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
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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
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…
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. …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A Constitution for the Future South
Presented at the 2025 Abbeville Institute Conference "The New South and Future South" A green hill… covered with wavering grass… sweeps up to a mighty castle, bright in the summer morning. At the highest parapet of this castle, you stand. A light breeze ruffles your hair. You look out on…ring after concentric ring of ramparts encircling your castle, stretching to…
Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia?
A review of Witchcraft in the Colonial Virginia (The History Press 2019), by Carson O. Hudson Nowadays, witchcraft and sorcery are part of pop culture. Both in Europe and America. These issues permeate many histories in various countries of Western civilization. They are present in fairy tales, folk tales and legends. Their influence seems to be very significant. It is…
Livin’ in the DMV
Colin Woodward, author of American Nations, identified eleven regional and rival cultures overlapping state boundaries that shapes American culture and politics. The work is insightful, bringing to mind the European observation that America is a continent, not a country. Woodward’s work has its limitations. One of these limitations is how to deal with the Megalopolis known as the District of…
The Southern Cadence
We all have an idea that when we hear Southern Music, we know it, but what is it? What is it about Southern music that makes it stand out from other types of American music or music from around the world? How do you know it when you hear it? How do you explain to somebody the difference between the…
Are We Worthy?
On February 22nd in 1732, George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. 130 years later, another American president gave his second inaugural address in Richmond, Virginia. "Fellow-citizens, after the struggle of ages had consecrated the right of the Englishman to constitutional representative government, our colonial ancestors were forced to vindicate that birthright by an appeal to arms. Success crowned…
Jefferson on Executive Action
Jefferson was ever committed to tripartite governmental powers, comprising an executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. Each branch, he asserts to George Wythe (July 1776), should be independent of the others to offer itself as a check on the others. The independence of the executive from the legislative is of utmost importance, for otherwise the executive might have undue influence…
Stonewall Jackson on the Sabbath and National Blessing
Originally published at TruthScript. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson is one of the most well-known Confederate generals and beloved men of the South. He is also known for his devout Christian piety and service as a deacon in the Old School Presbyterian Church. Southern Presbyterian theologian and Confederate chaplain, R. L. Dabney, said that “Jackson’s religious character was strictly sincere and…
We Are All Saint Oncho Now
Since the end of the War, with the Yankees in the ascendancy, the dominant ideas in the union have been mainly change, innovation, progress, and their near-of-kin. Sultan Donald the Magnificent re-confirmed this in his Inaugural Address in January: ‘And, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation. Americans are explorers, builders,…
Happy Worst Presidents Day
Originally published at LewRockwell.com A 64-year-old woman with deep family roots in Alabama recently said to me that she was taught in Alabama public school that Abraham Lincoln was “the best president ever.” That would be a good example of the consequences of what the New England Yankee conquerors labeled “reconstruction.” The truth is that Lincoln was by far the…
Lest We Forget
February 17th, 2025, marks the 160th anniversary of the burning of Columbia. Although there is already overwhelming proof that General William T. Sherman’s troops deliberately torched the capital city of South Carolina, once in a while, some “new” evidence turns up which can be added to the multitude of other testimonies on record. “Righteous Cause” adherents (beginning with Sherman himself)…
Trump’s Order to Release JFK, RFK, and MLK Files Doesn’t Cover Everything
Three days after taking office as the 47th President, Donald J. Trump took the bold and necessary step of issuing an Executive Order that will result in the declassification (and one presumes the release) of all intelligence community files on the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations. Thus, President Trump made good on a 2024 campaign promise. It’s a vision of…
The Priority of the Local
The online publication “Nature Communications” has an article titled, “Ideological Differences in the Expanse of the Moral Circle.” It demonstrates by use of a heat map, the moral priorities of the Right vs the Left. Using concentric circles, a heat signature upon those circles shows that psychologically the Conservative’s moral concerns are most intense at the center surrounding where he exists,…
Upholding the Sabbath
Perhaps shocking to some today, in the opening decades of the nineteenth century the transportation and delivering of the U.S. Mails on the Christian Sabbath (Lord’s day) was a hot political and social issue during several periods. The first was during the War of 1812, when Protestant denominations – mainly Presbyterian and Congregational – and professing Christians, generally, protested the…
The Captive South
A Review of James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy, Punished with Poverty: The Suffering South (Shotwell Publishing, 2016) A Real South For the redoubtable Kennedy brothers, James Ronald and Walter Donald, there simply is a coherent set of places called the South and people who are Southerners. Conventional wisdom aside, these folks have more in common with each other…
Power Shift
A Review of Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment (Random House, 1976) Editor’s note: Many Abbeville readers and supporters are familiar with Kirk Sale, a well-known advocate of decentralization and secessionism, and certainly a friend of the South. In asking him to review a book he penned in 1976,…
A Matter of Perspective
For decades academic historians have attributed the causes of the Civil War to two factors: First was to prevent Southern Secession in order to “Preserve the Union” because a United America was a role model for the rest of Western Civilization. Second was to prevent the spread of slavery into the federal territories because the institution was morally repugnant.…
The Constitution Did Not Cause the War in 1861
Many especially Southern historians believe that the Federal Government established by the thirteen independent American States with the ratification of the Constitution of 1788 was directly responsible for the war of 1861, thus destroying the rights and sovereignty of all the existing States and making of them mere “legislative counties” charged with and limited to fulfilling the will of that…
Did Jefferson Really Hate Washington?
Editor's Note: Professor Holowchak has published a SIGNED leather bound edition of his book, Framing a Legend: Exposing the Distorted History of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. You can take 10% the retail price at checkout by using the code JEFFERSON. Scholars commonly talk of the enmity between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as they commonly do of the enmity…
The South in the American War for Independence
You probably learned in school that America began when the “Pilgrim Fathers” landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and really took off when the Puritans founded Boston. Never mind that these events happened some decades after the founding of Virginia. You probably also learned that the American Revolution story centers around Paul Revere and the battle of Bunker Hill, although New England…
“A Most Uncertain Response to the Declaration of Independence . . . .”
The interesting thing about the relationship of post-colonial American literature to the events of 1776 is the way in which a pious regard for the nation’s founders and for the enterprise which they set in motion has, among our writers, co-existed with a most uncertain response to the Declaration of Independence itself and to the loftiest aspirations which gather upon…
A Southern Success
My Southern grandmothers, like all Southern grandmothers, taught me that one should be quietly proud of accomplishments but never brag. The eternal model, of course, being General Lee. I am going to violate their good advice (and not for the first time in matters of behaviour) by boasting about the near miraculous creation and success of Shotwell Publishing. Which I…
The Death of Debate
In ancient China, a physician could not look directly upon a lady from the Emperor’s court; she would appear before him in a screened palanquin. All diagnoses were the result of careful questions lest one offend, a matter that could lead to decapitation, or worse! — and an examination of the lady’s hands and wrists, the only parts of her…
Go Away and Think
The first quarter of this century has been marred by cancel culture, a consequence of an ideology pursued by reformers who call themselves “progressives,” believing themselves morally superior to others. By this ideology, each person in the world is categorized into oppressive or victim groups, largely based upon race, without regard to individuality. It is a staggeringly ignorant way to…
Modern Challenges and the Southern Tradition
The Southern tradition has many answers to modern problems. The challenge is that few look there. They get close but stop short. On a recent episode of the All-In Podcast, David Friedberg made some salient points about the Constitution and federal spending. They were discussing the fact that federal spending is roughly 23% of GDP. He then went into some…
“I Will Make Known My Lineage to All of You”
Remember the speeches we bravely shared At the meadhall tables – we boasted from the benches That we would be heroes, hard-fighting in battle. Now we'll see who's worthy of his vow, Who'll back up his boast in the rush of battle. I will make known my lineage to all of you: I come from a mighty family of Mercians;…
Jefferson’s “Religion”
In one of my recent videos, a viewer from Abbeville asked whether Thomas Jefferson was a deist or a theist. This essay answers that question. There has been and continues to be overwhelming confusion apropos of Jefferson’s religiosity. That is, in large part, due to Jefferson, whose behavior invites contradictory assessments of it. He attended worship and participated in prayers…
Puritans, Quakers, and Michel Foucault
Although he is not “one of us,” Southern conservatives can certainly learn something from the eloquent blogger Steve Sailer. For instance, Sailer recently summarized a new theory from a book which relates the Woke Cult to the North’s two characteristic religious strains: “Puritans tended to be intense and Quakers nice,” Sailer observes. “Put them together and you get an intolerant…
The Two Funerals of Jimmy Carter
This past week, I, along with the rest of the nation, watched the funeral service for President Jimmy Carter and followed along as his remains were transported around the country for his final goodbyes and honors. I was born well after Carter’s Presidency, so I never grew up with any baggage regarding his Presidency nor Governorship. I knew him at…
War on the Past
A University of Virginia religion professor said this about the presence of the Charlottesville Robert E. Lee statue: it was “like if there’s a rabid dog in the neighborhood that has been hurting people, and it needs to be euthanized.” Such a statement is ignorant, fanatical, and substitutes childish subjectivism for objective reality. The statue has since been destroyed. That…
Lee the American
It is now fourteen years since the publication of “Lee the American,” but the interest in at any rate the subject of the book seems by no means to have diminished. The colossal struggle of the European War, with all the passions and sacrifices involved in it, has made the American Civil War in general seem not perhaps less important,…
Is MAGA in the Southern Tradition?
