Monthly Archives

March 2025

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Thomas Jefferson, Black Women, and Male Orangutans

Jefferson’s reference in Query XIV of Notes on the State of Virginia to male orangutans’ preference for black women is often cited as evidence of his unabashed racism and Jefferson’s sheer lack of criticality and his credulity. Jefferson writes: Flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of…
M. Andrew Holowchak
March 31, 2025
Blog

When the Yankees Come…

Paul Graham discusses his book on the slave narratives that described Yankee atrocities during the late stages of the War in 1865 during our March 2026 Zoom webinar. https://youtu.be/pgMfSHTzkks
Abbeville Institute
March 28, 2025
Blog

Progressive States’ Rights

A review of Progressive States’ Rights: The Forgotten History of Federalism (University Press of Kansas 2024) by Sean Beienburg In The Future of the Past C. Vann Woodward wrote: “Serious history is the critique of myths…”. Practicing history requires honesty and research integrity. Until roughly the 1960s and 1970s, historians and political researchers were able to look at the issue…
Karol Mazur
March 27, 2025
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Make Arlington Great Again: An Open Letter to President Trump

The forthcoming is adapted from a letter which was written to President Donald Trump soon after his reelection. Copies of this letter were also forwarded to Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and many other officials in the administration. The recent renaming of “Fort Liberty” back to “Fort Bragg” augurs well for us. Dear Mr. President: Congratulations, sir,…
James Rutledge Roesch
March 26, 2025
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Sinners in the Hands of “Southern Studies”

Started out with the intention of a quick post on X about this book I’m reading, but my blood pressure kept rising and I kept writing and here we are. The book: Wilson, Charles Reagan. The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South. University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Mr. Wilson comes off as…
Chase Steely
March 25, 2025
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Green Men and Green Churches

A modern prophet from England, Paul Kingsnorth, has made the comment in a number of his essays that he appreciates how the ancient churches in England look as if they grew out of the soil itself rather than were constructed by human hands.  If one looks into Southern life, he will find that our churches share a strong resemblance to…
Walt Garlington
March 24, 2025
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Fibbing Finkleman on Thomas Jefferson

In 1994, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography published Paul Finkelman’s “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery: The Myth Goes On.” It is an essay, cleverly crafted, which deserves critical examination, because, cleverly crafted, it overwhelmingly misleads. Finkelman begins: Thomas Jefferson is certainly the most popular saint of American civil religion. His closest rival is Abraham Lincoln. But Lincoln was merely…
M. Andrew Holowchak
March 21, 2025
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Conservatism’s Womb

Almost four years ago I wrote an article regarding Tucker Carlson. The article was posted in “The Abbeville Institute” and described his attitude, as he had stated, regarding the South and its history with the Confederate States of America. My opinion was that Carlson (and I still have this opinion) is an intelligent conservative but misguided regarding the South’s Cause.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 20, 2025
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A Confederate Apology

A longer version of this essay was published at Rev. Beane's substack. I’ve made no secret about my views on a controversial period of American history: when thirteen states seceded from the American Union, formed a confederation, adopted a constitution, were invaded, were conquered, and were forced back into the Union - a Union transformed by the experience into a…
Rev. Larry Beane
March 19, 2025
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The Future Calhoun

Today is John C. Calhoun's 243 birthday. Several years ago, I took some time to visit John C. Calhoun's grave in Charleston, SC., a massive stone monument at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church erected in the 1880s to honor the State's greatest son. Calhoun's body had been exhumed three times, once from Washington D.C. after he died in 1850 so it…
Brion McClanahan
March 18, 2025
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Patrick Cleburne

From Cleburne and His Command (1908). From the foundation of the American Republic the Irish people have largely contributed to its upbuilding. Want of space forbids a recital of their services in the pulpit and in the forum, in commerce, agriculture, finance, and government. The military is the only one which can be treated in any degree of detail, for…
Irving A. Buck
March 17, 2025
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Red Pill Without Roots

