Films for the Family The major movie stars of the 1930s through the 1970s came from the East and Midwest. Nevertheless, there was a…
It was Thursday, Christmas day of 1862, and the guns at Fredericksburg had fallen silent just ten days before with over ten thousand Union soldiers of the Army of the…
12. Southerners in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries **The Yearling (1946). This is an all-time favourite about family life on the Florida frontier and a troublesome pet deer. …
King of the Hill is loaded with all kinds of satirical southern wisdom that was both of and way ahead of its time. In many ways this wonderful show was…
Fear not. Dixie lights are merely hiding under a bushel, as it says in the song we teach our children in Sunday School. Grass roots are sprouting. “Woke” tries to…
11. Post-bellum and Westerns There are two interesting, important, and little noticed features of films about the South in the period after the War for Southern Independence. First, until recent…
‘ . . . you know only A heap of broken images . . .’ –T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land I. Destruction The description of the South as a…
Lieutenant-General Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson was the greatest martyr of our Cause, the first icon of the War for Southern Independence. He was the archetypal Christian soldier; there is infinite…
William Gibson surprises people when they meet him. The writer who coined the terms “cyberspace” and “megacorp,” whose dystopian novels re-invented science fiction in the 80s, and was lauded in…
Theories of education in any land are never easily divorced from the prevailing ideas regarding civics and economics. Education’s function, particularly toward the young, will become merely to render them…
As 2020 commences it is perhaps appropriate that we take stock—that we take a look globally at just where we are, politically, culturally, religiously. All our basic and fundamental social…
A photograph of the University of Mississippi Majorettes graced the cover of the September 24, 1962, issue of the popular national magazine, Sports Illustrated. This national magazine thought nothing of…
5. Spielberg’s Amistad (1997) If Amistad is not yet a household word like ET or Jurassic Park, it soon will be with the power of Steven Spielberg behind it. (When…
Back in 2015 when Dylan Roof shot those black folks in their church in Charleston, South Carolina no one was quicker to denounce the Confederate flag than the governor of…
There are few Southern hearts that still fail to skip a beat or two when a military band strikes up “Dixie,” the de facto national anthem of the Confederacy and…
Symbols Used ** Indicates one of the more than 100 most recommended films. The order in which they appear does not reflect any ranking, only the convenience of discussion (T) …
A review of Maxcy Gregg’s Sporting Journals, 1842-1858 (Green Altar Books, 2019) Suzanne Parfitt Johnson, Editor. Foreword by James Everett Kibler, Jr. The exploration of everyday life in a given…
My new neighbor Ozzie, who grew up in the Bronx, thinks that the South is a place “without much culture.” Ozzie acts as if he is an expert on the…
A man only has room for one oath at a time. I took an oath to the Confederate States of America.” John Wayne, The Searchers “We are going to hit…
An excerpt from North Carolina author Robert Ruark’s best known novel reads: “If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he…
Early this past summer the historic Steele Creek Presbyterian Church, near the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, closed its doors for good. The church, the second oldest in Mecklenburg County,…
A Review of The Idea of The American South, 1920-1941, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979) by Michael O’Brien. I have an invitation to extend to Michael O’Brien, the British author…
One of the two commandments the Lord Jesus Christ gave to His disciples to follow was to love our neighbor as ourselves. However, in the modern United States of America,…
You know, as a kid who grew up without electricity, a telephone or indoor plumbing, it continues to amaze me that I posted a picture of a sign in front…
The news media rarely, if ever, focuses on the impact on society and culture the price of economic growth. Nor do politicians. This begs the question, what price is extracted…
I recently relocated–with any luck, temporarily–to a sprawling metroplex of a city of almost seven million, within an even more massive state. I’d believed I understood globalism and loss of identity….