In a previous article I compared the 2024 election to the Battle of Gettysburg and said that I was cautiously optimistic that developments after the election would result in a rearrangement of American institutions (governmental and otherwise) so that they would more closely resemble those of the constitutional republic envisioned by the Founders. If this occurs it will be a…
Lincoln Idolatry is a Disease
It never fails to surprise me how supposedly educated people, with a purported knowledge in history and law, get the Emancipation Proclamation wrong. For example, this week on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show, Clay Travis credited Abraham Lincoln for freeing slaves in the Civil War in 1863. Though he didn’t reference the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln…
The Land They Loved
A review of The Land They Loved, Vols. I and II (Shotwell Publishing, 2022, 2024). Clyde N. Wilson, known rightly as the dean of southern historians today—the most learned, the most honest—has a marked literary bent, which he has turned to the service of his homeland. Under the collective title The Land They Loved, he has assembled two volumes of…
Bill Neal: A Culinary Genius of the South
It was in New Haven that I picked up a seminal Southern cookery book written by a young Southern chef working in Chapel Hill. His name was Bill Neal. On the dust jacket cover of the first edition that I bought, I see Bill Neal as a young happy man in his thirties. He is standing inside one of Chapel…
The Bard of the South Carolina Low Country
Archibald Rutledge, a major South Carolina and national writer in the first half of the 20th century, seems to have dropped nearly out of sight. His books are mostly available, when obtainable at all, in over-priced used remnants. Yet Rutledge was in his time a celebrated and bestselling author of hunting and nature accounts, memoirs, and a poet of lasting…
Gettysburg
Under a copse of oaks, a mile or so from the ridge, we sit well hidden from the enemy. Yet at the moment, we’re less concerned about the Yanks than finding relief from the stifling heat. Hot, humid, and not a hint of a cloud in the sky. The woolen uniforms are no help either. Will stands up, and leans…
The South’s Forgotten Fire Eater
A review of The South's Forgotten Fire Eater: David Hubbard & North Alabama's Long Road to Disunion (New South Books, 2020) by Chris McIlwain Establishment historians typically portray Southern history as a cartoonish parade of superficial, racist, self-interested characters dedicated to the preservation of slavery. Every action by Southern political actors requires a discussion about how it relates to the…
Thomas Jefferson, Hugh Blair, and the Fine Art of Writing
As a writer of some accomplishment—over 70 published books and several hundred essays—my success in writing is due to my deep love of writing. Most of the scholars that I know have told me either that they find writing painful or at least unpleasant. That is not the case with me. There are times, and they are not infrequent despite…
Frances Fisher Tiernan: North Carolina’s Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell is for many Americans, especially Georgians, a household name. Her Civil War epic holds a prominent place in the modern American literary and film halls of fame, and quotes from her novel still come out of the mouths of many Americans. In contrast, one would be hard-pressed to find a bookshelf in any home or public library that…
A Slap in Jimmy Carter’s Face?
The Episcopal Church USA has long prided itself as hosting the venue for state occasions at its so-called National Cathedral in Washington D.C. The National Cathedral is a large building in the gothic style which was built over the course of decades with much fund-raising done by that denomination nation-wide. Begun in 1907, the Cathedral is actually dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, but…
I Ain’t Apologizing
Jon Harris has been affiliated with the Abbeville Institute for nearly a decade. He was one of our Summer School students, has been responsible for some of our video work, and was the editor and producer of our 1607 Project documentary. He hosts the popular YouTube channel Conversations That Matter and published two books on social justice and Christianity. He…
The Danger Still Not Over
In October 1801, Virginia’s great revolutionary and jurist Edmund Pendleton addressed a public excited about the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency. At eighty years old, this senior statesman offered thoughts on the election and the future of the United States. Pendleton’s bona fides were well known: member of the Continental Congress, first speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates,…
Crossing the River With My RC
When I was a young boy, circa six or seven, there were no monstrous interstate highways slashing across the land. The land was beautiful, or as I probably thought, at the time, natural. Interstate highways are about as natural as was Sherman’s march through Georgia. They are federal (Yankee) spending, creating great slashes through private property (eminent domain is Grendel;…
The New South and Future South
What does the Southern tradition have to offer America in 2025? Richard Weaver wrote in his Southern Tradition at Bay that the Old South may not be a place where we would want to live, but it certainly could offer examples of how to live. That’s a pregnant statement. Southerners, more than Americans in other sections, held fast to tradition…
The Sword Was Their Passport
While working on an essay about LSU Press, I came across a title I wanted to buy for my library. I searched for months—nothing. I finally made a two-hour roundtrip to a university library that lends books to locals. That’s where I found Harris Gaylord Warren’s The Sword Was Their Passport. Published in 1943 by Louisiana State University Press, Warren’s…
Another Example of Anti-Southern Judicial Activism
Earlier this month, a Federal District Court Judge in the Middle District of Georgia, Clay D. Land, ruled against the National Ranger Memorial Foundation in their lawsuit against Biden Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and others, regarding the brick paver honoring John Singleton Mosby at the Ranger Memorial at Fort Moore, formally known as Fort Benning, Georgia, that was targeted…
Thomas Jefferson’s Christmas Eve Wish
On Christmas Eve 1786, a mawkish Thomas Jefferson pens a letter (below, in toto) to Maria Cosway, a lovely Italian painter and musician, married by convenience to the eccentric and monkeylike Richard Cosway—a foppish macaroni. Jefferson met the Cosways on August 6, 1786, when he and American artist John Trumbull met them by accident while Jefferson and Trumbull were admiring…
A Christmas Day in Charlotte
"A merry Christmas and a happy New Year!" These be immortal words. They suggest happy firesides and blazing logs; the joy of little children; the repeated handshake; the ready offering of charity; the deepening of love; and a sweeter showing of spiritual life. As the words are written, the voice of the cow bell and the tin horn and the…
Moravian Star
In an effort to be unique, a new ubiquity has consumed Christmas decorations across the nation – inflatable snowmen glow in every front yard, multicolored neon lights clash dramatically at property lines, and Santa’s feet stick upright out of chimneys. In stark defiance to this trend, the city of Winston-Salem, with its demure Christmas decorations, features prominently in Southern Living…
Marxism and the Cultural Revolution
It will not have escaped many people’s attention that one of the main strategies in America’s “reckoning on race and Southern identity” involves depicting the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of racial oppression. Against this, Patrick J. Buchanan argued that: What the flag symbolizes for the millions who revere, cherish, or love it, however, is the heroism of those…
Honorable and Brilliant Labors
A review of Honorable and Brilliant Labors, Orations of William Gilmore Simms (University of South Carolina Press, 2024), edited by John D. Miller Out of this 298 page book, 70% are Simms's orations with a small part of that the index, bibliography and an appendix that lists all of Simms's known orations. The 195 pages of Simms's work - his…
Jefferson on Secession: Pro and Con
Jefferson was always committed to the rights to revolt and to secede. They are of the gist of his Declaration of Independence and his sanction of bottom-up government. Republican government, he often says—especially in three singular letters in 1816—is government by the vox populi (lit., voice of the people). He writes to Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816): Governments are republican…
The Southern Gentleman Who Dominated Chess
As the secession crisis intensified in the last years of the 1850s, the most famous Southerner known on the European continent was likely not Maryland-born Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, nor Mississippi senator and future president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, nor South Carolina poet and novelist William Gilmore Simms. Rather, that honor would almost certainly go to…
The Last of the Romans
Philosophic in his temperament and wise in his conduct, governed in all his actions by reason and judgment, and deeply imbued with Bible images, this virtuous and patriotic man (whom Mr. Jefferson called "the last of the Romans") had long fixed the term of his political existence at the age which the Psalmist assigns for the limit of manly life:…
It’s a Daniel’s Clothing Christmas
We give gifts at Christmas because we were given a gift. My grandfather, John T. “Tyson” Daniel, opened Daniel’s Clothing in Tuskegee, Alabama on May 5, 1939. Originally, he moved to Tuskegee from Montgomery in 1931 at the age of 26 to open a Singer Sewing Machine store, and he was a door-to-door salesman in Tuskegee for the Singer Corporation.…
The War as an International Strategic Conflict
When the discussion of the causes of the war is broadened from slavery to address tariffs, federalism, and several other issues they are still commonly looked at from the perspective of political philosophy in a domestic context but the American conflict existed in an international context with several external actors. England had both a trade policy at the time of…
Fear and Propaganda: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth
For 25 years, The Thomas Jefferson (Memorial) Foundation has been pushing the story of Jefferson’s involvement of Sally Hemings. In 2000, after conclusion of their analysis of the 1998 DNA study concerning Jefferson’s avowed paternity of Hemings’ children, their story was that it was very likely that Jefferson fathered all of Hemings’ children, but in 2018, the qualifiers were removed:…
Democratic Principles
