A Birthday Salute to Clyde Wilson Blog Post

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

Boyd Cathey
June 12, 2023

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XX Blog Post

William Gilmore Simms, Part 2 [No American writer, including James Fenimore Cooper, ever had more understanding, knowledge, and sympathy for the Native Americans than did Simms. They appear in many of his works of poetry and fiction.] The Green Corn Dance Come hither, hither, old and young–the gentle and the strong, And gather in the green corn dance, and mingle…

Clyde Wilson
April 22, 2022

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XIX Blog Post

A Series by Clyde Wilson. WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870) of South Carolina, amazingly prolific novelist, poet, essayist, lecturer, historian, critic, and editor, has been rightly called “The Father of Southern Literature.” Without question Simms is the most important Southern writer of the 19th century after Poe. Without question Simms is in every way one of the most important American writers….

Clyde Wilson
February 10, 2022

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XVIII Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson HENRY ROOTES JACKSON (1820—1898) of Georgia was a lawyer, judge and poet. He was U.S. Minister to Austria/Hungary 1853—1858 and was well-known for prosecuting Yankee slave traders trying to import African captives into Atlanta shortly before the war. He was Colonel of the 1st Georgia Volunteers in the Mexican War and fought in the Confederate…

Clyde Wilson
February 4, 2022

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XVII Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson Thomas Holley Chivers (1809—1858) of Georgia was a physician and poet and a friend of Edgar Allan Poe, who encouraged him. He published over 10 volumes of poetry and plays but was largely forgotten until rediscovered by 20th century critics. Chivers believed that  good poetry was a result of “divine inspiration.” Faith Faith is the flower that…

Clyde Wilson
January 28, 2022

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XVI Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson. LOUISA  SUSANNAH  CHEVES  McCORD  (1810—1879) of South Carolina  was one of the most outstanding women of 19th century America.  She was the daughter of Langdon Cheves, who had been Speaker of the U.S. House of  Representatives and had held other important posts.  In the antebellum period, while a plantation mistress, she published poetry, strong polemical…

Clyde Wilson
January 21, 2022

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XV Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson Alexander Beaufort Meek,  Part  2 The Rose of Alabama I loved, in boyhood’s happy time, When life was like a minstrel’s rhyme, And cloudless as my native clime, The Rose of Alabama. Oh, lovely rose! The sweetest flower earth knows, Is the Rose of Alabama! One pleasant, balmy night in June, When swung, in silvery…

Clyde Wilson
January 14, 2022

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XIV Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson ALEXANDER BEAUFORT MEEK (1814-1865) of Alabama. Meek was one of the most prominent citizens of antebellum Alabama–judge, orator, international chess master, and historian of the early days of his State. He also published two volumes of verse. Selections are from The Songs and Poems of the South (1857). COME TO THE SOUTH Oh, come to…

Clyde Wilson
January 7, 2022

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XIII Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR (1798-1859) of Texas moved from his native Georgia to the Texas Republic in 1835. He took a conspicuous part in the Texas War of Independence and was cited by Sam Houston for outstanding bravery at the Battle of San Jacinto. Lamar served in the Texas government and followed Houston as President. He…

Clyde Wilson
August 13, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XII Blog Post

A Series by Clyde Wilson THEODORE O’HARA (1820-1867) of Kentucky. “The Bivouac of the Dead” is often thought of as related to The War of 1861-1865. Like the “Star-Spangled Banner” it was confiscated for the North. Theodore O’Hara was a Confederate officer. (He was with Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston when he was fatally wounded.) He wrote the poem about 1850…

Clyde Wilson
August 6, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part XI Blog Post

A Series by Clyde Wilson EDGAR ALLAN POE,  Part 2 Sonnet – To Science Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!   Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,   Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,   Who wouldst not leave him in his wanderingTo seek for treasure…

Clyde Wilson
July 30, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part X Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–1849) of Virginia was the great creative genius of 19th century American literature in poetry, fiction, and criticism. Although accidentally born in Boston and spending part of his foreshortened life earning a living in New York, Poe was, and unequivocally considered himself to be, a Southerner. In all his career he was…

