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J.L. Bennett

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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…
J.L. Bennett
October 22, 2024
Blog

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.…
J.L. Bennett
May 9, 2024
Blog

Mr. H

When I was in school, many of my teachers were from North Carolina, one of them Miss M., a large and rather loud woman with steel-grey hair.  We liked her much better than her predecessor, the Chicagoan with the prominent nose who mocked our country speech.  We also liked our North Carolinian physical education teacher, a right pleasant person.  And…
J.L. Bennett
February 2, 2024
Blog

Damnyankees and Old Southern Gentlemen

In the summer of 1863 Confederate soldiers began arriving at Point Lookout Prison, located at the southernmost tip of the Western Shore of Maryland.  Too many of these men were to perish there, the captives not of a nation in desperate economic straits, cut off from the rest of the world, but of a wealthy one with access to open…
J.L. Bennett
September 28, 2023
Blog

Aunt Elizabeth, the Desert Fox, and General Jackson

Raised on a tobacco farm at the edge of the Chinquapin Forest in Southern Maryland, my Aunt Elizabeth for much of her life attempted to divest herself of her rustic upbringing.  When she graduated from nursing school, she married and subsequently lived for long spells in South America and Europe.  In spite of all this, fortunately, she never succeeded in…
J.L. Bennett
August 8, 2022
Blog

The Pride of Kentucky…and Maryland

There are disagreements on the subject, but I wholeheartedly believe that Bardstown, Kentucky is “where bourbon was born.”   Many of the first bourbons, however, were variations on old rye whiskey recipes brought to the Bardstown area by settlers from Maryland.  Among them were people named Dant, Mattingly, Medley, Wathen, Pottinger, Miles, Willett and Beam, all families associated with the earliest…
J.L. Bennett
April 15, 2022
Blog

When Baltimore was “An Old Crab Town”

“My shirt is ragged and my pants are tore. I ain’t found nothin’ I’m a-looking for, And I want to go back to Baltimore…. Good old Baltimore.”— lyrics from a country song recorded in 1954 by Sonny James In 1910, when visitors would come to call on Confederate Veteran George Watts, he would “ from a rickety chair” and receive…
J.L. Bennett
December 3, 2021
Blog

Disunion Then and Now

The delegates who gathered in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, presumptuously shelving that document, concluded their work on the proposed U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.  On another September 17th three quarters of a century later, the quarrels that had commenced at that gathering were to continue in a cornfield at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. One hundred…
J.L. Bennett
October 22, 2021
Blog

A Southern Song, A Southern Heritage–Canceled

“When we talk about the War it is our history we are talking about, it is a part of our identity.  To tell libellous lies about our ancestors is a direct attack on who we are.” —from Lies My Teacher Told Me by Clyde N. Wilson “The Story of Maryland is sad to the last degree.” —Jefferson Davis In the…
J.L. Bennett
June 14, 2021
Blog

Waving the White Flag Won’t Save the UDC

“Very late in the war, when defeat seemed inevitable, Northern generals were complaining that the Confederate soldier refused to give in and admit defeat, that Southern women remained indomitable in spirit….” – Dr. Clyde Wilson, “Rethinking the War for the 21st Century,” The Abbeville Review, September 14, 2016 “God bless…ALL who boldly defend the good name and honor of our…
J.L. Bennett
July 1, 2020
Blog

Lincoln v. Trump

Not that long ago, it seems, Congressional Democrats were calling the Constitution an outdated impediment to “smart,” progressive government, but lately they are professing their high regard for the founding document and its framers.  “Solemn” and “prayerful,” they feign a reluctance to impeach Donald Trump while conducting a ruthless campaign to disenfranchise the 63 million people who voted for him…
J.L. Bennett
January 10, 2020
Blog

The French Lady: A Most Agreeable Gentleman

“Fatti Maschii Parole Femine”1 In July of 1861, Union troops aboard the Chesapeake Bay steamer the Mary Washington found the “privateer” Colonel Richard Thomas Zarvona hiding in one of her cabins.  Aided by some sympathetic passengers, he had removed the bottom of each drawer of a dresser and had curled himself up inside of it.  Zarvona’s arrest brought to an…
J.L. Bennett
March 28, 2019
Blog

Talk Radio vs. The South

Right wing radio personalities need no excuse to engage in South-bashing, but the recent events in the Old Dominion have given them free rein to indulge in their passion non-stop.  Governor Ralph Northam’s perceived hatred of “the other” quickly overshadowed his chilling, matter of fact endorsement of proposed legislation establishing new and ghoulish abortion protocols in his state, and with…
J.L. Bennett
February 27, 2019
Blog

The Marseillaise of the South Plays On, For Now

As the 2018 legislative session was winding down in Annapolis, the Senate passed a bill retiring the Old Line State’s Confederate call to arms, but that bill was to die in committee in the House of Delegates. So, once again, though “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” has been archived, “My Old Kentucky Home,” “updated,” “Maryland! My Maryland!”—some would say…
J.L. Bennett
April 19, 2018
Review Posts

Maryland’s Confederate Sisterhood

“If you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace.  If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall know what to do, when you reduce the question to…
J.L. Bennett
March 28, 2017
Blog

Baltimore Set to Ban Lee and Jackson, to Welcome Degenerate Divine

    As Baltimore is preparing to honor a coprophagic crossdresser, the city’s double-equestrian Lee-Jackson monument is coming down.  Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who presided over and encouraged the riots following the death of Freddie Gray last year, is expected to direct its removal from Wyman Park where the monument, the site of many Lee-Jackson Day celebrations, has stood since 1948. …
J.L. Bennett
March 4, 2016
Blog

Governor Hicks: Accidental Defender of Southern History

As 1861 drew to a close, Governor Thomas Hicks recorded for posterity the events of the Northern invasion and occupation of Maryland in a message he sent to members of the state's first reconstruction era legislature, an extralegal body that would prove friendly to the Yankee regime. In defending his reluctance to authorize a special session of the previous General…
J.L. Bennett
November 19, 2014