This piece was originally published at The American Reformer. The Crisis of the Modern Right The greatest internal threat to genuine conservatism stems from modern ideological impulses that seek to reduce all human activity to simple precepts meant to explain the entirety of human existence. Today, this primarily takes the form of a neutralist liberalism masquerading as conservatism. In the…
Jonathan Harris
March 14, 2025
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Libertarian Confusion Concerning the Confederate Cause

Why would a defender of liberty defend the Confederate cause? This question is important in a time when many libertarians insist that the cause of the Confederacy was to defend slavery. If the Confederate cause was slavery, why would a libertarian defend it? A descendant of Confederate veterans may have an obvious reason to defend the Confederate cause as that…
Wanjiru Njoya
March 13, 2025
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What is Living and What is Dead in the Southern Tradition?

Dr. Don Livingston presents "What is Living and What is Dead in the Southern Tradition" at the 2025 Abbeville Institute Conference, "The New South and Future South", February 20-23, 2025. Purchase all of the lectures for this conference at: https://abbevilleacademy.org/p/thenewsouthandfuturesouth https://youtu.be/OkLKWU9f6tY
Donald Livingston
March 12, 2025
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How Did Jefferson Define “Democracy”?

Confidence in the people, writes C.E. Merriam, Jr., in a 1902 paper on Jefferson’s political thinking, was the “distinguishing characteristic in the theory of Jeffersonian democracy.” What Jefferson wrote on republican governing “was notable … because of its rhetoric than because of its scientific depth or clearness.” Jefferson offered nothing new, did not penetrate deeply into political theory, and was…
M. Andrew Holowchak
March 11, 2025
Blog

The Big Lie

When the newly-minted Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, named Fort Liberty, North Carolina “Fort Bragg” after Roland L. Bragg, a native of Maine, who served in WWI, instead of the original namesake, many were quick to excuse it saying “he did the best he could” and, or “the law prevents any military installation to be named after a Confederate”. Poppycock. …
Lola Sanchez
March 10, 2025
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A Modern Bill of Attainder?

Arguably, few who have read the United States Constitution, noticed the three words that support the argument that the Naming Commission and implementation of its recommendations were unconstitutional:  “Bill of Attainder”.  And those who did, most likely paid little attention. But hidden in Article 1, Section 9 is a provision that was adopted without resistance by The Constitutional Convention in…
David McCallister
March 7, 2025
Blog

Porches

The Village of Saline, Bienville Parish, North Louisiana At My Late Maternal Grandparents’ House The sand and gravel road, smooth asphalt now, Passes beside the church and sunken stones Of kin both dead and living yet awhile In memories of one who left and stayed. I slow down for those fields recalled and seen— The cultivated, fallow, undisturbed— Shift my…
David Middleton
March 6, 2025
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Nineteenth Century Jeffersonian Democrats

Originally published at Mises.org Following Donald Trump’s election victory, social media platforms were flooded with memes depicting the wailing and gnashing of teeth among Democrats bemoaning their loss. Some of these memes took a dig at the alleged historical predilection of Democrats for slavery. In a time when the subject of slavery is deemed to be so sensitive that the…
Wanjiru Njoya
March 5, 2025
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The South During Reconstruction

From the Author's Preface of E. Merton Coulter, The South During Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1947). AMERICANS have generally called the fifteen years following the Civil War the Reconstruction period, and writers in this field until recently have let the reconstructing processes crowd out of their narratives everyday developments in the lives of the people. This custom has been especially true of…
E. Merton Coulter
March 4, 2025
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Last Train to Dixie

Last Train to Dixie by Jack Trotter.  Shotwell Publishing, 2021 It is a fact that usually, if not always, the most important books receive little attention or appreciation when they first appear. There are several reasons for this. American publishing is a commercial entertainment enterprise not intended for knowledge or thought. Publishers, “peer reviewers,” critics, and standard shallow “scholars,” are…
Clyde Wilson
March 3, 2025