“Who’s your people?” Though now somewhat rare, one still hears that question in Dixie, usually uttered from the lips of older or rural Southerners. Much is implied by the question….
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If timid and pacified Southerners needed more proof that we are a defeated and occupied people, then indisputable proof was recently provided by the United States House of Representatives. At…
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…
Some twenty years ago I had planned to write a full-length study of John Pelham—known in the South as the Gallant John Pelham—and the making of myth. The business of…
The “ultimate cause” of the War of Secession was two mutually exclusive understanding of government. The South embraced the view of Aristotle that government was a natural outgrowth of communal…
While the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has also wreaked havoc throughout the South, there was an even more deadly epidemic that attacked a number of Southern states almost a century…
“The Hispanic community understands the American Dream and have not forgotten what they were promised,” declared Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who fled their native land…
“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…
A review of The Retribution Conspiracy: The Rise of the Confederate Secret Service (Scuppernong Press, 2021) by Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. In a world full of ever arising new…
The Federalist online magazine has a problem. It’s a condition that characterizes and infects almost the entirety of the present national conservative media. This hit home for me on May…
As Memorial Day approaches, I am thinking of a man I never met. His name is Charles Willis Kessler; he was a young, second Lieutenant from the small town of…
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crimeAre pronest to it, and impute themselves…Tennyson, from Idylls of the King (1) The US Supreme Court, in Texas vs. White, ruled…
One of my colleagues in the ministry of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) recently wrote that among “good uses” for the Confederate battle flag are “diaper, shop rag,…
Reviewers are unrelenting in their praise for the new Amazon streaming television series The Underground Railroad, a magic realist cinematographic depiction of the eponymous book by Colson Whitehead, which won…
Why bother with opening the schools, if all that you’ll have is the same uneducated blowhards filling the minds of children with the same monstrous mush that is conjured by…
It is a testimony to the prevalence of anti-Southern sentiment that The Gospel Coalition (TGC), one of the most prominent evangelical parachurch entities, has provided a platform for such sentiments…
In the 1986 comedy film Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield’s character, Thornton Mellon, a wealthy, middle-aged father, decided to attend college with his young son. Never serious about the endeavor,…
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 2. “He [Lee] was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring…a Christian without…
A review of Preachers with Power: Four Stalwarts of the South (Banner of Truth, 1992) by Douglas F. Kelly I first became aware of Douglas F. Kelly through some videos…
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…
Ah! My Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?For now I see the true old times are dead… Tennyson, from Idylls of the King…
In the Year of Our Lord 2021, it is fashionable for American Christians to despise the antebellum South. Many Christian leaders, Evangelical and otherwise, have defended or even applauded the…
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…
Many today feel that true Southerners living in the eleven States of the former Confederacy are, in many ways, once again fighting for their very existence and face the dismal…
Coming out of the American Revolution, the nation faced a slave problem that most today could scarcely imagine and that was unemployment. The Slave labor force had grown from reproduction…
On a late November evening in 1970, I rolled into the “Big Easy” on an L&N freight with my pockets jingling. Hitching a ride to Canal Street – and letting…
The year 2020 was brutal for the friends of the South. Monuments and statues of Southerners, not just Confederates, disappeared from the urban areas of the Southand beyond. The lockdowns…
A review of President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU Press, 2020) by Christopher Leahy “His Accidency.” That’s the nickname given to John Tyler, earned, as it…
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…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 11-22, 2021 Topics: Reconciliation, Southern Politics, Southern Culture, Southern History
According to a recent poll, 72 per cent of Americans think that we are now in the “worst” period of American history. Polls are dubious things and the great historian…
All-too-often, seemingly buried in the myriad dates and statistics of history, lies the human experience that should do more to make up that history in the first place. These eyewitness…
The dramatic events leading up to the secession of the Southern States, the tragedy of the War Between the States and the ensuing final act of the South’s Reconstruction period…
In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to advance their art. For example, Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made their composed…
Edited by Robert Hoyle. A Discourse delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hampden-Sydney College, June 15, 1882, before the Philanthropic and Union Literary Societies.[1] Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and…
The roots of the myth that slavery was primarily a white Southern institution were planted three decades prior to the War Between the States by the abolitionists in New York…
‘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…
Some people come from the “the land down under”. I come from the land “where old times are not forgotten”. As historians we must recommit to helping our youth understand…
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…
From The Land We Love, V, no. I (May 1868), 25-34, edited by Joseph S. Stromberg. Combinations for the prosecution of industrial pursuits are the characteristic of our age. They…
A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors. It is a lie for two reasons. First, the Confederate states had no…
On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War…
