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Southern Politics

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The Prophetic Southern Voices Who Opposed Federal Overreach

Some of the most forceful warnings against political centralization during the founding era came from a handful of figures rooted in the southern states. Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina produced voices who saw the proposed Constitution as a blueprint for consolidated, potentially tyrannical national power. With the benefit of hindsight, their warnings about the dangers of moving authority from…
Jose Nino
June 10, 2026
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Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Tale of Two Primaries

President Donald J. Trump’s use of the primary to remove his opponents from political office was singularly successful this past primary season.  In the past, the tactic was not always successful. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, much to his later chagrin, attempted the same tactic in 1938 to remove conservative Southern Democrats who began to oppose what they viewed as the…
John Devanny
June 1, 2026
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Remembering Martin Dies, Jr.

Few political figures in the 20th century confronted communist subversion and federal overreach as aggressively as Martin Dies Jr. of Texas. Born in Colorado City, Texas on November 5, 1900, Dies emerged from the Lone Star State's conservative Democratic tradition to become one of the century's most consequential congressional investigators. His father, Martin Dies Sr., served as a Democratic congressman…
Jose Nino
May 28, 2026
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Calculating the Value of Union

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

One of my favorite writers, who has long passed, Charley Reese, wrote an editorial for the Orlando Sentinel 25 years ago. I believe it was his final effort for the O.S. It is in no way dated. It could have been written yesterday, and it would fit perfectly with the current horrid simulation in Washington, D.C of the so-called government…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 12, 2026
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A Model of Government Stewardship

Thomas Jefferson had, in his first term as US president, one of the most successful presidencies in US history. Knowing the pricelessness of books, he sanctioned the Library of Congress and helped to build it. He purchased the Louisiana territories for 10 million dollars—a pittance—and doubled the size of the country. He began a course to reduce the US debt, and despite purchasing the Louisiana lands, the…
M. Andrew Holowchak
May 11, 2026
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Lessons on Liberty from the States’ Rights Democrats

In the 1940s, the Democratic Party was fractured by a dispute that eventually split the party into factions. On the surface, as described by the New York Times in 1939, the issue concerned the specifics of the New Deal. The moderates or “conservatives” supported limited federal interventions, while the “liberals” were pushing for a much more expansive interventionist program. The…
Wanjiru Njoya
May 7, 2026
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Crying Out in the Wilderness

A review of Joseph Scotchie, Samuel T. Francis and the Revolution from the Middle (Shotwell, 2025) by Jack Trotter In the Old Testament, the prophet Samuel is called three times by God to “listen to the voice of the people.” In these latter days, his namesake, Samuel Francis (1947-2005), is often described as a “prophet,” even by some of those who reviled…
Jack Trotter
May 5, 2026
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Harry Byrd, Carter Glass, and Opposition to the New Deal

In the words of one scholar, “the years from Reconstruction to the late 1950s witnessed Virginia’s fall from prominence.” This statement is true in many respects, as the South suffered greatly after the war and Reconstruction, not only in an economic sense but a political one as well. No Southerner could hope to win the presidency or vice presidency in…
Ryan Walters
February 9, 2026
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The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson

A review of Luigi Marco Bassani’s Liberty, State, & Union: The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson (Mercer, 2010). I am always appreciative when I can read the title of some book and it gives me some idea of the content of the book and its thesis. That might seem like a claim, mundane and perhaps even foolish. Are not all titles…
M. Andrew Holowchak
February 4, 2026
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Calhoun’s Doctrine of the Concurrent Majority

Originally published at Mises.org In the absence of effective checks on government power, all governments tend towards tyranny. This explains why John C. Calhoun defended the constitutional principle of limited government, emphasizing the importance of restraining the power of the majority. Calhoun argued that the aim of a constitution is not merely to confer power, but also to restrain it,…
Wanjiru Njoya
January 13, 2026
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The Conspiracy No One is Talking About

Originally published at From the Desk of Jon Harris. I recently recorded a podcast on John Taylor of Caroline’s important but often neglected book New Views of the Constitution (1823). I initially believed that the most compelling way to introduce this work to modern audiences would be to highlight how Taylor, writing from a federalist perspective, disagreed with Joseph Story’s…
Jonathan Harris
December 8, 2025
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The Day After in the Old Dominion

Virginia’s contribution to the blue wave this fall saw the usual round of Republican hand wringing and finger pointing. President Donald Trump blamed the defeats in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City on the absence of his name on the ballot, as well as voter frustration with the government shutdown. Concerning the governor’s race in Virginia, several pundits blame…
John Devanny
November 19, 2025
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The Secession Alternative for Red Counties in Virginia

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

In paying tribute to the “genius, integrity, and courage” of Murray Rothbard, Clyde Wilson observed that “Murray is no longer with us in the flesh, but the fireball of his mind and spirit will be giving us light and energy deep into the 21st century.” This light shines forth from letters recently unearthed in a Pennsylvania warehouse by Daniel J.…
Wanjiru Njoya
October 9, 2025
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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
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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
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Reply to MAGA: MAHAHAHA!

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Mark 8:36 On July 23, 2023 Donald Trump addressed the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Summit in Washington, D.C., delivering his AI action plan including these words (here starting about 21:35): We also have to have a single federal standard not 50 different states…
Mike Goodloe
September 15, 2025
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Oh Donald, Where Art Thou?

A while back I wrote that I would really believe in Donald Trump when I saw the Arlington reconciliation monument go back up. Almost hard to believe, but it looks like it’s happening. It seems also that immigration is being seriously addressed, and I am happy about that too! Although I fear it is far too late to repair the…
Clyde Wilson
August 20, 2025
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The Kingfish

“Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.” With that slogan Huey Pierce Long Jr. promised to dynamite America’s caste system and pave the rubble with schools, hospitals, and paved highways. To his enemies he was a bayou Mussolini; to his followers he was the first man in living memory who kept the lights on in forgotten parishes. Strip…
John Slaughter
August 1, 2025
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Are you a Confederate but Don’t Know It?

Most of the political problems in this country won’t be settled until more folks realize the South was right. I know that goes against the P.C. edicts, but the fact is that on the subject of the constitutional republic, the Confederate leaders were right and the Northern Republicans were wrong. Many people today even argue the Confederate positions without realizing…
Charley Reese
July 31, 2025
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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
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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
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The Republican War Machine Never Dies

The escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has Americans debating the future of a "conservative" American foreign policy. President Trump campaigned on a promise to keep the United States out of World War III while creating a solution to international problems in Ukraine and the Middle East. He blustered that Europe should be forced to pay for the upkeep of…
Brion McClanahan
June 17, 2025
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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
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Hurrah for Political Chaos!