How sweet are the sounds from home. How soothing the consolations of a discerning wife. I was feeling bad and she knew it. My cogitations over the election news were by no means jubilant. Silent and sad, with the newspaper open on my knee, I had been looking dreamily at the flickering flames for about ten minutes while Mrs. Arp…
The Simple Life
'Tis an old question, revived by a letter that wondered why anybody could be content to stay in Charlotte or smaller places when New York, Boston and other larger cities offer so much more broadening influences and so much greater facilities for ambition. The letter came from a man who has lived in New York only a year or so…
Local Signs and Wonders
A review of Local Signs and Wonders: Essays about Belonging to a Place (Mercer University Press, 2024) by Richard Rankin. Richard Rankin’s ancestral homestead, founded in the 1760’s, is located about twenty miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina. This book is an exploration of what could be called the two dimensions of stewardship: local and cosmic. Stewardship in the local…
Getting to Know Thomas Jefferson
As editor-in-Chief of the inaugural issue of the now-defunct theme-based journal, The Journal of Thomas Jefferson’s Life and Times, I was asked to write the feature, introductory essay, which I titled “‘A silent execution of duty’: The Republican Pen of Thomas Jefferson.” It was a daunting task, as I aimed to introduce the journal by constructing an essay that would…
Country Music in the 20th Century
A review of Southern Story and Song: Country Music in the 20th Century (Shotwell, 2024) by Joseph R. Stromberg Readers who have enjoyed the articles posted here at Abbeville by Joseph R. Stromberg will be as excited as I was to learn he’d written a book about country music. This excellent book explores the rich cultural tapestry of Southern music,…
Love Thanksgiving? Thank Virginia
When most Americans think of the “First Thanksgiving,” they think of the Pilgrims in Plymouth who sat down for a Harvest Festival meal with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The Pilgrims had arrived on the Mayflower in November of 1620 and nearly a year later celebrated the abundance of provisions that God had provided. The Thanksgiving tradition recalls to memory…
Erasing Black Confederates
This piece was originally published at Mises.org In 2019 The New York Times launched their 1619 project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” In the NYT retelling of American history, black troops who fought for the Union in the…
Pro Aris Et Focis
A review of The Gentler Gamester (Green Altar Books, 2024) by James Everett Kibler THE GENTLER GAMESTER holds a unique position in the literary corpus of Dr. James Everett Kibler, Jr. This is not simply due to the fact that the story is set in the Carolina Lowcountry and that it introduces his longtime readers to an entirely new cast…
The 2024 Election and the Southern Tradition: the Big Picture
The central issue of the 2024 election was the question, what is democracy? The Democrats in particular claimed that they were the defenders of “democracy.” They were sincere, although to their opponents this claim seemed the epitome of gaslighting. Their view is that democracy is top-down, whereby elite institutions (e.g., universities, foundations, the science establishment, big business, the media, government…
That’s What I Like About the South
In 2018, the Abbeville Institute hosted a Summer School on Southern music. I gave a talk titled “That’s What I Like About the South” based on the song written by Andy Razaf and made famous by Phil Harris in the 1940s. Much has changed in eighty years, but the things that Harris and Razaf “liked about the South” have not:…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Lowcountry Cheiron: William Elliott III and Carolina Sports by Land and Water Today
He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen That seith that hunters ben nat hooly men It was recently found, in the skeletal remains of Egyptian tombs, that scribes of the Pharaonic era suffered from maladies to the joints of the shoulder, neck, and knees. A unique posture, held for hours, contorted these men and shaped their very bones…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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
Conservatism? We’ll See
“The American Conservative” founders: Scott McConnell, Patrick J. Buchanan, and Taki Theodoracopulos Back in the “dark ages” I was one of the early subscribers to TAC, probably for most of the reasons that these founders had raised a flag which waved a more truthful and accurate flag of conservatism. That is, to say, in part, that once-upon-a-time, flag wavers of…
Thomas Jefferson Speaks Loudly From His Grave
Thomas Jefferson did not share fully his religious views with anyone, though one can tease out them from various writings to intimate friends. As I have shown in The Surprisingly Simple Religious Views of Thomas Jefferson, his religion was naturalized and equivalent to the most basic ethical precepts: (1) Love and adore God and (2) love others. He was not…
The Comical Tragedy of “Kumbaya”
In the Low Country of South Carolina and the coastal regions of Georgia, the Gullah people are everywhere because they never left. Although there were significant numbers of Gullah who migrated out of the South at the turn of the 20th Century, the multitudes who stayed replaced them quickly and remained isolated. Their customs, dress, arts, language, and music still…
The Sovietization of Federal Elections
Traditional community life is nearly non-existent in the modern United States, the natural effect of the venomous ideologies that have been imbibed in copious quantities over the decades by both Left and Right, progressives and conservatives. Voting days are one of the few remaining vestiges of those earlier times, one of the few communal gatherings left to us – when…
Secession and Its Doctrine
Excerpt from The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences: Four Periods of American History by Hilary Abner Herbert, 1912. PREFATORY NOTE BY JAMES FORD RHODES “Livy extolled Pompey in such a panegyric that Augustus called him Pompeian, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship.” That we find in Tacitus. We may therefore picture to ourselves Augustus reading Livy’s “History…
Al Smith and the “Facts” of American History
Alfred Emanuel Smith was an American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democratic Party’s candidate for president in 1928. The following unknowingly prophetic speech was delivered to The American Liberty League Dinner in Washington, D. C on January 25th, 1936. A short biography of the man is attached at the end of this…
Thomas Jefferson’s Ambivalence Concerning the Physic of His Day
This essay is dedicated to Dr. White McKenzie “Ken” Wallenborn, a cherished friend, dedicated unflinchingly to honesty concerning the life and legacy of Thomas Jefferson. “Dr. Ken” passed on October 1, 2024. He was 95 years of age. Upon graduation from UVA’s medical school in 1955, Dr. Ken was called to active duty in the Air Force and he served…
A Rare [Southern] Bird
“The cabin was quiet..people were in prayer.” –Artimus Pyle On May 30, 1976, along with Aerosmith, Nazareth and Ted Nugent, Lynyrd Skynyrd played for a very large crowd at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. My brother Kenny was there and 48 years later still has his ticket stub, a collector’s item now. In those days, there was a great divide…
Calhoun and “Liberum Veto”
John C. Calhoun was a brilliant political theorist and distinguished politician, and a noted champion of rights for minorities. The importance of his thoughts is reflected both in the doctrine of states' rights, as well as in relation to the federal system which serves as a textbook example of effective state management. Calhoun was also one of the first to…
Jefferson on Liberty and Truth
The Enlightenment was an epoch of unbridled optimism—a break from centuries of often blind reliancy on authority, and the sources of authority were generally the Bible and the works of Aristotle. With the shift to understanding the universe through empirical investigation of it (Gr., empeiria = experience), reliancy on authority weakened. Science—in the sense of strict observation of the world,…
Vision of Order
A review of Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995), by Richard Weaver Richard M. Weaver was one of the South’s finest thinkers. His Visions of Order was first published posthumously in 1964, and later republished in 1995. This edition has an excellent preface by Ted Smith III, who asks “how much relevance a…
The Confederate Constitution of 1861
The Confederate Constitution of 1861 is a misunderstood document that made improvements on the United States Constitution. What were they? Professors Donald Livingston and Marshall DeRosa discuss the Constitution and its currency in modern America. https://youtu.be/9TSGgOIiyPE
Jefferson’s Political Philosophy Critiqued
A Review of Garrett Ward Sheldon’s The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (Johns Hopkins, 1993) by Garret Ward Sheldon In his preface to The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, political theorist Garrett Ward Sheldon articulates a modest, but significant aim for beginning his book, and he does so economically: in one paragraph. Sheldon takes seriously the notion of Jefferson as…
More than Politics
What should we make of the exodus of millions of Americans from blue states to red ones, primarily in the South? In 2021, North American Van Lines reported that the Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Arizona, and Texas were the top destinations for movers, and the top five states for departures were Illinois, California, New Jersey, Michigan, and New York. Is this…
True Reconciliation
In response to an article about the Southern holocaust that occurred during the so-called “Civil War,” I wish to bring forth testimony from a Southern hero who was shunned by the South—or most of it—after he went with Grant in 1872 and Hayes in 1876, finally becoming a member of the Republican Party in that year. Previously, Col. John Singleton…
I’ll Take My Stand
Thomas H. Landess walked among Giants. He wrote and talked about them too. It was April of 1968, and he had gathered a few at the University of Dallas for a reunion under the banner of the Southern Literary Festival. It was a reunion of the surviving Southern Agrarians—Andrew Lytle, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren—Lyle Lanier…
Country People and Country Party
A review of Continuities: The South in a Time of Revolution (Shotwell Publishing, 2022) by John Devanny Dr. John Devanny writes from within an outlook quite unknown to most of today’s Americans. His focus is on the South’s origins and history, its variety and complexity, and its differences from its historical antagonists headquartered in New England. As the preface by…
Centralizing Federal Power Through Southern Reconstruction
