The date of the latest federal holiday, June 19th, was touted as the one marking the end of slavery in America. While few today would argue with the idea of…
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I have been studying the War Between the States for 53 years. In all those years, the one quotation I have read which summarizes the true reason for the differences…
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…
A review of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas, 2014) by William C. Harris. William C. Harris has set before him the admirable task…
“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…
As most Americans have learned by now, in their rush to do something politically correct, Congress passed, and the president signed, a bill making “Juneteenth” a federal holiday. Some of…
First some context. The South did not secede to “preserve and extend slavery.” Its “pro-slavery“ arguments were not in response to any major political party in the antebellum period calling…
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,…
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…
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…
Marjorie Taylor Greene forced the political left into an apoplectic rage two weeks ago when they discovered she intended to form an “America First Caucus” based on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”…
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…
We have been told that the first shot fired in the “Civil War” was fired by the Confederacy at Fort Sumter in response to the Lincoln government’s attempt to rearm…
Take up the White Man’s burden – Ye dare not stoop to less –Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness;By all ye cry or whisper, By all…
On the Ingraham Angle recently, guest, Craig Shirley offered an opinion that should cheer the people who have read (best seller) The South Was Right. Even those who haven’t read…
A review of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin’s Press, 2021) by Ty Seidule A number of good historians…
Published in 2016, the book Our Man in Charleston tells the story of Robert Bunch (1820-1881), the British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, who is described in the subtitle as…
Ty Seidule’s mea culpa memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me, has generated the predictable supporters: mainstream media outlets, leftist dominated history departments, and neoconservative “intellectuals.” This says more about Seidule…
It is time to consider the crimes committed against Southern prisoners of war by their federal captors. In 1903, Adj. Gen. F. C. Ainsworth estimated that more than 30,000 Union…
In June 1863, Fitzgerald Ross, a British military man who was collecting information about the war in America, paid a visit to Richmond, Virginia, the capital city of the Confederacy….
Two terms that are tossed about with great liberality today are “racist” and “white supremacist.” Like other words with specific definitions, such as “fascist” and “Nazi,” these labels are losing…
“The Burning of Atlanta,” 82 minutes. Produced and directed by Christopher Forbes. 2020. I have written a great deal on the Abbeville Institute site in the past on the portrayal of…
The diary of Emma LeConte is one of the best known documents chronicling the sack and destruction of Columbia, South Carolina. On February 17, 1865, the city surrendered to the…
The Washington establishment, led by a senile 78-year-old man who can barely speak in complete sentences and seems permanently fighting mad, is hell- bent on labeling virtually all Americans who…
Yesterday’s melee in Washington provides good reason to honor Robert E. Lee because he demonstrated how he maintained dignity in defeat while convincing many resentful Southerners to reconcile with their…
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 phantasmagorical image of slave life in the South has long been regarded as one of the sparks that ignited the War Between the States. However, a…
Early in the civil war President Lincoln had Federal Troops occupy the State of Maryland. Though the power vested only with the US Congress, Mr. Lincoln also took it upon…
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…
Lexington, Virginia January 2002 Driving up, then down the mountain hairpins into Lexington,By daylight, moonlight, headlight (only one),I smell the moist ancient earth rising up to greet meThis January evening…
The red and the blue—states that is– are as different as the colorless black and white landscapes absent from the color spectrum. The concept of separate states for separate cultures…
A review of The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Second Edition; Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1999) by James Farmer The role of religion…
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…
