Mon, 14 Jul 2014 01:57:53 +0000 Kent Masterson Brown Download MP3
Kent Masterson BrownFebruary 24, 2021
Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:53:27 +0000 Joseph R. Stromberg Download MP3
Joseph R. StrombergFebruary 24, 2021
Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:52:40 +0000 Joseph R. Stromberg Download MP3
Joseph R. StrombergFebruary 24, 2021
"What we have to Expect," Harper’s Ferry: Abolitionism, Extradition, and Secession by Jonathan White
Mon, 07 Jul 2014 15:19:30 +0000 Jonathan White Download MP3
Jonathan WhiteFebruary 24, 2021
Wed, 09 Jul 2014 13:29:13 +0000 Kent Masterson Brown Download MP3
Kent Masterson BrownFebruary 24, 2021
We Are What We Remember: The Old South and the Origins of a Real American Literature by Clyde Wilson
Sun, 13 Jul 2014 17:05:26 +0000 Clyde Wilson Download MP3
Clyde WilsonFebruary 24, 2021
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 08:43:12 +0000 Joseph R. Stromberg Download MP3
Joseph R. StrombergFebruary 24, 2021
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 08:44:47 +0000 Joseph R. Stromberg Download MP3
Joseph R. StrombergFebruary 24, 2021
In May of 2008, I became embroiled in a situation that had developed with the former Museum of the Confederacy. Having received an e-mail sent to the membership from Director S. Waite Rawls asking for an opinion about removing the word “Confederacy” from the Museum’s title, I assumed that he was taking heat from the ongoing crusade against all things…
Valerie ProtopapasFebruary 24, 2021
A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard; ISBN: 978-0-14-312202-9, Penguin, September 25, 2012, 384 pages. American Nations is simply the most brilliant book I have ever read on American history. Almost every page is compact with some…
Terry HulseyFebruary 23, 2021
“Acts of congress, to be binding, must be made pursuant to the constitution; otherwise they are not laws, but a mere nullity.” -St. George Tucker “There is no danger I apprehend so much as the consolidation of our government by the noiseless, and therefore unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme Court.” -Thomas Jefferson As a pro-life Jeffersonian, I am constantly frustrated…
Earl StarbuckFebruary 22, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 15-19, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Political Correctness, Southern literature, Southern music, Civil War, Southern Politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-249
Brion McClanahanFebruary 20, 2021
Sometime back in the early sixties—climaxed in 1964 with Barry Goldwater’s efforts—the South with its conservative measure, almost En Masse wanted (and needed) a place to go other than the old Democrat bastion of “Solid South.” The SS political vector had been in unofficial direction and vogue since the dastardly and corrupt destruction and "reconstruction" of the South; post-War-Between-the-States (the…
Paul H. YarbroughFebruary 19, 2021
Coming out of the American Revolution, the nation faced a slave problem that most today could scarcely imagine and that was unemployment. The Slave labor force had grown from reproduction and from importing of slaves by the northern slave traders in a situation that, using modern business terms, was more of supplier push than buyer pull. That is the suppliers…
James (Jim) PedersonFebruary 18, 2021
The diary of Emma LeConte is one of the best known documents chronicling the sack and destruction of Columbia, South Carolina. On February 17, 1865, the city surrendered to the besieging army of General William T. Sherman. His soldiers pillaged the city throughout the day and in the evening set fires that would destroy much of the place. Emma LeConte’s…
Karen StokesFebruary 17, 2021
If these were normal times, we’d all be unpacking our Mardi Gras gear right about now. Purple, yellow, and green would be everywhere, and I would be writing about how the first (and oldest) Mardi Gras in North America was in Mobile, Alabama, and not New Orleans. But things went a little haywire recently, and Mardi Gras got canceled. However,…
Tom DanielFebruary 16, 2021
I hope Grandfather fed them wellFrom out his meager store of cornOr fodder pulled by Mother'Neath a blazing autumn sun--So hot sometimes she saidThat she and sister sickenedTo the vomit stage, and tender armsWere sliced by leaves' fierce razor edge. I know they had warm winter's barnand stabled shelter from both heat and cold.They sometimes got a treat of pea-vine…
James Everett KiblerFebruary 15, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Feb 8-12, 2021 Topics: Southern Politics, Southern Tradition, United States Constitution, John C. Calhoun, Southern Music, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-248
Brion McClanahanFebruary 13, 2021
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…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.February 12, 2021
“A fig for the Constitution” if it does not protect our most basic rights was John Randolph’s nineteenth century estimation of the value of the Constitution. In 2021 his words of warning are even more applicable. What power does the Constitution have to protect the First Amendment’s guarantee to peacefully assemble and the free exercise of religion when the government…
James Ronald KennedyFebruary 11, 2021
As one pastor in his sixties mentioned recently, “I would have thought VMI to be one of the last bastions,” meaning, of course, among those institutions most committed to preserving the best of Western civilization, including the rule of law, freedom of expression and religion, and the traditional values that every generation of Americans took for granted until the 1960s.…
Forrest L. MarionFebruary 10, 2021