Originally published at Mises.org. Many historians have commented on the extent to which Abraham Lincoln centralized federal power in the course of his war against the South. Less often remarked upon is the fact that this trend continued during the Reconstruction era, 1865 to 1877. In his essay “Wichita Justice? On Denationalizing the Courts,” Murray Rothbard observes that the Reconstruction…
George III and the Revolution
In Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Jefferson writes of King George III’s unwillingness to use his “negative” to abort unjust proposals. Jefferson again writes similarly is in his first draft of Declaration of Independence, two years later. Jefferson here lists a “long train of abuses & usurpations,” at the hand of King George III. Those, he…
Coming of the War Between the States: An Interpretation
When Lee surrendered at Appomattox a tall gaunt North Carolinian stolidly stacked arms and fell back into line. He was worn, hungry, and dirty. The insistent Yankees had granted him little time during the past weeks for relaxation. Food had been scarce; the opportunities for cleanliness lacking. He had gone on fighting more from habit than purpose. He had quit…
Keystones and Linchpins
Everyone understands the concept of the keystone and the linchpin. Even those who do not comprehend why these objects are of supreme importance, understand that, in fact, they are. For if one destroys the keystone, the arch dependent upon it will fall and if one removes the linchpin, the apparatus it binds together comes apart. There are keystones and linchpins…
The Battle of the Confederate Monuments
This essay was originally published at Mises.org. Various justifications have been advanced by those removing or destroying Confederate monuments to explain why they deem it necessary to dismantle the Confederate heritage. For example, the memorial to Zebulon Vance in Asheville, North Carolina was demolished on grounds that it was “a painful symbol of racism.” In the tumult surrounding the Black Lives Matter riots, “168…
Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture
Sam Bowers Hilliard understood power—not the kind that flows from political office or great wealth, but the power of the land itself. Born in 1930, in a Georgia hamlet that bore his mother's maiden name, Hilliard grew to recognize how the soil, the crops, and the very food on Southern tables shaped the course of history. Hilliard joined the Department…
Jefferson’s Greatest Legacy
It is well-known today that Thomas Jefferson considered his Declaration of Independence, his Bill for Religious Freedom, and his University of Virginia to be his greatest contributions to humanity. That is why he had those deeds inscribed proudly on his tombstone. Yet perhaps his greatest legacy, mostly flouted today because of scholarly indifference to the large moral dimension of his…
John Rutledge
John Rutledge was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in September, 1739. His father, Dr. John Rutledge, was a native of Ireland, who emigrated to South Carolina in 1735. He married Sarah Hext, a lady of liberal endowments and cultivation, who became the mother of the future jurist in the fifteenth year of her age. She was left a widow at…
From the Archive–Hooray for the Confederate Flag
The Rev. Al Sharpton is a darling of the national news media, primarily because he has a talent for making outrageous statements and the lack of scruples to go with it. You should keep this in mind. In today's media-saturated world, nobody can be a successful demagogue without the cooperation of the national news media. Sharpton has even outdone Jesse…
Why Maryland Did Not Secede
After Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers on April 15, 1861, to force the seven cotton states back into the Union, four Upper South states—Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas—seceded and joined the Confederacy. They deemed Federal coercion against any state to be an unconstitutional abuse of power. Maryland’s experience underscores the point. The first fatality of the Civil War was…
Jefferson and Kosciuszko
He is as pure a son of liberty, as I have ever known, and of that liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone – Thomas Jefferson Modern scholars consider the friendship expressed in the letters exchanged between Tadeusz Kościuszko and Thomas Jefferson as one of the main historical sources on the…
From the Archives: James Iredell: Neglected Southern Federalist
Born in Lewes, England (October 5, 1751), Iredell spent his childhood in Bristol. The eldest of five sons born to Francis and Margaret McCulloh Iredell, he was forced to leave school after his father suffered a debilitating stroke in 1766. With the assistance of relatives, Iredell came to America in 1768 to accept an appointment as Comptroller of the Customs…
“The Whole Affair Has Been Conducted by Amateurs”
In the November 5, 1998, piece for Nature, a group of scientists, led by pathologist Dr. Eugene Foster, had published a piece titled “Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child.” Utilizing what was at the time state-of-the-art Y-chromosome DNA analysis—the Y-chromosome is identical in a particular line of males (e.g., Jefferson’s Y-chromosome is the same as this father’s, his grandfather’s, his brother’s,…
Neo-Abolitionist Hypocrisy
Many modern Americans believe that slavery was a national unpardonable sin and that slaveholders were evil people unworthy of any respect or admiration. No one escapes this denunciation, including the Founding Fathers. They will give innumerable reasons why slavery was morally wrong, and while modern Western Civilization has generally accepted slavery as a morally reprehensible institution, judging historical actors by…
The Battle of Secessionville
My Talk at the 129th Annual Reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Charleston, South Carolina, July 16, 2024 Good evening and WELCOME to God's Holy City of Charleston, South Carolina, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers come together to FORM the Atlantic Ocean! It's also where the FIRST Ordinance of Secession passed 169 - 0 on December 20,…
Jefferson v. Adams on “The Natural Aristocracy”
After a lengthy respite due to tensions between the two that began during Adams’ presidency, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, with the intervention of Benjamin Rush, resumed their correspondence with a brief letter from Adams to Jefferson on January 1, 1812. On June 15, 1813, Jefferson aims to clear the air, as it were. He brings up partisan differences concerning…
The War Against the South
Originally published at LewRockwell.com In the past few decades, the federal government has been engaged in a concerted effort to destroy the heritage of the South, and this effort has intensified under so-called “President” Joe Biden and his gang of neo-con controllers. We can be sure that if Kamala Harris takes office as his successor, these efforts will continue. After…
Too Many Skunks
I hate to take it out on Donald Trump. Whoever or whatever he is, he has spent a lot of time and money when he didn’t have to. He did most likely earn his money, unlike many of the disgusting and vile yard-dog Democrats, such as the Clintons, Obamas, Willie Brown, Pelosis, and of course there is the Biden Ukraine…
Muslim Slavery
The following remarks were delivered at the fourth annual Jefferson Davis Conference at Mount Crawford, Virginia on June 27, 2024. When we hear about slavery, what do we hear about it? We hear that it was invented by white people when they enslaved black people. Actually, slavery has been in the world since the beginning of recorded history. Historian John…
Robert E. Lee: The Marble [Christian] Man
Originally published at Truthscript.com On 7 August 2024, the Witherspoon Institute’s journal, Public Discourse, published an article by John F. Doherty entitled: “Propriety without Principle: The Cautionary Tale of Robert E. Lee.” Citing Allen C. Guelzo’s 2021 biography of Lee as his source of information, Doherty paints Robert E. Lee as an irreligious hypocrite of weak moral fiber whose virtues were apparent rather than…
How Sally is Saving Monticello
Recently, I watched the Abbeville Institute’s Zoom conversation with Mike Kitchens on the loss of historic antebellum homes. Many have been lost to demolition or neglect. But there is another kind of loss threatening these historic sites. While it is important to discuss the people who built and kept these plantations afloat, some house museums are focusing disproportionately on the…
The Honest Zealot Versus the Troublesome Ideologue
A Critique of Thomas Fleming’s The Great Divide: The Conflict between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation A book about the conflict between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is overdue, says Thomas Fleming. “Numerous historians have explored Jefferson’s clash with Alexander Hamilton. But little has been written about the differences that developed between the two most famous founding fathers”…
Justice Chase and the Davis Treason Case
In May 1860 former Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase was a leading contender for the presidential nomination at the Republican Party’s convention. Although Abraham Lincoln won it, he would appoint Chase his Treasury Secretary in March 1861. Chase would also make two more attempts at the presidency, one as a Republican in 1864 and a second as a Democrat in…
Sally Cary, Fairfax Harrison, and F.F.V. Pedigrees
I grab my trusty pocket knife, make short work of the tape, and open the box. Inside is a book, but not one I ordered. It’s a gift, courtesy of my friend Percy Gryce, a bookman’s bookman. The Book Sally Cary: A Long Hidden Romance of Washington's Life by Wilson Miles Cary (1838-1914). Its format or size is common. Octavo…
Ghosts of Grandeur
Historic Southern antebellum homes are disappearing, and those that still remain are being reinterpreted by activist historians. Author Mike Kitchens joins us to talk about his book "Ghosts of Grandeur" and the current woke assault on Southern home museums and historic sites. https://youtu.be/7WE9RdCkFY8
Thomas Jefferson on Educating Republican Citizens
After publishing my book, Thomas Jefferson: Uncovering His Unique Philosophy and Vision (2014)—which had three chapters each on Jefferson’s political philosophy, his moral thinking, and his philosophy of education—I realized that I had far from exhausted what could be said on each of the subjects. Thus, I began the first of a trilogy of books on the philosophy of Thomas…
Thoughts Among Ruins
This, Warren, is our trouble now: Not even fools could disavow Three centuries of piety Grown bare as a cottonwood tree (A timber seldom drawn and sawn And chiefly used to hang men on), So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age. -Allen Tate It is on the hunt where the martial prowess is sharpened, where…
From the Archives–Is America Too Big?
