Monthly Archives

October 2022

Blog

The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe

Originally published in The Sewanee Review, Spring, 1968, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Spring, 1968), pp. 214-225 In 1948 T. S. Eliot, in a lecture “From Poe to Valery”, said in substance that Poe’s work, if it is to be judged fairly, must be seen as a whole, lest as the mere sum of its parts it seem inferior. There is…
Allen Tate
October 31, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 331

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 24-28, 2022 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, Southern politics, Northern studies https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-331?si=7447380358be43f2a2a0a913b5467374&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
October 29, 2022
Blog

Dark Age Patriotism

“Now at the height of modern progress, we behold unprecedented outbreaks of hatred and violence; we have seen whole nations desolated by war and turned into penal camps by their conquerors; we find half of mankind looking upon the other half as criminal. Everywhere occur symptoms of mass psychosis. Most portentous of all, there appear diverging bases of value, so…
Lafayette Lee
October 28, 2022
Blog

An Inheritance of Love

I recently found myself sitting next to an old classmate from my Virginia high-school on an airplane flight (for whatever serendipitous reason, these bizarre things happen to me with some regularity). It was particularly timely: this year marks the twentieth anniversary of my high-school graduation. I recognized the woman immediately — we probably shared ten classes together between seventh and…
Casey Chalk
October 27, 2022
Blog

W.J. Cash: the Portrait of Dorian Gray as a Young Southern Man

I, thankfully, studied history and political theory at a Southern university at a time not that long ago when those predisposed to a more classical Southern worldview could hold those positions in class. We would be challenged, yes. We had professors who were more liberal than we were, naturally, but as long as we could well defend our positions, we…
R. Ashley Hall
October 25, 2022
1607 Project

Looking for Mr. Jefferson

A cynical but true saying that sometimes passes around among historians is “He Who Controls the Present Controls the Past.”  Man is a symbolizing creature and political struggles can be as much over symbols as over tangible things.  Those who hold power and those who seek power want to associate themselves with favourable symbols from their society’s past.  It gives…
Clyde Wilson
October 24, 2022
1607 Project

Virgina First

I. THE name First given to the territory occupied by the present United States was Virginia. It was bestowed upon the Country by Elizabeth, greatest of English queens. The United States of America are mere words of description. They are not a name. The rightful and historic name of this great Republic is “Virginia.” We must get back to it,…
Lyon G. Tyler
October 24, 2022
Blog

Do Motives Matter?

A friend of mine translated a book on Lincoln written by Karl Marx in which her first installment was a refutation by Marx of the European press’s contention that the assault by the North on the South was not about slavery but economic and political power. Of course, one cannot divorce the issue of slavery from either consideration, but Marx…
Valerie Protopapas
October 24, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 330

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 17-21, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Southern symbols, Cancel Culture, Northern Studies https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-330?si=7a20def61ce844e7b6223c88045b1399&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
October 22, 2022
Blog

Shermanized

Editor's Note: This poem was delivered by Miss Lucy Powell Harris at a concert give by the pupils at the Houston Street Female High School in Atlanta, Georgia, May, 1st, 1866. It was originally written by L. Virginia French, the daughter of a prosperous Virginia family. She relocated to Tennessee and became a teacher after her mother died and her…
Abbeville Institute
October 21, 2022
Blog

Douglas Southall Freeman

From the 2011 Abbeville Institute Summer School. The topic I chose was “Douglas Southall Freeman, a Southern Historian's Historian.” But I could have all kinds of meanings. It could be he's a Southern historian’s historian, or he's a Southern historian’s historian. He's also a Southern historian's military historian, because most of the topics that he wrote about were military oriented.…
Jonathan White
October 19, 2022
Blog

Carpetbaggers

When you read Raleigh, what comes to mind? How about Charleston? Nashville? Birmingham? One can almost hear the ring of iron in the name “Birmingham”. Waves splash at the sound of Charleston. The raucous theatres of Nashville ring back when country music was “country western”. Raleigh conjures images of tar, pork and tobacco. So what happened to these industries that…
Sara Sass
October 18, 2022
Blog

Never the Twain

In today’s America, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, North is North, and South is South, and never the twain shall meet. This dichotomy, of course, was not always the case, for after the many years of bitter sectional rancor and four years of bloody internecine warfare that took place over half a century before, the North and the South finally managed…
John Marquardt
October 17, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 329

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 10-14, 2022 Topics: Southern Political Tradition, Southern History, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-329?si=351d6dcd5a9f4e0abdbf80d637aea947&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
October 15, 2022
Blog

Driving Through Southern Maryland, Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 It’s easy to be transported back in time in Charles County. Rural roads meander through woods, across streams and between fields, some adorned with tobacco barns. Sprinkled throughout this typical Southern Maryland countryside are historic sites, villages, and quiet churches. The final resting places of settlers and patriots, churchyards tell their own story of regional…
Brett Moffatt
October 14, 2022
Blog

History vs Lies

History is an art in a sense. That is, it is not mathematically provable. The mathematician (I am one, at least through some bit of graduate studies) must prove something logically (there are certain basic rules of logic—contrary to reflections from “the squad,” et al). If he can’t prove it, it simply means it is not provable true, nor is…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 13, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 328

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 3-7, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Southern Tradition, the War, Sovereignty, Cancel Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-328?si=2c8df96e9b214ac98eca508febafc6b0&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
October 12, 2022
Blog

Good Directions

The fella that runs the local feed store is a Cajun from Ville Platte, Louisiana. He moved up here to Arkansas because the woman he met in the personal ads said she could abide thickets and pine trees but would not tolerate bayous or raising a coonass baby. I stopped by the store yesterday because I needed some laying pellets…
Brandon Meeks
October 11, 2022
Blog

Forms of Nationalism in Early America

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School My first lecture is going to be a bit of a story, but this story is not going to be one where there's a hero at the center of it. Instead this is gonna be a story about nationalism, what nationalism is and the categories of nationalism that were present during the early…
Carey Roberts
October 10, 2022
BlogReview Posts

The Attack on Leviathan, Part 4

X. American Heroes Originally published as “A Note on American Heroes” in the Southern Review (1935). Whatever else we lack, we do not lack great memories. We have heroes, and we want to possess them affectionately as a mature nation ought. The American mind is divided against itself. Our approach to “what terms we may possess our heroes” is as…
Chase Steely
October 7, 2022
Blog

We’ve Been Lied To

Much of what we’ve gotten from our “history” books has been wishful myth. Those who are the victors in wars and other world situations get to write the “history” books, in which they make themselves look good and their enemies look bad. The bad things they’ve done are either ignored or swept under the rug while their enemy’s faults are…
Al Benson
October 6, 2022
Blog

The Rainmakers

Uncle Dude and Aunt Lura lived across the field beside us when I was growing up. They were both born between the two World Wars and lived through the Depression. Dude was born at the foot of Mount Saint Helens, Lura was born in the same room where she died in the Arkansas Delta. They had lots of odd superstitions…
Brandon Meeks
October 4, 2022
Blog

Southern Resistance to the European Concept of Sovereignty

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. So, our friend Don Livingston asked me to bring a European perspective on the problems of the Southern decentralist tradition. Today, I want to address what I would call, “What They Were Up Against: The Modern State and Federalism.” One of the greatest errors of mainstream Anglo-American political studies, from the history of…
Marco Bassani
October 3, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 327

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Sept 26-30, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Southern Culture, Cancel Culture, The War, Northern Studies https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-327?si=4e2ebd96dfdb4b6795fa6e7aaadc9072&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
October 1, 2022