Monthly Archives

February 2020

Blog

Statues in Peril

Statues of heroes are erected to remind us of our past, of their noble deeds, to honour them, and to inspire us. These men served out of a sense of civic duty.  They answered the call of their community or state, used their skills and knowledge to serve their fellow citizens, and returned home to honest toil. Today, greed and…
Brett Moffatt
February 28, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide Part XI

15.  Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Southerners:  Films for the Family The major movie stars of the 1930s through the 1970s came from the East and Midwest.  Nevertheless, there was a strong presence of native Southerners in the top ranks:  Oliver Hardy, Ava Gardner,  Randolph Scott, Joseph Cotten, Jeffrey Hunter,  Miriam Hopkins, John Payne (an almost forgotten Virginian star of film…
Clyde Wilson
February 27, 2020
Blog

To Guard the Precious Dust of the Martyred Dead

Today there is a frenzied effort to tear down memorials to the Confederate dead. If you think "frenzied" is too strong a word, take a look at video of the crowds in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who resembled (ironically) a lynch mob as they threw ropes around a metal soldier and dragged it to the ground, all the…
Shane Anderson
February 26, 2020
Review Posts

The Recovery of History

A Review of Old Times There Should Not Be Forgotten (Shotwell Publishing, 2020) by Leslie R. Tucker If I were to classify my own regional sense of identity, I would say I am a Tennessean born and bred first; second, a North Carolinian by adoption; third, a Southerner, and finally, an American. Like Leslie Tucker, I am disturbed by the…
Michael Potts
February 25, 2020
Blog

Low Hanging Fruit

Several months ago, I attended a speech given by Paul Gramling, the commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to the Northeast Louisiana Brigade of the SCV at the Lieutenant Elijah H. Ward Camp in Farmerville, Louisiana. In his oration, Mr. Gramling declared that the hoopla about removing the Confederate monuments was not really about the Confederate monuments. “We are…
Samuel W. Mitcham
February 24, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 206

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Feb 17-21, 2020 Topics: Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-206
Brion McClanahan
February 22, 2020
Blog

Confederate Christmas

It was Thursday, Christmas day of 1862, and the guns at Fredericksburg had fallen silent just ten days before with over ten thousand Union soldiers of the Army of the Potomac and half that number of Confederates from the Army of Northern Virginia lying dead or wounded beyond the city. That night, a twenty-one year old cannoneer from Richmond, Lieutenant…
John Marquardt
February 21, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part X

12.   Southerners in the Late 19th  and Early  20th Centuries **The Yearling (1946).  This is an all-time favourite about family life on the Florida frontier and a troublesome pet deer.  Seldom noticed is that the father, Gregory Peck, is a former Confederate soldier.  The film is based on the novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.  Another fine Rawlings book about her…
Clyde Wilson
February 20, 2020
Review Posts

How to Study History

A review of How to Study History When Seeking Truthfulness and Understanding: Lessons Learned from Outside Academia by Howard Ray White Howard White has written a dozen or so highly original books on the War Between the States (Bloodstains, The C.S.A. Trilogy, and others). In the midst of a very successful career as a chemical engineer, he was drawn to the…
Clyde Wilson
February 18, 2020
Blog

Reconsidering William Henry Harrison

Who was the greatest president in American history? Ask this question to a group of people who are cynical of the imperial presidency and at least one person will answer William Henry Harrison, the man who died one month after taking office. Who could be better than a president who impacted the office in such a minimal way and who…
Brion McClanahan
February 17, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 205

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 10-14, 2020 Topics: Secession, Immigration, Southern Film https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-205
Brion McClanahan
February 15, 2020
Blog

Finding Dixie

Fear not. Dixie lights are merely hiding under a bushel, as it says in the song we teach our children in Sunday School. Grass roots are sprouting. “Woke” tries to get her toe in the door, but in small Southern towns memories and traditions are strong. Here are five examples. In my small Southern town, the first sentence of the…
Barbara Lawter
February 14, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part IX

11.  Post-bellum and Westerns There  are two  interesting,  important,  and  little  noticed features of films about  the South  in the  period  after the War for Southern  Independence.  First, until recent times they generally portray the mainstream view of “Reconstruction” as corrupt and oppressive that prevailed before the Marxist coup in American history writing.   Carpetbaggers are shown as vicious, greedy, and…
Clyde Wilson
February 13, 2020
Blog

Secession and Its Discontents

The American story is a story of secession, or better still secessions.  The first permanent settlements of Europeans in North America were the result of a series of secessions from primarily the British Isles.  Religious motive, political persecution, economic distress all play their part in impelling movement from the homeland into a new world, and it does so with a…
John Devanny
February 12, 2020
Review Posts

Small is Still Beautiful

A review of Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered (ISI Books, 2006) by Joseph Pearce. There’s not too much that’s actually wrong about this book, other than it proves itself totally unnecessary. Obviously from the title you know that it is based on Fritz Schumacher’s great classic of 1973, and it does a lot of quoting from…
Kirkpatrick Sale
February 11, 2020
Blog

The Washington Post Publishes Fake News

On January 21st Washington Post reporter Courtland Milloy wrote an article about my “Defending Confederate Monuments” speech at the January18th Lee-Jackson Day in Lexington, Virginia. His “Lee-Jackson Day with a bit of history and context” article portrays me unfairly. Today’s post responds to one Milloy comment excerpted below: Before giving his keynote speech, Civil War book author Phil Leigh made an offhand remark discounting the role of…
Philip Leigh
February 10, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 204

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 3-7, 2020 Topics: Two Americas, Southern tradition, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-204
Brion McClanahan
February 8, 2020
Blog

A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part VIII

10. Spielberg’s  Lincoln (X)  Spielberg’s Lincoln.   Life is short.  Although I am a devoted   if amateur student of Hollywood’s treatment of the great American War of 1861-65, I intended to spare myself the ordeal of Spielberg’s Lincoln.   However, the honoured editor of America’s bravest and best journal (Tom Fleming of Chronicles) instructed me to go.  I have always found such…
Clyde Wilson
February 7, 2020
Blog

If You Can’t Blame the Confederacy, Secede!

American political theater has become the most entertaining show in town. Trump refuses to shake hands and Pelosi rips up his script. This is red meat for the duly indoctrinated in the mainstream political parties, but in case you thought that Trump's impeachment and subsequent acquittal would calm the waters and draw the final curtain on a five-month Greek comedy,…
Brion McClanahan
February 6, 2020
Review Posts

Two Visions of America

A review of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Encounter Books, 2019) by Wilfred M. McClay. Two Visions of America What is America? If America is a place, then it will have a history like other places. People will do things, those things will have consequences, other people will be pleased or embittered or indifferent, and…
Jason Morgan
February 4, 2020
Blog

Silent Sam and Inconvenient History

All across the Southland today efforts have been mounted by “woke” social justice warriors—in most cases spearheaded by violent and destructive mobs composed of radicalized Millennials—to tear down or at least remove all monuments to Confederate veterans. But removing monuments to those who fought and died in 1861-1865 is just a first step in a broad national effort, a national…
Boyd Cathey
February 3, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 203

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Jan 27-31, 2020 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, the War, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-203
Brion McClanahan
February 1, 2020