Eight-tenths of a mile down a dead-end Arkansas gravel road, at that dead end, past two neglected old cattle guards and in the back pasture is not where you’d expect…
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are constantly under attack from those on the left and the mainstream historical establishment for leading the charge of promoting the “lost cause…
“Madam, don’t bring your sons up to detest the United States Government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities and make your sons Americans.” -Lee…
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion…
Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), known as “The Father of Black History,” was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, the son of former slaves. He received his doctorate from Harvard, rose…
“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…
A Review of Old Times There Should Not Be Forgotten (Shotwell Publishing, 2020) by Leslie R. Tucker If I were to classify my own regional sense of identity, I would…
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…
A review of How to Study History When Seeking Truthfulness and Understanding: Lessons Learned from Outside Academia by Howard Ray White Howard White has written a dozen or so highly original…
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…
‘ . . . 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…
Driving thru Southern Maryland’s rural scenery- farms, woods, and villages, history greets you around every curve. Strong traditions in the heart of the people make it easy to appreciate the…
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…
In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released the “Whose Heritage?” report on the Confederate symbols in the United States. This report had one thesis: The Confederate monuments, memorials,…
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell “Sure I am this day we are masters…
Where did the belief in the “black Confederate soldier” originate? Did it begin in 1977, after the success of the television mini-series Roots caused people to reevaluate race and slavery…
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…
Every now and then an acquaintance who reads what I write will ask me: “Boyd, why are you so critical of writers and commentators—Neoconservatives—like Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Shapiro, Brian…
These days, we see many politicians pushing relentlessly for gun control. In the wake of recent mass shootings, several so-called “conservatives” have shown their true colors by demonizing gun owners…
A book condemning the left-wing bias of one of the most widely read and educationally used histories of the United States was recently written by Mary Grabar who received her…
What does the South have to offer that is valuable to humanity, to civilization? In 1939, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman proposed an answer to this question in…
A review of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books, 2014) by Edward Baptist Recent polling of the millennials’ attitudes toward socialism…
I recently read a report of a professor who declared that he had come sadly to the conclusion that the Founding Fathers had been all wrong in the government they…
From late 1983 until its fitful demise in the early 2000s, I served as a contributing editor, adviser, or just simply a contributor to the old Southern Partisan magazine. Although…
The Colonial Parkway connects Jamestowne and WIlliamsburg with the third leg of Virginia’s HIstoric Triangle-Yorktown. The colonial period of history had its beginning at Jamestown, its maturity at Williamsburg, and…
A semantic technique that has worked well for political types is renaming things to make them more acceptable to the public. This has occurred countless times in our society. Here…
Before there was any New England in the North, there was something very like Old England in the South. Relatively speaking, there is still – G. K. Chesterton Within Christian…
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…
George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson trod the roads of this area as the colony of Virginia grew. George Mason, James Madison and Richard Henry Lee sat in the…
Review of The Barber of Natchez (LSU, 1954, 1973) edited by Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom Hogan. Author’s Note: In 1938 a trove of documents dating from 1793 -1937, “over…
Virginia’s Historic Triangle: Jamestowne, Williamsburg and Yorktowne encompasses the first permanent English settlement in America, the most important colonial capital, and the last major military engagement of the American War…
Many who are well acquainted with Southern history are almost entirely unfamiliar with the historical character of Nathaniel Macon. He is often mentioned by the best of authors as a…
A review of The First South (LSU Press, 1961) by John Richard Alden One of the things I’ve discovered since I began studying Civil War history is that the roots…
I attended a protest to tear down the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston on May 16, 2019. This event was being hosted by “The Independent Media Institute,” and consisted…
A Review of Doniphan’s Expedition, Containing an Account of the Conquest of New Mexico . . . by John T. Hughes. Cincinnati, 1847 and Reid’s Tramp, or a Journal of…
The first English settlement in what is now Hampton was started in 1610, when Colonist under Governor Sir Thomas Gates captured a Native American village, Kecoughtan. Forts Henry and Charles…
History is remembered as a narrative, not facts and figures. If the story is told from the viewpoint of past sins, the rendering condemns our ancestors and makes us ashamed…
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…
“It is out of fashion these days to look backward rather than forward,” the poet John Crowe Ransom wrote almost thirty years ago. “About the only American given to it…
Southeast Virginia is a region rich in history, from the earliest colonial times to today’s modern military. Cape Henry welcomes visitors today, just as it did the Virginia Company colonists…
It was an indelible moment, one that has resonated with me up to the present day. My father and I had gone to whatever permutation of Wal-Mart existed at that…
A Review of The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (Knopf Publishing Company, 1990) by Robert Caro “I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:…
In the ongoing war against Southern Confederate heritage, we need to be cognizant of the academic pressures against it. As y’all know, UNC Chapel Hill recently tore down Silent Sam….
