Monthly Archives

April 2014

Blog

Moonshiners

Stewart, Bruce E. Moonshiners and Prohibitionists: The Battle over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 2011. Interest in southern Appalachian history and culture is growing in the academy. Moonshining is one particular area that is beginning to fascinate both the scholar and history buff. From the popular Discovery Channel show “Moonshiners,” to the growing number of…
Samuel C. Smith
April 30, 2014
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The Art of Southern Manliness

What attributes make a man? More importantly, what made a Southern man? Two famous Southern men had much to say about this. George Washington and Lighthorse Harry Lee, Robert E. Lee's father, spilled ink on the subject, Washington in a short book titled Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation and Lee in letters to his eldest…
Brion McClanahan
April 30, 2014
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Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers

Have you ever wondered about that cryptic third verse of “Sweet Home Alabama?” The music industry of Muscle Shoals, Alabama is almost a perfect encapsulation of the Southern experience – Yankees can’t figure out where it came from, and Southerners know exactly where it came from. Of course, “Muscle Shoals” refers to the entire quad-city area of northwest Alabama along…
Tom Daniel
April 29, 2014
Review Posts

The Cliven Bundy Saga: How Congress Snatched The Power To Claim Lands

You have to hand it to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). His soft-spoken demeanor and reputation for decorum continue to survive his ad-hominem vitriol like the following, said about rancher, constituent and grandfather Cliven Bundy and friends. “They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists.” In case you didn’t hear that bromide the first time, Reid doubled down. “I repeat: what…
Mike Church
April 29, 2014
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James Monroe and the Principles of ’76

James Monroe was born today (April 28) in 1757. He is one of the more misunderstood and maligned Presidents of the United States. Historians typically rank him as no better than "average." This is unjust and an indictment of the historical profession. Monroe, they suggest, lacked leadership and energy in the executive office. He should have been more like Lincoln…
Brion McClanahan
April 28, 2014
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Southern Honour and Southern History

  In present day academia, one is guaranteed a celebrated career by inventing a new way to put the South in a bad light or a new twist on an old put-down. In the 1970s, Raimondo Luraghi, Eugene Genovese, and other historians were starting to pay some attention to the existence of a genuine aristocratic ethics in the Old South.…
Clyde Wilson
April 28, 2014
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Reconstruction…of a Football Team?

In my article from last week entitled “1865 and Modern Relevance” I asserted that the outcome of the War for Southern Independence was as relevant today as it was 150 years ago. Just a few days after publication an incident involving Clemson University proved this point. A group of atheists calling itself the “Freedom From Religion Foundation” has leveled allegations…
Carl Jones
April 28, 2014
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Birds of America

The antebellum American South did not have any artists of note. This misconception has been perpetuated since the end of the War in 1865, perhaps even earlier. Sully, Trumbull, Stuart, West, and even the Peale family (though originally from Maryland) are all claimed by or hailed from the North. The Hudson River School dominated the American Romantic period, and none…
Brion McClanahan
April 26, 2014
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Spring on the Farm

It feels good to be outside alongside Mother Nature as she greens, casually, lovingly transforming from those calloused, wobbly, winter-time ways into something indescribably perfect. April in Pine Mountain makes us proud to belong to a place so gracious in spring. The season matures slowly affording us the time to take a deep, emerging breath at the beginning and then…
Chris Jackson
April 25, 2014
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The Accommodating Mind of Wilbur Cash

A phenomenon that has always intrigued me is how certain books achieved importance not because of their literary merit or substance but because they accommodated the political trends of the time. This occurred because the Eastern establishment not only set the political trends, it also decided which books would be published, and its members wrote approving reviews of books it…
Gail Jarvis
April 24, 2014
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GRITS

Grits can simultaneously be both an item of pride and an item of derision. On the old TV show “Mel,” the cartoonish waitress Flo used to insult people by drawling out, “Kiss my grits.” In the movie “My Cousin Vinny,” Joe Pesci was able to break down the testimony of a faulty witness by challenging how fast “boiling water soaks…
Tom Daniel
April 24, 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 one…
Charles S. Sydnor
April 23, 2014
Review Posts

Was the Fourteenth Amendment Constitutionally Adopted?