The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the most iconic speech in American history. Students are required to memorize it, and it has become as important to American political culture as the…
“May 29, 1856 “Abraham Lincoln, of Sangamon, came upon the platform amid deafening applause. He enumerated the pressing reasons of the present movement. He was here ready to fuse with…
A review of General Edmund Kirby Smith C.S.A. (LSU Press, 1992 (1954) by Joseph H. Parks This biography is a must read for any student of the War for Southern…
The South Was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. New Edition for the 21st century. Shotwell Publishing, 2020. In 1991 the Kennedy brothers first published The South Was Right!, a…
The following address was delivered as part of a symposium at the 150th anniversary of the burning of Winnsboro, S.C., in February 2015, sponsored by the Winnsboro Historical Society. It…
A Review of The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (Uncommon Books, 1993) by Otto Scott. The Leftist political violence that has engulfed the disintegrating American nation for…
While watching a seventy-minute interview with Professor Adam Domby about his book, The False Cause, I was surprised at the number of errors, biased interpretations and even endorsement of “extralegal” conduct by anti-statue…
In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and…
“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is…
The United States acquired a vast area of the Southwest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (May 30, 1848), which included all or part of the following states: Arizona, California,…
What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the…
Recently an acquaintance of mine remarked that the Confederate statue in her hometown should be removed from its present place of honour and relocated to the Confederate cemetery which is…
Reading an article in the latest Hillsdale College newsletter Imprimis I was shocked by the outrageous comparison of Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson…
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…
The tiny hamlet of Lake Hill in New York State’s Catskill Mountains was my mother’s hometown, and her ancestors there, the Howlands, could trace their family history to its roots…
A recent article in Hillsdale College’s newsletter “Imprimis” compared Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in wanting to “divide the country.” On a lessor…
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…
Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural…
A review of Cleburne: A Graphic Novel (Rampart Press, 2008) by Justin S. Murphy and others. The graphic novel is a major feature of literature in these times. Southerners can…
“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…
During the War of Northern Aggression not every Southerner was on board for the Cause. Not every Yankee was opposed to the Cause. The numbers, apparently, from the action of…
A Review of Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War (Amazon, 2019) by James Michael Pasley. Ordinarily, I don’t endorse novels. As a general rule, I don’t even…
I don’t have time to detail everything the piece in question gets wrong, because it’s a lot. I’m sure this will be fodder for Abbeville posts for a long time,…
From the 1870s to the late 1950s, there was an unofficial truce between the North and South. Each side recognized and saluted the courage of the other; it was conceded…
I caught a snatch of news the other day that, even with all that is happening in our time, stunned me. It seems that Hollywood is gearing up its machinery…
While Fake News may be a new term, the concept has a long history. We have been taught that a free, independent, and ethical press is essential for a free…
“The problem with Lincoln is the problem with America,” said my friend Clyde Wilson when I asked him for a blurb for my new book, The Problem with Lincoln (Regnery,…
Tucker Carlson, a man who had revealed himself as a reliable reporter/journalist over the years, in my opinion, stumbled recently. His nightly show, like most, has been confronted with the…
Today, as it was a hundred and sixty years ago, America stands on the edge of an ever-widening chasm of cultural, ideological, political, racial and sectional divisions. In 1860, there…
“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…
People remember Missouri as a Union rather than a Confederate state. Even those who are not offended by the memory of the Confederacy are either unaware Missouri seceded from the…
Presbyterianism has a rich legacy in American history. The Presbyterian church was founded in Scotland by John Knox (d. 1572), a disciple of John Calvin. Along with the Dutch Reformed…
Over a century and a half has passed since Confederate States General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant. Yet, despite surrender by…
An outlook is bleak when nothing worse can be said than the truth. To this end, there is no ‘sugar-coating’ the elements of obliteration, subjugation, necrosis and above all, ‘Hatred’,…