Clyde Wilson
July 2, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part IX Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson EDWARD COOTE PINKNEY (1802-1828) of Maryland was born and partly raised in England where his father, William Pinkney, was the U.S. Minister.  After publishing a good deal of poetry, he attempted to join the Mexican Navy during that country’s war of independence. From this venture Pinkney returned home to Baltimore, his health shattered.  He continued…

Clyde Wilson
June 11, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part VIII Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson RICHARD HENRY WILDE (1789–1847) of Georgia gave up a successful career as lawyer and Congressman to pursue the Muse in Europe. This poem, though perhaps out of fashion, was praised by Byron and was long immensely popular in the English-speaking world. The Yankee black-face minstrel show impresario Stephen Foster “appropriated” some of the lines and…

Clyde Wilson
May 28, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part VII Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson WASHINGTON ALLSTON (1779–1843) of South Carolina was one of the most important of early American painters.  The first two poems were written in response to his first viewing of major artistic works in Italy. On a Falling Group in the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, in the Cappella Sistina How vast how dread, o’erwhelming, is…

Clyde Wilson
May 21, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part VI Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1779-1843) of Maryland.  The story is well known how Key composed “The Star-Spangled Banner” after he witnessed the repulse of the British attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbour in 1814. It casts an interesting light on the official U.S.  national anthem when one notes that Key’s grandson, Frank Key Howard, was…

Clyde Wilson
May 14, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part V Blog Post

A series by Clyde Wilson Homage to Revolutionary Heroes DOLLEY PAYNE MADISON (1768—1849) was the wife of President James Madison.                              Lafayette Born, nurtured, wedded, prized, within the pale Of peers and princes, high in camp—at court— He hears, in joyous youth, a wild report, Swelling the murmurs of the Western gale, Of a young people struggling to be free!…

Clyde Wilson
May 7, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part IV Blog Post

A Series by Clyde Wilson UNKNOWN WRITER, 1781 The Battle of King’s Mountain ‘T was on a pleasant mountainThe Tory heathens lay,With a doughty major at their head,One Forguson, they say. Cornwallis had detach’d himA-thieving for to go,And catch the Carolina men,Or bring the rebels low. The scamp had rang’d the countryIn search of royal aid,And with his owls, perched…

Clyde Wilson
April 30, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part III Blog Post

EBENEZER COOKE (fl. ca. l 680s–1730s?) of Maryland is a major figure in Colonial American literature. He is best known for the long satirical poem “The Sot-Weed Factor.”  (The sot-weed is tobacco, mainstay of the Southern and American economy in the colonial period, and the factor is a figure long familiar in the South—the merchant who sold and exported the…

Clyde Wilson
April 23, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part II Blog Post

JOHN COTTON (fl. 1660s – 1720s) was an early settler of Virginia, never to be confused with the awful Cotton family of Massachusetts. In 1814 an anonymous poem about Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (1676) was found among some old mss. and subsequently published. It was long regarded as an anonymous treasure of American colonial literature. Twentieth-century poet and critic Louis…

Clyde Wilson
April 16, 2020

Southern Poets and Poems, Part I Blog Post

A Series By Clyde Wilson If the South would’ve won, we’d’ve  had  it made.” –Hank Williams, Jr., of Alabama “The South’s  gonna do it again.”–Charlie Daniels  of  North Carolina 1 INTRODUCTION This collection is made, not from the viewpoint of a critic of literature, but that of a student of history interested in how the experiences of the Southern people…

Clyde Wilson
April 9, 2020

Loosiana Poets Blog Post

A review of Louisiana Poets: A Literary Guide, (U. Press of Mississippi, 2019) by Catharine Savage Brosman and Olivia McNeely Pass. The poet and the scholar are reportedly different sorts of people. Rarely do you find high performance in both roles combined in one person. Catharine Brosman has done it. The only other example I can think of is the…

Clyde Wilson
June 4, 2019

Outside the Gates of Eden Blog Post

William Faulkner once said of his own work that he was just “a failed poet.” Of course, Faulkner is at the lasting peak of American culture in his portrayal of mankind’s striving and endurance and cannot be any kind of failure. The only thing I have in common with Faulkner is that we both write in prose—me being a very…