During and after the Civil War, Southerners repeatedly declared that the cause for which they fought was the "sublime moral principle" of states' rights. Given such protestations, and given the history of southern resistance to federal authority throughout the antebellum period, it is easy enough to associate states' rights exclusively with the South—but it is also mistaken. Connecticut and Massachusetts…
Forrest McDonald
April 23, 2014
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An Ethnic Food Group?

In the mid-90’s, my wife and I lived and worked for several years in Ames, Iowa. No matter how much fun we still make of Midwesterners, we will always remember the Iowa State Fair as one of the great wonders of the modern world. Those people take their state fairs very, very seriously. For one thing, they sold beer right…
Tom Daniel
April 22, 2014
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When Doing Nothing is the Right Thing to Do

In the present judgment of history—or at least those who are counted worthy to opine on that subject—two American presidents occupy positions among the lowest and the highest with regard to their place in the nation’s pantheon of leaders. The interesting thing is that the one followed the other into office which means that the performance of their duties in…
Valerie Protopapas
April 22, 2014
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Déjà Vu All Over Again

It had to happen. It was as inevitable as the sunrise, death, taxes, politicians’ lies, and Massachusetts arrogance. The only thing surprising is that it took so long. “Students” (unnamed and unnumbered) at Washington and Lee University have demanded that the school apologise for “the dishonorable side” of General Robert E. Lee and his “participating in chattel slavery.” Further, they…
Clyde Wilson
April 22, 2014
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The Terrible Swift Sword

In his book The Coming of the Glory (1949), author John S. Tillery relates that on July 14, 1868, a visitor walked into the office of Abram Joseph Walker, Chief Justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court. Walker had served as Associate Chief Justice from 1856, when the Legislature of Alabama had elected him to that post, until 1859 when he became…
Carl Jones
April 21, 2014
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A Review of Paul Gottfried’s War and Democracy

War and Democracy by Paul Gottfried, Arktos, 2012. War and Democracy is a collection of 25 of paleoconservative thinker Paul Gottfried’s essays, originally published in The American Conservative, Taki’s Magazine, Modern Age, lewrockwell.com, and similar outlets. Almost all of them come from the last 15 years. Many of them are book reviews in which Gottfried gives rein to his own…
Jason Sorens
April 21, 2014
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Who Wrote the Best American Ghost Story? Simms Of Course

When it comes to stories that make your hair stand on end everyone’s mind understandably goes to master of macabre Edgar Allan Poe. But what did Poe himself consider the best ghost story? Of William Gilmore Simms’s short story “Grayling, or Murder Will Out,” Poe wrote “it is really an admirable tale, nobly conceived and skillfully carried into execution—the best…
Sean Busick
April 17, 2014
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William Gilmore Simms on the Fate of Nations

William Gilmore Simms was a consummate Southern man of letters, excelling equally in poetry, fiction, and essay. The excerpt below is from a long piece he wrote in 1850 in the Southern Quarterly Review. Simms had in mind the hubris of the North as it engaged in intensified economic, political, and cultural aggression against the South, but his remarks are…
Clyde Wilson
April 17, 2014
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Where’s The Rest of My Ice?

Here’s another one of those things about our lives controlled by Yankees – ice quantity. Southerners love our drinks to be cold and iced to perfection. That’s why we call them “iced drinks.” The ice in the glass isn’t an afterthought, or a fringe benefit. It’s part of the very name of the drink. We don’t want a glass of…
Tom Daniel
April 17, 2014
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Happy Birthday William Gilmore Simms

"To write from a people is to write a people---to make them live---to endow them with a life and a name---to preserve them with a history forever." --W.G. Simms The great Southern writer William Gilmore Simms was born on this day in 1806. Unlike the more famous Southern writer, the short-lived Edgar Allan Poe, Simms wrote voluminously and in every…
Clyde Wilson
April 17, 2014
Review Posts

