Monthly Archives

March 2019

Blog

The American Taliban

You don’t see much on the continued attack and removal of war memorials in the news, but that’s the intent of the left isn’t it?  Do it quietly but totally. These monuments were dedicated by their loved ones not to the "cause" but rather to honor their loved ones who paid the ultimate price with their lives. The American Taliban…
Lee Congleton
March 29, 2019
Blog

The French Lady: A Most Agreeable Gentleman

“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 cabins.  Aided by some sympathetic passengers, he had removed the bottom of each drawer of a dresser and had curled himself up inside of it.  Zarvona’s arrest brought to an…
J.L. Bennett
March 28, 2019
Blog

Lee, Virginia, and the Union

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 of the Bronx, New York City, has, or is in­tended to have, a panel of bronze with other mementos for each of one hundred and fifty native-born Americans who have…
Fred H. Cox
March 27, 2019
Review Posts

Two From Alabama Ladies

A review of John Gildart: An Heroic Poem. (H. Young & Co., 1901) by M. E. Henry-Ruffin and Plantation Songs: For My Lady’s Banjo, and Other Lyrics and Mono­logues (J.W. Otts, 1901) by “ Eli Shepperd.” The mental emancipation of the South is proved by noth­ing more clearly than by the work of her women. Prior to the war, we…
Thomas Cooper De Leon
March 26, 2019
Blog

The Challenge of the Southern Tradition

In 1966, Senator Jim Eastland of Mississippi walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee and asked, “Feel hot in heah?” A staffer replied: “Well Senator, the thermostat is set at 72 degrees, but we can make it colder.” Eastland, puzzled by the response, doubled down, “I said, Feel Hot in heah?” The staffer now was perplexed and fearing that he might…
Brion McClanahan
March 25, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 162

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 18-22, 2019 Topics: John C. Calhoun, Patrick Cleburne, the War, Political Correctness, Southern Music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-162
Brion McClanahan
March 23, 2019
Blog

Scotch Snaps and Southern Music

I need to tell you one story in order to tell you another. The Czechoslovakian composer Antonin Dvorak moved to the United States in 1892, and immersed himself in American music while composing his New World Symphony.  Although he was fascinated, inspired, and moved by traditional Southern folk music, Dvorak complained that he simply couldn’t tell the difference between Scottish…
Tom Daniel
March 22, 2019
Blog

Silent Sam: A Personal Experience

Editor's Note: During the height of the Silent Sam protests in the Summer of 2017, Jonathan Harris went to the statue and talked with the people wishing to tear down the monument. This is his story. Maybe it was Southern heritage, the honor of a family name, or Christian conviction. Or perhaps I just needed to prove something to myself.…
Jonathan Harris
March 21, 2019
Blog

Mississippi’s Free Speech Confusion

Some lawmakers in Mississippi, obviously alarmed at the violent demonstrations and restrictive measures at college campuses intended to silence what passes for conservative viewpoints, have come up what they consider a fitting solution in their legislative kitchen, House Bill 1562, ‘Forming Open and Robust University Minds (FORUM) Act’.  But the result is far from enticing. The heart of the bill…
Walt Garlington
March 20, 2019
Review Posts

When Real Historians Understood Calhoun

A review of Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, Vol II. (Washington, 1900) edited by J. Franklin Jameson. It is a fitting crown to Professor Jameson’s efforts in promoting the estab­lishment and successful career of the manuscripts commission and a most substantial proof of the material services rendered to the advancement of the study of history in the United States by…
Edward G. Bourne
March 19, 2019
Blog

Patrick Cleburne

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 in existence are difficult of access. Of Cleburne’s early life little is known. The record of his service in the Southern armies belongs to the yet unwritten history of the…
William J. Hardee
March 18, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 161

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 11-15, 2019 Topics: Political Correctness, Confederate Symbols, Confederate Monuments, Southern History, Confederate Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-161
Brion McClanahan
March 17, 2019
Blog

Leave Confederate Statues Alone

In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so because the Southerner has a sense of having been present there himself in the person of one or more of his ancestors. The war filled merely a chapter in his……
Philip Leigh
March 14, 2019
Blog

Athletes and Education: Mutually Exclusive

Athletes gain money when they gain attention. Just like Congressmen. Ole Miss basketball players kneel in deference to standing for the National Anthem. Again, athletes, many of whom have an academic pedigree from high school that suggests borderline literacy, have taken a stand –oops—a kneel for something or against something. Who the hell knows why these muscle-bound morons do what…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 13, 2019
Review Posts

Many Thousands Gone

A review of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Harvard, 1998) by Ira Berlin For an understanding of the Atlantic-African slave trades and the origins of the peculiar institution in North America, Prof. Berlin’s Many Thousands Gone is a must read (along with Hugh Thomas’ The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave…
W. Kirk Wood
March 12, 2019
Blog

Crazed Leftists Strike Again

For thirty-one years the North Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has sponsored annually Confederate Flag Day, an event commemorating our state’s rich history and Southern heritage, held in the House of Representatives chamber of the historic 1840 Tar Heel State Capitol. First proclaimed by former Governor James G. Martin in 1988, the day has served as an…
Boyd Cathey
March 11, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 160

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 4-8, 2019 Topics: Jeffersonian tradition, economics, Southern symbols. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-160
Brion McClanahan
March 9, 2019
Blog

Is Opposition to Trump “Satanic?”

On a February 2017 episode of televangelist Pat Robertson’s “The 700 club,” a viewer sent in the following question about dissent: “Why do so many hate President Trump and say everything he does is bad? I voted for him and believed he would make ‘America Great Again,’ and he has already in many ways. So what is your answer as…
Michael Martin
March 8, 2019
Blog

Rescuing Old Joe

Whoever weds himself to the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.    —   William Inge Few realize that Florida was so committed to The War Between the States that she gave more soldiers to repel Northern invaders than she had registered voters. Gainesville was among the towns that responded. As a result, the…
Philip Leigh
March 7, 2019
Review Posts

The True Heirs of the Founding Fathers’ Vision

A Review of Beyond Slavery: The Northern Romantic Nationalist Origins of America’s Civil War (Shotwell Publishing, 2019) by Walter Kirk Wood In the post-War between the States mythology supported by the victors, the Antebellum South was Satanic and subject to “slave power,” the alleged immense power of the plantation owners and their demonic desire to perpetuate slavery at all costs.…
Michael Potts
March 5, 2019
Blog

Modern Monetary Theory: A Jeffersonian Critique

The chattering class’ newest obsession, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has seized the policy initiative from the Democratic Party’s geriatrics by promoting a “Green New Deal.”  T’is clever branding to combine left-wing eco virtue signaling with FDR’s version of “down home” fascism. (If one doubts me on this last point, I refer you to John Garraty’s seminal article, “The New Deal, National Socialism,…
John Devanny
March 4, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 159

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institutes, Feb 25-Mar 1, 2019 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition, Jeffersonian tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-159
Brion McClanahan
March 2, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Virginia

Southeast Virginia is a region rich in history, from the earliest colonial times to today’s modern military.  Cape Henry welcomes visitors today, just as it did the Virginia Company colonists in 1607, just before they settled at Jamestown.  First Landing State Park commemorates where the colonists first entered Chesapeake Bay, seeking a site for settlement. One of Virginia’s oldest and…
Brett Moffatt
March 1, 2019