Originally published at Reckonin.com It is not easy to find out what is going on in Washington these days. That is partly due to Donald Trump’s style - many initiatives and gambits, loudly and provocatively presented. Some of these, like the tariff business, are obviously maneuvering for position; others are serious. This is wonderful and Trump is doing great service…
Clyde Wilson
June 2, 2025
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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
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What the Confederate Constitution Got Right

In today’s hypersensitive society, saying anything nice about the South, and especially the Confederacy, could very well be a death sentence in many job fields, not to mention academia. The clowns of “cancel culture” will be out in force. This should come as a shock to no one, for the South has always had to defend itself, first in the…
Ryan Walters
May 7, 2025
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The Federal Government Did Not Create the States

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

In a comment to a recent essay on Jefferson, “Jefferson on Executive Action,” an Abbevillian wrote: Can’t put Biden anywhere near Jefferson. Trump. On the other hand, seems to be acting more, much more, in the interest of saving our Republic—whether he is aware of it or not. While no where near as eloquent as Jefferson—his presidential library may not…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 18, 2025
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Gordon Chang, Allies Ad Nauseum

You can call it a trifecta or any of the obvious synonyms (trio, triplex, triad, etc.), but in any event, the contemporary political abstract  is aligned as  a unit melded from three:  one of the three being mostly admirable (within the bounds of mortal sinfulness), the second, mostly consist of  pitifully weak sissified men (and their cable-news whore), and the…
Paul H. Yarbrough
April 15, 2025
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Trump in Power: A Southern View

Originally published at Reckonin.com. Donald Trump is not the kind of character who appeals readily to Southerners. However, he is a recognisable un-Woke American type who deserves credit for some virtues. His is certainly not a Southern administration although a solid South made possible his big victory in the popular vote and the Electoral College. It is nice to see…
Clyde Wilson
April 14, 2025
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The Importance of Constitutional Government

This piece was originally published at mises.org In his book, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis explained (vol. 2) the Southern cause, as he saw it: “When the cause was lost, what cause was it? Not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights…
Wanjiru Njoya
April 4, 2025
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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
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The Future Calhoun

Today is John C. Calhoun's 243 birthday. Several years ago, I took some time to visit John C. Calhoun's grave in Charleston, SC., a massive stone monument at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church erected in the 1880s to honor the State's greatest son. Calhoun's body had been exhumed three times, once from Washington D.C. after he died in 1850 so it…
Brion McClanahan
March 18, 2025
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Nineteenth Century Jeffersonian Democrats

Originally published at Mises.org Following Donald Trump’s election victory, social media platforms were flooded with memes depicting the wailing and gnashing of teeth among Democrats bemoaning their loss. Some of these memes took a dig at the alleged historical predilection of Democrats for slavery. In a time when the subject of slavery is deemed to be so sensitive that the…
Wanjiru Njoya
March 5, 2025
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Are We Worthy?

On February 22nd in 1732, George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. 130 years later, another American president gave his second inaugural address in Richmond, Virginia. "Fellow-citizens, after the struggle of ages had consecrated the right of the Englishman to constitutional representative government, our colonial ancestors were forced to vindicate that birthright by an appeal to arms. Success crowned…
Garrick Sapp
February 24, 2025
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Power Shift

A Review of Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment (Random House, 1976) Editor’s note: Many Abbeville readers and supporters are familiar with Kirk Sale, a well-known advocate of decentralization and secessionism, and certainly a friend of the South. In asking him to review a book he penned in 1976,…
Kirkpatrick Sale
February 10, 2025
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Is MAGA in the Southern Tradition?

In a previous article I compared the 2024 election to the Battle of Gettysburg and said that I was cautiously optimistic that developments after the election would result in a rearrangement of American institutions (governmental and otherwise) so that they would more closely resemble those of the constitutional republic envisioned by the Founders.  If this occurs it will be a…
Mike Goodloe
January 17, 2025
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The War as an International Strategic Conflict

When the discussion of the causes of the war is broadened from slavery to address tariffs, federalism, and several other issues they are still commonly looked at from the perspective of political philosophy in a domestic context but the American conflict existed in an international context with several external actors. England had both a trade policy at the time of…
James (Jim) Pederson
December 13, 2024
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The 2024 Election and the Southern Tradition: the Big Picture

The central issue of the 2024 election was the question, what is democracy?  The Democrats in particular claimed that they were the defenders of “democracy.”  They were sincere, although to their opponents this claim seemed the epitome of gaslighting.  Their view is that democracy is top-down, whereby elite institutions (e.g., universities, foundations, the science establishment, big business, the media, government…
Mike Goodloe
November 25, 2024
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Reinvigorating State Power in the US Senate

Donald Trump’s victory in the election for the federal presidency has provoked bold claims of a sweeping political realignment in the States: ‘The recent political landscape has been shaken to its core, revealing a seismic shift that has emerged as a result of the latest elections. The transformative power of the MAGA movement has taken center stage, with an unprecedented…
Walt Garlington
November 18, 2024
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Lessons from Reconstruction

Originally published at Mises.org. In “The Terror of Reconstruction,” Lew Rockwell highlights the dangers of governments seeking to suppress their political opponents by an assault on citizens’ liberties. He draws upon the experience of the South under military dictatorship during the Reconstruction years as an example of what happens when governments embark on social revolution. One tactic described by Rockwell…
Wanjiru Njoya
November 4, 2024
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Conservatism? We’ll See

“The American Conservative” founders: Scott McConnell, Patrick J. Buchanan, and Taki Theodoracopulos Back in the “dark ages” I was one of the early subscribers to TAC, probably for most of the reasons that these founders had raised a flag which waved a more truthful and accurate flag of conservatism. That is, to say, in part, that once-upon-a-time, flag wavers of…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 31, 2024
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The Sovietization of Federal Elections

Traditional community life is nearly non-existent in the modern United States, the natural effect of the venomous ideologies that have been imbibed in copious quantities over the decades by both Left and Right, progressives and conservatives.  Voting days are one of the few remaining vestiges of those earlier times, one of the few communal gatherings left to us – when…
Walt Garlington
October 28, 2024
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Calhoun and “Liberum Veto”

John C. Calhoun was a brilliant political theorist and distinguished politician, and a noted champion of rights for minorities. The importance of his thoughts is reflected both in the doctrine of states' rights, as well as in relation to the federal system which serves as a textbook example of effective state management. Calhoun was also one of the first to…
Karol Mazur
October 21, 2024
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Vision of Order

A review of Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995), by Richard Weaver  Richard M. Weaver was one of the South’s finest thinkers. His Visions of Order was first published posthumously in 1964, and later republished in 1995. This edition has an excellent preface by Ted Smith III, who asks “how much relevance a…
Caryl Johnston
October 14, 2024
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The Confederate Constitution of 1861

The Confederate Constitution of 1861 is a misunderstood document that made improvements on the United States Constitution. What were they? Professors Donald Livingston and Marshall DeRosa discuss the Constitution and its currency in modern America. https://youtu.be/9TSGgOIiyPE
Abbeville Institute
October 11, 2024
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Jefferson’s Political Philosophy Critiqued

A Review of Garrett Ward Sheldon’s The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (Johns Hopkins, 1993) by Garret Ward Sheldon In his preface to The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, political theorist Garrett Ward Sheldon articulates a modest, but significant aim for beginning his book, and he does so economically: in one paragraph. Sheldon takes seriously the notion of Jefferson as…
M. Andrew Holowchak
October 10, 2024
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Jefferson’s Greatest Legacy