The dominant powers in American discourse today have succeeded in confining the South to a dark little corner of history labeled “Slavery and Treason.” This is already governing the public…
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…
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…
In 1875, Rev. Moses Drury Hoge stood before 40,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, at the foot of the newly dedicated statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, and delivered what one…
A review of Recovering the Past: A Historian’s Memoir (University Press of Kansas, 2004) by Forrest McDonald “History is marble, and remains forever cold, even under the most artistic hand,…
In the spirit of historical course correction, I herewith submit some thoughts to those who may find themselves in an American Revolution between 1774 and 1783. 1. Rule number one….
Citizens of Dixie…. This is a call to arms, or rather, a call to your legs and feet. Get up off that couch! If you don’t have family plans, ballgame,…
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….
I recently traveled with ten undergraduate students to the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) held at Calvin College, Grand Rapids Michigan. This was an exciting and enriching trip for…
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…
A review of In Defense of Andrew Jackson by Brad Birzer (Regnery History, 2018). Andrew Jackson, who Davy Crockett famously mocked as “the great man in the white house,” occupies…
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…
The whole 20th century was a horrible time for the friends of tradition: the mild rule of Europe’s Christian monarchs – Habsburgs, Romanovs, and others – was replaced by the…
On October 31, 1910—seven years after the Wright Brother’s first airplane flight of less than a minute—seventy-five thousand spectators gathered at Belmont Park to watch a day of competition among…
The “Fake News” appellation has been applied to just about every outlet that presents itself as something on the order of a news outlet, manned (yes–the word) by what are…
There is a tendency for each generation to assume its opinions are the ultimate correct opinions. But each generation’s beliefs are typically modified by succeeding generations. Unfortunately, societal structures are…
A review Slave and Free on Virginia’s Eastern Shore by Kirk Mariner (Onancok, VA: Miona Publications, 2014). The book can be purchased by emailing Miona Publications. One of the ironies that plague…
“Lincoln, under no circumstances, would I vote for … So, I say, stand by the ‘Constitution and the Union’, and so long as the laws are enacted and administered according…
In the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, after Atlanta has been burned and Scarlett O’Hara is fleeing to Tara, there is a scene where she arrives…
Is the South today a captive nation? Most Southerners would never consider the question—most likely because they would deem the issue to be absurd. But is it inane to ask…
One of the foremost scholars of the Southern Cause lives in New Market, Virginia. He has never written a book, authored a scholarly thesis, or lectured at a university. Instead,…
Fort Sumter was the beginning not only of a bloody conflict, but it forged a generation of war correspondents that would culminate in live action reporting one-hundred and thirty years…
History is the propaganda of the victorious. – Voltaire According to an explanation of “The Lost Cause” from the web site of the Virginia Historical Society: Former Confederates crafted a…
Confederate West Virginia has always been an enigma. A bright fellow riding through Monroe County was intrigued by the Confederate monument in a field near Union. This biker-hiker-writer Michael Abraham…
I’ve always been fascinated by those tricky slogans politicians and social activists use to dupe the public. These cleverly crafted catchphrases are short, simple, easily understood and tend to stick…
When the majority of people think of the Ku Klux Klan, there undoubtedly comes to mind a relic of post-Confederate racism that has now morphed into dangerous groups of rabidly…
A review of For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams (Madison Books, 2001). Why can’t American Presidents learn that if you…
No discussion of Southern conservatism, its history and its relationship to what is termed broadly the “American conservative movement” would be complete without an examination of events that have transpired…