A recent National Review column in the silly Northern War over 1619 contained this unfortunate paragraph: “In fact, Adams suggested, if there ever were a civil war, the president would…
Those of us whose experience goes back a way into the last century, can remember when “democracy” was the main theme of American discourse. A million tongues proudly and repeatedly…
George Mason, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, was happiest at home, either in the fields and woods, with a good book by the hearth, or entertaining neighbors and family. …
Southerners love home. This is true of many people throughout history, but place has, in part, defined the South. The earliest settlers to what became the South championed its Utopian…
This article originally appeared on www.TheAmericanConservative.com. Copyright 2019 From the colonial era well into the 20th century, large public barbecues were an institution across the South, from the Chesapeake eventually…
Lack of attachment to culture, heritage, and tradition is the death of a nation. As a child, I had very little in-depth knowledge of my family’s history. Most of my…
A review of The C.S.A. Trilogy (Independent, 2018) by Howard Ray White. A beautiful thought experiment for Southerners. The year is 2011, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the…
In I Kings 21, we see that Naboth did not feel that he had the right to sell the family land no matter how much money King Ahab offered. The…
This essay was originally published in The Lasting South (Regnery, 1957). Recently when Bertrand Russell was a speaking-guest of the Richmond Area University Center, its director, Colonel Herbert Fitzroy, drove…
“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to bear the…
A review of Dabney on Fire: A Theology of Parenting, Education, Feminism, and Government (2019) by Zachary Garris, ed. During his lifetime, Southern theologian and writer Robert Lewis Dabney was…
CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 22 April 2019 American by birth — Southern by the grace of God! I come from a true Southern state, South Dakota, and I am honored…
Stretching from the Potomac River across the southeastern quarter of the United States in a broad arc into the plains of Texas is a region known geographically and politically as…
To the student of the Classics the most interesting thing in the Library of Congress at Washington is the considerable remnant of the library of Thomas Jefferson. On October 6,…
Right wing radio personalities need no excuse to engage in South-bashing, but the recent events in the Old Dominion have given them free rein to indulge in their passion non-stop. …
In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay…
In this age of political correctness it may surprise people that there were three TV series that portrayed Confederates in a good light. All three are very good and all…
Presented at the Lee-Jackson Banquet, Finley’s Brigade Camp 1614 – Tallahassee, Florida, 19 January 2019 Prologue It seemed like just another day at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, for…
Watching NBC’s TODAY program on Tuesday, January 23, 2019, there was anchor Savannah Guthrie demanding to know if Covington, Kentucky, Catholic High School student, Nick Sandman, wished to “apologize” for…
Many years ago the historian Francis Parkman wrote a passage in one of his narratives which impresses me as full of wisdom and prophecy. After a brilliant characterization of the…
One summer day in Paris, France, just a year after the Great War, a former French military officer, not yet nineteen years of age was invited by his father to…
The destruction of Confederate monuments and the slandering of all things Confederate is in vogue in contemporary mainline media, academia, and the political establishment. The destruction of Confederate monuments by…
None knew it then, but in 1915, Southern agrarian influence on the movies was at its height. The film trade had just left Fort Lee, New Jersey, only to land…
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” – H. L. Mencken “Let any man of contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them [the Puritans], they close…
A review of The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage (Scuppernong Press, 2018) by Boyd Cathey I must confess that I feel a bit awkward about reviewing Dr….
The Abbeville Institute conducted three conferences this year on the fracturing of American national identity and what means for the Southern tradition and the Southern people. The general public knows…
Why do Southerners continue to fall into that trap where we only talk about the years1861-1865? There are almost 400 years of Southern culture to talk about, yet we keep…
For all of the pontificating of the virtues of the South, we have increasingly seen our agrarian landscape polluted by strip malls and environmental contamination. I make the case that…
The news came Thursday, November 15, that country music legend, Virginia-born Roy Clark had passed away at age 85. For those either too young to know who Clark was, or…
The study of history cannot be neatly contained behind the tall foreboding doors of an ivory tower nor swept under the rugs of dusty corner offices housing stacks of paper….