It is well-known today that Thomas Jefferson considered his Declaration of Independence, his Bill for Religious Freedom, and his University of Virginia to be his greatest contributions to humanity. That is why he had those deeds inscribed proudly on his tombstone. Yet perhaps his greatest legacy, mostly flouted today because of scholarly indifference to the large moral dimension of his…
M. Andrew Holowchak
September 23, 2024
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The War Against the South

Originally published at LewRockwell.com In the past few decades, the federal government has been engaged in a concerted effort to destroy the heritage of the South, and this effort has intensified under so-called “President” Joe Biden and his gang of neo-con controllers. We can be sure that if Kamala Harris takes office as his successor, these efforts will continue. After…
Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
September 4, 2024
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Too Many Skunks

I hate to take it out on Donald Trump. Whoever or whatever he is, he has spent a lot of time and money when he didn’t have to. He did most likely earn his money, unlike many of the disgusting and vile yard-dog Democrats, such as the Clintons, Obamas, Willie Brown, Pelosis, and of course there is the Biden Ukraine…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 3, 2024
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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
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Mr. Trump and the Old Dominion

Recent polls conducted by Roanoke College and Morning Consult show Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in a dead heat in the presidential race in Virginia. Mr. Trump lost Virginia to Hilary Clinton by five percentage points, a bit more than 200,00 votes, and was buried under a Biden landslide in the state by a margin of over nine percentage points…
John Devanny
June 14, 2024
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Jefferson v. Hamilton: A Northern versus Southern Feud?

As one enters Monticello, one is greeted by a bust of Jefferson facing a bust of Alexander Hamilton—“opposed in death as in life”—both by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi. The statue of Hamilton is life-size, while the statue of Jefferson is a bit larger, and that suggests not merely Jefferson’s opposition, but political victory over Hamilton. What were the reasons for…
M. Andrew Holowchak
May 28, 2024
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The Second Battle of Atlanta

My brother and I have often fantasized about combining western North Carolina (my birthplace and my extended family’s home since the 1820’s), eastern Tennessee, and north Georgia into a new state.  What a stronghold of conservatism she would be!  We had always thought that Atlanta, the largest metropolitan area in the South, would be the economic hub of our new…
Philip Dickey, MD
May 14, 2024
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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
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Jefferson on “Nation Building”

On July 19, 1823, Adamantios Koraïs—preeminent Greek scholar (1748–1833), philosopher of education, polyglot (Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Dutch, French, and English), and revolutionist—writes to Thomas Jefferson for “help from men truly free.” Circumstances in Greece are parlous. Greeks, under Turkic yoke since the middle of the fifteenth century, are in the midst of a revolution, begun in 1821, and Greeks…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 5, 2024
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Calhoun’s “Richest Legacy to Posterity”

From Gustavus M. Pinckney, The Life of John C. Calhoun The attentive reader will not have forgotten that in the letter of Mr. Calhoun in reference to his acceptance of the Secretaryship of State he made mention of a project which he had in mind for leisure hours in the home routine to which at that time he looked forward.…
Gustavus M. Pinckney
March 18, 2024
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The Birth of Jaffa and the Death of History

There have been a lot of things spoken of Goldwater, from lunatic to nationalist and everything in between. While most historians, on both the right and the left, tend to focus on these well placed propagandist terms, the few points that get perpetually overlooked by any analyst are the significant points of who he was, his own personal platform, how…
Justin Pederson
March 4, 2024
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New York v. Tennessee

You’ve probably already seen the video of a mob beating up two New York City police officers. The incident happened about 10 days ago in broad daylight in Times Square, one of the most prominent public places and tourist attractions in New York. The video shows two officers apprehending a suspect who resists arrest and is wrestled to the pavement,…
John Avery Emison
February 7, 2024
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Democrats Did Not Keep Lincoln Off the Ballot

Democrat activists in Colorado and Maine dictatorially kicked Trump off the primary ballot in those states.  Historically ignorant Neocons had a field day, labeling the Left as “Neo-Confederates.” Fox News Jesse Watters ranted, “Democrats booted Lincoln off the ballot in 10 states.” Declaring that “history always has a way of repeating itself,” he continued, “Just like Southern Democrats did to…
Carole Hornsby Haynes
February 5, 2024
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Remembering John Taylor of Caroline

Prophet of Encroaching Tyranny John Taylor of Caroline was a man of the American Revolution. During the fight for independence, he served in the Continental Army and Virginia militia. He left the latter at the end of the war with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Military life molded his character as it did for so many other men, but the enduring…
William J. Watkins
January 24, 2024
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The Kingdom of Callaway

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

In February 2000, Republican presidential candidate John McCain told “Face the Nation” that he considered the Confederate Battle Flag to be “offensive” and a “symbols of racism and slavery.” Candidate George W. Bush remarked that while he considered the display of the flag to be a state issue, he refused to allow Confederate symbolism at the Texas statehouse and had…
Brion McClanahan
January 2, 2024
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Willmoore Kendall’s Battle Lines

Few men would confuse the late Willmoore Kendall for a Southern gentleman. The son of a blind Oklahoma Southern Methodist preacher, the conservative political philosopher married three times, and carried on numerous affairs. A regular contributor to National Review, Kendall was once caught with a copy girl in the office of a colleague in NR spaces. He was an alcoholic,…
Casey Chalk
December 4, 2023
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Old Men and Honor

Old men observe and imagine the fate of the "country" that was once a relatively free group of independent states of people living freely within tribal nests of local-style Jeffersonian parlors of home and family; people who loved the land and the God who provided it. Some old men have such observations. Now in time, much past, as the fortunes…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 31, 2023
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The Making of a Conservative

The student radicals and New Leftists of the 1960s and 1970s are now the ruling elite of the U.S.  They naturally celebrate themselves as the heroes of that period of American history.  But neither then or now are they representatives of the majority of the American people.  They are affluent spoiled brats who know  nothing of the life of  middle…
Clyde Wilson
August 23, 2023
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Recognising the Southern Tradition

A review of Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism for Our Times (Routledge, 2017), by Joseph Scotchie. Joseph Scotchie’s knowledge of Southern thought in the 20th century and beyond is both encyclopedic and insightful--a rare combination. He surveys a body of Southern writing that is a major unrecognised achievement of American culture. This collection of reviews, articles, and talks…
Clyde Wilson
June 7, 2023
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George Washington and the Constitution, A Reflection

Things are seldom what they seem and therefore, beware “simple” or “easy” solutions to problems and questions that are themselves neither simple nor easy. In other words, when one is presented with what seems an obvious explanation of something that is itself anything but obvious, one should take care lest in grasping at “the answer,” one fails to understand the…
Valerie Protopapas
June 1, 2023
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The Same Old Faux Cons

We already can see the faux conservative movement seepage oozing from the political sewers. The ilk of presidential wannabees begin to whistle and flash their sexy thoughts reminding us of some fictitious “founding” of a “nation.” And how they love the flag and “our troops” and the rest of their usual bovine excreted piles of patties. They wouldn’t understand the…
Paul H. Yarbrough
February 24, 2023
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It’s Washington’s Birthday, Not President’s Day