The Swamp Fox

I. "We follow where the Swamp Fox guides, His friends and merry men are we; And when the troop of Tarleton rides, We burrow in the cypress tree. The turfy hammock is our bed, Our home is in the red-deer’s den, Our roof, the tree-top overhead, For we are wild and hunted men. II. "We fly by day, and shun…
William Gilmore Simms
April 17, 2014
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Top Southern Rock Albums

In light of Tom Daniel's post "Top 11 Southern Rock Bands," I thought I would create a list of my top Southern rock albums. Many of these records are from the bands he mentions, but I included several others. How did I choose? I selected albums that have stood or will stand the test of time and that can be…
Brion McClanahan
April 16, 2014
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1865 and Modern Relevance

"I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy....Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more…
Carl Jones
April 16, 2014
Review Posts

‘Counsellors That Feelingly Persuade Me What I Am:’ Jefferson and Fletcher on Education

In an age such as ours—beset by the conceit that the noblest political act is individual self-actualization—any philosophic discussion of education will be tenuous and fragile. True, our time has witnessed heated debates over educational policy—over the processes through which public schools are funded, over the criteria by which educators’ performance is evaluated, over the students injured by our current…
Jefferson Viridi
April 15, 2014
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Top 11 Southern Rock Bands

I decided to rank my own favorite Top Southern Rock Bands with some added personal memories. Forgive me if your favorite is not named, but this list goes to eleven. 1) The Allman Brothers Band – Before he died, Duane Allman sure kicked a lot of musical butt. He was an early one of “The Swampers” in Muscle Shoals, and…
Tom Daniel
April 15, 2014
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Illegal, Unconstitutional, and Unjust

The historian Andrew C. McLaughlin in 1932 wrote that the British imperial system was characterized “by diversification and not by centralization....The empire of the mid-eighteenth century was a diversified empire” with power “actually distributed and exercised by various governments.” British colonies, including Ireland, “had long existed” as “bodies, corporate, constituent members of the Empire,” each with its own constitution and…
Brion McClanahan
April 15, 2014
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Jefferson Davis and the Kenner Mission

A few months back, I had a student ask me about Don Livingston's characterization of Jefferson Davis in a paper he presented to the Mises Institute in 1995 titled "The Secession Tradition in America." The student wondered if Livingston's statement, "Jefferson Davis was an enlightened slave holder who said that once the Confederacy gained its independence, it would mean the…
Brion McClanahan
April 14, 2014
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War is a Racket

“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” General Robert E. Lee My wife’s grandfather was a WW II veteran. He served in North Africa, was wounded in Sicily, and was sent back into action after D-Day, which he’d missed while healing in a hospital. He didn’t talk about the war. He…
Carl Jones
April 14, 2014
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The Virus of Centralization

In my previous post on this website I addressed the Lincoln’s 1863 revelation to Governor Pierpont that the war must be protracted in order for the politically connected to rape the South of its cotton. The recent events in Nevada, during which the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) squared off with rancher Cliven Bundy, are symptoms of a sick…
Marshall DeRosa
April 14, 2014
Review Posts

State Sovereignty and Centralism in 19th-Century Argentina

Introduction: Centers and Peripheries A look at the early history of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata -- a political structure ancestral (partly) to the modern-day Argentine nation-state -- reveals many interesting parallels with our own experience in the United States. The European empires’ settler colonies in the New World had much in common: their European-derived populations…
Joseph R. Stromberg
April 14, 2014
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Welcome to Alabama

Just a few days ago I read a post on this blog which discussed the influence of Southern Rock on American culture in the 1970s and early 80s. Having grown up in that era, I remember it well. Skynyrd, Hank Jr and numerous others proudly proclaimed that they were unapologetically Southern. Tom Petty’s song “Rebels” from his Southern Accents Album…
Carl Jones
April 12, 2014
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Lincoln’s War for Cotton

