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…
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….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 15:05:06 +0000 Catharine Savage Brosman Download MP3
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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!…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A series by Clyde Wilson Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, Continued.
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[1] 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…
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…
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…
“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…
At the request of friend John Spear Smith[1] (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,…
Until the publication of Jay B. Hubbell’s great The South in American Literature 1607-1900 (Duke University 1954), nobody remembered many of the South’s great writers, apart from Edgar Allan Poe and, if only by deprecation, maybe Joel Chandler Harris. Now nobody remembers Jay B. Hubbell. Hubbell’s work extends beyond scholarship through antiquarianism practically to archaeology. The chief reason why modern…
A few days ago, I attended the annual Robert E. Lee Banquet in Virginia. I felt so at home and surrounded by Southern comrades who shared my values. We all had a grand time. In these trying days, it is very difficult to stand up for traditional Southern values. I often think of my mentor Cleanth Brooks–whose grandfather was a…
The recent video, “The Fall of Minneapolis,” by journalist Liz Collin and Dr. J.C. Chaix, is chillingly eye-opening. The documentary, following the book, “They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and the Death of George Floyd, is painstakingly researched. It shows convincingly that the four officers, who were involved in the arrest of George Floyd on the day of his passing,…
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…
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…
Historians today with interest in historiography—what is often characterized simply and somewhat misleadingly as the history of history—seem to be in general agreement that the aims and methods of “historians” over millennia have changed. Study of history, as the argument goes, unquestionable shows that. There was yesterday’s history, there is today’s history, and there will be tomorrow’s history, and there…
I’m going to talk about Mary Boykin Chesnut. I want to ask you, how many of you know her famous epic, sometimes called A Diary from Dixie, sometimes called Mary Chesnut’s Civil War? How many of you have heard those names? I’d like to see a show of hands. Well, less than half. I was expecting a few more. How…
We’re here to talk about the man who’s responsible for “Amazing Grace,” but I want to build a base first so you’ll appreciate the song better, because the song’s being attributed, I think, by people who are rewriting history, whether willfully or ignorantly (and I think it’s ignorantly, because we haven’t done our work). We need to give the story…
XIII. The Dilemma of the Southern Liberals Originally published in The American Mercury, 1934 “The Dilemma of the Southern Liberals” Back when wild-eyed suffragettes were on the losing end of Oklahoma Drills with King George V’s horse, Vanderbilt and Sewanee were Southern football giants, and the Bull Moose Party was hawking the square new deal, Southern liberals—all hopped up on…
Originally published in The Sewanee Review, Spring, 1968, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Spring, 1968), pp. 214-225 In 1948 T. S. Eliot, in a lecture “From Poe to Valery”, said in substance that Poe’s work, if it is to be judged fairly, must be seen as a whole, lest as the mere sum of its parts it seem inferior. There is…
From the 2011 Abbeville Institute Summer School. The topic I chose was “Douglas Southall Freeman, a Southern Historian’s Historian.” But I could have all kinds of meanings. It could be he’s a Southern historian’s historian, or he’s a Southern historian’s historian. He’s also a Southern historian’s military historian, because most of the topics that he wrote about were military oriented….
X. American Heroes Originally published as “A Note on American Heroes” in the Southern Review (1935). Whatever else we lack, we do not lack great memories. We have heroes, and we want to possess them affectionately as a mature nation ought. The American mind is divided against itself. Our approach to “what terms we may possess our heroes” is as…
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…
From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. After the decision was made to build a new capital on land granted by Virginia and Maryland, George Washington gave the task of sorting through proposals for the Federal buildings to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was very, very conscious of the enormity of what was about to happen. He wanted to…
I’ve learned a good deal about [Edgar Allan] Poe’s paternal and maternal backgrounds; I had never really pursued that; the biographies don’t. But I found that Poe’s grandfather had immigrated to America in about 1750 from Drung, County Cavan, Ireland. To put that on the board for you, that’s about 75 miles Northwest of Dublin, so it’s sort of in…
The flourishing of art is necessary for the preservation of any people or tradition. Over-reliance upon didactic or dialectical methods of communication is trademark of rationalism’s withering grip. Artistic expression, whether in architecture, on the canvas, in prose or verse, in works of literature, or in music, possesses the ability to conjure or reinforce the values and traditions of a…
At the University of Virginia, Room No.13 on the fabled Lawn is reserved as a permanent shrine to Edgar Allan Poe, who reportedly lodged in the room during his brief time on campus (or “the grounds,” as we say). One wonders what Poe, though a proud Virginian, would think about this honor — he was not terribly happy with his…
Editor’s Note: In an effort to “explore what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition,” we offer an explanation of what it “meant to be a Southerner” in 1958. This raises the questions of what has and has not changed in the South and if themes in this essay can still be applied to the twenty-first century Southerner. This…
The Southern version of Thoreau’s Walden may be considered I’ll Take by Stand, by Twelve Southerners, with its subtitle, The South and the Agrarian Tradition. It was published in 1930 and met with considerable criticism from those who believed it was a futile effort to “turn back the clock” to an idealized utopia of the antebellum South. On the contrary,…