“Conservative” writer and classicist Victor Davis Hanson hates the Confederacy and the South; he has demonstrated this repeatedly in recent years through his articles published in National Review (where he…
Eminent historian Dr. Clyde Wilson in one of his many books on American history expresses this sentiment about the “old-style history:” History is not an expression of abstract laws, or…
It was Tuesday evening, September 16th, and people all across America were settling down for the first performance of a new CBS comedy and music program. Rather than watching the…
Social activist Julia Ward wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861, the same year that Henry Timrod composed his “Ethnogenesis” (the poem which kicked off part 2 of…
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I am speaking but the plain truth when I tell you that I would rather be here tonight facing an assemblage of men and…
With the current heated debate over gun rights and the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution (which serves to affirm our natural rights…rights we have whether the State recognizes…
Since the 1960s, the interpretation of Southern history and the War Between the States put forth by most of the news media and academia is largely a fraud. It is…
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…
Address by Sam H. Jones, Governor of Louisiana to the Southern Farm Bureau Training School, Monroe, La., August 18, 1943 The history of mankind relates many stories where superior military…
‘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,…
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the…
Donald Trump made the following statement at a recent rally in Phoenix, Arizona on August 22: “In the proud tradition of America’s great leaders, from George Washington — please, don’t…
“Some crazy person just compared President Abraham Lincoln to Hitler. Yes, this just happened on CNN and Brooke Baldwin’s reaction was perfect.” So scribbled one Ricky Davila on Social Media…
Recent years have seen a new revisionist theme emerge in the history of America’s two principal, modern-day political parties – the Democrats and Republicans. In the new debate, two questions…
The current pogrom against Southern history and symbols ignores the influence the South and the institution of slavery had on most American presidents. American history would not be the same…
Delivered at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. The attack on the so-called “lost cause” myth in American history is nothing new. Beginning in the 1950s and 60s, historians like…
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. You are deplorable. It is worse than that. If you are Southern or interested in the South you are the most deplorable…
This article was originally printed at Townhall.com A couple of days ago, a friend of mine from Alabama shared on his Facebook wall an article from Alabama Political Reporter by a Mr….
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…
Malcolm X wrote that “History is a weapon.” He was right, and no topic encompasses this truth more than the War of Northern Aggression. And the most practical way we rebels can advance…
This article is the abbreviated address that I made at the Upcountry Literary Festival 2017, at the University of South Carolina, in Union South, Carolina. Some people come for the…
This article was originally published in Southern Partisan magazine in 1994. The past—what we believe happened and what we think it means—can be a very slippery customer. Even the recent…
The promise of “Freedom of the Press” becomes meaningless when large national “Progressive/Liberal” conglomerates maintain a virtual monopoly on access to newsprint within a given geographical area. Their virtual monopoly…
The Confederate battle flag is, as John Coski of the Museum of the Confederacy titled his book on the subject, “America’s most embattled emblem.” Recent polls show that Americans are…
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…
You can stand on the station platform at Harpers Ferry and see three States, two battlefields, two rivers and a panorama of natural scenery which the Kiwanis Club calls “the…
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…
The title of this piece may seem odd in light of recent events in New Orleans and the mass hysteria over all things Confederate since June 2015. Monuments have come…
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…
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 tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. — THOMAS JEFFERSON A Review of In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Noble E….