Early in the winter of 1863 Francis Pierpont, the Governor of the Restored Government of Virginia, met with President Lincoln at the White House requesting he countermand the order sending General Nathaniel P. Banks to New Orleans. Governor Pierpont argued that Union forces be focused on Richmond, with the objective of forcing the CSA Government to flee and thereby resulting…
Marshall DeRosa
April 12, 2014
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Daniel Boone Was A Man

Daniel Boone by John James Audubon "Daniel Boone was a man, yes a big man." So began the (now not so) famous Ballad of Daniel Boone by legendary Southern actor Fess Parker. Parker portrayed Boone from 1964-1970 on the television series of the same name. It would be impossible to produce that show today. Boone is the antithesis of the…
Brion McClanahan
April 11, 2014
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Southern Rock

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Southern Rock, which is something very meaningful to me. I’m a musician (guitar), and I can play 60’s and 70’s rock, jazz, folk, and classical music very well, because I had great formal and practical training. I played in a lot of bands when I was younger, and I especially loved…
Tom Daniel
April 11, 2014
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Pronouncing Talladega

My commute to work was a little bit spirited the other day. First of all, I noticed a newly awakened hornet clinging to the inside of my windshield. Thank goodness it was a cool morning, because he/she never really got enough juices flowing to be active. Secondly, during my hornet-harrowing commute, I got a chance to yell at the radio.…
Tom Daniel
April 10, 2014
Review Posts

Lee in the Mountains

Walking into the shadows, walking alone Where the sun falls through the ruined boughs of locust Up to the president's office. . . . Hearing the voices Whisper, Hush, it is General Lee! And strangely Hearing my own voice say, Good morning, boys. (Don't get up. You are early. It is long Before the bell. You will have long to…
Donald Davidson
April 10, 2014
Review Posts

The Fight

IN the younger days of the Republic there lived in the county of -- two men, who were admitted on all hands to be the very best men in the county; which, in the Georgia vocabulary, means they could flog any other two men in the county. Each, through many a hard-fought battle, had acquired the mastery of his own…
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet
April 10, 2014
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BBQ and the Hillbilly Homeboy

February 2014 saw the passing of Maurice Bessinger and Tim Wilson, two Southerners who represented different elements of Southern culture: barbeque and comedy respectively. No one cooks like Southerners. This dates to the colonial period. It used to be said that Southerners dined, Yankees just ate. David Hackett Fischer noted in his significant work Albion's Seed that colonial Virginians enjoyed…
Brion McClanahan
April 10, 2014
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Don’t Hold Your Breath

Jonathan Kozol seems to be one of those innumerable relentless reformers who are determined to make the world resemble their idea of what it should be. American society breeds the type like the proverbial rabbits--ever since the 1830s when New England started sending out Unitarians, abolitionists, convent-burners, free lovers, vegetarians, suffragettes, Mormons, and such. (I note Professor Kozol was born…
Clyde Wilson
April 9, 2014
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Sunnyside and Sleepy Hollow

April 3 was Washington Irving's birthday. While not a Southerner, Irving would have supported the South in its fight for independence in 1861 had he been alive to see it. He at least would have been opposed to coercion. Many notable New Yorkers, and for that matter Canadians, too, believed the same. Two fine treatments on this issue are Clint…
Brion McClanahan
April 9, 2014
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Constitutional Deists

According to Deist belief, God does not get involved in the affairs of mankind. He built the celestial clock, wound up the spring and then walked away. There is no point in praying, since the Almighty is not listening. He apparently has other fish to fry. We are left to our own devices. Some look at the system of government…
Jonathan White
April 8, 2014
Review Posts

Violating the Lieber Code: The March From the Sea

On April 24, 1863—-just three months after the cruel and retaliatory Emancipation Proclamation--Lincoln issued an order drafted by Columbia University law professor Francis Lieber that codified the generally accepted universal standards of warfare, particularly as it related to the lives and property of civilians. Among the actions it deemed to be criminal and prohibited were the “wanton devastation of a…
Kirkpatrick Sale
April 8, 2014
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Local Color

