Monthly Archives

August 2020

Blog

General Orders No. 9

Have any of you all heard about the film, "General Orders No. 9" ? It's a visual & musical tone poem—an experimental film which appeared in 2011. The filmmaker, Robert Persons, took 11 years to make it. It concerns his musings about the Deep South, mostly Georgia, but also includes abutting parts of Mississippi & Alabama. This strange film struck…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
August 31, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 229

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 24-28, 2020 Topics: Cancel Culture, Political Correctness, Yankees, Confederate Monuments https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-229
Brion McClanahan
August 29, 2020
Blog

A Monument Worthy of a Hero

Eight-tenths of a mile down a dead-end Arkansas gravel road, at that dead end, past two neglected old cattle guards and in the back pasture is not where you’d expect to find a hero, much less a monument to him and his men. But, alas! There he is, lying in all of his humble glory. There are no official monuments…
Travis Archie
August 28, 2020
Blog

Of Apostates and Scapegoats

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
August 27, 2020
Blog

The Fire Eater

Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural civilization; one of the first and most intense Southern nationalists; and the man who fired the first gun at Sumter and ended his own life in grief when the civilization…
Neil Kumar
August 26, 2020
Review Posts

New Confederate Territory

A review of Cleburne: A Graphic Novel (Rampart Press, 2008) by Justin S. Murphy and others. The graphic novel is a major feature of literature in these times.  Southerners can indeed be happy that the Confederacy has entered this field in grand style.  Murphy is a nationally notable animator, writer, publisher, composer, and prize-winning dramatist from Florida.  As a youth…
Clyde Wilson
August 25, 2020
Blog

Cancel Culture Comes to Wake Forest, North Carolina

Photo by Martin Fried I have written previously about the very real dangers of what is called “cancel culture.” Indeed, what we have—what we see and experience today in the United States—is a massive attempt, increasingly successful, to not just inhibit the rights of more conservative and right-leaning citizens from expressing their views, but to “doxx” them, get them fired…
Boyd Cathey
August 24, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 228

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 17-21, 2020 Topics: Southern history, Political Correctness, Cancel Culture, Language, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-228
Brion McClanahan
August 22, 2020
Blog

Idiotic Idioms

Identity Politics is changing our language in order to advance its agenda. One example is “people of color.” Hemingway would have convulsed at such a laborious construction. Does its nearly Global use today  suggest  that “people of whiteness” should also be adopted for consistency? While the simpler “colored people” technically has the same meaning, perhaps its potential racist connotation can…
Philip Leigh
August 21, 2020
Blog

The Shaping of Modern American History

The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are constantly under attack from those on the left and the mainstream historical establishment for leading the charge of promoting the “lost cause myth” of the Civil war. Defenders of popular history and the “righteous cause” narrative disparage any attempt to justify the Confederate Cause with the pejorative “Lost Cause Myth.” Their mantra…
Kevin Flynn
August 20, 2020
Blog

The Fire That Failed

I’ve never written of this episode in the history of Marion County, Fla., but then, I don’t think anyone else has either.  However, so much time has passed, with most of the witnesses long gone, I feel it’s time to mention it for posterity’s sake. Back in the late 1960s, there was a very active chapter of the Weathermen in…
Joscelyn Dunlop
August 19, 2020
Blog

The Simple Things

I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They raised their families, fought in the war, battled famine and drought and came out ahead, leaving their children small, improved farms. They taught them the joy of being independent, finding…
Travis Holt
August 18, 2020
Blog

“False Story” Historiography

“Madam, don't bring your sons up to detest the United States Government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities and make your sons Americans.” -Lee writing to a Southern mother, with a heart wrenching of hatred towards the North. Source: Proceedings & Debates, 2nd Session of the Seventy-First Congress, United States of America, Vol. LXXII-Part 8, United…
Gerald Lefurgy
August 17, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 227

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 9-13, 2020 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, Yankees https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-227
Brion McClanahan
August 15, 2020
Blog

Jeff, Judas, and Mr. James

During the War of Northern Aggression not every Southerner was on board for the Cause. Not every Yankee was opposed to the Cause. The numbers, apparently, from the action of four years of massacre and bloodshed indicate that each of the other sides saw few who crossed over. So be it. Or so it was. Records are probably not available…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 14, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XIII

A series by Clyde Wilson MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR (1798-1859) of Texas moved from his native Georgia to the Texas Republic in 1835. He took a conspicuous part in the Texas War of Independence and was cited by Sam Houston for outstanding bravery at the Battle of San Jacinto. Lamar served in the Texas government and followed Houston as President. He…
Clyde Wilson
August 13, 2020
Blog

America Without the South

A Yankee is a creature without a civilization. Having no people, no breeding, no past, he roams the earth by instinct, tearing down the civilizations built by others who, unlike him, lovingly cultivate human society. Being unwelcome in England due to his penchant for religious terrorism, the Yankee was exiled across the sea where he immediately set about destroying the…
Jason Morgan
August 12, 2020
Blog

Missouri’s War

A Review of Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War (Amazon, 2019) by James Michael Pasley. Ordinarily, I don’t endorse novels. As a general rule, I don’t even read them. But after my wife suggested I read Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War, I couldn’t put it down, so I decided to make an exception…
Samuel W. Mitcham
August 11, 2020
Blog

The Remnant, Part III

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of Hosts had left to us a…
James Rutledge Roesch
August 10, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 226

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 3-7, 2020 Topics: Black Southerners, Confederate Monuments, Southern Literature, Southern Poetry, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-226
Brion McClanahan
August 9, 2020
Blog

Knead to Know

Today we are besieged with raucous cries on both America’s streets and its social media platforms, as well as by all too many in the halls of government, to bring to an end what is now termed “systemic racism.”  To bring this amorphous demand about, we are led to believe that the systems that formed the very foundation upon which…
John Marquardt
August 7, 2020
Blog

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XII

A Series by Clyde Wilson THEODORE O'HARA (1820-1867) of Kentucky. "The Bivouac of the Dead" is often thought of as related to The War of 1861-1865. Like the "Star-Spangled Banner" it was confiscated for the North. Theodore O'Hara was a Confederate officer. (He was with Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston when he was fatally wounded.) He wrote the poem about 1850…
Clyde Wilson
August 6, 2020
Blog

Free Black Slaveowners

Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), known as “The Father of Black History,” was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, the son of former slaves. He received his doctorate from Harvard, rose to prominence as a writer and historian, and was the editor of The Journal of Negro History. He is best known for establishing Black History Week, which evolved into Black…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
August 5, 2020
Review Posts

Words of Wisdom

A review of Southern Scribblings (Red Mill Publishing, 2020) by Brion McClanahan In an age in which error, falsehood, and perversion are regaled by the politically correct, neo-Marxist as being America’s new normal, Brion McClanahan’s new book, Southern Scribblings, provides Southerners with a compass pointing them back to the tradition of virtue, honor, and the American principles of constitutionally limited…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 4, 2020
Blog

The Remnant, Part II

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us…All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are…
James Rutledge Roesch
August 3, 2020
Podcast

Podcast Episode 225

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 27-31, 2020 Topics: Secession, Southern Literature, Southern Music, Political Correctness, Confederate Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-225
Brion McClanahan
August 1, 2020