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,…
On the morning of July 5, 1880, Colonel E.B.C. Cash and Colonel William M. Shannon faced each other with pistols near Du Bose’s bridge in Darlington County, S,C. At a…
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…
Want to learn about one of the greatest statesmen that the United States has ever produced? Then get hold of John C. Calhoun: American Portrait by Margaret Coit. When this…
According to the modern historical establishment, John C. Calhoun is the ultimate American villain. These esteemed historians think lofty assessments from previous decades failed to account for his glaring inconsistencies…
The Fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, we repeat, of genius, and that of no common order. Had he been even a Yankee, this genius would have been rendered immediately…
Every so often, a candid examination of current events makes famous incidents in American history altogether relevant again. In my mind no incident demonstrates this more than the Stamp Act…
Abraham Lincoln and George Washington stare silently at one another across the reflecting pool on the National Mall in Washington D.C., their paths inextricably linked by the historians who consider…
John Oller, The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution (Da Capo Press, 2016) Francis Marion is better remembered today than he used to be. There was a…
Early in February, the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia voted 3-2 to remove a bronze equestrian monument to Robert E. Lee that stands in a downtown park named in his…
I am always glad to talk about my favourite subject–-John C. Calhoun. I think it will become apparent that what he has to say has some relevance to our topic…
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….
In our time, we think we know a lot about presidential cover-ups. There was Nixon’s Watergate, of course. Some of us remember Lyndon Johnson’s problems with Bobby Baker. And President…
William S. Belko, Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew’s Court (The University of Alabama Press, 2016). Sometimes a professional historian gets it right. William…
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, which began with the epic demand, “ That these…
American historians often write of a contrast between the South, a closed reactionary society, and the West, free and open and characteristically American. The dichotomy thus presented is a false…
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. Clyde Wilson on “American Culture: Virginia or Massachusetts?” at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School.
Dr. Donald Livingston on “When the South Was America, 1607-1861” at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School on “The Southern Tradition and the Renewal of America,” June 2016.
The 1861-65 war destroyed the American South’s economic, legal, political and social systems, and afterward ruled the region with proconsuls dispatched from Washington. From this aftermath of war came the…
This essay was presented at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. When I was young I used to read a lot of books about archaeology—the study of ancient lost worlds…
—there was no television; and then when there was one station on two hours a day. —newspapers were locally owned, had lots of locally written literate material, and even had…
General Richard Taylor was only son of President Zachary Taylor. His father and mother were natives of Virginia, and his grand father, also a Virginian, commanded a brigade of Virginia…
It is generally thought that when the earliest Homo sapiens arrived on the scene in Africa and Asia less than a hundred-thousand years ago, all of North and South America…
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…
[Extract from speech delivered in the United States Senate, March 16, 1846.] But I oppose war, not simply on the patriotic ground of a citizen looking to the freedom and…
The date was Tuesday, November 5th . . . the year was 1889 . . . federal and local elections were being held in twenty states throughout America. In addition…
Every student of history knows at least a brief sketch of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, but most people don’t realize that Alexander Hamilton’s excise tax on distilled spirits hit George Washington…
The mission of the Abbeville Institute, to redeem what is worthwhile in the Southern tradition, is an embattled one. The dominant powers in American discourse today have succeeded in confining…
Published in honor of James Jackson’s birthday, September 21. Delivered in Savannah, in February, 1806, by the Author of this work. IT is announced to us, that on the 19th…
This essay was originally published at The Imaginative Conservative and is published here in honor of Carroll’s birthday, September 19. The last of the American signers of the Declaration of…
(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,…
The Roman historian Titus Livius once called Rome “the greatest nation in the world.” He wrote those words in a time of moral and political decline, and Livy was hoping…
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…
In 1935 the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) constructed Confederate Memorial Hall as a residence for girls at Nashville’s Peabody College. Originally residents who were descendants of Confederate veterans…
General Lee was a soldier and leader of men, not a politician. Although several of his decisions as soldier had an important political impact in American history, he seldom discussed…
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…
Hollywood has struck again with another “Civil War” movie that, unsurprisingly as it may seem, does not do justice to the real Southland or the Confederacy. The latest episode is…
In America, there are a lot of places you can go that will make you feel like you’re in a foreign country. Certain areas of Miami, Phoenix, or San Francisco…
Address delivered to the graduates of the South Carolina College, December 1821. Gentlemen, YOU are now about to quit the precincts of the College, and to enter upon the commerce…
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…
