Monthly Archives

December 2023

Blog

Christmas in Dixie

Editor's Note: This is our final post of 2023. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We will be back January 2, 2024. Until we meet again.... The older that I get, it seems the less I enjoy the Christmas season. So much is now packed into the month of December, that it is hard to…
Keith Redmon
December 27, 2023
Blog

Christmas Reflections

As Christmas 2023 rapidly approaches I am put in mind of a short poem, “The Broad Winter,” written some seventy years ago by English poet, Jack Clemo. It may seem a bit odd to cite this work during the Christmas Season, but I will explain. Here it is: “The darkness comes as you foretold. You hear the fretful moan, The…
Boyd Cathey
December 26, 2023
Blog

Dear Santa

When I came home from the grocery store yesterday I found an envelope taped to my front door. It was blank but sealed. I assumed it was a bill left by my landlord, so I laid it on the coffee table and went to work cooking supper. But about the time the beans came to a simmer curiosity got the…
Brandon Meeks
December 25, 2023
Blog

A Southern Christmas Carol

During the Advent, or Christmas, season, I enjoy hearing and singing Advent hymns, or Christmas carols, which celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I always look forward to this every year. One which I enjoy hearing and singing was written in Northern Virginia, where I am from and where I live. The Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary…
Timothy A. Duskin
December 22, 2023
Blog

An Open Letter for Arlington National Cemetery Confederate Monument

I recently finished reading The Need To Be Whole by Wendell Berry, and it has inspired me to write to you in protest of the imminent—if not actually underway as you read these very words—removal of the Arlington National Cemetery Confederate Monument. I am certain that you have already encountered many arguments in favour of the monument. You have heard…
James Rutledge Roesch
December 21, 2023
Blog

A Confederate Lady at Castle Pinckney and Battery Wagner in Charleston Harbor

Since I became a member of the Charleston Chapter 4 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, I have had the honor of working as a volunteer at our museum in historic Charleston, South Carolina. One aspect of that work involved an inventory of the museum’s rich, remarkable treasure trove of manuscripts and printed material. Having authored a book some…
Karen Stokes
December 20, 2023
Blog

South Carolina Debates the Union

Editor's Note: This 1830 speech from Whitemarsh B. Seabrook shows that South Carolina's commitment to the original Constitution was not solely based on arguments against slavery. Mr. Chairman—I am not aware that I ever attempted to address you with feelings like those which now influence me. The momentous character of the controversy between this state and the federal government, the…
Abbeville Institute
December 19, 2023
Blog

O. Henry: The Short Story Writer of America

Editor's Note: O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is one of the most popular Christmas short stories, but most modern Americans know little about the author or his Southern background. O.Henry posted caricatures of the local carpetbagger in the drugstore window. He also said that when he heard “Dixie” he did not celebrate but only wished that Longstreet had…This…
Edwin W. Bowen
December 18, 2023
BlogReview Posts

Who is the Real Thomas Jefferson?

Who is the real Thomas Jefferson? Historians have attempted to answer this question since "Sage of Monticello" died in 1826. Jefferson has been the symbol of nearly every political movement in America, even if he would have disagreed with their positions. He has been described as a radical, a progressive, a liberal, an agrarian, a populist, a libertarian, a conservative,…
Brion McClanahan
December 15, 2023
Blog

VMI and the American Empire

The instances are innumerable, their details vast. To exist outside and apart is to be a threat, a West Berlin just visible over the parapet. All distinction must submit. There is no more dialogue as once offered to Melos, there is no longer even the illusion of choice: your old god must be displaced, your plinth must be empty, and…
Thomas Ellen
December 14, 2023
Blog

Sally Hemings’ Bedroom

“Historians have made a discovery just in time for the July 4th holiday” (2018), writes Natalie Dreier of the National/World News. “They have found the living quarters for Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who bore six children to one of the country’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson.” Where at Monticello is this bedroom? Michael Cottman of NBC News says that Hemings’ bedroom was…
M. Andrew Holowchak
December 13, 2023
Blog

The Fall of Minnesota

Anyone who wants to judge how far into corruption our present U.S. regime has sunk needs to view the documentary “The Fall of Minneapolis” which covers the George Floyd case and the official reaction to it. Before the evidence was even finalised, the President of the United States, the Vice-President of the United States, the then Speaker of the U.S.…
Clyde Wilson
December 12, 2023
Blog

What Was the War About?

Names tell a lot, and that conflict had many names. The one that seems to have stuck is “The Civil War.” But is this an accurate description? Civil wars by definition are wars waged between two or more factions within a country struggling for control of the government (1). But Robert E. Lee was not fighting to take over the…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
December 11, 2023
Blog

A Southern Memoir

Dr. Virginia Abernethy, retired from the Psychiatry Department of Vanderbilt University, is still going strong at age 90, as evidenced by her lively memoir, Born Abroad:  A Patriot’s Tale of Choice and Chance (Arktos: 2023). From a family of Virginian origins, she was, due to her father’s work, born in Havana and spent her childhood in Buenos Aires.  She still…
Clyde Wilson
December 8, 2023
Blog

Prayerful Warrior

In the years following the defeat of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee emerged as the face of the Lost Cause. In many respects, Lee embodied a defeated South: strong, stubborn, but simply outmanned. However, this interpretation of defeat as a matter of mere numbers and arms did not rest well with many Southerners. To them, the war was a battle…
Jacob Ogan
December 7, 2023
Blog

Abraham Lincoln–War Criminal

We frequently read today about war crimes, such as bombing hospitals. In World War II Britain bombed civilians in Dresden and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In war, we are told, “anything goes.” Abraham Lincoln followed this barbaric policy, and those who treat him as a “hero” have much to answer for. In his definitive book War Crimes…
Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
December 6, 2023
Blog

An Affectionate Farewell

This is a footnote to my most recent offering at the Abbeville Institute regarding the sayonara being given to far too much of Southern culture, heritage and history that is now being swept away by the ever-growing tsunami of mindless social justice rage. You might well ask what could possibly have led a person who was born and largely bred…
John Marquardt
December 5, 2023
Blog

Willmoore Kendall’s Battle Lines

Few men would confuse the late Willmoore Kendall for a Southern gentleman. The son of a blind Oklahoma Southern Methodist preacher, the conservative political philosopher married three times, and carried on numerous affairs. A regular contributor to National Review, Kendall was once caught with a copy girl in the office of a colleague in NR spaces. He was an alcoholic,…
Casey Chalk
December 4, 2023
Blog

Bronze is the Mirror of Form

With the Thanksgiving of 2023 in the rearview mirror, I am still thankful for the over 9000 Americans who submitted comments around the removal of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery. Only 10% of the comments supported the decision to remove the memorial. Over eight thousand Americans wrote in defense of the Confederate Memorial, and over 364 people mentioned grave…
Sara Sass
December 1, 2023