Was the Old South Feudal? Eugene Genovese wrote several works on antebellum slavery that essentially argued the Old South was neither feudal nor capitalist. His book Fruits of Merchant Capital:…
Having traveled in all fifty states, I must admit there are certain areas of this great country that continue to draw me back, time and again, to enjoy their natural…
There was a time, before universal white male suffrage and the closing of the frontier, when the poor whites of the South were considered shiftless and without caste. If we…
In some ways, historians are like anyone else: they hate to make mistakes. But if you write enough, sooner or later, you will make a mistake—I assure you. I certainly…
I was saddened to hear that Phil Harris had died. I knew the man. You might say we were old friends. As a matter of fact, we first met in…
Because we live in such a hurried time, we hear countless “noises” but have little time to appreciate actual “sounds.” Sound is a sensation that you can feel, not just…
In October 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the executive mansion. This was an unprecedented move. No African-American had ever been asked to dine with…
The 1970’s were an interesting time in the South. The 1970’s were the last time Southerners could be Southern without feeling the need to apologize for, or be ironic about,…
In the book The Mystery of the Wonder-Worker of Ostrog, the main character, Mladjen, a fictional representation of the modern Serb uprooted from his traditions by the lingering effects of…
Southerners confronted by Northerners touring our section are made aware of the difference in their speech from ours. They approach us speaking a form of English known outside the United…
There are many examples of heroism that illustrate spiritedness in America’s history. Indeed, the American Revolution was won because of the indomitable spirit of the Patriots and a growing unwillingness…
In his important 1994 work, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858, the Rev. Iain H. Murray examined the periods in American church history known as…
First of all, I wish to state that I teach history. I do not try to erase it, and I do not desecrate graves, like the “politically correct” did in…
“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his…
The quote below indirectly warns about the implications of Confederate statue removals and the censorship of Southern interpretations regarding the Civil War and Reconstruction. Kundera is presently a French…
Picture it. A book store in Madison, Wisconsin, in the mid-’90s. Quite the unlikely place you’d expect to be exposed to the true history of the Pilgrims being totalitarian religionists,…
Our culture has, of late, become rather fixated on the idea that every historical figure in our past should have anticipated how moral worldviews would evolve after his or her…
Given that the Star Wars franchise seems to have degenerated into yet another vehicle for the transmission of political-correctness, it seems a little ironic that the newest installment of the…
This spring thousands of graduates coming out of the high schools and colleges across the South will be hearing a similar message: Go far! Dream big! Succeed! Break the mold!…
After reading Richard Weaver’s monumental work Ideas Have Consequences last semester I was struck with one characterization of the “ideal man” that has since been shaping the way I look…
“It was my first introduction to damn Yankees,” my oldest sister remarked of her first semester at James Madison University in the fall of 1982. It was here, at this…
What exactly does it mean to be a Southerner in the 21st Century? Is it spending countless hours finding out who your Confederate ancestor is and joining up with the…
This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1985. Hank Williams has now been dead longer than he lived. And outside of a hundred or more fine songs,…
A review of Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States: The Attack on Leviathan by Donald Davidson (Transaction Books, 1991). August 18, 1993 will mark the centennial of Donald Davidson’s…
If I was forced to give an example of at least one good thing we got out of the Puritans, I would quickly point to Sacred Harp singing. Sacred Harp…
If you travel I-20 east from Jackson, Mississippi, somewhere about 20 miles short of Meridian you’ll see a sign: Hickory Exit. This sign is one almost ad infinitum of green…
It is near impossible to express any admiration of the antebellum South without incurring the wrath of the perpetually offended mob, online or otherwise. Even acknowledgment in the accomplishments of…
When I was very young, I recall my father telling me of George “No-Show” Jones, a country music legend. The moniker, I was told, was given after Jones failed to…
The Stockholm Syndrome is a condition where captives or hostages develop a psychological attachment and loyalty to their captors. Psychologists often describe this syndrome as a “survival strategy.” This strategy…
Everyone wanted to be Southern in the 1970s. The rejuvenated interest in Southern music from bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlies Daniels, and the Allman Brothers (and the unknown Southern influence…
Once upon a time in America, in a far different and far more gentle age, it was possible for four young men from Memphis, Tennessee, to appear at a performance…
Reading on the Abbeville site articles about the South and the West, I was reminded of my newspaper piece on Florida as the Wild Wild (South) East, which had a…
‘Just a post, just a post, just a post on a blog, just a post, just a post, and the war has begun’ (To the tune of “Sloth,” Fairport Convention,…
A review of The World They Made Together, Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia, by Mechal Sobel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1987 I In America, in…
From its port side northern Kentucky’s foremost tourist attraction looks exactly like a real vessel, a big one, with a ramp fitted along it to take on animals and supplies. …
For five days in May, 1856, Charles Sumner delivered a speech entitled The Crime Against Kansas. For those five days, he continuously slandered South Carolina and its senator, Pierce Butler….