Cindy L. Arbelbide, a historian of holidays, has written, “Historic dates, like stepping stones, create a footpath through our heritage. Experienced by one generation and recalled by those to come, it is through these annual recollections that our heritage is honored.” The celebration of the birthday of George Washington began during his lifetime and continued after his death. He was…
Timothy A. Duskin
February 22, 2023
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A Sleepy Night in Georgia

History begins with, "In the beginning…." for many of us.  Modern analysis of history begins, today it seems, with T.V. historians (most of them aren't really) who seem to perceive only that the American South which they consider an evil section not just of the United States but of the world globe has attempted to destroy any measure of the…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 18, 2023
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Jefferson’s “Textured Republicanism”

Both parties, says Jefferson to Abigail Adams (11 Sept. 1804), agree that the proper object of governing is the public good, yet they disagree concerning how it is best to promote that good. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other, the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove. We think…
M. Andrew Holowchak
December 13, 2022
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Halfbacks

In North Carolina and South Carolina native observers have noticed a phenomenon frequent enough to have a label--Halfbacks. This does not refer to football.  It refers to well-to-do Northerners who have moved to Florida, become discontented, and moved halfway back. The coastal areas of the two States are full of gated communities of mini-mansions already occupied by Northerners who the…
Clyde Wilson
December 8, 2022
Blog

The Attack on Leviathan, Part V

XIII. The Dilemma of the Southern Liberals Originally published in The American Mercury, 1934 “The Dilemma of the Southern Liberals” Back when wild-eyed suffragettes were on the losing end of Oklahoma Drills with King George V’s horse, Vanderbilt and Sewanee were Southern football giants, and the Bull Moose Party was hawking the square new deal, Southern liberals—all hopped up on…
Chase Steely
December 2, 2022
Blog

Southern Humor in Congress

The halls of Congress today are seldom filled with the sound of laughter.  The humor that pervaded congressional proceedings over a century ago has now given way to only angry shouts and hateful partisan rhetoric engendered by a variety of ever-growing regional, political, racial and social differences.  Not that such divisions did not exist during the latter half of the…
John Marquardt
November 29, 2022
Blog

Remember 1994

The problem now is the same as it was in 1994, the same as it was in 1980 (Reagan) and 2016 (Trump). The greatest Republican measure of conservatism that creates “waves” as opposed to pond-stills, e.g. Ford, Romney, McCain, Bush (any one of the New England preppies, carpetbagging Bush clan), is in the South. The real South. Not the South…
Paul H. Yarbrough
November 8, 2022
Blog

Southerners Riding the Red Wave

America’s talking heads on the right and left are predicting a conservative “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections. They predict that “conservatives” will take control of both Houses of Congress. If, and that is a big if, it happens, what opportunities will it present to those of us who want to put an end to modern Reconstruction’s anti-South cancel…
James Ronald Kennedy
November 7, 2022
Blog

Carpetbaggers

When you read Raleigh, what comes to mind? How about Charleston? Nashville? Birmingham? One can almost hear the ring of iron in the name “Birmingham”. Waves splash at the sound of Charleston. The raucous theatres of Nashville ring back when country music was “country western”. Raleigh conjures images of tar, pork and tobacco. So what happened to these industries that…
Sara Sass
October 18, 2022
Blog

Happy Birthday Senator Sam

Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina was arguably one of the most important political figures of the twentieth century. His commitment to the Constitution and willingness to stare down executive power during the 1973 Watergate hearings place him among the great conservative voices in Senate history. Ervin was first and foremost a Tar Heel. He considered his election to the…
Brion McClanahan
September 27, 2022
Blog

Biden’s Political Slavery

Joe Biden’s “address to the nation,” delivered September 1, 2022, was one of the most illuminating—as in revealing—speeches ever given by a president since Lincoln’s speech in which he falsely declared that the Union preceded and created the states. Biden’s speech, as in Lincoln’s speech, was full of emotion and ideological passion, supported by a fawning press but totally absent…
James Ronald Kennedy
September 14, 2022
Blog

“His Richest Legacy to Posterity”

From Gustavus Pinckney, Life of John C. Calhoun. The attentive reader will not have forgotten that in the letter of Mr. Calhoun in reference to his acceptance of the Secretaryship of State he made mention of a project which he had in mind for leisure hours in the home routine to which at that time he looked forward. The home…
Abbeville Institute
August 26, 2022
Blog

The Red Ripple

Why the red wave will NOT be.  The typical contemporary Republicans lie for support, then reveal their lies. The Democrats just lie. The resignation of Dr. Ann Hunter McLean from her Youngkin appointment to the Virginia Historic Resources Board is a product of the same mentality wherein Ronald Reagan was deceived in 1981 insofar as Bob Bennett’s replacing M.E. Bradford.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 25, 2022
BlogReview Posts

Confessions of a Copperhead

A review of Confessions of a Copperhead: Culture and Politics in the Modern South (Shotwell Press, 2022) by Mark Royden Winchell The concept of the South as a peculiar and singular region of America, indeed not quite American except in its vices of racism and violence, is something of an industry in the halls of academia. Numerous university centers and…
John Devanny
August 18, 2022
Blog

The Lost Cause of Conservatism

The history of political parties in America is as old as the United States itself and while the seeds of England’s Whig and Tory Parties goes back to 1679, those in America even predated the rise of most such factions in Europe by several decades. However, for half a century many of America’s founding fathers, particularly those in the South,…
John Marquardt
July 13, 2022
Blog

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Origins of Southern Constitutionalism

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School On April 10th, 1606, King James I of England (and VI of Scotland) granted letters of patent to Sir Thomas Gates and others, thereby establishing two companies for the settlement of colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America, which was then called Virginia in honour of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. The…
John Graham
July 7, 2022
Blog

The Anti-Federalists and the Ratification Debates

From the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School. I’m going to be talking about the Anti-Federalists. The first question we might ask is: “Who were the Anti-Federalists and why did they take the position they took?” Today, historians are never happy just to study the writings, speeches, correspondence, and other documents produced by the protagonists of an era or a battle.…
Marco Bassani
May 23, 2022
Blog

No Capitulation: A Call to Southern Conservatives

This piece was originally published at Chronicles Magazine and is reprinted here by permission. The following speech critical of the conservative establishment is one that I did not give at The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, S.C., whither I was invited by its organizer Gene d’Agostino, as a speaker for the evening of April 14. After espying copies of my book…
Paul Gottfried
May 2, 2022
Blog

A Red Wave? So What?

