Monthly Archives

October 2015

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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
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XX

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.--Jefferson When did the South ever lay its hand on the North?--Calhoun . . . it remains true that the bulk of modern monopoly or quasi monopoly is not the result of always irresistible economic forces, but simply the…
Clyde Wilson
October 28, 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

Calhoun and Yale

I can still recall one of my college economics professor's witticisms. When a student mentioned that the current year's test had the same questions as last year's, the professor replied: "Yes, but the answers have changed." My professor illustrated a valid point: theories of economic causation, like other theories, often change. A culture's political and social attitudes also change. But…
Gail Jarvis
October 26, 2015
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The Queen City Humbled

In 1865, a writer for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine described Charleston, South Carolina, contrasting her condition before the war, and after four years of siege, blockade and bombardment: Not many years ago, Charleston sat like a queen upon the waters, her broad and beautiful bay covered with the sails of every nation, and her great export, cotton, affording employment to…
Karen Stokes
October 23, 2015
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Jefferson’s “Rightful Remedy”

This article was originally published at Townhall.com. Victor Davis Hanson has a strange and misguided infatuation with “Confederates.” In June, his widely read National Review piece on the Confederate Battle Flag equated the Confederacy to a “racist separatist group” like Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and just this week, Hanson suggested that so-called “sanctuary cities” are the new “Confederates.” Hanson’s overarching…
Brion McClanahan
October 22, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Chronicles of the South

Introduction to Chronicles of the South: In Justice to So Fine a Country “The South” is a Problem. A Big Problem. This has been true at least since the 1790s when Mr. Jefferson and his friends rallied to put the kibosh—only temporarily, alas—on New England's attempt to reinterpret the new Constitution and set up a central government powerful enough to…
Clyde Wilson
October 21, 2015
Review Posts

Slavery in the Confederate Constitution

...... Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or Inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known and my practice has been so conformable to my sentiment that I have always employed freemen both as Domisticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave. The…
Vito Mussomeli
October 20, 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
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The Cemetery Tour Revisited

Well, another year has come and gone that the Auburn Heritage Association did not invite me back to portray secessionist William F. Samford in their annual cemetery lantern tour. This year’s tour concluded last weekend, and it has been at least a decade since that fateful night when innocent young progressives were assaulted at dusk by my fire breathing interpretation…
Tom Daniel
October 16, 2015
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Hiding from History

When I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina as a retiree over twenty years ago, I brought much of the Yankee historical baggage—as written by the victors—of the War Between the States, or Lincoln’s War as many Southerners know it. I’ve always been interested in history, so naturally I wanted to understand more about the Southern views of the war. I…
R.E. Smith, Jr.
October 15, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Prosperity

Declining prosperity is now a settled fact of American life. Prosperity is not measured by the day’s average of stock speculation, or the profits of bankers, or the munificence of government subsidies and salaries, or the consumption of luxury goods, or even by the Gross Domestic Product. It is amazing how in a few short decades American “educators,” “experts,” “journalists,”…
Clyde Wilson
October 14, 2015
Review Posts

Habeas Corpus

Recently, I came across a little known case that I wanted to call to your attention. It involves the ancient writ of habeas corpus, which was first recognized in 1215 in the Magna Carta, but existed long before that. In Alabama, the writ of habeas corpus has been codified in Section 15-21-1 et. seq. Code of Alabama (1975). It did…
Joseph S. Johnston
October 13, 2015
Blog

Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

Note: A version of this paper originally appeared in the Summer 2015 Edition of the Palmetto Partisan, the Official Journal of the SC Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans. The grey riders are gone, but yet they remain. Asleep in our soil, and alive in our veins. Untouched by fire, untouched by frost, they whisper within us, "Our cause is not…
Paul C. Graham
October 12, 2015
Blog

Believe It Or Not…

Criss-crossing the South, from Virginia and Maryland to Texas, and from Missouri and Tennessee to South Carolina and Florida, there are thirteen museums dedicated to the myriad oddities of life . . . Robert Ripley’s “Odditoriums.” Almost a century ago, as a reporter for the New York Globe, Ripley created what would soon become the world-famous media feature, “Believe It…
John Marquardt
October 9, 2015
Blog

Reconstruction Continues…

I spent some time perusing my son's sixth grade history book. I didn't read it from back to front (yet), but just glanced through it. However, in that short span of time the fallacies, distortions and half-truths were pretty staggering. To begin with, the book is definitely not on a sixth grade reading level. My child is, in his personal…
Carl Jones
October 8, 2015
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XIX

A man has only got room for one oath at a time. I gave mine to the Confederate States of America. --John Wayne, “The Searchers” Going back is the quickest way on. --C.S. Lewis Idiocy is bipartisan. --Ilana Mercer The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shall…
Clyde Wilson
October 7, 2015
Blog

September Top 10

Our top ten articles for the month of September.  Read 'em again and pass 'em along. 1. John C. Calhoun and States Rights by James Rutledge Roesch 2. The War for Southern Independence: My Myth or Yours? by Clyde Wilson 3. Revisiting 25 Years of Revisionist Claptrap by Gail Jarvis 4. Apostles of Racism by Brion McClanahan 5. Life in…
Brion McClanahan
October 6, 2015
Review Posts

On a Postmodern Publisher

  A modest query falls out of the fog: “Might you be interested in this small book, which would appear to fit your catalogue— new figures, new research? Please take a look.” The answer is politely couched, and smooth; they cannot risk offense that might be quoted. The momentary business is to soothe, while the assessment’s “pending, as was noted.”…
Catharine Savage Brosman
October 6, 2015
Blog

One Ruler to Enforce Obedience

The peaceful political separation desired by the American South in early 1861 was best summarized by President Jefferson Davis’ in his inaugural address: “We seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated. All we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall…
Bernard Thuersam
October 5, 2015
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Is the Public Getting a Skewed Idea of Thomas Jefferson?

This article was originally published by History News Network. In a recent article on Thomas Jefferson’s mythic and contradictory legacy for Time, Joseph Ellis begins with an account of an encounter during a book tour with an outraged woman. She snaps: “Mr. Ellis, you are a mere pigeon on the great statue of Thomas Jefferson.” Ellis has a decisive retort.…
M. Andrew Holowchak
October 2, 2015
Blog

Pope Francis and the Southern Tradition

Recent attempts made by the left and the right to make Pope Francis one of “their” own has sparked considerable debate among the political class and their voices in the mainstream media.  Pope Francis’s speech before Congress was nothing more than a continuation of themes he has publically endorsed throughout his time as pontiff, namely support for the environment and opposition…
Brion McClanahan
October 1, 2015