The Washington establishment, led by a senile 78-year-old man who can barely speak in complete sentences and seems permanently fighting mad, is hell- bent on labeling virtually all Americans who voted for President Trump –Republicans, Independents, and Democrats — as “insurrectionists.” They have invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 to justify placing thousands of heavily-armed National Guard (and other) troops…
Thomas DiLorenzoFebruary 9, 2021
What would you give in exchange for your soul? Bluegrass greats Bill Monroe and Doc Watson asked that question in one of their most memorable live recordings. It’s also the same one posed by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., on one of the tracks of the first album released by the Hillbilly Thomists, a bluegrass band of Dominican friars from…
Casey ChalkFebruary 8, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Feb 1-5, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-247
Brion McClanahanFebruary 6, 2021
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…
Rev. Benjamin GlaserFebruary 5, 2021
Southern conservatism is considered an enigma when juxtaposed against the bipartisan political configuration having been imposed upon us since the beginning of the American experiment. The candor of its echoed sentiment as a past relic meets the ears of many contemporary Americans with halted sails as its message could never penetrate their intellect. When the essence of its subject is…
Brad PondFebruary 4, 2021
The year 2020 was brutal for the friends of the South. Monuments and statues of Southerners, not just Confederates, disappeared from the urban areas of the Southand beyond. The lockdowns imposed by the authorities weighed heavily upon the region’s and the country’s remaining small farms and small businesses. In larger urban areas such as Atlanta, what the lockdown did not…
John DevannyFebruary 3, 2021
(Mrs. Holley was the third generation of a Southern family in California. She wrote this on being able to return permanently to the South.) The cotton fields grow row after row, we saw them from Grandad's back seat,The twins and I arms and legs stuck together in the dawg days summer heat. The cotton fields grow row after row, we…
Ruth Ann HolleyFebruary 2, 2021
A review of President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU Press, 2020) by Christopher Leahy “His Accidency.” That’s the nickname given to John Tyler, earned, as it were, because of the way he became vice-president (no one else wanted the job) and president (William Henry Harrison died after just over a month in office). Fair enough. Those…
Joe WolvertonFebruary 1, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 25-29, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Slavery, Southern History, Southern Music, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-246
Brion McClanahanJanuary 30, 2021
From Eternity into Time Mighty the Wizard Who found me at sunrise Sleeping, and woke me And learn’d me Magic! Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the valley, In early summers, Over the mountain, On human faces, And all around me, Moving to melody, Floated The Gleam… - Tennyson, “Merlin and the Gleam” (7) When I…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.January 29, 2021
Slavery, we are repeatedly told, is America’s “original sin.” But unlike the effects of Biblical original sin, there is no possible atonement. The Left and its racial Grievance Factory will never let original sin be blotted out or separated from American politics. In the words of Yale historian David Blight, there exists a “the living residue” connected to African slavery…
William J. WatkinsJanuary 28, 2021
Rock ‘n Roll may be the most significant cultural export in American history. There is no doubt that American culture, for good and bad, has had an enormous impact on global culture, and Rock ‘n Roll is one of our most iconic contributions. Around the world, people don’t hear Rock ‘n Roll and think of Switzerland or Brazil or Thailand. …
Tom DanielJanuary 27, 2021
America has a Lincoln problem. Professor Tom DiLorenzo explains why our nearly deification of "Honest Abe" presents a fundamental problem for our understanding of both the American past and the American present https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOC9gkJmnZM&feature=youtu.be
Thomas DiLorenzoJanuary 26, 2021
I find myself sitting on the bank of a lake, not far from where I grew up. Being in an extremely rural and poor area of Arkansas, we hang on to things quite a bit longer than most, both literally and figuratively. In the 1960s, there was a thriving vacation destination in my home county, known as the ‘Wildlife Club.’…
Travis HoltJanuary 25, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 11-22, 2021 Topics: Reconciliation, Southern Politics, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-245
Brion McClanahanJanuary 23, 2021
It is a sad thing that it should fall to a junior representative from New York to tell the truth about the South’s position in national politics and culture. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has done so by saying that our states are oppressed, and that there can be no national healing until we are liberated. In this she was right in what…
Tom HerveyJanuary 22, 2021
The old saying: “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God” certainly applies to me. I’m an ethnic Southerner who was raised in the north – but who, for the past 25 years (with the exception of my three year educational exile to the permafrost of Fort Wayne, Indiana) has lived in the Deep South. In fact, for the…
Rev. Larry BeaneJanuary 21, 2021
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 KillenJanuary 20, 2021