There is a vast political swell among some ill-informed conservatives that the great mid-term elections will come and a tide of goodness (spelled R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N) will sweep over the grand land, often puerilely referred to as “American exceptionalism,” for everyone. Everyone but conservatives, however. Yes, that’s what I meant.  Conservatives are republicans. Republicans are Republicans. They aren’t goodness or even good. They…
Paul H. Yarbrough
April 18, 2022
Blog

Grover Cleveland and the South, Part I

From Ryan Walters, Grover Cleveland: The Last Jeffersonian President (Abbeville Institute Press, 2021). “Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.” Thomas Jefferson “I have faith in the honor and sincerity of the respectable white people of the South. … I am a sincere friend of the negro.” Grover Cleveland On March 4,…
Ryan Walters
January 26, 2022
Blog

Democracy and Universal Suffrage

Edmund Ruffin, from his Diary: hen the mob bears the sway in elections, it knows little, & cares not at all, for the superior fitness or honesty of candidates. Each of the lowest voters gives his vote, or the direction of his vote, to some one the nearest in qualities to himself, or by whose favor the voter expects to…
Abbeville Institute
January 13, 2022
Blog

Southern Patriotism and Foreign Military Interventions

Is it un-patriotic for Southerners to question American military intervention? This is a perplexing question for those raised during the Cold War. For us, it was a battle to defeat atheistic communism—an evil power attempting to force its will upon the world. We were raised and educated by the World War II generation for whom patriotism was intricately linked to…
James Ronald Kennedy
December 29, 2021
Blog

An Able Address Against Conscription

Editor's Note: This speech was delivered in 1917 and was published in the September issue of Watson's Magazine. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: Deeply impressed with the gravity of this occasion, and an earnest desire to preserve the liberties of my people and our common country, I beg to submit, that — The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United…
H.W. Johnston
November 19, 2021
Blog

The Arrogance of Power

The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation…
J. William Fulbright
November 18, 2021
Blog

Southern Heritage and “New Right” Populism

The current conservative populist movement appears to offer some hope of mounting an effective resistance to the corporate state that was established during, and has largely adapted and stayed in power, since the failed War for Southern Independence. While having turned away from the endless wars and being able to effectively mobilize people to resist the political establishment that has…
James (Jim) Pederson
November 2, 2021
Blog

A Sham of Free Government

  Editor's Note: United States Senator Thomas F. Bayard delivered this speech in January, 1875 on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. Bayard, later United States Secretary of State, considered the military occupation of New Orleans to be an unconstitutional usurpation of power and a direct assault on republican government. He denounced Gen. Philip Sheridan, insinuated that…
Thomas F. Bayard
October 29, 2021
Blog

Remembering John C. Calhoun

Though John C. Calhoun was a distinguished American statesman and thinker, he is little appreciated in his own country. Calhoun rose to prominence on the eve of the War of 1812 as a “war hawk” in the House of Representatives and was the Hercules who labored untiringly in the war effort. While still a congressman, he was the chief architect…
John Devanny
October 26, 2021
Blog

Beautiful Losers

When T.S. Eliot said that there are no lost causes because there are no won causes, he probably was not thinking of American conservatism. Nearly sixty years after the New Deal, the American right is no closer to challenging its fundamental premises and machinery than when Old Rubberlegs first started priming the pump and scheming to take the United States…
Sam Francis
October 13, 2021
Blog

Conservative as “Defender of Liberty”

In 1960, the great Southern political philosopher Richard Weaver penned an essay titled “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground.” Most people considered Weaver to be a “conservative,” and he accepted the term, but he also thought American conservatives and libertarians had much in common and should work together for a common goal: liberty. The current internal warfare in both conservative…
Brion McClanahan
May 7, 2021
Blog

You Lie Down With Dogs, You Get Up With Fleas

Sometime back in the early sixties—climaxed in 1964 with Barry Goldwater’s efforts—the South with its conservative measure, almost En Masse wanted (and needed) a place to go other than the old Democrat bastion of “Solid South.” The SS political vector had been in unofficial direction and vogue since the dastardly and corrupt destruction and "reconstruction" of the South; post-War-Between-the-States (the…
Paul H. Yarbrough
February 19, 2021
Podcast

Podcast Episode 245

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

The New Face of “Liberation”

It is a sad thing that it should fall to a junior representative from New York to tell the truth about the South’s position in national politics and culture. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has done so by saying that our states are oppressed, and that there can be no national healing until we are liberated. In this she was right in what…
Tom Hervey
January 22, 2021
Review Posts

Conservatism and the Southern Tradition

A review of Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (All Points Books, 2018) by Sir Roger Scruton. There is no such thing as conservatism, according to Sir Roger Scruton’s 155-page monograph, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition. That is, there is no unified theory of conservatism because it is always localized to a time, a place, and a…
Duncan Killen
January 20, 2021
Blog

Pretenses

You might call it propaganda, state lies, fraud, illusions or delusions. I prefer pretenses which afford the peddler thereof and the hapless fool who buys into them just the degree of deniability so that they can pretend that what is represented or misrepresented is respectable and a touchstone for the common weal. 1. America was founded: The country which we…
Robert Peters
January 14, 2021
Blog

The Blundering Generations and the Crisis of Legitimacy

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 and II, The Thirty Years War, The Great Deluge that rocked Eastern Europe and the Polish Commonwealth. Even the Glorious Revolution, that peaceful coup launched by Anglicans and Whigs against…
John Devanny
December 18, 2020
Blog

The South in Retreat

Editor's Note: This lecture was delivered at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Carey Roberts explores the relationship between the Old Whig faction in the South--e.g. Alexander H. Stephens--and the New Democrats who controlled the region after the War. Roberts concludes that the Jeffersonian vision of America, dominant in the antebellum South, was bulldozed by the Old Whigs…
Carey Roberts
December 16, 2020
Blog

The Power of the Powerless

‘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 history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.’ – Milan Kundera ‘I personally think…
James Rutledge Roesch
November 4, 2020
Blog

A Fool and His Money are Soon Elected

Will Rogers had a quip for just about any situation, but he loved to talk politics. Rogers was born on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. His father was a Confederate veteran and political leader in the Cherokee nation. At the height of his career, Will Rogers had the number one radio program in America and was the highest paid actor…
Brion McClanahan
November 3, 2020
Blog

Blackstone’s Influence on American Political Philosophy

The question before us, ‘how did the writings of Blackstone influence American political philosophy, and what evidence for this influence is seen in Tocqueville's observations of American political life?’ is perhaps best quantified with qualifiers such as influence ‘upon whom’, ‘for how long’, ‘to what extent’. If we accept a genealogy of ideas from Blackstone’s conception of positive law reinforcing…
Barry Clark
May 13, 2020
Review Posts

Real Conservatism

A review of The Southern Tradition: The Achievements and Limitations of Southern Conservatism (Harvard, 1994) by Eugene Genovese The notion of a Southern polit­ical tradition can be understood as conservative, complete, and consistent with its roots. Eugene Genovese’s The Southern Tradition poignantly articulates these qualities from the perspec­tive of a Marxist gone conserva­tive—a Southern conservative, indeed. Elucidating Genovese’s understanding of…
Won Kim
September 3, 2019
Blog

The Place of Nathaniel Macon in Southern History

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 North Carolinian, as a Georgian, or simply as a Southern Democrat. His share in the political development of the South is but vaguely known, yet every southern state has either…
William E. Dodd
June 27, 2019
Blog