Every Southern town has a local historian, a life-long resident who loves the tales and culture of the region and its people. They are not professionals who have been indoctrinated by the graduate programs at the university. They aren't concerned with the fashionable theories about the South and many times know more about Southern history than the leading experts. They…
Brion McClanahan
April 8, 2014
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Jackson and Ewell

General Richard S. Ewell had a reputation for being a heavy drinker, foul mouthed, and blasphemous. During the War to Prevent Southern Independence, he was under the Command of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, whom he hated and referred to as "That Crazy Presbyterian." One night, he went to pay a visit to Jackson in his tent. He looked through the…
Carl Jones
April 8, 2014
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American Idol

We Southerners know a little bit about music. “American Idol,” for those who haven’t watched, is a reality-based music singing competition on the Fox Network. The very nature of what anybody would call “American music” is the definition of a blending of diverse American sub-cultures into one representative “sound,” and that alone is the definition of growing up Southern. The…
Tom Daniel
April 8, 2014
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Sweet Home Alabama

Forty years ago today, Lynyrd Skynyrd released their second album titled Second Helping. The effort contained what has become the quintessential Southern rock anthem, Sweet Home Alabama. Skynyrd, along with Georgia's The Allman Brothers Band, Tennessee's Charlie Daniels Band, and South Carolina's Marshall Tucker Band, were part of a Southern music revival in the 1970s. Being Southern was chic. Everyone…
Brion McClanahan
April 7, 2014
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Getting Right with Mr. Hamilton?

“…the borrower is servant to him that lendeth” (Proverbs 22:7) “There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country . . .” (George Will, Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy, 1992)…
John Devanny
April 6, 2014
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Winter Rest

The consummation of farming year number six arrived abruptly, almost automatic like the next breath. The ease of external inhalation and exhalation mask a clandestine, internal arrangement intimately crafted and forever dependent on so many parts cooperating. Much like the farm days of early winter, our working hours unravel effortlessly, unrevealing of the exhaustion and feverish efficiency demanded of warmer…
Chris Jackson
April 6, 2014
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Watch What You’re Doing

“Watch what you’re doing – you never know who’s watching you.” I can still hear my mama say that. No, literally – she still says that to me. I have heard people say this is not a uniquely Southern thing, and it is universal in small towns across America. I disagree, because I’ve never seen this concept applied and executed…
Tom Daniel
April 4, 2014
Review Posts

Fugitive Agrarians

I’ll Take My Stand, the classic statement of Southern Agrarianism, was first published in 1930. Since that time, it has never been out of print. You have to ask yourself why people have continued to read it. There are several good reasons why they shouldn’t. It’s a quirky book. The 12 essays—written by men of varying backgrounds and talents—are uneven…
Thomas Landess
April 3, 2014
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Coming Home

Many black Southerners headed North in the early twentieth century in search of a better life. Most didn't find it. Now, many are coming home. The Christian Science Monitor recently made this trend a cover story. In the early twentieth century, black Americans constituted less than five percent of the total population of every Northern State. This was not by…
Brion McClanahan
April 3, 2014
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My Court House and Their “Judicial Center”

When I first moved here, more than forty years ago, the county was mostly rural, inhabited by families whose land patents went back to the late 17th century and by black people with equally ancient pedigree--- the descendants of slaves, the numbers of which had been modest by South Carolina standards. Few people ever bothered to cross the river to…
Clyde Wilson
April 3, 2014
Media Posts

Jefferson vs. Lincoln

This two part lecture by Abbeville Institute founder Don Livingston concentrates on the dichotomy between Thomas Jefferson's conception of Union and Abraham Lincoln's "national" argument. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CAYAkt3KFY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JpuADcC2bM
Donald Livingston
April 3, 2014
Review Posts

Southern Conservatism and the “Gilded Age”

Russell Kirk called the early post-bellum period in American history the age of “Conservatism Frustrated.” He lamented that the leading members of the conservative mind from 1865-1918 flirted with the radicalism of their compeers both before and during the Civil War and now were left with the daunting task of closing Pandora’s Box, a Box they helped open: The New…
Brion McClanahan
April 3, 2014