In 2010, the Abbeville Institute asked the question, "Is America Too Big?" This project was intended to be a multi-part series that pondered the future of the United States. Due to funding, we were only able to produce Part I, shown below, but we were ahead of the curve on the issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCNd7h0fsdE
Pawleys Island
My maternal grandmother grew up on a South Carolina beach and has passed her love of the beach on to her grandchildren. Ever since I can remember, my family has spent a week on Pawleys Island in South Carolina. We would fly from Arizona to spend two or more months between our grandparents’ home in Virginia, Pawleys Island in South…
Jefferson’s Summary View as a Political Document with a Strong Southern Flair
In a 2022 essay for Abbeville, “Jefferson’s Textured Republicanism,” I examine letters by Jefferson on the differences between Federalists and Republicans. Jefferson argues that there is a constitutional (physical) difference between Federalists (Tories) and Republicans (Whigs), which manifests itself in polar political sentiments. Republicans and Whigs are Saxon-sympathizers; Federalists and Tories, Norman-sympathizers. In a letter from Jefferson to Marquis de…
Was Jefferson Davis a Traitor?
While many Civil War students argue that Jefferson Davis was a traitor, he was never convicted of the crime because Federal prosecutors dropped the case. Specifically, in February 1869 Attorney General William Evarts notified Davis’s counsel that all prosecutors were told to apply nolle prosequi to all his indictments. To be sure, after Lincoln’s April 15, 1865, assassination many Northerners…
The Nature of the Union: A Response to Mark Pulliam
This piece was originally published at the Independent Institute. Mark Pulliam is a good fellow. He is retired from big law and regularly writes for publications such as Chronicles and the Law and Liberty Blog. Pulliam often sends me links to his publications and 99 percent of the time, I love his material. I enjoy my correspondence with him. However,…
A Hill and a Holler
Some memories are a story just waiting to be told. And memories of family make some of the best stories. Some of my favorite memories revolve around travel, those family outings where we hit the not so dusty trails of Dixie. Actually, many modern highways were the byways, the pioneer trails of yesteryear. Our travel often included extended family, with…
The Resistance of the South to Northern Radicalism
This piece was originally published in the New England Quarterly in 1935. In December 22, 1859, an extra train arrived at Richmond bringing over two hundred medical students from Philadelphia. It was the hegira of southern students from the North following the excitement of John Brown's raid. The faculty and students of the Richmond Medical College, the town council, and…
The Economic Aspects of the South as a Health and Pleasure Resort
Editor's Introduction: This short essay in The South and the Building of the Nation series highlights the spirit of reconciliation that most Americans embraced by the early twentieth century. Published in 1909, The South in the Building of the Nation offered native Southerners--almost all of whom possessed terminal degrees in their academic fields--a chance to offer a critical yet often…
Oh, Say Can You Secede?
This piece was originally published at The Imaginative Conservative. A review of The Constitution of Non-State Government: Field Guide to Texas Secession (Shotwell, 2022) by T.L Hulsey “Secession,” writes Robert W. Merry in a recent essay for The American Conservative, “isn’t a word heard in today’s political discourse.” But, he notes, “an extensive poll of 35,307 Americans conducted earlier this…
From the Archives–What Secession Is
The Institute was founded in 2002 around a conference table at the University of Virginia. We held our first Summer School in 2003. Here, President Emeritus Donald Livingston discusses "What Secession Is" at this first summer event. It's a worthy topic in our current political climate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kZSU8NJIzY
The Unimpeachable Authority of Annette Gordon-Reed on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
“Travelling through a desert, a man saw a woman, standing alone and with her eyes fixed to the ground. “‘Who are you,’ asked he. “‘I am Truth,’ she replied. “‘Why have you left the city and retreated to the desert?’ “‘Times have changed. In days bygone, few people lied. Yet now, all people lie.’ “Human life is a vile and…
From the Archives–Livingston v. Guelzo
In September 2010, the University of Virginia hosted a debate between Abbeville Institute founder Don Livingston and Professor Allen Guelzo, recognized to be one of the foremost Lincolnian scholars in the United States, on the topic "Is Nullification Constitutional?" Guelzo is as committed to the Lincolnian position of an "indestructible Union" as Livingston is to the compact fact of the…
From the Archives–A Plea for the Real Union
The Abbeville Institute website has existed in its current form since April 2014 when we relaunched and rebranded our online presence, a shade over a decade after the founding of the Institute. We wanted our online footprint to highlight our past, present, and future. Clyde Wilson was not only one of the founding members of the Institute, he has been…
Spencer Roane, Part 2
Continued from Part 1. When the Democrats came into power, the need of a Democratic paper was felt in Virginia. The newspaper had now become one of the most important methods of political warfare. Each party maintained one at Washington, in which articles advocating the one and maligning the other were published. These were read throughout the country, and in…
Spencer Roane, Part 1
Written by Edwin J. Smith in 1905 and published in the John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College. The formative period of our national existence is the one which, more than any other, produced great men. Great issues arose which had to be settled. Great battles were fought and won in the arena of public life-battles on which depended…
How Liberal was Thomas Jefferson’s Liberalism?
Government, Thomas Jefferson all too frequently notes, is for the sake of the wellbeing of all citizens, each considered the political equal of all others and, in consequence, deserving of the same rights. Government, thus, exists for the sake of the wellbeing of all citizens, considered as individuals. Government, he often says, is of and for the people. That noted,…
My New Favorite Song
I have a new favorite song. I discovered it during the promotional build-up to the annual football contest between two worthy academic institutions: The University of Michigan and The Ohio State University. I don’t know whether the song has a title, but it is sung to the tune of “ The Old Grey Mare” (she ain’t what she used to…
Have We Learned Anything from the Destruction of Confederate Monuments?