Yesterday’s melee in Washington provides good reason to honor Robert E. Lee because he demonstrated how he maintained dignity in defeat while convincing many resentful Southerners to reconcile with their former enemies. At the end of the War Between the States in 1865 he had as much reason as any Southerner to reject reconciliation, but he didn’t do that. To…
Philip LeighJanuary 19, 2021
According to a recent poll, 72 per cent of Americans think that we are now in the “worst” period of American history. Polls are dubious things and the great historian John Lukacs has questioned whether there really is any such thing as “public opinion.” But this poll simply supports what we already knew about pervasive historical ignorance, which is exhibited every…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 18, 2021
Legendary financier J. P. Morgan once said: “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” His meaning is that our public explanation is a noble one whereas our real reason is self-serving. Any adult knows that the maxim applies to politicians, about whom Robert E. Lee said, “They are among the most…
Philip LeighJanuary 15, 2021
You might call it propaganda, state lies, fraud, illusions or delusions. I prefer pretenses which afford the peddler thereof and the hapless fool who buys into them just the degree of deniability so that they can pretend that what is represented or misrepresented is respectable and a touchstone for the common weal. 1. America was founded: The country which we…
Robert PetersJanuary 14, 2021
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 phantasmagorical image of slave life in the South has long been regarded as one of the sparks that ignited the War Between the States. However, a now almost forgotten anti-slavery polemic by the North Carolina abolitionist Hinton Rowan Helper did far more to inflame the nation at that time than did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In fact,…
John MarquardtJanuary 13, 2021
A review of Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain (LSU Press, 2019) by Thomas Ruys Smith In Deep Water: the Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain prominent Mississippi River scholar Thomas Ruys Smith examines the literature surrounding the Mississippi River from the late 19th to the early 20th Century. Smith analyzes Mississippi River…
Jason StewartJanuary 12, 2021
“The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence,” observed Southern Gothic author and native Georgian Flannery O’Connor. But what about those weaknesses that don’t? Well, then the offender may require rebuke, and, depending on the gravity of the offense, and the character of the offender, that might range somewhere between a polite reprimand to being run…
Casey ChalkJanuary 11, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Jan 4-8, 2021 Topics: Political Correctness, Southern Heroes, Southern Tradition, Nationalism, Neoconservatives https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-244
Brion McClanahanJanuary 9, 2021
Early in the civil war President Lincoln had Federal Troops occupy the State of Maryland. Though the power vested only with the US Congress, Mr. Lincoln also took it upon himself to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus (the right of trial) throughout Maryland and eventually throughout the entire Union. Mr. Lincoln also authorized his military commanders to imprison and…
Paul CallahanJanuary 8, 2021
In May of this year, George Floyd died; seven months later, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) removed its statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson from its prominent position at the nation’s oldest state-supported four-year military college. The two events – one in Minnesota’s largest city, the other in Virginia’s picturesque Shenandoah Valley – had nothing to do with one another.…
Forrest L. MarionJanuary 7, 2021
I saw a pile of household goods on the side of the road a couple of days ago, as I was picking up a friend to take him to the store. It was a blighting image that I gazed on with disdain. I asked him what was that, and he said his neighbor was cleaning the house, and it was…
Cliff PageJanuary 6, 2021
“Black identity-mongers…are creating a phoney history and phoney traditions as escapes from very real problems of drugs, violence and social degeneration in the ghettos of the 1990s.” So wrote black columnist and philosopher Thomas Sowell in 1995. In 1991, amid internal strife, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) finally found something to unite them. It was…
Joshua DoggrellJanuary 5, 2021
During the past couple of months, from shortly after the presidential election until now, seven installments in the MY CORNER series have been picked up and (re)published, and while most of these dealt specifically with the election, an emphasis on the South and the vicious attacks upon it were never far from my thoughts. To forthrightly and openly defend Southern,…
Boyd CatheyJanuary 4, 2021
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5G4NWbkjJA&feature=youtu.be
John DevannyDecember 28, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5G4NWbkjJA&feature=youtu.be
John DevannyDecember 28, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiiqzceHS6I&feature=youtu.be
Philip LeighDecember 24, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiiqzceHS6I&feature=youtu.be
Philip LeighDecember 24, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcuQ9wavo0w&feature=youtu.be
Joseph R. StrombergDecember 23, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcuQ9wavo0w&feature=youtu.be
Joseph R. StrombergDecember 23, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB2W7qsoZr0&feature=youtu.be