There is a popular theme embraced by many that the uniqueness of Southern culture is explained by its “Celtic” origins in opposition to the “Anglo-Saxon” foundations of the North. This…
In our politically correct culture where even the mildest criticism of a societal group can earn someone the label of racist, it remains open season on rural America. When Barack…
From the beginnings to rather recent times, sympathetic portrayals of Confederates have been a mainstay of America cinema. An astounding number of major stars without any Southern background have had…
Lee Sam and Abner were settin’ on the porch drinking ice-tea one day when the Yankee from Boston come running his Toyota Prius up the road to the house. He…
In 1958 a nearly forgotten thirty-four year old Texas author named William Humphrey debuted his first novel, Home From the Hill, to widespread praise. Legendary director Vincente Minnelli released a film version only…
An Address given on the Occasion of the Observance of Confederate Flag Day Raleigh, North Carolina | 03 March 2017 SEVEN SCORE AND SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, our fathers brought forth…
Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. When historians discuss reasons for Southern secession, as if the South needed to produce one, perhaps the most important, and sometimes neglected,…
Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. You are deplorable. It is worse than that. If you are Southern or interested in the South you are the most deplorable…
A review of J. Wayne Flynt, Dixie’s Forgotten People: The South’s Poor Whites. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1979. Professor Flynt, the author of this volume, concentrates on the…
A review of Music from the Lake and Other Essays by Catharine Savage Brosman (Chronicles Press, 2017). Catharine Savage Brosman is a treasure of Southern literature. Although much of her…
The political market, as the economic market, has the demand and supply dynamic. Interest groups make demands and the politicians provide the supply. In the case of Confederate memorials, interest…
A review of George William Koon, Hank Williams: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 1983. Like it or not, the most lasting symbol of the South is the Redneck. My eight-year-old son…
Most people probably associate cattle drives with the last century, and the wild West, but out here in Spottswood, in the Shenandoah Valley, there’s a man who’ll tell you different,…
I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America (CSA) from April 1861 to April 1865. Pictured above is the statue of Confederate…
Count Herman Keyserling (1880-1946) was born in Estonia and married the granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck. He was an aristocrat who interested himself in philosophy and the natural sciences; Keyserling…
I have made a discovery. There does, indeed, exist a place where nobody wants to leave. It is possible to breathe there without worrying about what you are inhaling. This…
Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the, symposium I’ll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive…
A review of All Clever Men, Who Make Their Own Way: Critical Discourse in the Old South, edited with an introduction by Michael O’Brien. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. 1982….
Originally published at www.circa1865.com The conservative and noble Christian civilization of the South described below has all but vanished as the New South of industrial capitalism, materialism and commercial vulgarity…
I was born in the North. Nonetheless, I have instructed my attorney, a most honorable Virginian, that when I die he is to see to it that I am buried…
One-hundred and fifty-two years ago, April 9, 1865 was a Palm Sunday just as today, and in the central part of war-torn Virginia, a major turning point occurred in American history….