A review of Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian (Regnery History, 2012) by Edward Bonekemper, III. I don’t think a person of sound mind and impartial understanding of…
Literature, be it works of fact or fiction, might well be described as a window through which the reader is invited to view the world as the author chooses to…
The first thing I learned about Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest was that he had twenty-nine horses shot out from under him in battle; in my fifth-grade social studies class, I…
Estimates of the number of South Vietnamese civilian casualties during the U.S. war in Vietnam vary. A U.S. Dept. of Defense estimate put the numbers at 1.2 million, including 195,000…
Just as the Earth revolves on its axis each day and travels around the Sun in an equally regular pattern, so has world history tended to be cyclical in nature…
A review of The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won (Regnery History, 2015 ) by Edward Bonekemper The late…
Bernie Sanders wants to bring back slavery. This raises the question: can he have the 13th Amendment repealed? Who says that it hasn’t already been repealed? Bernie says, among other…
Today there is a frenzied effort to tear down memorials to the Confederate dead. If you think “frenzied” is too strong a word, take a look at video of the…
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 It Wasn’t About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Regnery History, 2020) by Samuel Mitcham On a huge hill, Cragged and steep, Truth stands,…
8. The War for Southern Independence (continued): Fantasy and Fraud Scorcese’s Gangs of New York (2002) Martin Scorcese, in an interview, candidly described his Gangsof New York, as an “opera.” …
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…
Symbols Used ** Indicates one of the more than 100 most recommended films. The order in which they appear does not reflect any ranking, only the convenience of discussion (T) …
Symbols Used ** Indicates one of the more than 100 most recommended films. The order in which they appear does not reflect any ranking, only the convenience of discussion (T) …
Bevin Alexander’s “How Great Generals Win” was an intellectual watershed in my life. By applying the wisdom of Sun Tzu to famous Generals throughout history Alexander makes clear that battlefield…
The role of religion, specifically evangelical protestant religion in the North, is frequently emphasized by gatekeeper historians in framing the causes and consequences of the War Between the States. This…
Confederate statue critics increasingly argue that the monuments should be torn down because they honor traitors. Among such advocates is Christy Coleman, CEO of the Richmond’s American Civil War Museum. While the…
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,…
A Review of The Everlasting Circle: Letters of the Haskell Family of Abbeville, South Carolina, 1861—1865. (Mercer University Press, 2019) Edited by Karen Stokes. Participants in the Old South and…
In August of 1862, two years before his infamous ‘March to the Sea’, General William T. Sherman declared, “Salt is eminently contraband.” The Southern leaders’ positioning of the South’s economy…
A review of The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973) by William C. Wright (WCW) “Historical writing during the Civil War and immediately after…
Just before Christmas of 1860, the chain of events that was to soon to lead the nation into four bloody years of undeclared war began with South Carolina exercising its…
Charles Francis Adams was the grandson and son of former-Presidents John and John Quincy Adams. It is therefore of little surprise he himself embarked on career and life of public…
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…
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…
A review of Faith and Fury: The Rise of Catholicism During the Civil War (Ewtn Publishing, 2019) by Fr. Charles Connor The abolitionists are wrong as to their point of…
A review of To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas (Pelican, 1999) by George Levy The dead are buried somewhere in Chicago and there are over 4,000 of…
Old slave and planter graves a flight apart For thrushes eating seeds of grass and yew, The unmarked plots and plots with dates and names Too weatherworn to trace and…
Lack of attachment to culture, heritage, and tradition is the death of a nation. As a child, I had very little in-depth knowledge of my family’s history. Most of my…
Louisiana is a state accustomed to incredibly incompetent and corrupt public officials, especially in the governor’s office. Some of my fellow Louisianans will be surprised to know that one of…
Sooner or later any student of the War for Southern Independence will run across discussion of “black Confederates,” which may well be the most controversial topic related to the war….
