Monthly Archives

November 2024

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Summertime and the Livin’ Is Easy

Originally published in Southern Partisan in 1979. Some forty years ago, H. L. Mencken and one of his cronies set out to study the “level of civilization” in each of the (at that time) forty-eight states. They put together a variety of quantitative indicators of health, wealth, literacy, governmental performance, and so on, and triumphantly announced in the American Mercury…
John Shelton Reed
November 21, 2024
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While Hegel Smiles in His Grave: A Colorful Explanation of Jefferson’s Racism

A review of Black Reason, White Feeling: The Jeffersonian Enlightenment in the African American Tradition (University of Virginia Press, 2024) by Hannah Spahn Following philosopher Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment, says Hannah Spahn, can be summed by the formula sapere aude (“dare to know”), Spahn focuses on two figures she takes to be representative of that climate: black “poet” Phillis Wheatley…
M. Andrew Holowchak
November 19, 2024
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Reinvigorating State Power in the US Senate

Donald Trump’s victory in the election for the federal presidency has provoked bold claims of a sweeping political realignment in the States: ‘The recent political landscape has been shaken to its core, revealing a seismic shift that has emerged as a result of the latest elections. The transformative power of the MAGA movement has taken center stage, with an unprecedented…
Walt Garlington
November 18, 2024
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The Frescos of North Carolina

In 2022, I was driving through Wilkesboro, NC and saw a brown DOT sign that said something along the lines of “St. Paul’s Church Frescos.”  The word “frescos” caught my eye as I tend to associate frescos with Italy, not small towns in western NC.  Some of the most famous works of art in the world are frescos such as…
J. Shaw Gillis
November 14, 2024
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The Apotheosis of Abraham Lincoln

“Abraham Lincoln…has almost disappeared from human knowledge. I hear of him, I read of him in eulogies and biographies, but I fail to recognize the man I knew in life.”--Union General Donn Piatt You have to give credit to those who fought to prevent Southern Independence. Post-war, they seized the narrative, stated they were going to “reeducate” Southerners and created…
John M. Taylor
November 13, 2024
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Rebuilding the Christian and Southern Traditions for Posterity

Trump’s historic election victory was a clear mandate from the American people to stop the insanity that has been the political Left. However, it is much more than reversing inflation, strengthening borders, and not being woke. The next four years, and Lord-willing, beyond are an opportunity to redefine the trajectory of the country and use the time given to us…
Cole Branham
November 12, 2024
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A Knotty Nodus

I have ever championed the view that the hallmark of good history or philosophy, especially for young scholars, is for a scholar to take what might be considered as a small problem or topic, perhaps one typically overpassed by others (e.g., Jefferson and guns), and do a thorough job of it. In that way, whoever wishes to write on that…
M. Andrew Holowchak
November 8, 2024
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Donald Trump on Lee and “Reconciliation”

Editor's note: Trump issued this statement on the removal of the Lee monument in Richmond, Virginia on September 8, 2021. He has publicly supported reversing the work of the "Naming Commission", has offered a real reconciliationist assessment of the War and Reconstruction, and could, by executive order, mandate that the Arlington Confederate Monument be restored to its original position.  Just…
Donald J. Trump
November 7, 2024
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A New View of Reconstruction

A Review of Reconstruction: Destroying a Republic and Creating an Empire by James Ronald Kennedy (Shotwell Publishing, 2024 Since they wrote The South Was Right, the Kennedy twins have become legendary in the field of Southern history, and this latest effort by Ron Kennedy does not disappoint. He begins by quoting Marxist historian James S. Allen, who wrote: “Reconstruction was…
Samuel W. Mitcham
November 5, 2024
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Lessons from Reconstruction

Originally published at Mises.org. In “The Terror of Reconstruction,” Lew Rockwell highlights the dangers of governments seeking to suppress their political opponents by an assault on citizens’ liberties. He draws upon the experience of the South under military dictatorship during the Reconstruction years as an example of what happens when governments embark on social revolution. One tactic described by Rockwell…
Wanjiru Njoya
November 4, 2024
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Secession and Reconciliation

Modern activist historians think "reconciliation" is a pejorative, but for most Americans in the early 20th century, it was a necessary part of healing. This included histories written by Southerners. We discuss one of those books on this episode of The Essential Southern Podcast. https://youtu.be/ZMkmCr8u7V8
Abbeville Institute
November 1, 2024