“Take but degree away, untune that string,And hark! what discord follows! Each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy”—Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida One of William Gilmore Simms’ abiding concerns was the almost complete absence of a profession of literature in the South. Prior to the 1850’s the South had produced only two professional writers of any note—Simms, himself, of course, and Edgar Allan…
On a late November evening in 1970, I rolled into the “Big Easy” on an L&N freight with my pockets jingling. Hitching a ride to Canal Street – and letting the morrow “take thought for the things of itself,” as the Scriptures say – I checked into the Sheraton Delta Hotel, got myself cleaned up, then indulged myself in a…
I am not from where I live, yet I have a deep fear that where I live won’t be where I live for very much longer. The god of progress bears down on our town like cavalry upon the steppes. There is not a whole lot one can do outside of seeking divine intervention, much like a Magyar farmer in…
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…
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…
The first thing I learned about Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest was that he had twenty-nine horses shot out from under him in battle; in my fifth-grade social studies class, I remember thinking to myself that the most dangerous thing one could be was one of Forrest’s horses. The unconquerable Tennessean was bold, severe, and uncompromising in the discharge of his…
The novelist Walker Percy was inescapably Southern by virtually any measure. Born May 28, 1916 in Birmingham, he lived briefly in Athens, Georgia following the death of this father, grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, and lived most of his adult life in Louisiana, in New Orleans and Covington. Both the culture into which he was born, and the fatherly—as well…
A review of An Aesthetic Education and Other Stories (Green Altar Books, 2019) by Catharine Savage Brosman One of the most felicitous occurrences in literature is when a first-rate poet turns his or her talents to the writing of short fiction. Among those who have done so, turning out first-rate stories, have been William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop,…
Then Lytle asked: Who are the dead? Who are the living and the dead? Allen Tate, “The Oath” Over the decades since its first publication in 1927 Allen Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead” has probably received more critical and popular attention than any of his other poems.[i] Tate himself alludes to some of it in his own commentary on…
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…
The image of Richard Weaver that sticks in my memory is a disturbing one. He is standing before an audience in a conference room at Vanderbilt University, his gnome-like features barely rising above the tall, polished oak podium that holds his manuscript. He wears a brown, wrinkled suit, shiny at the elbows; and at midmorning he is already in need…
“It is out of fashion these days to look backward rather than forward,” the poet John Crowe Ransom wrote almost thirty years ago. “About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living.” Ransom made the remark in an essay…
In 1966, Senator Jim Eastland of Mississippi walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee and asked, “Feel hot in heah?” A staffer replied: “Well Senator, the thermostat is set at 72 degrees, but we can make it colder.” Eastland, puzzled by the response, doubled down, “I said, Feel Hot in heah?” The staffer now was perplexed and fearing that he might…
The sketch is necessarily imperfect, from the want of official records. Most of these were lost or destroyed by the casualties attending the close of the war, and those still in existence are difficult of access. Of Cleburne’s early life little is known. The record of his service in the Southern armies belongs to the yet unwritten history of the…
Because we live in such a hurried time, we hear countless “noises” but have little time to appreciate actual “sounds.” Sound is a sensation that you can feel, not just something you can hear. To understand this idea, consider how some musicians have actually played concerts for the deaf, who cannot hear the music but still feel the vibrations. These…
“Lincoln, under no circumstances, would I vote for … So, I say, stand by the ‘Constitution and the Union’, and so long as the laws are enacted and administered according to the Constitution we are safe …“ (emphasis added) Letter from Sam Houston to Colonel A. Daly, August 14, 1860 The 1860 Election was still 3 months in the future and…
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I am speaking but the plain truth when I tell you that I would rather be here tonight facing an assemblage of men and women of Irish blood and Irish breeding than in any other banquet hall on earth. For I am one who is Irish and didn’t know it; but now that I…
For as many years as I’ve been an artist, I’ve seen numerous Southerners, Christians, libertarians and other traditionalist-minded folks wring their hands over people subscribing to this or that tenant of leftist ideology, but then turn around and market their own ideas in just about the most boring manner possible. Because if there’s anything the left has done exceptionally well,…
A review-essay on A Memory of Manaus: Poems by Catharine Savage Brosman. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2017. A Memory of Manaus, Catharine Brosman’s eleventh full-length collection of poetry, confirms her rightful place in the front rank of contemporary American poets. Working skillfully in both traditional forms and in tightly controlled free verse, Brosman is among that very small number…
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…
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…
Edgar Allan Poe secured a permanent place among world authors as father of the short story, creator of the detective story, and/poetic genius. While he has an international reputation, Poe consciously identified himself as a Southern writer. Poe may not often come to mind as a Southern writer because he did not write about the South the way Simms or,…
“The modern man has lost his sense of vocation.” “A Statement of Principles,” I’ll Take My Stand “One wonders what the authors of our Constitution would have thought of that category, ‘permanently unemployable.’” –Wendell Berry A Review of Land!: The Case For an Agrarian Economy by John Crowe Ransom, Edited by Jason Peters, Introduction by Jay T. Collier University of…
The rejection of the old Prayer Book was something like the demolition of a historic building. For over four centuries it has been regarded as a monument of great prose. It has influenced the English language with memorable images and phrasing. Only the King James translation of the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare have affected our language so…