On February 4, 2002, a current member of the United States Supreme Court gave the following remarks at Loyola University, in New Orleans: a tribute to Judah P. Benjamin, a former…
I had some correspondence with an editor of the Post and Courier this week when I sent them a letter for publication in response to their July 6, 2019 editorial…
I am always annoyed when a conservative political leader attacks Southern heritage. I don’t know why because with the present-day crop of cowardly politicians, it is becoming routine, but I…
Battle of Secessionville Commemoration Address by Gene Kizer, Jr. on the battle site at Fort Lamar Heritage Preserve on James Island in Charleston, South Carolina June 15, 2019. This was…
Abraham Lincoln is widely regarded as one of the nation’s greatest Presidents.[1] He is the subject of at least 15,000 books.[2] A popular poem (later set to music) responded to…
Catholic and non-Catholic Southerners alike have reason to mourn the loss of Father James Schall, S.J., who passed away shortly before Easter at the age of 91. As an erudite…
It’s telling indeed that while everyone, irrespectively of political partisanship, can’t refer to “racism” enough, few people, if any, want to spend any time at all talking about “anti-Americanism.” The…
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…
A review of For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford, 1997) by James McPherson Miss Emma Holmes of Charleston, SC, and a survivor of the…
Row after row with strict impunityThe headstones yield their names to the element,The wind whirrs without recollection;In the riven troughs the splayed leavesPile up, of nature the casual sacramentTo the…
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…
Stretching from the Potomac River across the southeastern quarter of the United States in a broad arc into the plains of Texas is a region known geographically and politically as…
A review of Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home (Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by James Ronald and Walter Donald Kennedy The Kennedys have fired a well placed shot across…
Compatriots, how do y’all seek to maintain alive the Confederate heritage within your family & relatives? This would be a great discussion point for any Sons of Confederate Camp or…
“Fatti Maschii Parole Femine”1 In July of 1861, Union troops aboard the Chesapeake Bay steamer the Mary Washington found the “privateer” Colonel Richard Thomas Zarvona hiding in one of her…
The Hall of Fame recently dedicated at New York University was conceived from the Ruhmes Halle in Bavaria. This structure on University Heights, on the Harlem river, in the borough…
The sketch is necessarily imperfect, from the want of official records. Most of these were lost or destroyed by the casualties attending the close of the war, and those still…
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does that famous dictum’s author, Cambridge…
In this age of political correctness it may surprise people that there were three TV series that portrayed Confederates in a good light. All three are very good and all…
Even among the most Grant-partial historians there’s no denying that Ulysses Grant and his wife owned slaves prior to the Civil War. In fact, “Ulysses Grant” is the correct answer…
Suffering from a nasty bacterial infection, the insomnia induced by a lamp kept lit in his cell at all hours, and the very real possibility of being hanged by a…
I hope that no one who reads this paper will suppose that I have any feeling in the matter. I am only correcting errors in Northern writers, and I trust…
A review of A Thousand Points of Truth: The History and Humanity of Col. John Singleton Mosby in Newsprint (ExLibris, 2016) by V.P. Hughes Valerie Protopapas (who writes under her…
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…
On the stump in New Boston, New Hampshire in early January 1852, Franklin Pierce gave a long oration during which free-soil hecklers forced him to address his ideas on slavery….
A review of Catholics’ Lost Cause: South Carolina Catholics and the American South, 1820-1861 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018) by Adam L. Tate Some thirty odd years ago, scholars…
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…
William Plumer Jacobs (1842-1917), a native of Yorkville, South Carolina, was a Presbyterian minister and scholar whose entire life has been called “a singular consecration to work and service in…
A review of Slavery, Secession, & Civil War: Views from the United Kingdom and Europe, 1856-1865 (Scarecrow Press, 2007) by Charles Adams. At long last Charles Adams’s new book, Slavery,…
As the brilliant American military victory in the Persian Gulf approaches its second anniversary, the focus has shifted from the emotions of homecoming celebrations to the seriousness of lessons learned…
From the front porch, Jakob Emig could look across fields where his winter wheat greened nicely. An old man now, with sons gone off to war, he lived mainly in…
A review of “An Arch Rebel Like Myself;” Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas, by by Gene Armistead and Robert D. Arconti (North Carolina: McFarland &…
Constitutional Violation: Amendment One. Freedom of Speech Denied. Vallandigham Imprisoned in Ohio. “From the beginning to the end of these proceedings law and justice were set at naught;…the President should have…
In the past few weeks two major interrelated events took place in these once United States of America that should serve as a warning for all Americans. First, after the…
“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Attributed to Mark Twain Americans at their best are a pragmatic “can do” folk, be it “Yankee ingenuity” or good old…
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…
Constitutional Violation: Amendment One: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;…
A review of My Own Darling Wife: Letters from a Confederate Volunteer by Andrew P. Calhoun (Shotwell Publishing, 2018). This is not just a book of family letters from the…
A Review of Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation by John M. Taylor (Booklocker, 2016). Most of the time, finding historical gems requires a lot of work and…