The South Carolina Federalists

Original material for Southern history has been so scarce at the centres where American historiographers have worked, that the general writers have had to substitute conjecture for understanding in many cases when attempting to interpret Southern developments. The Federalists of the South have suffered particularly from misrepresentation and neglect. Their Democratic-Republican contemporaries of course abused them; the American public at…
Ulrich B. Phillips
June 26, 2019
Review Posts

The First Congress

A review of The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (Simon and Schuster, 2016) by Fergus Bordewich Amateur historians usually write excellent histories. Left unshackled by the latest groupthink of the academy, these historians tend to be independent thinkers and more importantly better writers than their professional counterparts. Shelby Foote…
Brion McClanahan
April 2, 2019
Blog

A Crisis of Confidence

Pat Caddell died on February 16. Several major news outlets ran stories about his influence in both the Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump campaigns. Everyone understood Caddell's role as the voice of the "outsider." A colleague at the College of Charleston, where Caddell served in the Political Science department for the last couple of years, said that Caddell hated everything…
Brion McClanahan
February 25, 2019
Blog

In Search of the Real Southern Democrat

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 time in Union County in late 1982.  (Maybe it was still Edwards then, maybe Big K; the chronology is no longer clear so many years later.)  He was a supervisor…
Randall Ivey
February 21, 2019
Blog

Texas is Going to be Bluer Than Bluebonnets

Texas will turn blue before it’s over with its local Neocons in charge. Former sports announcer and Bankrupt, now Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick has decided that his historical acumen can bring Texas forward into the true modern way of thinking.  That is, the South is and always had been a bunch of ignorant savages. But no more. If…
Paul H. Yarbrough
February 1, 2019
Blog

Southern Conservatives

The South is and always been conservative. But with the constant hammer of political correctness and political falsehood (redundant?) pounded on it, it has waffled among many who brand it as evil. Punchy from the blows, it has sought to defend itself in the wrong places: In presentism and with Republicans. Republican and Air Force veteran Mike Hill, the first…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 18, 2019
Blog

Trump Agonistes

The presidential election of 2016 gave promise to be a watershed in American politics. Donald Trump appeared, a non-politician and rich enough to support his own campaign without selling himself to the usual special interests. He collected all the right enemies. He deflated a whole platoon of Republican celebrities down to their actual pigmy size. He vanquished them by something…
Clyde Wilson
January 16, 2019
Blog

The Supreme Selection Supported by Senator Sasse and the Several Dwarfs

Why does congress have hearings for people who are paraded through their judiciary committee- noise for examination as to their qualifications. Quality of what?  Those jobs, for example the Supreme Court Justices, certainly only require little more than a reasonably educated person. And the people examining these people seemingly requires virtually no intelligence at all. It is a monstrous show…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 8, 2018
Blog

The Last republican President

Jimmy Carter may have been the last Jeffersonian to be president. A recent article in the Washington Post labeled him the "Un-Celebrity President." In either case, Carter is a reflection of a people and a place. He is the most authentic man elected president since Calvin Coolidge, and like Coolidge a true Christian gentleman. At the very minimum, Carter represented the…
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2018
Blog

July 4 Comes and Goes, but Doesn’t Square with The Swamp

“Living in Washington, you can't take politics too seriously. I draw the line at honesty. I have no time for political hacks who say things they don't believe because they get paid to.” Tucker Carlson My opinion on Trump’s election is that those who voted for him (by states, as required) was because those people who voted knew, and know,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 2, 2018
Blog

Is Dixie A Captive Nation?

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 such a question—is it forbidden in politically correct America to ask such a “confrontational” question? Conservatives would immediately dismiss such rhetorical questions as being unpatriotic or even treasonous—after all, everyone…
James Ronald Kennedy
July 9, 2018
Blog

Why the South Needs the Electoral College

The Electoral College, a bulwark of federalism,  is under attack.  Straightforward abolition of the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, which is most unlikely to be passed in the foreseeable future.  But the Electoral College now faces a more serious,  insidious threat from the so-called  National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC,) which purports to operate through the Electoral College…
Michael Arnheim
June 28, 2018
Blog

The Only Way to Drain the Swamp

“When you are up to your hindquarters in alligators—it is hard to remember that your intentions were to drain the swamp.”  This old country-boy saying seems most appropriate for President Trump as he attempts to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. The continuing efforts of the ruling elite in Washington to destroy a lawfully elected president because “their” anointed candidate…
James Ronald Kennedy
May 28, 2018
Blog

Yankee Sanctification

“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 university nestled in the mountains of Virginia and named after one of the state’s most famous sons, that her Northern dormitory suite-mates were horrified by such flagrant abuse of their…
Dissident Mama
May 16, 2018
Blog

This is why the Founding Generation Crafted the 2nd Amendment

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 them or not), I thought it might be interesting to talk briefly about the Battle of Athens. If you’re like a lot of people, you probably haven’t heard about this…
Lewis Liberman
March 9, 2018
Review Posts

Remember Mississippi

A review of Remember Mississippi: How Chris McDaniel Exposed the GOP Establishment and Inspired a Revolution (WND, 2017) by Ryan S. Walters. Ryan S. Walters, who is book review editor for Abbeville Institute and editor of Mississippi Conservative Daily, has produced a highly readable biography of his close friend, Chris McDaniel. For those who may not remember, McDaniel is the…
Paul Gottfried
February 6, 2018
Blog

New South Voices of the Southern Tradition

Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. As scholars dedicated to exploring what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition, we are most often drawn to the antebellum South and the early federal period, the days when Jeffersonian federalism and political economy reigned supreme and Southern statesmen were regarded as the best in the land. We still fight…
Brion McClanahan
July 28, 2017
Blog

Fired in Washington

The Left is wringing its hands and talking about impeachment because of the Comey firing, but it has a very short memory--its hands resemble Lady MacBeth's- dripping with the blood of Republicans they have savaged in unceremonious firings over the years. Some of the very people crying buckets of tears for the insensitive way Comey was fired have treated Republicans with utter contempt.…
Christina Jeffrey
May 23, 2017
Blog

Republican Death Wish

As readers of this column well know, I have never really trusted the Republican Party. Even in 1962, when I first worked actively for a Republican candidate (the late Bill Workman), I saw the arrogance of the Party leadership—its love of money and power, its fine contempt for grassroots beliefs and sensibilities. Over the years I have come to understand…
Thomas Landess
April 6, 2017
Blog

On Liberty

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, most dear," has slipped out of many recent editions. Like most of the South, Calhoun was on the losing side of the liberty versus union debate. After the Second War…
Thomas Fleming
April 3, 2017
Blog

The South’s Gonna Do It Again

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 don't see what makes Southern life so wonderful that you and your friends want to impose it on the rest of the country." I did my best to reassure him…
Thomas Fleming
March 15, 2017
Blog

Liberal and Conservative

The terms “liberal” and “conservative” were usable signs in a society in which the state was governed by politics. They are of little use the in 21st century United States because “politics” no longer plays any significant role in governance. In a dynamic and free republican society, citizens of similar ideas, values, and interests, and even inherited allegiances and inclinations,…
Clyde Wilson
December 8, 2016
Blog

If This Be Treason….