The Age of Enlightenment represented the Middle Ages as a Gothic night—an interlude of ignorance and superstition when men were enveloped in a cowl, oblivious to the wonders of knowledge,…
Andy Jackson’s famous toast, “The Union—it must and shall be preserved,” is still recorded in most high school U.S. history books. Calhoun’s once equally famous reply, “Next to our liberties,…
Order of the Southern Cross Banquet, Sons of Confederate Veterans National Reunion, Asheville, North Carolina, August 1, 2003 As the direct descendant of a private in the 42nd North Carolina…
Why the South Will Survive, by Fifteen Southerners. Edited by Clyde N. Wilson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1981. As a naturalized Southerner (born in the North but educated…
A few days ago I ran into an old friend, an historian, who started in on the Partisan. “I’ve lived all my life in the South,” he grumbled, “but I…
Mencken’s “Sahara of the Bozart” is one of the most famous essays of 20th century American letters. Since its appearance in 1919, the essay has become widely regarded as Mencken’s…
For as long as people have been writing about Southern character—and that’s getting to be a pretty long time now—they’ve been inclined to mention Southern individualism. From Thomas Jefferson’s letter…
At first glance, Nathaniel Hawthorne seems the quintessential Yankee, one not at all likely to be claimed or adopted by Southerners. His great, great, great grandfather, William Hathorne, came to…
I am a Georgian and a University of Georgia alumni. I have been a fan of all the Atlanta sports franchises since I was a kid, and I was a…
Every historian has a viewpoint, shaped by his own background, values, and perception of the present. The relationship between background and viewpoint is not necessarily simple. As in the case…
I write not as an expert to tell you of my thought but to explain a particular concept of Lewis’s and my own application of it to the Old South….
Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina told a friend in 1980 that, “I’m bound to confess that President Carter has instilled some foreboding in prospect to the outcome of the…
Dr. Carey Roberts on “The South and the Renewal of America” at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School.
Dr. Clyde Wilson on “American Culture: Virginia or Massachusetts?” at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School.
In the Partisan’s last issue, I raised the question of why the United States has not been troubled in this century by regional nationalisms of the sort that are currently…
A biographer defined Francis Butler Simkins as “one of the most interesting intellectual forces of his generation.” As a scholar who questioned conventional thinking he “helped lay the foundation of…
The polls show that 33 per cent of the public still gives Dubya Bush a favourable approval rating. Who could these people be? Some of them, no doubt, are well-meaning…
Reprinted from The Deliberate Agrarian. We are not called to be slaves. In My Previous Blog Post I wrote about the family economy and posted Returning To The Family Economy, a chapter from a…
The late 1970s represented the heyday of popular Southern music. Southern rock and “outlaw country” dominated the airwaves. It was chic to say “ya’ll,” even in Boston, and with the election of Jimmy Carter,…
I was a faithful, Southern fisherman even in New England exile. “Oh, these small mouth bass are fine,” I’d tell them, “but when I was a kid back home in…
(13th Annual Gettysburg Banquet of the J.E.B. Stuart Camp, SCV, Philadelphia) ****How Should 21st Century Americans Think about the War for Southern Independence? **** We human beings are peculiar creatures,…
Call me simple… But I don’t understand: Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem. Why the government spends billions on education…
Late in August 1965, a young boy not yet eight-years-old stood with his father on the field at Gettysburg near the spot where Pickett’s men formed in the woods. The…
This article was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine in 1997. “Being a Southerner is a spiritual condition, like being a Catholic or Jew.” So wrote Richard Weaver in his…
Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the symposium I’ll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive…
The thrill is gone, and the numbers prove it. After decades of phenomenal growth, NASCAR’s popularity has hit the wall. At Bristol Motor Speedway a couple of years ago, Jeff Gordon…
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published at The Fleming Foundation. This piece appeared in the second issue (1980) of the Southern Partisan, which Clyde Wilson and I (along with…
In a recent Huffington Post video, director-turned-historian Gary Ross, of the film “Free State of Jones,” debunks what he calls “4 myths of the civil war era.” And since I’ve…
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at The Southern Literary Review and is an interview with author Robert J. Ernst by Allen Mendenhall covering Ernst’s book, The Inside War….