Jack TrotterDecember 22, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB2W7qsoZr0&feature=youtu.be
Jack TrotterDecember 22, 2020
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP5v7_4jM58&feature=youtu.be
William WilsonDecember 21, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Dec 14-18, 2020 Topics: 2020 in Review, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-243
Brion McClanahanDecember 19, 2020
Crises of legitimacy are rarely resolved without some resort to violence. The European experience in the seventeenth century is generously populated with examples: The English Civil War, Le Fronde I and II, The Thirty Years War, The Great Deluge that rocked Eastern Europe and the Polish Commonwealth. Even the Glorious Revolution, that peaceful coup launched by Anglicans and Whigs against…
John DevannyDecember 18, 2020
Lexington, Virginia January 2002 Driving up, then down the mountain hairpins into Lexington,By daylight, moonlight, headlight (only one),I smell the moist ancient earth rising up to greet meThis January evening that seems almost like spring.Incredible! Time has collapsed around me. I sit on a wooden bench on the lawn of the Holiday Inn ExpressIn shirt sleeves accompanied only by Jack…
Thomas HubertDecember 17, 2020
Editor's Note: This lecture was delivered at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Carey Roberts explores the relationship between the Old Whig faction in the South--e.g. Alexander H. Stephens--and the New Democrats who controlled the region after the War. Roberts concludes that the Jeffersonian vision of America, dominant in the antebellum South, was bulldozed by the Old Whigs…
Carey RobertsDecember 16, 2020
Most all of us who were fortunate enough to know our Grandfather has experienced his love. It may be expressed in many ways, whether it be a spoken ‘Well done’ or an ‘I love you’, or by a physical ‘pat on the back’ or a hug. But most expressions of our Grandfather’s love are something we hold close, and will…
Travis HoltDecember 15, 2020
The red and the blue—states that is-- are as different as the colorless black and white landscapes absent from the color spectrum. The concept of separate states for separate cultures is as old as Canaan and Egypt. The concept of separation for moral law is as old as these two, as well. Today on any given "news" outlet, maps are…
Paul H. YarbroughDecember 14, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Dec 7-11, 2020 Topics: United States Constitution, Southern Tradition, Secession, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-242
Brion McClanahanDecember 11, 2020
There are very few human symbols that find absolute approval or, in the alternative, disapproval. Symbols are called that because they represent something far larger than themselves. An unknown symbol is an oxymoron. At present, the symbol that is seemingly most under attack in this country is the Confederate battle flag albeit other flags that represented that short-lived, tragic nation,…
Valerie ProtopapasDecember 11, 2020
Earlier this year, shortly after the sad and unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I witnessed an especially peculiar example of one of the many thousands (perhaps millions?) of debates on social media regarding race in America. In this case, both of the virtual combatants were white males — one was a young, recent graduate of an Ivy League…
Casey ChalkDecember 10, 2020
All-too-often, seemingly buried in the myriad dates and statistics of history, lies the human experience that should do more to make up that history in the first place. These eyewitness accounts and anecdotes seem to speak to us, across the ages, in ways that numbers do not (something historians might want to pick up on, if they want a revived…
Travis ArchieDecember 9, 2020
A review of The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Second Edition; Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1999) by James Farmer The role of religion leading up to the War Between the States is sometimes overlooked. However, there is no question that Christian clergy had a major influence on the Old South, including the politics…
Zachary GarrisDecember 8, 2020
The dramatic events leading up to the secession of the Southern States, the tragedy of the War Between the States and the ensuing final act of the South’s Reconstruction period were, for the most part, staged east of the Mississippi River, as well as in the waters surrounding the East Coast. A lesser part of the drama was played out…
John MarquardtDecember 7, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 30 - Dec 4, 2020 Topics: Abraham Lincoln, Southern Tradition, Southern Music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-241
Brion McClanahanDecember 5, 2020
In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to advance their art. For example, Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made their composed music sound Russian, and the only way to do this was to become immersed in Russian folk music to see what made it tick. They studied work songs, play songs,…
Tom DanielDecember 4, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zksz7mOggqI&feature=youtu.be The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the most iconic speech in American history. Students are required to memorize it, and it has become as important to American political culture as the United States Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. This is unfortunate, because in this speech, Abraham Lincoln invented history and by doing so intellectually nuked the original federal republic.…
Brion McClanahanDecember 3, 2020
