Monthly Archives

December 2018

Blog

The Long Ago

Oh! a wonderful stream is the river of Time, As it runs through the realm of tears, With a faultless rhythm, and musical rhyme, And a broader sweep, and a surge sublime, And blends with the ocean of years! How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow, And summers like buds between, And the ears in the sheaf, —…
Philo Henderson
December 31, 2018
Blog

Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox Meet St. Nicholas

On one fine evening, in which winter’s chill hung in the air and the stars sparkled merrily in the heavens above, a happy song of the season could be heard faintly weaving it’s way through the trees and rolling hills surrounding the humble home of Uncle Remus. “Ho my Riley, in this happy Christmas time, the black folks shake their clothes,…
Lewis Liberman
December 25, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 151

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 17-21, 2018 Topics: Southern symbols, Political Correctness, Secession, Southern tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-151
Brion McClanahan
December 22, 2018
Blog

What Are Symbols For?

In 1875, Rev. Moses Drury Hoge stood before 40,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, at the foot of the newly dedicated statue of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and delivered what one historian called the "noblest oration of his later life." He believed that in the future, the path to that statue would be "trodden" by the feet of travelers from "the…
Brion McClanahan
December 21, 2018
Blog

We the People of South Carolina….

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 behalf of his fellow men.” He is closely identified with the town of Clinton, where he pastored a church and founded the Thornwell Orphanage and the Presbyterian College of South…
Karen Stokes
December 20, 2018
Blog

The Neo-Puritan War on Christmas

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” – H. L. Mencken “Let any man of contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them , they close up their ears, his reasons they weigh not . . . . They are impermeable to argument and have their answers well drilled.”  – Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical…
John Devanny
December 19, 2018
Review Posts

The Land We Love

A review of The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage (Scuppernong Press, 2018) by Boyd Cathey I must confess that I feel a bit awkward about reviewing Dr. Boyd Cathey’s outstanding anthology, The Land We Love: The South and its Heritage. I am, as the reader may notice, mentioned in the preface, along with Clyde Wilson, as one…
Paul Gottfried
December 18, 2018
Blog

What Does the Fracturing of the American Identity Mean for the Southern Tradition?

The Abbeville Institute conducted three conferences this year on the fracturing of American national identity and what means for the Southern tradition and the Southern people. The general public knows America is coming apart and that they're anxious about it, but most don't understand why because our political leaders and the national media generally suppress its origins. We wanted to…
Donald Livingston
December 17, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 150

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 10-14, 2018 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern History, Southern Culture, Southern Music, Southern Sport https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-150
Brion McClanahan
December 15, 2018
Blog

Southern Music is American Music

Why do Southerners continue to fall into that trap where we only talk about the years1861-1865?  There are almost 400 years of Southern culture to talk about, yet we keep limiting ourselves to just four of them.  And it doesn’t matter how much of an expert someone becomes about Fredericksburg, Yankees will always have that same ace-in-the-hole comeback, “You lost.” But…
Tom Daniel
December 14, 2018
Blog

Shoeless Joe

Two of the poems I most admire are very short. One is simply a name - Shoeless Joe Jackson. Read it aloud and feel the assonance and alliteration. The other is a phrase Say it ain't so, Joe, delivered sadly, with its final rhyme. There is a mythic quality in both of these poems. The name, Shoeless Joe Jackson; the…
Ray Merlock
December 13, 2018
Blog

Black Southerners in American Wars

President Trump recently used his executive powers to designate a national monument to honor African Americans’ role as soldiers during the War Between the States. The monument will be a 380-acre site in Kentucky to commemorate Camp Nelson, which was one of the largest recruitment stations for the United States Colored Troops. The unfortunate reality is that the monument will…
Michael Martin
December 12, 2018
Review Posts

Forrest McDonald and the Art of History

A review of Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir (University Press of Kansas, 2004) by Forrest McDonald “History is marble, and remains forever cold, even under the most artistic hand, unless life is breathed into it by the imagination. Then the marble becomes flesh and blood—then it feels, it thinks, it moves, and is immortal.” —Charles Gayarré (1805-1895) It is…
Stephen M. Klugewicz
December 11, 2018
Blog

Social Justice and Clemson University

In November 2018 Will Hiott, Director and Curator of Historic Properties at Clemson University, included a thinly disguised political paper from Clemson University History Professor Rhondda Robinson Thomas as part a packet distributed to Historic Properties Advisory Committee members. The essay has no relevance to ongoing volunteer efforts toward the Preservation of Historic campus buildings and is nothing more than…
Andrew P. Calhoun
December 10, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 149

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Dec 3-7, 2018 Topics: Agrarianism, United States Constitution, John Marshall, Andrew Johnson, Thomas Johnson https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-149
Brion McClanahan
December 8, 2018
Blog

Steady Hand at the Wheel

Thomas Johnson was born in Calvert County, Maryland, on his father's lands near the mouth of St. Leonard's Creek. He was the son of Thomas and Dorcas Sedgwick Johnson and the grandson of Thomas Johnson, barrister, who was the first of the line to reside in Maryland, having fled there after running away with a chancery ward. All of these…
M.E. Bradford
December 7, 2018
Blog

Lessons in Conservatism from Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was born into poverty in rural North Carolina. His father died after saving some town locals from drowning and left the family to fend for themselves in a two-room shack. A young Andrew began working as a tailor’s apprentice and developed an appreciation for the laboring class early on. Johnson was poorly educated and learned how to write…
Michael Martin
December 6, 2018
Blog

The Problem with Lawyers and the Constitution

On November 10, 2018, the Abbeville Institute hosted an event called The Revival of Nullification and Secession in Dallas, TX. The purpose was to educate people on the means by which we can escape the hatred and hostility that is consuming not only headlines, but our very souls. The population of these United States is split pretty much equally in…
Suzanne Sherman
December 5, 2018
Review Posts

The Man Who Made the Supreme Court

A review of John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court (Basic Books, 2018) by Richard Brookhiser John Marshall presents a curious problem for Southern history. How can a man, born and bred in the same State, who breathed the same air and shared the same blood with Thomas Jefferson, have been such an ardent nationalist? The same question…
Brion McClanahan
December 4, 2018
Blog

The Tragedy of Land Use in the South

For all of the pontificating of the virtues of the South, we have increasingly seen our agrarian landscape polluted by strip malls and environmental contamination. I make the case that neither of these things are inherently Southern in character, and as I believe, are contributing negatives to the soul and character of our region. We must work to correct these…
Nicole Williams
December 3, 2018
Podcast

Podcast Episode 148

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 26-30, 2018 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern music, Southern culture, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-148
Brion McClanahan
December 1, 2018