Clyde Wilson
November 21, 2023

The Attack on Leviathan, Part 3 Blog Post

VI. Still Rebels, Still Yankees Originally published as two essays in the American Review and can be found in the anthology Modern Minds. Many will recognize this chapter’s title from another book of Davidson’s collected essays with the same title published in 1957. Davidson begins recollecting a meeting of Southern writers in Charleston, SC. In 1932, Davidson penned a brief…

Chase Steely
August 4, 2022

Conservatism and the Southern Tradition Blog Post

A review of Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (All Points Books, 2018) by Sir Roger Scruton. There is no such thing as conservatism, according to Sir Roger Scruton’s 155-page monograph, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition. That is, there is no unified theory of conservatism because it is always localized to a time, a place, and a…

Duncan Killen
January 20, 2021

We’ll Take Our Stand Blog Post

It is not often enough, but I do set aside blocks of time to express gratitude to God for all the many blessings He has bestowed on me in my lifetime. There are many things I have missed out on, or simply fouled up royally, but the stars aligned in mid-October and I had the good fortune of being able…

Joshua Doggrell
November 12, 2020

On Ballylee: The Enduring Legacy of Our Fathers’ Fields Blog Post

A retrospective review of Our Fathers’ Fields: A Southern Story (University of South Carolina Press, 1998) by James Everett Kibler, Jr. On June 7, 1998, I opened a copy of The State newspaper from Columbia, South Carolina, and read a review of a book that I immediately knew I had to own. The article, “Family Ties: Author Looks at Hardy…

Look Away Blog Post

A bit of free verse to address our current situation, which is probably not as good as I think it is.  It marshals various lines from Donald Davidson’s poems.  As Faulkner said, all of us writers are really only failed poets. You, Mel Bradford, told Of remembering who we are. A time has come When answers will not wait. But…

Clyde Wilson
December 15, 2017

Upon the Painting by Paul Davis of the Statue of a Young Confederate Soldier Blog Post

Upon the Painting by Paul Davis of the Statue of a Young Confederate Soldier —on the cover of The Fugitive Poets: Modern Southern Poetry in Perspective (William Pratt, editor, 1965)— in honor of Clyde Wilson The cover holds us from the poems within, This young Confederate Davis captured here, A private guarding gates at two removes, This painting of a…

David Middleton
December 8, 2017

American Culture: Massachusetts or Virginia Blog Post

Delivered at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. A Frenchman has observed that the qualities of a culture may be identified by two characteristics— its manners and its cuisine. If that is so, then we can safely say that the United States, except for the South, has no culture at all. Aside from the South the only American contributions to…

Clyde Wilson
August 3, 2016

Calhoun’s Carolina Blog Post

John C. Culhoon. Culhoon is the right pronunciation by the way. John C. Culhoon was an upcountryman. We upcountry people tend to suspect Charlestonians, like Dr. Fleming, of being somewhat haughty and dissipated. Calhoun studied law briefly in Charleston and found a bride here, and he stopped off when he couldn’t avoid it on his way to and from Washington,…

Clyde Wilson
March 18, 2016

A Jeffersonian Political Economy Blog Post

Your other lecturers have pleasant and upbeat subjects to consider. I am stuck with economics, which is a notoriously dreary subject.   It is even more of a downer when we consider how far the U.S. is today from a Southern, Jeffersonian political economy which was once a powerful idea. Economics as practiced today is a utilitarian and materialistic study. It…

Clyde Wilson
July 29, 2015

M. E. Bradford, The Agrarian Aquinas Blog Post

I have called M.E. Bradford the Agrarian Aquinas. He did not write a Summa, but his work as a whole enriched and carried into new territory the message of I’ll Take My Stand on a broad front of literature, history, and political thought. He came at a crucial time when Richard Weaver had passed his peak of influence and the…

Clyde Wilson
February 4, 2015

Twenty Million Gone: The Southern Diaspora, 1900—1970 Blog Post

That is Bobby Bare on Detroit and Dwight Yoakam on Los Angeles. Sometimes there are significant movements in history that go unnoticed because they take place slowly over a long period of time and are marked by no major event. The Southern Diaspora of the 20th century is such a movement. Twelve million white and eight million black people left…

Clyde Wilson
November 10, 2014

The Other Side of Union Blog Post

The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern States. —Charles Dickens, 1862 Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery. —Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey, 1863 Sixteen years after publishing his classic of American…

Clyde Wilson
July 9, 2014