Sir, South Carolina has not gone one step further than Mr. Jefferson himself was disposed to go in relation to the present subject of our present complaints; not a step…
This piece is published in honor of Davis’s birthday, June 3. With unaffected distrust of my ability to meet the demands of such a great hour as this, I rejoice…
Originally published at Circa1865.com. The presidential messages of Jefferson Davis were filled with assertions of the South’s legal right to secede and form a more perfect union, and determine its…
It is said that the more things change, the more they stays the same. This has proven more than a mere cliche in the aftermath of the horrifying events in…
The most recent issue of Hallowed Ground, a publication of the Civil War Trust, features an 1863 photograph of several Confederate soldiers laid out in shallow graves—casualties of the fighting…
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…
Throughout the entire South, our Confederate Southern heritage is under massive attack. This time, it’s not just Yankee invaders who are doing this under a new Reconstruction; it’s being reinforced…
A new contribution to Southern literature from one or both of the Kennedy brothers, authors of the classic The South Was Right! and other good books, is always a cause…
John C. Culhoon. Culhoon is the right pronunciation by the way. John C. Culhoon was an upcountryman. We upcountry people tend to suspect Charlestonians, like Dr. Fleming, of being somewhat…
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…
This essay is taken from The South in the Building of the Nation Series, Vol. 4 The Political History. THE political theory on which the Southern states in 1860 and…
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…
In the Old South, only those children whose parents thought they needed education, attended school; many did not. Of those who did not, many were taught at home to read…
Throughout most of American history region has been a better predictor of political position than party. That aspect of our reality has been neglected and suppressed in recent times as…
This essay was originally published in The Georgia Review, Vol. II, No. 3 (Fall 1948), 297-303. As the Civil War assumes increasingly the role of an American Iliad, a tendency…
This essay is excerpted from the Preface to Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997) by James I. Robertson, Jr. Thomas Jonathan Jackson’s walnut bookcase at the…
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject…
This essay is the introduction to Larry Koger’s book, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860. Black slaveholding is a historical phenomenon which has not been…
A review of Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, by Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, 447 pages; and Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slavemasters…
This article was originally printed at TheRoot.com on March 4, 2013. One of the most vexing questions in African-American history is whether free African Americans themselves owned slaves. The short…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 28, 2015-January 1, 2016. Topics: Southern literature, the year in review, John C. Calhoun, slavery, the Confederate Flag, Southern film, California.
This piece is taken from Varina Davis’s recollections of life in the South, published in the New York World on December 13, 1896, and reprinted here. …Rice, flour, molasses and…
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…
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…
History is a liberal art and one profits by studying the whole of it, including the lost causes. All of us arc under a mortal temptation to grant the accomplished…
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…
Martha Jane Davis (Campbell) was born in Reed Creek, Henry County, Virginia in 1840. Her mother died when Little Mattie was two, and, her Turner grandparents (who lived nearby) took…
Several generations after his lifetime Jefferson became best known, as he still is, of course, for these words “All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator…
This story was originally published at Alabama Pioneers and comes from the book Alokoli : the Choctaw County. “Tell us about when you were little” was the oft repeated request…
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…
‘If only I can restore to our institutions their primitive simplicity and purity, can only succeed in banishing those extraneous corrupting influences which tend to fasten monopoly and aristocracy on…
This article is reprinted from Edward Spencer, An Outline Public Life and Services Of Thomas F. Bayard, Senator of the United States from the State Of Delaware, 1869-1880. With Extractions from His Speeches and…
I can still recall one of my college economics professor’s witticisms. When a student mentioned that the current year’s test had the same questions as last year’s, the professor replied:…
In 1865, a writer for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine described Charleston, South Carolina, contrasting her condition before the war, and after four years of siege, blockade and bombardment: Not many…
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…
…… Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or Inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known and my…
“Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat, They oughta get a rich man to vote like that.” Bob McDill, “Song of the South” The presidential candidacy of Jim Webb marks,…
Well, another year has come and gone that the Auburn Heritage Association did not invite me back to portray secessionist William F. Samford in their annual cemetery lantern tour. This…
When I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina as a retiree over twenty years ago, I brought much of the Yankee historical baggage—as written by the victors—of the War Between the…
Declining prosperity is now a settled fact of American life. Prosperity is not measured by the day’s average of stock speculation, or the profits of bankers, or the munificence of…
Criss-crossing the South, from Virginia and Maryland to Texas, and from Missouri and Tennessee to South Carolina and Florida, there are thirteen museums dedicated to the myriad oddities of life…
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