Monthly Archives

June 2023

Blog

Anti-Commandeering in Practice

One effective way States can resist unconstitutional encroachments from the general government is through the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine. James Madison articulated this idea in Federalist Number 46. He said States could obstruct “unwarrantable measures” emanating from “the federal government” through “refusal to co-operate with the officers of the union.” In recent years States have successfully used this rationale to defend themselves…
Jonathan Harris
June 29, 2023
Blog

Jefferson’s Platonic Republicanism

Jefferson was never shy about his execration of Plato. He told John Adams (5 July 1814) that reading Plato’s Republic—fraught with whimsies, puerilities, and unintelligible jargon—was “the heaviest task-work I ever went through.” It is not so astonishing that Jefferson would have had such an unsympathetic, even hostile, view of Plato and his Republic, as Jefferson was a practical man…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 28, 2023
Blog

How Confederates Helped End Slavery in the United States

About two weeks after Texas Confederates surrendered on June 2, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to take command of the state’s occupation troops on June Nineteenth. On that day he ordered soldiers to post bulletins around town notifying the public that all persons held as slaves had been freed by virtue of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on…
Philip Leigh
June 27, 2023
Blog

Rethinking Fort Sumter

Many prevailing assumptions about the War to Prevent Southern Independence are questionable summary judgments more akin to propaganda than careful understanding. This is certainly true of the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861.  It is assumed that “firing on the flag” was a justification for all patriots to rush to the defense of America and inaugurate a war…
Clyde Wilson
June 26, 2023
BlogPodcast

Ep. 3: Carolina! Carolina!

Music and poetry have long been indicators of a robust culture and tradition. The South excelled at both. Henry Timrod's "Carolina!" served as the basis of the South Carolina State song, and it is a fine example of Southern tradition, honor, and heroism. https://youtu.be/a7UW1z0I5Pk
Brion McClanahan
June 24, 2023
Blog

The Lord and His Mules

As a child, my grandfather inspired in me both a love and fear of two things: the Lord and mules.  Having been born into an old family in the “Little Dixie” part of Missouri, the importance of loving reverence for both the Lord and his mules (seemingly His agents on Earth) were exceedingly important, and, according to Grandpa, both played…
Trevor Laurie
June 23, 2023
Blog

The Moral Superiority of the South

The South is morally superior. It always has been and, looks like, likely will be. It all started when the Yankees showed up in 1620 to be the second English-speaking people here. The pilgrims were absolutist, stiff-necked, uncompromising, dissenting Puritans. They were different from the start. They mostly came from East Anglia and the ancient Danelaw. The Puritan’s religion, ideas,…
James Atticus Bowden
June 22, 2023
Blog

Roscoe

The little hill behind my grandparent’s house is a piece of sacred earth to me. My grandmother planted a dogwood tree there when I was just a sapling myself. And beneath its blossoms I have planted three flying squirrels, a basset hound, and a kindly old cur dog. To rest in the shade until the Day dawns. I know how…
Brandon Meeks
June 21, 2023
Blog

Some Interesting Northern Opinions on the War

The philosopher and labour advocate Orestes Brownson, a staunch Union supporter, had this to say shortly after the war: “Nothing was more striking during the late civil war than the very general absence of loyalty or feeling of duty, on the part of the adherents of the Union . . . . The administration never dared confide in the loyalty…
Clyde Wilson
June 20, 2023
Blog

A Glaring Consistency

While other interests come and go, I believe the permanence of my obsession with Dixie is rooted in its manifestation of enduring principles, to which I am stubbornly loyal. Despite the Abbeville Institute’s dedication to the Southern tradition in its entirety, our study seems to hover around the Confederacy and the War for Southern Independence, and for good reason.  In…
Julie Paine
June 19, 2023
BlogPodcast

Ep. 2: Jefferson Davis’s Farewell Address

Ep. 2: Even just a few years ago, Jefferson Davis's January 1861 Farewell Address to the United States Senate was considered to be one of the most important speeches in United States history. Those who heard it both wept and cheered as Davis led several other Senators out of the chamber. The speech is one of the "essential Southern" documents…
Brion McClanahan
June 17, 2023
Blog

The Barbershop Gospel

As a young minister, my daily conversations tend to be around the Bible in some form or another. Everyone, and rightly so, expects a minister to talk about Jesus. Still, one could be amiss if a young barber started talking about Jesus, especially sin and forgiveness while clippin' a man’s hair. It was rather pleasant for a change to hear…
Rev. Tar Heel
June 16, 2023
Blog