Most mainstream historians point to the “Cornerstone” speech by Alexander Stephens as the clearest piece of evidence that slavery and white supremacy alone were the reasons for Southern secession. After…
There is a 1909 “Lincoln penny” attached to the probe arm of Curiosity, a unit of currency, as it were, stuck to its palm. On the face of it, this…
In a PBS interview seven years ago historian and Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War. “Historians are pretty united on the cause of…
Whether it’s the Civil War, War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence or Lincoln’s War, this extremely important period of American history continues to resonate powerfully over 150 years…
A review of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North by Jennifer L. Weber (Oxford University Press, 2007). They say a picture is worth a thousand…
This essay is Chapter 13 in Mr. Taylor’s Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation (2016). “I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only…
The War Between the States is called by many names, the most genteel being “The Late Unpleasantness.” The low country districts of South Carolina, including the environs of Charleston, is…
A review of Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico by Mary Margaret McAllen (Trinity University Press, 2014). Leaving forever the land of your fathers is painful, yet many…
Last November, when President Bush issued an executive order establishing a system of military commissions to punish non-citizens, I asked myself, as no doubt countless other Americans did, “But what…
A review of Vicksburg: The Bloody Siege that Turned the Tide of the Civil War by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. (Regnery History, 2018). On the eve of the War for Southern…
There are many examples of heroism that illustrate spiritedness in America’s history. Indeed, the American Revolution was won because of the indomitable spirit of the Patriots and a growing unwillingness…
“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…
A review of America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation, by David Goldfield (Bloomsbury Press, 2011). Whether or not the American Civil War might have been avoided has…
The bloody conflict of 1861 to 1865 is often called the Civil War, but most Southerners regarded it as a war for independence and self-government. Many if not most Confederate…
A review of The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew’s Regiment of Mounted Rifles by W. Craig Gaines (LSU Press, 2017). When most people think of Confederate Cherokees, the name Stand Watie…
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,…
Were Robert E. Lee and the Confederates “traitors” who violated their oaths to the Constitution and attempted to destroy the American nation? Or, were they defenders of that Constitution and…
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…
It was Wednesday, April 19, 1865. The Confederate States of America lay prostrate under the twin plagues of starvation and despair. Richmond had fallen and Lee’s surrendered Army of Northern…
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…
Originally published at amazon.com, 30 September 2009. A Review of War Crimes Against Southern Civilians by Walter Brian Cisco (Pelican, 2007). Walter Brian Cisco is lifelong scholar of American Civil War…
A review of Division and Reunion: America, 1848-1877, by Ludwell H. Johnson, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978. 301 pages; and The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist…
“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…
No one interested in American history can escape Abraham Lincoln. Over the years the outpouring of books, articles, essays, and poems has been enormous, so much so that this form…
Oh! Save the souls of the Lords of Gray. Donned their swords and scabbards. Rode into cause valiant to pray. Ever still they cease from marching forth; Holding their cause…
When the Pacific phase of World War Two began in December of 1941, Great Britain’s main bastion of power in Southeast Asia was its eighty-five thousand man army behind the…
Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, is known as the place where the “Civil War” began. The South is normally portrayed as the aggressor, the side which fired the “first…
A review of The Civil War in the American West by Alvin M. Josephy (Vintage, 1993). As the “history” books to which government school students are subjected begin to deal…
Most modern historians reject any suggestion that the South fought the Civil War over states’ rights. They insist that the only states’ rights the South cared about, “as neo-confederates are…
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…
The complex issues which have and continue to divide America’s North and South have a long and at times violent history, as well as having involved an extensive list of…
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…
A review of Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States (Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) by Gene Kizer, Jr. In all my growing up years I was…
Judas failed in his purpose because he failed to recognize the coming of Christ for what it was: The coming of God with His presentation, gift, of grace. Judas…
Propaganda. It’s a well-known word defined as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” And, I…
When you hear or read about the burning of Columbia, General Sherman’s principal target in South Carolina, you are often told that the origin of the fire is a historical…
A review of Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis, (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). Shearer Davis Bowman presents a comprehensive view…
Modern American society seems to have little understanding of what really happened before, during and after the War Between the States. To see evidence of this one need look no…
More than 150 years after the Civil War, the nation is engulfed in controversy over statues of people who fought for the Confederacy. Many people want the statues taken down….