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 dupes in the early stages of Alzheimers. But there is a hard core of latent fascism out there. Though they deviously misuse the idea to slander opposition, leftists are not…
Clyde Wilson
October 4, 2016
Blog

Up, Maybe, From Liberalism

When I was active in College Democrats at my small state college, in the early 2000s, we didn’t quite fancy ourselves revolutionaries. Middle class origins were universal; collared shirts were frequent; raised fists were nonexistent. Many of our meetings and events were, like so much else in college, little more than excuses to drink beer. We didn’t aspire to bring…
R.M. Stangler
September 30, 2016
Blog

No Confederacy, No Republicans, But a Pale Horse

The Republican party is no more republican then the Democratic party is democratic. Both are oligarchies promoting their namesakes as if those in charge (power) have the interests of the people firmly in their hearts (with their pocketbooks in their hands). They are both corrupt, though the Democrats have taken fraud and debasement to levels (down) not seen since Thaddeus…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 26, 2016
Blog

Call Me Simple with Strange Words for Strange Days

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 and the population gets dumber and dumber. Why the government spends billions on “intelligence” and defense but could not prevent 9/11. Why pointless filthy language has taken over in popular…
Clyde Wilson
September 7, 2016
Review Posts

The South as an Independent Nation

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

More Deja Vu, circa the George W. Bush Years

Twenty-three Republican Senators joined a large majority of Democrats to vote for the Bush bill to amnesty millions of present and future illegal aliens. The bill passed the Senate 62–36. The Republican Senators supporting amnesty and future immigration increases were from Maine (2), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio (2), Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona,…
Clyde Wilson
August 31, 2016
Blog

South of New York with Charley and Me

Southerners (and there are many who still proudly spell that with a capital “S” even if positioned in the middle of a sentence; we don’t simply think we are that because we live farther south of Canada than the masses in New York et al.) remain steadfast when in a fight, sometimes to the point of leading, like the great…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 25, 2016
Blog

The Vanishing Republic of Our Fathers

The New South is one of the more misunderstood periods in American history. The contemporary narrative generally describes the period and its leaders as dense political hacks riding the coattails of Northern business elites. They were "wannabe" statesmen whose political ideology was singularly tied to race. This perspective is clouded by present conditions and our own short-sighted infatuation with racial politics. Historians…
Brion McClanahan
August 11, 2016
Blog

Rats and Republicans

Never knew for sure where the expression came from that my grandmother voiced to my brother and me from time to time, “You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” but whether or not it was original with her, that probably wasn’t vital to her concern; only the intent to make a point for her grandsons. I’d like…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 9, 2016
Review Posts

Are Southerners Different?

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 would appear—should be able to sit down over glasses of sour mash and find ourselves in such sweet agreement on the range of problems facing the world and the humankind…
John William Corrington
July 26, 2016
Blog

The Imperial and Momentary We

This piece was originally published in Chronicles Magazine, October 2012. “O Fame, O Fame! Many a man ere this Of no account hast thou set up on high.” —Boethius “It is a kind of baby talk, a puerile and wind­blown gibberish. . . . In content it is a vacuum.” —H.L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding’s speeches Americans are a…
Clyde Wilson
May 13, 2016
Blog

Vale Res Publica

Once again, it is politicking time in the good ol’ US of A.  The Democrats, the party of youth, vision, and vigor, present to the country a senile old socialist who doesn’t believe that poor white people exist, and a former first lady rejected by Netflix central casting for a role in  House of Cards (It was the looks, not…
John Devanny
March 24, 2016
Blog

Elephants in Dixie

The origin of the elephant as a symbol of the Republican Party occurred in 1874 after a political cartoon by Thomas Nast appeared in the popular New York newspaper, “Harper’s Weekly.” It was during the congressional elections of that year when Nast, a renowned Republican satirist, drew a picture of the Democratic donkey dressed in a lion’s skin frightening away…
John Marquardt
February 9, 2016
Clyde Wilson Library

The Way We Are Now

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 with school bullies. * * * * I may not be a good American. I have never watched a Super Bowl or an NBA championship, never been to Las Vegas,…
Clyde Wilson
February 3, 2016
Clyde Wilson Library

It’s True What They Say About Dixie

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 the rest of the country has conspired or acquiesced in transforming the South into a replica of Ohio. Yet the notorious squeak vote on the ObamaCare bill shows that the…
Clyde Wilson
January 27, 2016
Review Posts

“We want not Gascons, but Southern gentlemen, honorable, high-toned men of strict integrity and straight hair.”

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 of the great events in the history of North Carolina, and to. embalm the memories of the illustrious actors therein. Perhaps, it may not be amiss in me to pursue…
Daniel Harvey Hill
December 15, 2015
Review Posts

Defending the Southern Tradition

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 fact more than we should. That the fall of Rome, the dissolution of medieval Catholicism, the overthrow of Napoleon, the destruction of the Old South were purposeful and just are…
Richard M. Weaver
November 26, 2015
Blog

John William Corrington and Southern Conservatism

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 a jazzy voice and bold pen whose work has since been unjustly neglected. A lawyer and an English professor, an ambivalent Catholic and a devotee of the philosopher Eric Voegelin,…
Allen Mendenhall
October 29, 2015
Review Posts

Thomas F. Bayard and the Defense of the South, 1866-1876

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 the Debates Of Congress (1880) and is published in honor of Bayard's birthday, October 29. The war was fought for the Union. Whatever may have been the hopes or desires of some of…
Edward Spencer
October 27, 2015
Blog

The Last Southern Democrat

“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, perhaps, the last gasp of that nearly extinct species of politician populus austrinalus, the southern democrat. Webb, a native Missourian, has an impressive record of public service: a marine officer…
John Devanny
October 19, 2015
Blog

Trump: A Southern Conservative Perspective

Source: Washington Post There are several attributes of Donald Trump’s bid for the U.S. Presidency that this Paleo-Conservative finds to be interesting. To follow is an adumbration of the more salient. His campaign style is refreshing. The absence of teleprompters, which results in spontaneity, which in turn reveals the unvarnished candidate in contradistinction to the coached, stale, and unconvincing political…
Marshall DeRosa
September 2, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

What This Country Needs

In one of Henry James’s less unreadable novels, The Bostonians, the hero is Basil Ransom, an impoverished ex-Confederate from Mississippi who is trying to make his way professionally in the urban North. The author wants us to see the tough, realistic, earthy Ransom as a healthy contrast to the decayed idealism of the wealthy, reformist, insular, enervated society of Boston.…
Clyde Wilson
July 8, 2015
Blog

Caitlyn Jenner and the New South

It is not necessary to detail Bruce Jenner’s transformation into Caitlyn Jenner. Suffice it to say that we have been informed that Bruce’s inner self was at war with his physical self. With the assistance of modern medicine, Bruce was physically modified into Caitlyn. This is not to say that Bruce the male was transformed into Caitlyn a female. Nevertheless,…
Marshall DeRosa
July 2, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