Delivered at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. A Frenchman has observed that the qualities of a culture may be identified by two characteristics— its manners and its cuisine. If…
This essay appeared in the 1984 winter issue of Southern Partisan magazine. In the best of all possible worlds, President Reagan, George Will, William Buckley and I—conservatives all—or so it…
Transcend yourself and join in the universal struggle to bring about the self-transcendence of all men! –Karl Marx Culture, as the term is used in America in our times, covers…
This essay was published as a new introduction for Lytle’s Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company and is published here in honor of Forrest’s birthday, July 13. This is a…
This essay was originally published in Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The American South: Portrait of a Culture, 1979, 27-37. In 1928, an unusually far-sighted southerner named Broadus Mitchell pondered the implications…
The 2014 movie “Monuments Men” exposed a little known aspect of the horrors of Hitler’s Aryan supremacist totalitarian regime – the looting of priceless historical treasures and cultural purge of…
I probably should not admit this due to certain… ummm… shall we say… stereotypes, but since I was a young adult, I have had a particular interest in fashion. For…
This essay was originally printed at The Imaginative Conservative. Among the contributions to I’ll Take My Stand, Allen Tate’s “Remarks on the Southern Religion” is usually interpreted as the most…
What makes the South, the South? Most modern Americans would say football and grits sprinkled with a bit of country music and NASCAR. These clichés hold true for many Southerners…
Southern Voices: Poems by William H. Holcombe, M. D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1872. We hail this volume as a beautiful presage of the future of the South…
Delivered May 6, 2016 in Columbia, SC. Archibald MacLeish was a 20th century poet, author and three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote the following about the lost soldier:…
Editor’s Note: A Mother’s Day special dedicated to all Southern wives and mothers, this piece was originally published in 1877 in Bledsoe’s The Southern Review. It is strange how we…
A dear friend of mine, a Harp like myself but born and raised in the Deep North, repeated to me for the umpteenth time one of the most persistent of…
Over the years, countless thousands the New Yorkers have passed by monuments in their city that were dedicated to two eminent physicians who were related by marriage, but there is…
This article was originally printed at Tony Woodlief’s website, Sand in the Gears. When I was twelve, we were evicted from our house in Florida, a consequence either of Reaganomics…
A slightly different version of this essay is Chapter Eleven in Brion McClanahan, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009). This essay is offered as a Southern…
Over time a man, if he is perceptive, comes to certain conclusions. The most startling is that the greatest truths were spoken to him throughout his life by ordinary men,…
Many people are familiar with the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s. While some historians reject them for what has been called gross inaccuracies due in…
I promised to keep you updated on our government’s radio ads. In the latest, the Department of Justice offers you its benevolent services for any problem you might be experiencing…
This essay is a chapter from The South in the Building of the Nation series, History of the Social Life. The solidarity of public opinion in the South has been…
This essay served as the concluding chapter to Page’s biography of Robert E. Lee, published in 1908. I stood not a great while ago on the most impressive spot, perhaps,…
Gentlemen of the Historical Society of Mecklenburg (1876): Our president has appropriately introduced the series of historical lectures with the inquiry, why so few have attempted to preserve the record…
“There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians.” — Barnard Elliott Bee A Review of Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies…
This essay was published in Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I’ll Take My Stand, edited by Clyde Wilson, 1981. When…
This article was originally printed in the Nov/Dec 2015 issue of Confederate Veteran Magazine. In June 2015, after the depraved shootings in a Charleston, South Carolina, black church, a frenzied…
I. THE name First given to the territory occupied by the present United States was Virginia. It was bestowed upon the Country by Elizabeth, greatest of English queens. The United…
There was a popular ragtime song in the 1940s and ‘50s, derived from an old minstrel tune, that went like this: Is it true what they say about Dixie? Does…
Do men read fiction anymore? In my youth I remember visiting other boys’ homes and finding novels from their fathers – you know, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Ernest Hemingway, Ian…
This piece was originally published at The American Conservative. When John William Corrington died in 1988, Southern conservatives lost one of their most talented writers, a refined Cajun cowboy with…
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.–Jefferson When did the South ever lay its hand…
Introduction to Chronicles of the South: In Justice to So Fine a Country “The South” is a Problem. A Big Problem. This has been true at least since the 1790s…
Thanks for the “Amateurs” “Amateur” has come to mean “inferior” to most people today. But the term originally meant someone who was as good as a professional but did not…
Recent Comments