On a bright September day in 2017, in my hometown of Dallas, Texas, a work crew removed a large, bronze statue from Lee Park. The sculpture depicted Robert E. Lee accompanied by a young soldier, each mounted on horseback, and had been unveiled eight decades earlier as part of the Texas Centennial. During that celebration marking 100 years of Texas…
The (Self)-Righteous Cause
It is common in Civil War circles to hear about the so-called “Lost Cause”, variously termed a myth or a narrative. Are those two terms synonymous? Let’s look. Dictionary.com defines myth as: “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” On the other hand, using…
A Northerner by Birth, A Southerner by Choice
When speaking at Abbeville’s “The 1607 Project,” someone from the audience came to me, after my talk—and the Abbeville audience was electric!—and said, “You really mean what you say.” It was a curious sentiment, for by implication, I could conclude that many speakers at that or other conferences merely go about the business of public speaking without investing personally in…
An Outrage Double Standard?
Donald Trump’s MAGA base (which includes many of the Southern people) is galvanized like never before after the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life. Two things in particular have annealed them to the former president as it regards this traumatic incident: the tough guy image of a man who ‘took a bullet for America’ and the vitriol of his opponents. But…
And He Shall Be Leevonne (And He Shall Be a Good Man)
Mr. Leevonne Mitchell was my teacher. I graduated from Auburn High School in 1978, and he was technically and officially my Speech teacher in 10th grade. But, man, he was SO much more than that… Recently, I was talking with some classmates about him, and we all realized that as much as we owed that man, we knew absolutely nothing…
“Providence” – Divine Intervention in the Life of George Washington
There is an old saying that rejects not only the concept of the “randomness” of history but of mankind’s involvement in that history. It identifies situations addressing external forces acting on human beings and in so doing influencing history itself. This maxim states that, “Man proposes but God disposes.” For there is overwhelming evidence of the existence of something other…
A Book on Jefferson’s Declaration That is About Everything but the Declaration
A review of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (Liveright, 2015) by Danielle Allen “The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot have freedom without equality,” writes Danielle Allen in the first sentence of her prologue. Its claim to freedom, in fact, rests on “it so clear-eyed about…
An Old Confederate Story of Irish Wit
From the Confederate Veteran, February, 1916: Tommy Logan was a typical son of the Emerald Isle, who entered the Confederate army at the first call for troops 11 tn Mississippi. He joined the company to which I belonged, which was formed of young planters, all or nearly all the sons of wealthy planters of Hinds and Madison Counties. Tommy was…
A Man of the South
With Father’s Day 2024 come and gone, I have had the opportunity to consider the coincidence that occurred that weekend – namely my watching two superb westerns from different decades, Anthony Mann’s Man of the West from 1958 and Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales from 1976. As a longtime aficionado of the western, I should, of course, have already…
Southern Poetic Wisdom
When little sister fell down the well, We retrieved her by pulley, rope, and bucket. She, bruised, wet, learned a lesson. Maybe. Doves fly over as hunters blast away; Nothing falls but droppings in one eye. ‘I can’t see Jack-squat, Billy Bob.’ Hook from my fly-cast catches the wife’s ear lobe, And screaming like a banshee, she falls out of…
Invoking the Rule of Completeness on Independence Day
Political hucksters—both Left and Right—are dusting off copies of the Declaration of Independence in preparation for the July 4th observances. At most, they are making sure to quote correctly the language of paragraph two which speaks of self-evident truths about liberty and equality. Seldom does a modern rhetorician even glance at the remainder of the document. On this Independence Day,…
John Tyler, Son of Virginia
From the Confederate Veteran, January 1916: John Tyler, distinguished Virginian and tenth President of the United States, has received fitting, though long-deferred, honor from the country he served. Fifty-three years after his death the United States government has erected a handsome monument at his last resting place, in the shades of beautiful Hollywood Cemetery, at Richmond, Va., that sacred and…
The GOAT of Political Documents
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate & equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that…
40 Acres and a Lie?
It has evidently taken a hundred and sixty years for some people to realize that Abraham Lincoln's War was waged not for the slave but against his master, who had been the stumbling block for Northern ambitions for an unconstitutionally powerful central government ever since the days of Thomas Jefferson. With the election of Lincoln and his strictly sectional Northern…
20th Century American Historians
Dr. Clyde N. Wilson is known to many through his association with the Abbeville Institute and his long tenure as editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun. Some might have read Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I'll Take My Stand. The well-versed have likely read his Southern Readers Guide…
Jefferson and the Four Faces of Liberty
Precisely what Jefferson means by “liberty” is a matter of considerable debate among scholars. Merrill Peterson in “Thomas Jefferson and the National Purpose” says that liberty for Jefferson was a code of restraint on sovereignty, exercised by a few or many. Thus, liberty involved minifying and decentralizing government. “He was the first to see that strength, the progress, even the…
The Sabbath and the Slaves
Perhaps no topic of importance in the Old South may be handled rightly without dealing with the Peculiar Institution: slavery. The Christian Sabbath, or the Lord’s day – often referred to by Christians in the nineteenth century simply as the Sabbath – was no exception. Embedded in the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment (according to Protestant enumeration) – to remember…
Virginia First: The 1607 Project
Over the past five years, historians, journalists, and political activists have crafted seemingly conflicting narratives about the American founding. They are "seemingly conflicting" because all three center on the "proposition nation myth" of American history. According to this account, the United States was founded on the idea that all men (and women) were created equal. The "idea of equality" forms…
The Unbroken Line of New England Radicalism
Prof. David Hackett Fischer gives an overview of the chief characteristics of New England’s ancestors, who hailed from the coastal southeastern counties of England, mainly East Anglia and Essex, in his praiseworthy book, Albion’s Seed. Among them were an inclination toward industrial pursuits, urban living, equality, and rebelliousness against established authorities in religion and politics (Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways…
Davis vs. Lincoln
If any further evidence had been required to show that it was the determination of the Northern people not only to make no concessions to the grievances of the Southern States, but to increase them to the last extremity, it was furnished by the proclamation of President Lincoln, issued on April 15, 1861. This proclamation, which has already been mentioned,…
A Meeting of Southern Writers
This essay by Donald Davidson was originally published in The Bookman in 1932. The footnotes and links are my contributions. Such essays are maps. In reports appearing soon after the event, the gathering of Southern writers held in late October under the auspices of the University of Virginia was variously denominated “house party,” “conference,” “convocation,” or—with even greater reserve—“occasion.” Such…
Another Book about White Privilege at a Southern Plantation
A review of The Jeffersons at Shadwell (Yale University Press, 2010) by Susan Kern The first question that demands an answer in reviewing a book is this: Why is this book needed? Without straightforwardly answering that question, Susan Kern in The Jeffersons at Shadwell at least implicitly answers that question by allowing discerning readers to craft, through reading her book,…
Mr. Trump and the Old Dominion
Recent polls conducted by Roanoke College and Morning Consult show Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in a dead heat in the presidential race in Virginia. Mr. Trump lost Virginia to Hilary Clinton by five percentage points, a bit more than 200,00 votes, and was buried under a Biden landslide in the state by a margin of over nine percentage points…
Southern Sacrifice
In Vietnam, 13,262 Southerners in the US Army died. On a per capita basis this is 12% more than the rest of the country. In other words, Southerners were 31% of the total US population and accounted for 36% of the Army deaths in Vietnam. A similar story is true for Korea. Southerners accounted for 35% of the deaths in…
The 19th Century Ecclesiastical Debate Over Slavery – Part 3
Ecclesiastical organizations, both North and South, had by the early 19th century developed sensitivities uncomfortable with the institution of slavery. This discomfort was sourced in common Enlightenment ideals regarding liberty and natural law but took on sectional distinctions which led to conflict. An ideological fervor swept the North which influenced a radicalism that played loosely with any consideration of traditional…
Thomas Jefferson and the Other (Black) Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson bought the 57-acre tract of land including the Natural Bridge of Virginia in 1774—the year he produced his vitriolic Summary View of the Rights of British America—for a pittance. Except for the bridge, which Jefferson considered to be one of the natural wonders of the world, a mirabile visu, the land around the bridge was not much arable…
When Lincoln Changed the War’s Pretext from “A Question Upon Slavery”
State Dept. Documents Prove Abolition Neither the Aim Nor the Cause of the Conflict On April 1, 1861, Secretary of State William H. Seward sent President Abraham Lincoln a memorandum entitled “Some thoughts for the President’s consideration.” “My system is built upon this idea as a ruling one,” Seward wrote, “namely that we must Change the question before the Public…
Jefferson on Gentlemanly Farming
In The Gentleman Farmer, Being an Attempt to Improve Agriculture, By Subjecting It to the Test of Rational Principles, Lord Kames (Henry Home) distinguishes between the practice and the theory of farming. The former, which concerns only effects, is rightly a branch of Natural History. The latter, which concerns causes, is rightly a branch of Natural Philosophy. Most writers treat…
The South and World War II
Being Southern is a good thing. People around the world have long recognised that. Those who love the South must present a POSITIVE front, celebrate the South, and avoid being simply AGAINST. Nothing can be more irrelevant and counter-productive to the cause of the South than to get wrapped up in ideologies from the ugly history of central and eastern…
Polish Confederates and the Principle “For Our Freedom and Yours”
The history of Poles' participation in the formation of the American Republic, especially participation in the American War of Independence, has been perfectly documented by Polish and non-Polish researchers. For example, there are extensive biographies of Tadeusz Kosciusko and Casimir Pulaski. Unfortunately the contribution of Poles in the period of the Civil War still remains a topic for broader discussion,…
In Memoriam: Jefferson Davis
To those who were not actors in the events of the period from 1860 to 1865, it is almost impossible to present a complete and vivid picture of the revolution by States which was practically inaugurated by the action of the convention of the people of South Carolina, on December 20, 1860. So much has been done by the war,…
The 19th Century Ecclesiastical Debate Over Slavery – Part 2
When we dichotomize the 19th century ecclesiastical debate as “Southern “pro-slavery” and Northern “anti-slavery,” it must first be pointed out that these two titles are heavily nuanced in meaning. They did not mean that a virtuous North was committed to the welfare of blacks while an evil South delighted in their human bondage. Neither side believed that slavery abstractly considered…
African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective
A review of African American Slavery in Historical Perspective (Shotwell Publishing, 2024) by Clyde N. Wilson This is an extremely important book because putting slavery in historical perspective puts the lie to the worthless presentist history regurgitated ad nauseam by academia and the fake news media. You can not learn from history when the history being taught is a fraud.…
Confederates Weren’t Traitors
Professor Williams’ argument (“Naming Commission Historian Rationalizes Name Changes in Campus Talk,” news, May 14) that the Confederate soldier is odious because he committed treason when killing Union soldiers collapses at its premise. He was not a traitor. First, almost 300 officers left the Federal Army during the secession crisis and 270 joined the Confederacy. None were charged with treason. Second,…
Jefferson v. Hamilton: A Northern versus Southern Feud?