The Grand Old (Stupid) Party

The awful Obama is pushing terrible things on our country like socialised medicine, big spending, corporate bailouts, affirmative action, and amnesty for illegal aliens. He must be defeated so the Republicans can get in and push socialised medicine, big spending, corporate bailouts, affirmative action, and amnesty for illegal aliens. Obama is conducting two endless and pointless wars in Asia. He…
Clyde Wilson
July 1, 2015
Blog

“Hang the Usurpers”

On November 21, 1793, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill titled “An Act declaratory of certain parts of the retained sovereignty of the State of Georgia.” It’s unclear as to whether or not the Georgia Senate concurred. The bill was in response to the Chisholm v. Georgia , the case resulting in the ratification of the 11th Amendment.…
Marshall DeRosa
June 15, 2015
Blog

“…The Patriotic Gore, That Flecked the Streets of Baltimore?”: Musings on the Baltimore Riot by a Native Son

The recent riots in Baltimore gave most Americans pause as they struggled to make sense of the violence that tore at the fabric of some of the city’s most impoverished and desperate neighborhoods.  President Barack Obama moved swiftly to enlighten Americans that the origins of the violence in Baltimore could be traced back to the days of Jim Crow and…
John Devanny
May 15, 2015
Blog

No History, No Culture, No Past

  The title of this article is how the radical Muslim organization, ISIS, characterizes its callous destruction of Jewish, Christian, and other pre-Islamic religious statuary; places of worship, libraries, and other ancient cultural artifacts. There are even videos of ISIS slaughtering groups of civilians. As justification for these massacres and devastation, ISIS claims that its concept of the Muslim faith…
Gail Jarvis
May 14, 2015
Blog

New From Southern Pens, Part 2

Maryland Redeemed Everybody knows that our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was written by Francis Scott Key as he watched the British attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor during the War of 1812. Almost nobody knows the rest of the story. In 1861, Key’s grandson, Francis Key Howard, was locked up in Fort McHenry.   Howard wrote: “The flag which…
Clyde Wilson
May 8, 2015
Blog

Post Appomattox Fallacies Justifying Federal Tyranny

“We the people” of Dixie are in a unique position in today’s America. We are, though most Southerners do not realize it, a conquered and occupied people. A people of a once free nation—the Confederate States of America composed of former sovereign states. Southerners are a minority in a nation ruled by the secular humanist majority of the North.  This…
James Ronald Kennedy
April 23, 2015
Blog

The Old South,The New South, and The Neutered South

The phrase, "The New South", appears in the 1886 speech that Atlanta newspaper editor, Henry Grady, delivered to the New England Society in New York. In fact, the origination of the phrase is often attributed to the former Atlanta editor. Reconstruction was only a few years in the past when Grady addressed the New England Society. The South was struggling…
Gail Jarvis
April 6, 2015
Review Posts

True American Whiggery: John Tyler and Abel P. Upshur

This piece is taken from Brion McClanahan and Clyde Wilson Forgotten Conservatives in American History. Two dates changed the course of American political history. On 13 September 1841, the Whigs expelled President John Tyler from their Party, outraged over his “betrayal” of what they considered true Whig political and economic principles. Shorty over two years later, on 28 February 1844,…
Brion McClanahan
March 31, 2015
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“His Accidency:” The Indispensable John Tyler

In honor of John Tyler's birthday (March 29), I thought it proper to include a excerpt from my new book, Compact of the Republic: The League of States and the Constitution, detailing the actions of a President I believe followed the Constitution strictly and has been cast aside by history. Called “His Accidency” by his political adversaries to refer to…
Dave Benner
March 30, 2015
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Calhoun on American Government, Politics, and War

"When it comes to be once understood that politics is a game; that those who are engaged in it but act a part; that they make this or that profession, not from honest conviction or intent to fulfill it, but as the means of deluding the people, and through that delusion to acquire power, when such professions are to be…
Clyde Wilson
March 19, 2015
Blog

“The Last Roman”: John Caldwell Calhoun

Born in 1782 near Abbeville, South Carolina, Calhoun's educational opportunities were limited, albeit advanced by the occasional tutelage offered by his brother-in-law, Reverend Moses Waddel. After his parents' death and a period of self-education, Calhoun entered Yale College, studying under the arch-Federalist Dr. Timothy Dwight. He proceeded to study law for two years under Judge Tapping Reeve at the Litchfield…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
March 18, 2015
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Is Disparaging the South Becoming Passe?

The lack of interest in the film "Selma" by both the public and the film industry is a healthy sign. It is an indication that the public is growing tired of this particular movie formula (often called the "Mississippi Burning Syndrome") ; portrayals of racist, bigoted Southerners from fifty years ago. This movie formula has been a powerful opinion-molding device,…
Gail Jarvis
February 6, 2015
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Yankee Narrative vs. Southern Truth

To the chagrin and mortification of many liberals, Rolling Stone magazine had to apologize for its “lack of accuracy,” otherwise known as a lie, in a highly publicized article. In ‘A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA,’ this left of center magazine first reported a total falsehood and for weeks defended their story. After…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
January 14, 2015
Blog

The South Hating Business

The defeat of liberal Democrat Mary Landrieu removed the Deep South’s last Democratic U.S. Senator. It is interesting to see the reaction of Yankee liberals (pardon the redundancy) as they complain about the “racist white South” abandoning the Democratic Party. Now don’t get me wrong—I am no lover of Lincoln’s Republican Party but it is amusing to watch the libs…
James Ronald Kennedy
December 11, 2014
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Please “Dump Dixie”

Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast believes “It’s Time to Dump Dixie.” Please do. He also thinks that there may be a point in the future when the South should have its independence. Hallelujah, but we tried that once and were forced to keep company with our “kind” neighbors to the North, those like Tomasky who call the South, “one…
Brion McClanahan
December 10, 2014
Blog

Ferguson

Events over the past several days in Ferguson, MO, should not surprise those familiar with the motives of the political class operationalized by Mr. Lincoln. We know that the the rhetoric utilized to justify the so-called American Civil War was a ruse to conceal the money-making opportunities concommitant with centralized political power. The slave qua freedman was and is nothing…
Marshall DeRosa
August 19, 2014
Blog

The Dix Note and Southern Freedom

While cleaning my study the other day I ran across my copy of a $10.00 “Dix” note. This paper money was issued by the Bank of New Orleans up to 1860. Looking at my copy of the “Dix” note cause me to reflect on the disastrous changes that have occurred in the Southern economy since the days of that quaint…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 18, 2014
Review Posts

The Eighteenth Century to the Twentieth

  Judged by the quality of the men it brought to power the eighteenth-century Virginia way of selecting political leadership was extremely good; but judged by modem standards of political excellence, it was defective at nearly every point. As for voting qualifications, there was discrimination against women, poor men, and Negroes. There was no secrecy in voting, and polling places—only…
Charles S. Sydnor
April 23, 2014