Advance the flag of Dixie For Dixie’s land we take our stand To live or die for Dixie And conquer peace for Dixie Anyone singing the above lyrics from the…
At the Battle of Nashville, on 16 December 1864, the Tennessean’s brigade, fought valiantly, but Brigadier General Thomas Benton Smith soon found himself surrounded on three sides by Federal troops….
Upon the Painting by Paul Davis of the Statue of a Young Confederate Soldier —on the cover of The Fugitive Poets: Modern Southern Poetry in Perspective (William Pratt, editor, 1965)—…
With the election of Rutherford B. Hayes by a one vote margin in the Electoral College, the Compromise of 1877 ended the era of Reconstruction in the minds of the…
A review of Gettysburg Rebels: Five Native Sons Who Came Home To Fight As Confederate Soldiers, by Tom McMillan, Regnery, 2017. In 1912, the renowned publisher of books on The…
There is an old saying in the theater that when one is acting the part of a butler in a play, the actor tends to regard it as a play…
After the rousing success of Kansas University’s redesigned football uniforms in honor of Jennison’s Jay-hawkers of 1861, a competing Kansas university also recently unveiled a special-edition football uniform in commemoration…
A review of Pickett’s Charge – The Last Attack at Gettysburg by Earl J. Hess (UNC Press, 2001). When I was still on active duty with the U.S. Army, the true “Gettysburg”…
The recent apoplexy over White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly’s comments about Robert E. Lee and the Civil War have revealed on ongoing problem in the thinking of many Americans when…
You would think that David Duke had somehow been elected president. Or, maybe in this topsy-turvy, Alice-in-Wonderland period of history we are living through, that that reactionary “bad guy” Vladimir…
We hear endless accounts today concerning the dire effects of global climate change, as well as the horrific devastation caused by the recent hurricanes that have mainly struck the Southern…
The Jewish people have endured much throughout their long history, yet have always continued to hold on to their religious and cultural identity. Finding a safe harbor from persecution was…
At the time of his death, was Robert E. Lee a man without a country? No, the Gray Fox of the Confederacy was not like the naval officer in Edward…
A Review of States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, by Walter Brian Cisco, Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1991. “So teach us to number our…
Russian-American relations over the past two and a half centuries, like the weather in Alaska, the land Russia sold to the United States in 1867 for ten dollars a square…
A review of Karen Stokes, A Legion of Devils: Sherman in South Carolina (Shotwell Press, 2017). Many of us have read about the horrendous things William Tecumseh Sherman did as he…
A review of Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess, University of North Carolina Press, 2016. In Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of…
“Anybody who would trash Lee and laud Lincoln is either stupid as a post or just plain evil,” said a sage reader. This applies in spades to anyone who would…
From the beginnings to rather recent times, sympathetic portrayals of Confederates have been a mainstay of America cinema. An astounding number of major stars without any Southern background have had…
Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free: Beginning of Jefferson’s Statue for Religious Freedom, passed by the Virginia Legislature in 1786 I With one intro line Jefferson explains the…
To assert the dogma that slavery caused the war of the 1860s sanctifies the North, vilifies the South, glorifies the Blacks, and mythologizes the war. This dogma has been thrown…
“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…
A Review of The Angel of Marye’s Heights, by Les Carroll, Columbia, SC: Palmetto Bookworks, 1994. The famed G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The Bible tells us to love our…
The South has always had to defend itself, first in the halls of Congress, then militarily on the battlefield, but since 1865 in the annals of history. For surely today…
It takes men of worth to recognize worth in men. – Thomas Carlyle Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. – Hannah Arendt Yea, they would pare the…
Review of Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 by Nelson D. Lankford. (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2008): 308 pages. Few people, whether northerners or Southerners know…
A review of William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War. by Eric H. Walther. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2006. William Lowndes Yancey was described as the Patrick…
Presented at the 2017 Abbeville Institute Summer School. When historians discuss reasons for Southern secession, as if the South needed to produce one, perhaps the most important, and sometimes neglected,…
Foreword for A Rebel Born: A Defense of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General, American Legend, by Lochlainn Seabrook, Sea Raven Press, 2010. There is a story that a year or…