As one enters Monticello, one is greeted by a bust of Jefferson facing a bust of Alexander Hamilton—“opposed in death as in life”—both by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi. The statue of Hamilton is life-size, while the statue of Jefferson is a bit larger, and that suggests not merely Jefferson’s opposition, but political victory over Hamilton. What were the reasons for…
Dirty Work and Decoration Day
In 1853, a newly elected, twenty-six year old State representative stood to defend his "Negro Exclusion" bill against bitter attacks by anti-slavery legislators in his State. He made this a centerpiece of his campaign in 1852, railed against "Negro equality" and supported the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. The bill found support from the majority of the people of his State,…
The Lincolns in the White House
A review of The Lincolns in the White House (Pangaeus Press, 2023) by Kevin Orlin Johnson Kevin Orlin Johnson is a brilliant researcher who has doggedly pursued original source material for the truth about Abraham Lincoln. And it doesn’t matter how many libraries he has to visit and how many un-indexed collections of papers written with quill pens he has…
Forrest
The officer of regular troops intrusted with the duty of quickly raising levies for immediate war service is often too prone to think that his one great endeavor should be to “set them up” and so instruct them in drill as to make them look as much 1ike regulars as possible. As a matter of fact, he almost invariably fails…
Lynchburg’s Noiseless Musical Genius
Julia Winston Ivey, on September 15, 2020, quietly passed away at her house on Parkland Drive in Lynchburg, Virginia. She was a remarkable musical talent, an internationally lauded pianist in her prime years, yet her death created only a small stir in Hill City and her funeral, at her gravesite, was sparsely attended. The irony of her hushed passing is…
The 19th Century Ecclesiastical Debate Over Slavery – Part One
It is almost impossible for 21st century Christians, much less deeply biased contemporary historians, to comprehend that nineteenth century Southerners could, with any sincerity or justification, defend the compatibility of Christianity with the institution of slavery. For the past six decades historians have spilled much ink conjuring up images of insincere and hypocritical commitment on the part of Southern Christians’…
Deplorables
I have lived for more than half a century in a region of Lexington County, South Carolina, known as “the Dutch Fork.” So called because it was settled in the early 1700s by German (Deutsch) farmers looking for good soil. “Fork” because it begins in the fork of the Broad and Saluda rivers. The original settler families are still there,…
Cicero and the South
William Byrd II of Westover on the James River in Colonial Virginia lived a full generation before Thomas Jefferson, but they are comparable in their intellectual pursuits. Byrd had perhaps the largest library in the colonies, certainly below the Potomac River, and he began each day by reading, usually ancient authors, Greek or Roman, in the original languages. Private diaries…
Did Jefferson Really “Hate” Patrick Henry?
Writes Thomas Jefferson to Leavit Harris concerning Patrick Henry (11 Oct. 1824): I never heard anything that deserved to be called by the same name with what flowed from him, and where he got that torrent of language is unconceivable. I have frequently shut my eyes while he spoke, and, when he was done, asked myself what he had said,…
The Second Battle of Atlanta
My brother and I have often fantasized about combining western North Carolina (my birthplace and my extended family’s home since the 1820’s), eastern Tennessee, and north Georgia into a new state. What a stronghold of conservatism she would be! We had always thought that Atlanta, the largest metropolitan area in the South, would be the economic hub of our new…
Never Reconciled: Boston’s Revenge
“Then the Lord said unto me, out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.” Jeremiah. 1:14. Harvard University has a memorial to all its students who were killed in military service, including several Nazis. The only omission is of some Americans---Confederates. I know of about a dozen Confederate generals who attended Harvard,…
Wendell Berry’s 400-Year-Old Debts
Love of cultivated land is a gift—born not from the unbridled wilds but the furrows of tilled soil. This gift, neither wrought nor feigned, cannot be bought nor swapped like an old mule, but rather, is bestowed upon us as a boon from our shared Agrarian Patrimony. Wendell Berry is a fortunate heir and shares his Southern heirloom generously through…
Looking for Samuel, I Found George and Bobby…I Think
Since the 1600s the people of the Northern Neck (NNK) of Virginia and of St. Mary's County, Maryland have been connected—not separated—by the Potomac. They have married each other; they have battled common enemies together: the British in 1776 and 1812 and the Yankees in 1861. Though they were on the same side in The War, in later years, St.…
The Southern Origins of Anesthesia
Some call it eureka, that moment of inspiration when an imaginative brain makes a connection no one else made. Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia possessed this gift when he discovered that ether could be used as an anesthetic in surgery—a long sought remedy after hundreds of years of suffering. What led to Dr. Long’s discovery? First, let’s meet the…
Scopes’ Scoops and Yankees
Gregg Jarrett like most of the “journalists” on Cable TV writes a book and, apparently, as part of his remuneration, can market the book through the cable broadcast (marketing is the backbone of selling books). In this case, he has written something called The Trial of the Century. This version was such a grand event that it apparently, in Jarrett’s mind,…
The History of Our Southern People
The history of the Southern people, in its broad and significant dimensions, is still to be written. A lot of good history (and a lot of bad history) has been written about the South, but the over-arching theme of most of this writing has been to treat the South as a peculiarity. The North is normal, the South is to…
The Real Myth America
In early 2023, accused plagiarist and Twitter (Princeton) historian Kevin Kruse published Myth America, a book that promised to replace “myths with research and reality.” You see, Kruse and his co-authors—many of whom are social media “celebrities” for their attacks on “conservative” scholarship—argued that, “The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the…
Jefferson vs. Hamilton, Again
During the French Revolutionary War, President George Washington asks Jefferson’s advice on whether the US ought to respect its treaties with the French government, which was a monarchy prior to the revolution and months after the clean divorcement of the head of King Charles XVI from his body. The request is sensible, for the government of France, formerly monocratic, promises…
Wingless Chickens
The great Georgian writer of the mid-twentieth century Flannery O’Connor famously described herself as a “hillbilly Thomist,” a nod both to her Southern origins and her dedication to the medieval theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas. However much yankee intellectuals thumbed their noses at the South, the hillbilly moniker was not a little discordant given the well-educated O’Connor hailed from a…
A Forgotten Southern Poet–Columbus Drew
Columbus Drew (1820—1891) was born in Washington D.C to parents who had recently immigrated from England. A journalist as a young man, he was persuaded in 1855 to go to the slowly growing State of Florida and establish a newspaper at Jacksonville. From that time on he was loyal to Florida through the hard days of the Confederacy and Reconstruction…
Two-Lane South
I learned to drive in a pasture. The speed limit didn’t matter; that orange Allis Chalmers tractor could only go so fast on uneven ground. Sweetheart, my grandmother, told too many tales of reckless young boys whose turns on the lumbering machines led to disfigurement and death, so I didn’t try anything too adventurous. That is, until my mother let…
America’s Prophet
This piece was originally published at IM_1776.com. Cormac McCarthy died at his home in Santa Fe last Tuesday, June 13 (2023), at the age of 89. He was our greatest living novelist, an apocalyptic prophet and diviner of violence, and will forever stand with the likes of Melville and Faulkner as the chief American mythmaker of his time. Born in…
Why “Democracy” Has Failed–And How to Fix It
Democracy in America has failed. In spite of the lack of any reference to “democracy” in both the American Constitution and its Declaration of Independence, the United States has institutionalized the democratic principle to become its world exemplar, which according to some intellectuals is henceforth to be the sole pattern for all governments on earth. Francis Fukuyama, a neoconservative until…
Jefferson as the “Architect of American Liberty”
In Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty, (Basic Books, 2017), John B. Boles offers us another biography of Thomas Jefferson. In his brief introduction, he mentions that his aim is to present Jefferson as “politician, party leader, executive; architect, musician, oenophile, gourmand, traveler; inventor, historian, political theorist; land owner, farmer, slaveholder; and son, father, grandfather.” He cautions readers that his portrait…
Washington’s “Unforgivable Sin”?
