The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 26-30, 2019 Topics: Southern culture, Southern tradition, Southern heritage https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-184
Brion McClanahanAugust 31, 2019
This essay was presented at the 2019 Abbeville Institute Summer School on the New South. 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…
Philip LeighAugust 30, 2019
On May 17, 2019, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 5: Equality Act—better known as the Trans-Gender Equality Act. The “peoples” House thus spoke on behalf of the American people. The vote was not even close! The final vote was 236 Yes, 173 No, and nine not voting. We can, therefore, conclude that 58% of the American people…
James Ronald KennedyAugust 29, 2019
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 extended family had died from old age by the time of my birth except for my maternal grandfather, Nelson Pace and great aunt, Mary Paul Pittman Smyrl, both natives of…
Nicole WilliamsAugust 28, 2019
A review of The C.S.A. Trilogy (Independent, 2018) by Howard Ray White. A beautiful thought experiment for Southerners. The year is 2011, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Confederate States of America. Celebrants are gathering in the capital, Davis, located where Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee come together. Confederates have every reason to celebrate. They have a free, prosperous,…
Clyde WilsonAugust 27, 2019
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 their former chief executives was a model of competence, ability, courage, and self-sacrifice. One Pulitzer Prize-winning historian even suggested that, had the South recognized his talents earlier, the results of…
Samuel W. MitchamAugust 26, 2019
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 19-23, 2019 Topics: Secession, Political Correctness, Slavery, Strom Thurmond, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-183
Brion McClanahanAugust 24, 2019
In 1866, a year after taking the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant had reason to consider and comment on the political landscape. At the head of what was likely the most powerful national armed force on the planet, Grant would voice an altering measure of both satisfaction and disappointment of America's attempt to…
Gerald LefurgyAugust 23, 2019
When most Americans hear the word slavery today, their minds instantly conjure up only images of either a black African in chains or a group of such people toiling away in the fields of some Southern plantation. This distorted, even psychotic, mental picture of an institution that is as old as civilization itself is now, of course, being used not…
John MarquardtAugust 22, 2019
This essay was presented at our 2019 Summer School on The New South. James Strom Thurmond, or Strom, was born on December 5, 1902 in Edgefield, South Carolina. This historic county was also the home of Francis Hugh Wardlaw, the author of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, and Preston Brooks, who caned Charles Sumner in 1856. These three are…
Michael MartinAugust 21, 2019
A review of U.S. Grant's Failed Presidency (Shotwell Publishing, 2019) by Philip Leigh There was a time in recent memory when thoughtful people consistently ranked U.S. Grant's presidency as one of the worst in history. The scandals, military Reconstruction, the mistreatment of the Plains Indian tribes, and the poor economy during the 1870s wrecked his reputation. That all began to…
Brion McClanahanAugust 20, 2019
In a recent column, “Nationalism vs. Secession: Should America Break Up? (July 27), I included references to an essay I had published at THE UNZ REVIEW (July 26), and then which was picked up nationally by a number of other Web magazines, including LewRockwell (July 29) and The Abbeville Institute (August 2). For that essay “Nationalism vs. Secession,” I added…
Boyd CatheyAugust 19, 2019
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Aug 12-16, 2019 Topics: Reconstruction, Monuments, Southern Religion, New South, G.K. Chesterton https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-182
Brion McClanahanAugust 17, 2019
A semantic technique that has worked well for political types is renaming things to make them more acceptable to the public. This has occurred countless times in our society. Here are two examples from the past. Beginning with our first President, we had a cabinet post called Secretary of War. But in the late 1940s, this designation was changed to…
Gail JarvisAugust 16, 2019
Before there was any New England in the North, there was something very like Old England in the South. Relatively speaking, there is still - G. K. Chesterton Within Christian and conservative circles, the great English writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) is widely considered one of the most important authors of the Twentieth Century. As a poet, novelist, mystery writer,…
Garrett AgajanianAugust 15, 2019
This essay was presented at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Fundamentalism is often viewed as the most Southern of religions. Yet this is not so. It was an alien seed planted in ground razed by war and harrowed by Reconstruction. The harrowing, or Reconstruction if one prefers, was not merely an updating of the constitutional and political…
John DevannyAugust 14, 2019
A review of Punished with Poverty: The Suffering South-Prosperity to Poverty & the Continuing Struggle (Shotwell, 2016) by James Ronald and Walter Donald Kennedy This is one of the most important works of American history that has appeared in many a year. If enough Southern people could absorb the lesson of this book, it would bring about a complete reorientation…
Clyde WilsonAugust 13, 2019
Does anyone remember United States Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.? I mean, for something other than being the son of The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and for being sentenced to 30 months in jail for violating federal campaign finance laws. Well, I do. It was Jackson, Jr who, in 1999, amended an appropriation bill for the Department of Interior.…
Andrew P. CalhounAugust 12, 2019
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 5-9, 2019 Topics: Land, Southern Tradition, United States Constitution, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-181
Brion McClanahanAugust 10, 2019
I don’t like the thing. I hate what it stands for, and I respect the givers even less than I respect the gift. Most of the problems we face today can be traced to the Statue of Liberty. If we’d just send it back to the French, crime in the streets would disappear, we’d have a surplus in the federal…
Thomas LandessAugust 9, 2019
In I Kings 21, we see that Naboth did not feel that he had the right to sell the family land no matter how much money King Ahab offered. The land was not his except as a trust from his forefathers to the generations yet unborn." ~~RJ Rushdoony We have come to the place were every year another noble Southern…
Robert HoyleAugust 8, 2019
This essay was originally published in The Lasting South (Regnery, 1957). Recently when Bertrand Russell was a speaking-guest of the Richmond Area University Center, its director, Colonel Herbert Fitzroy, drove the philosopher from Washington to Richmond over Route One. After some miles the usually voluble Russell grew silent, and nothing would draw him out. Then, as if emerging from deep…
Clifford DowdeyAugust 7, 2019
A Review of A Historical and Constitutional Defense of the South (1914) by Captain John Anderson Richardson Captain Richardson was a member of the 19th Georgia, experienced the war and its aftermath, and wrote this work in 1914. The Sprinkle Publications edition was printed in 2010, and was edited by H. Rondel Rumburg, who also wrote a forward to this…
Brett MoffattAugust 6, 2019
Mr. Leigh presented this paper at the 2019 Abbeville Institute Summer School on The New South. Historians have reinterpreted Civil War Reconstruction over the past fifty years. Shortly before the Centennial it was commonly believed that the chief aim of the Republican-dominated Congress was to ensure lasting Party control of the federal government by creating a reliable voting bloc in…
Philip LeighAugust 5, 2019
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 29 - Aug 2, 2019 Topics: Federalism, Nationalism, Decentralization, Southern history, Virginia, Anti-imperialism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-180
Brion McClanahanAugust 3, 2019
There is a question that increasingly arises, uncomfortably, in our conversations…from brief exchanges at work at the water cooler, at home with family, after church on Sunday, with our email messages to friends and associates. To watch any amount of television news these days, to switch back and forth between, say, CNN and Fox, and to listen to their interpretations…
Boyd CatheyAugust 2, 2019
Earlier this month, prominent names in the conservative movement gathered in Washington, DC, for a conference on “National Conservatism.” Speakers included such luminaries as Tucker Carlson, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, John Bolton, Michael Anton, Rich Lowry, Yuval Levin, and Josh Hawley. Representing the academy were F.H. Buckley, Charles Kesler, Amy Wax, and Patrick Deneen. Other conservative writers and thinkers participated…
Allen MendenhallAugust 1, 2019
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