A review of Bust Hell Wide Open: the Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., Regnery History, 2016. Writing a biography about Nathan Bedford Forrest – a…
A common technique of Liberal ideologues is to change the meanings of words to suit their agendas. So “illegal aliens” become “undocumented immigrants” and “adolescent criminals” become “justice-involved youths.” We’re…
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…
“…You said he’s a Confederate general. They’re the bad guys. And he’s probably racist… We’re going to raise our kids here. I don’t want some Confederate General ghost teaching them…
In a recent column for the Associated Press, entitled “Old South monument backers embrace Confederate Catechism”, writer Jay Reeves opines that that those of us who seek to remember the…
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…
Anyone who has been paying attention has heard many times the assertion that the flag of the Southern Confederacy is equivalent to the banner of the Nazi German Reich. That…
Political correctness didn’t succeed as well as the Left had hoped it would because PC conflicts with the concept “two sides to every story.” National media only presents the side…
The political market, as the economic market, has the demand and supply dynamic. Interest groups make demands and the politicians provide the supply. In the case of Confederate memorials, interest…
Two weeks ago New Orleans removed its Robert E. Lee Monument, one of four that the city decided to take down. As well, Charlottesville, Virginia, currently finds itself in the…
George Orwell, in his dystopian novel 1984, wrote that “Ignorance is strength.” Big Brother thrives on it – whether in a totalitarian regime or in a pure democracy. In his…
Statement about the “slavery the sole cause of the war” plaque affixed to the Confederate soldier monument in Gainesville, Florida. I have been asked to comment on the recent fad…
This essay was written in 1982 under the direction of Emory Thomas at the University of Georgia and was originally titled, “The Affluent Section: The South on the Eve of…
This piece was originally published at Townhall.com. Mayor Mike Signer—who had declared his intention to make Charlottesville, Virginia, the “capital of the resistance” to President Trump and a sanctuary city…
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…
Historians and pundits came out in droves decrying President Trump’s recent claim that Andrew Jackson could have negotiated a peaceful resolution to the Civil War. Infusing their alarm was Trump’s…
Despite nearly universal scolding in the mainstream media, President Trump’s suggestion that a compromise similar to the one Andrew Jackson arranged during the 1832 South Carolina nullification crisis might have prevented…
As the slow process of excavating the marvel continues, more and more revelations are coming to light about the technical sophistication of the H.L. Hunley, the world’s first successful submarine….
Confederate Flag Day Address Oakwood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia March 4,2017 I had the honor of delivering the keynote address in 1994 at the Last Capitol of the Confederacy in Danville…
In a recent interview on Sirius XM, President Trump, now completely enthralled by Andrew Jackson, made a couple of interesting remarks about the War of Northern Aggression, specifically theorizing that…
A Review of Joseph W. Danielson, War’s Desolating Scourage: The Union’s Occupation of North Alabama, University Press of Kansas, 2012; Charles A. Misulia, Columbus Georgia 1865: The Last True Battle…
Although the nation recently recognized the 150th anniversary of the end of the War of Northern Aggression, we are still plagued with questions about the legality of secession, issues and…
A prevailing notion throughout the grand land of America is that the constant brouhaha down South among many of us regarding monuments and flags and statues is much ado. ….
Historian and novelist Thomas Fleming is the author of more than fifty books, including two very good revisionist histories of the two world wars: The New Dealers’ War, and The…
“If you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle [the issues] on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the States we both represent…
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…
Like it or not, movies are the main art form of our time, the story-telling medium that reaches the largest audience and captures the attention of us all, high and…
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…
In 1864, General William T. Sherman wrote to a fellow Union officer that the “false political doctrine that any and every people have a right to self-government” was the cause…
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…
No one interested in American history can escape Abraham Lincoln. Over the years the outpouring of books, articles, essays, and poems has been enormous, so much so that this form…
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