I have once again embarked upon a topic of historical research. Over the years, a particular individual having caught my attention results in my almost monomaniacal concentration upon the chosen object of study. My present interest arose after watching a replay of the old TV drama, The Crossing, a well done though moderately fictionalized version of George Washington’s attack on…
He’s Southbound, Lord, He’s Comin’ Home to You
Dickey Betts died. If you need to read a biographical tribute, turn elsewhere. While there are plenty of cookie-cutter articles about Dickey Betts all over the place, the perspective found here is from a fellow musician, a fellow guitarist, and a fellow Southerner who never met Dickey Betts or ever even saw him perform. But, oh, what an influence he…
Reconstruction Historiography: Ideology vs. History
Reconstruction is the single most confusing and controversial period in American history. The tinderbox of race relations and the new organization of the central government and the states were not reformed reasonably or to the satisfaction of anyone involved, or to any faction that engages the history today. Explanations and justifications for the extreme policies, punitive laws, and social experimentation…
Rethinking Southern Poetry
"Works of fiction--novels and poetry--can mean more to a people than all the political manifestos and reports from all the think tanks and foundations ever established by misguided philanthropy." Tom Fleming, 1982 I take this quote seriously. So should anyone interested in the Southern tradition or in a larger sense Western Civilization. Fleming implored his reader to do so, for…
The Fasola Fellowship
I’m not deaf to the vibrant Country music chatter. Got opinions, but on social media, I made a vow: don't discuss the current thing. Yet, the discourse reminded of something. Donald Davidson was a man of tradition. He liked the old way. Saw a kinship between song meant for singing and verse meant for reading, a stance rare among his…
Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson!
At the request of friend John Spear Smith (1785–1866, figure below), who named a newborn child after him, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter (21 Feb. 1825) that he pens some one and one-half years prior to his death, offers philosophical advice to the newborn child, Thomas Jefferson Smith. The missive takes the form of an epistolary trilogy: an advisory letter,…
Yankee Cain and Southern Seth
Southerners have often been mocked for their agrarian simplicity by Yankee-minded folks. We know the insults well by now: hicks, hillbillies, rednecks, and so on. But Dixie should not be ashamed of this. We ought rather to delight and exult in it. Richard Weaver gives us good ground for doing so in his contrast of the Northern/Yankee and Southern types:…
Republic or Democracy
Back in 1966, the conservative activist and F.B.I. operative Dan Smoot produced a short film, A Constitutional Republic, Not a Democracy. Anybody who calls the United States a democracy, he said, is trying to subvert the Constitution of the United States — we’re not a democracy; we’re a republic. Probably because there are supposed to be two political parties here,…
Saving a Remnant
Nothing is more indicative of the ongoing degradation of American culture than the fate of the once noble Commonwealth of Virginia—not long ago widely admired as the mother of States and Presidents—inseparable from Patrick Henry, Washington, Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Lee and Jackson. Now shallow, opportunistic politicians ignorant of American foundations swarm in every Southern State. In Virginia they have…
The Gentleman From Virginia
A review of John Randolph of Roanoke (Louisiana State University Press, 2012) by David Johnson One might assume that John Randolph of Roanoke, who may be the most singular individual in American political history, would be the subject of numerous biographies. The earliest attempt to capture something of the man was Powhatan Bouldin’s Home Reminiscences, written in 1878, a book…
Jefferson on “Nation Building”
On July 19, 1823, Adamantios Koraïs—preeminent Greek scholar (1748–1833), philosopher of education, polyglot (Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Dutch, French, and English), and revolutionist—writes to Thomas Jefferson for “help from men truly free.” Circumstances in Greece are parlous. Greeks, under Turkic yoke since the middle of the fifteenth century, are in the midst of a revolution, begun in 1821, and Greeks…
Cowboy Carter and Cultural Appropriation
At the time of the Super Bowl in February, 2024, pop singer Beyoncé Knowles released two new singles that sounded a little different than her usual stuff. One of those two singles called Texas Hold ‘Em went to number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country chart and eventually number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In late March, Beyoncé followed…
Soured on the South
I grew up in Virginia, though my accent, apart from a few words and phrases, is almost indistinguishable from my friends from California, Massachusetts, and Michigan. For many Southerners, especially in the Upper South, all that remains of that once rich linguistic heritage are such expressions as “y’all,” “yonder,” and “if I had my druthers.” For that, we can thank…
Independence or Subjugation
In the middle of July, 1864, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Kennesaw Mountain had been fought and Sherman was at the gates of Atlanta. In Virginia, Grant had fought Lee for two months and had lost as many men as Lee had in his entire army at the beginning of the campaign, and was now investing Petersburg. Jubal Early's Second Corps…
Reconciled No More
The U.S. Army’s removal of the Reconciliation Monument from Arlington, with the approval of your Congress, is nothing less than an attempt to remove the Southern people from American history. The lead instigator in this atrocity seems to have been a general with a funny name, not a West Pointer and not a soldier but a bureaucrat. One of many…
True Virginia Ham
In February 1820, a native Virginian then residing in Richmond wrote a letter to a good friend in Princeton, New Jersey. One of his topics in the missive was how best to prepare a hog for dinner: Altho’ I am sick and harassed with much business I must write soon, least your pork should be too long in brine. .…
A Confederate in Paris
In March 1861, Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia, left the Confederate States of America on a diplomatic mission to Europe, where he remained for the next four years. After his country was defeated in the war, he resolved that he could never return to his native soil unless he returned to an independent South, and so he resided…
What Did Jefferson Really Look Like?
A newspaper in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1887 and in 1902 stated that Sally Hemings’ last child, slave Eston Hemings, resembled Thomas Jefferson. Just how that resemblance was established is unclear. Eston Hemings died in 1877; Thomas Jefferson, in 1826. So, the newspaper was reporting that one person that had been dead for 10/25 years resembled another that has been dead…
Lincoln Studies and a Stacked Deck
Back in 1949, two researchers, J. S. Bruner and Leo Postman, wanted to sort out the relationship between what we see and how we interpret what we see. They did a proper study of it — “On the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm”, Journal of Personality, 18:206 ff. (1949), if you want to look it up. Bruner and Postman asked…
The North’s Victory Unmasked
An aspect of preserving the Southern tradition is rescuing books of wisdom that have been lost and forgotten. That is the case with The United States Unmasked, published in 1879 by Gabriel Manigault (1809—1888). Manigault was born in Charleston to distinguished patriot families on both sides and married into another such family. After serving in the defenses of Charleston and…
Patriotism and the History of Prejudice
A review of The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice (Shoemaker + Company, 2022) by Wendell Berry I had heard of Wendell Berry for quite some time, and though I had an idea of what he was for—‘what I stand for is what I stand on’—I had never read him. I believe that my very first…
The Original Meaning of the 14th Amendment
On Friday, March 15, the Abbeville Institute hosted a webinar on the legal scholar Raoul Berger and the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brion McClanahan hosted legal scholars Allen Mendenhall, William Watkins, and Jesse Meriam for a round table discussion on the Berger, the amendment, and Reconstruction. If you want to learn more about the fraudulent "ratification" of the…