Thomas Jefferson as a “Southern Cosmopolitan”

Xenophon in his Memorabilia (II.i.21–34) cites Prodicus’ account of Herakles (L., Hercules), “passing from boyhood to youth’s estate,” at a crossroads. He went to a quiet place to consider his course of life, when he was visited by two goddesses—Hēdonē (Pleasure) and Aretē (Virtue). “The one was fair to see and of high bearing; and her limbs were adorned with…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 15, 2023
Blog

More Unnoticed Facts About the War Between the States

William T. Sherman was a diagnosable manic-depressive. Such a man should not be in command of an army. Always with superior forces, he seldom won a battle. His famous “March” was almost entirely a terror campaign against undefended civilians. Republicans tried hard to get him to run for President which he refused with annoyance. His son became a Jesuit and…
Clyde Wilson
June 14, 2023
Blog

Tomatoes

Early Saturday morning, an unexpected item popped up on my laptop. Not an unusual phenomenon, but this one was different. It came from a New England travel site and featured an article titled, “The Tomato Sandwich-A New England Sumer Treat.” What the heck? Each word slapped me in the face, and I finally understood the definition of cultural appropriation. “No,…
Averyell A. Kessler
June 13, 2023
Blog

A Birthday Salute to Clyde Wilson

On Sunday, June 11, 2023, my dear friend and a man who is rightly called “the Dean of Southern Historians,” Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, celebrated his 82nd birthday. For some fruitful fifty-five of those years he has been at the forefront of efforts to make the history of his native region better known, and, as events and severe challenges to…
Boyd Cathey
June 12, 2023
Blog

Cowell to Judea

I pulled up to my great uncle's house around 7:30 on a Saturday morning. Our goal was to find mushrooms, but what it evolved into was so much better than any sackful of morels could ever be! We left his house and headed to Cowell, on Highway 7, and took the dirt road that winds back down the mountain. As…
Travis Holt
June 9, 2023
Blog

The Putrid Sink of Today’s Jeffersonian Scholarship

Historians today with interest in historiography—what is often characterized simply and somewhat misleadingly as the history of history—seem to be in general agreement that the aims and methods of “historians” over millennia have changed. Study of history, as the argument goes, unquestionable shows that. There was yesterday’s history, there is today’s history, and there will be tomorrow’s history, and there…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 8, 2023
Blog

Recognising the Southern Tradition

A review of Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism for Our Times (Routledge, 2017), by Joseph Scotchie. Joseph Scotchie’s knowledge of Southern thought in the 20th century and beyond is both encyclopedic and insightful--a rare combination. He surveys a body of Southern writing that is a major unrecognised achievement of American culture. This collection of reviews, articles, and talks…
Clyde Wilson
June 7, 2023
Blog

Mary Boykin Chesnut as Novelist

I’m going to talk about Mary Boykin Chesnut. I want to ask you, how many of you know her famous epic, sometimes called A Diary from Dixie, sometimes called Mary Chesnut’s Civil War? How many of you have heard those names? I’d like to see a show of hands. Well, less than half. I was expecting a few more. How…
James Everett Kibler
June 6, 2023
Blog

Memorial Day, What it Means, and Why

Observing Memorial Day 2023, like millions of other Americans I recall the sacrifices of those who selflessly gave their lives in far off places like Guadalcanal or the Hurtgen Forest or Anzio beach. Some remain in neatly kept cemeteries in France or other countries. In many cases, those men did not understand fully “why” they were engaged in conflict, save…
Boyd Cathey
June 5, 2023
Blog

James Dickey and Charlotte Holbrook

Families in the South connect in complicated ways.  James Dickey was the famous author of the 1970 novel, Deliverance, about 4 Atlanta men who take canoes down a north Georgia river and become violently entangle with the local mountain men.  James Dickey himself appears at the end of the movie version (1972) in the character of the Sheriff, with a…
Charles Stewart Roberts, MD
June 2, 2023
Blog

George Washington and the Constitution, A Reflection

Things are seldom what they seem and therefore, beware “simple” or “easy” solutions to problems and questions that are themselves neither simple nor easy. In other words, when one is presented with what seems an obvious explanation of something that is itself anything but obvious, one should take care lest in grasping at “the answer,” one fails to understand the…
Valerie Protopapas
June 1, 2023