Editor’s note: This piece was published less than ten years (1983) before the end of communist control of Romania. Bradford’s assessment of the Romanian people well applies to the South, a region that had been defeated and “reconstructed” but still retained much of its cultural vibrancy, albeit suppressed and ridiculed by the political class. It also serves as a stark…
[Extract from speech delivered in the United States Senate, March 16, 1846.] But I oppose war, not simply on the patriotic ground of a citizen looking to the freedom and prosperity of his own country, but on still broader grounds, as a friend of improvement, civilization and progress. Viewed in reference to them, at no period has it ever been…
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…
In 1855 Putnam’s Monthly carried an article by the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson describing an African village. The villagers, according to Higginson, were “active, commercial geniuses,” who enjoyed “a remarkable language, and an even more remarkable recollection of proverbs.” In fact, they resembled New Englanders. They were mechanically inventive and commercially fruitful. Their advanced culture was described by Higginson in…
Southern Voices: Poems by William H. Holcombe, M. D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1872. We hail this volume as a beautiful presage of the future of the South in the department of poetry In saying that it is worthy of the author, who, for several years past, has been a brilliant star in the literary firmament of the…
Editor’s Note: A Mother’s Day special dedicated to all Southern wives and mothers, this piece was originally published in 1877 in Bledsoe’s The Southern Review. It is strange how we undervalue the historical interest of contemporaneous events, and how careless most persons are of preserving any record of the most stirring incidents that mark their own pathway through life. While…
Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847) was regarded as one of the finest American poets of his day. Born in Ireland, he settled in Georgia and served several terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Democratic-Republican and later Jacksonian Democrat. He supported William H. Crawford for president in 1824. Wilde left the United States for Europe in 1835 then…
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,…
Over time a man, if he is perceptive, comes to certain conclusions. The most startling is that the greatest truths were spoken to him throughout his life by ordinary men, simple preachers, old men sitting around drinking soda and eating peanuts, his father. These men, if beneficiaries of a culture and community that embraces common-sense as a virtue, know truths…
History is a liberal art and one profits by studying the whole of it, including the lost causes. All of us arc under a mortal temptation to grant the accomplished fact more than we should. That the fall of Rome, the dissolution of medieval Catholicism, the overthrow of Napoleon, the destruction of the Old South were purposeful and just are…
It was the fate of much Southern poetry to have been written during the stormy period of our Civil War and hence to have been overlooked and neglected. War may furnish incitement to the production of poetry, but it does not generate that attitude of quiet and content most conducive to gentle, poetic reading. Indeed misfortune befell much poetry of…
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…
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…
BECAUSE I believe that Sidney Lanier was much more than a clever artisan in rhyme and metre; because he will, I think, take his final rank with the first princes of American song, I am glad to provide this slight memorial. There is sufficient material in his letters for an extremely interesting biography, which could be properly prepared only by…
A Critique of Onufian Revisionism and Jefferson’s “Contradictions” Robert Booth Fowler writes: “The monuments to Stalin that have come down in recent years in Eastern Europe mark the fall of a former hero and the fall of the values the hero supposedly embodied. The situation with Jefferson, however, is different. The values celebrated by the Jefferson Memorial have not lost…
A modern student of American literature would be hard pressed to find anything written on or about Henry Timrod in a current anthology of American poetry. Bob Dylan and Langston Hughes will have text dedicated to their work, but not the Poet Laureate of the Confederacy, a man whose verse sparked men to action and whose sweet sorrow at the…
Southern history contains many fine examples of literary and artistic merit long ignored by contemporary scholars and forgotten by the American public at large, both North and South. Much of this is due to the impact that the War had on the perception of the Southern people. Students in American literature will get a cursory understanding of Southern literature, primarily…
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…
“No wonder men were willing to fight for such a country as ours—and such women. They were enough to make heroes of any material.”- President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A. Mary Boykin Chesnut’s diary is a touching human and intimate history of a civilization locked in a struggle for life or death. Out of respect to her, and to preserve the authenticity…
It has been much too long since so-called “serious” poetry has had a legitimate hold on the affections and imagination of the American reading public at large. Many culprits stand guilty for this breach between what is one of the most natural forms of literary expression, one closely akin to music, and the time and attention of non-academic readers. Only…
Aristotle taught that “To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements, for none of these things retain their natural power when they are too large or too small.”1 In this paper I want to explore Hume’s views on the proper size and scale of political order. Size and scale are…
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…
Most people who visit or live in Columbus, Georgia probably don’t realize that one of the most famous houses in American literature sits on a back street near Lakebottom Park in the midtown section of the city. The impressive Greek revival home, first named El Dorado, was built by Colonel Seaborn Jones between 1828 and 1833. Jones’ daughter married Hennry…
I’ll Take My Stand, the classic statement of Southern Agrarianism, was first published in 1930. Since that time, it has never been out of print. You have to ask yourself why people have continued to read it. There are several good reasons why they shouldn’t. It’s a quirky book. The 12 essays—written by men of varying backgrounds and talents—are uneven…
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