"May 29, 1856 "Abraham Lincoln, of Sangamon, came upon the platform amid deafening applause. He enumerated the pressing reasons of the present movement. He was here ready to fuse with anyone who would unite with him to oppose slave power; spoke of the bugbear disunion which was so vaguely threatened. It was to be remembered that the Union must be…
Vito MussomeliDecember 2, 2020
A review of General Edmund Kirby Smith C.S.A. (LSU Press, 1992 (1954) by Joseph H. Parks This biography is a must read for any student of the War for Southern Independence in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. It is an informative broad overview of Smith’s life and career, while also humanizes the man who was often subject to heavy criticism during and,…
Wes FranklinDecember 1, 2020
The life of a man is something that runs deep in all history. Before the war on gender roles, man and woman had a clear, defined boundary that all recognized and respected. Man was the provider, and woman, the nurturer and homemaker. A story and role as old as time. But, what of the physical boundaries of a man? My…
Travis HoltNovember 30, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 23-27, 2020 Topics: New South, Southern music, Southern sports, Southern economics, Southern culutre https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-240
Brion McClanahanNovember 28, 2020
When you hear the word “jazz,” what type of music pops into your head? What do you hear? You probably hear piano, brass, saxophone, or all of the above. But do you hear it melodious and catchy, or do you hear it jumbled and chaotic? There’s a lot of jazz out there that’s very melodious and catchy, and extremely easy…
Tom DanielNovember 27, 2020
This Thanksgiving, the second of three NFL games will feature one of the oldest (albeit moribund) rivalries in professional football history: the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Football Team, previously known as the Redskins. Since the late 1970’s, the Cowboys, who with the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving, have been nicknamed “America’s Team.” Yet Washington, who under woke capitalist…
Casey ChalkNovember 26, 2020
Edited by Robert Hoyle. A Discourse delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hampden-Sydney College, June 15, 1882, before the Philanthropic and Union Literary Societies. Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and Union Societies, and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Audience: You will credit my expression of sincere embarrassment at this time when you consider that I am attempting a species of…
Robert Lewis DabneyNovember 25, 2020
The South Was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. New Edition for the 21st century. Shotwell Publishing, 2020. In 1991 the Kennedy brothers first published The South Was Right!, a classic that can be considered a key document in the modern movement of Southern awareness and activism. With a second edition in 1994, the book has sold an astonishing 180,000 copies.…
Clyde WilsonNovember 24, 2020
The chief conflict in American history was and remains the conflict between the center and the periphery. Geographically, this conflict plays out as a powerful antagonism between the large, urbanized, metropolitan areas of America and their satellite college and university towns, and the less densely populated small towns and rural areas. In the political and financial realms, the conflict is…
John DevannyNovember 23, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 16-20, 2020 Topics: Secession, Lincoln Myth, Nationalism, John Brown https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-239
Brion McClanahanNovember 21, 2020
Secession: The point of the spear aimed at the heart of the American Leviathan – or so I once thought. Certainly secession has been a live idea in Europe for a long time, often under the rubric of “self-determination.” Ludwig von Mises wrote in Liberalism in 1927 that “he right of self-determination... thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular…
Terry HulseyNovember 20, 2020
The following address was delivered as part of a symposium at the 150th anniversary of the burning of Winnsboro, S.C., in February 2015, sponsored by the Winnsboro Historical Society. It is published here for the first time. By preface, I have one common-sense comment on the manufactured controversy over who burned Columbia. An army who torches and pillages every town…
James Everett KiblerNovember 19, 2020
It happened on Saturday morning, November 14, 2020, at around 8:15 EST. I had switched over to briefly catch some national news on the Fox News Channel. All of a sudden I heard—and saw—Pete Hegseth stop in the middle of the sentence he was reading from his teleprompter: “…there weren’t any substantiated cases of voter fraud in the swing states….”…
Boyd CatheyNovember 18, 2020
A Review of The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (Uncommon Books, 1993) by Otto Scott. The Leftist political violence that has engulfed the disintegrating American nation for much of the past year traces its origin on the North American continent to the infernal life of the original American terrorist, John Brown. Like the terrorists of today who…
Neil KumarNovember 17, 2020
The pattern for modern American politics was set by Lincoln and his cronies in the 1850s—1870s, although it took an immense war against other Americans to make it stick. The pattern involved making the federal government (not the “Union” or the Constitution) the center of power and the fount of good (and goods). This meant, in everyday terms, that the…
Clyde WilsonNovember 16, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 9-13, 2020 Topics: Decentralization, Southern Tradition, Southern Politics, Education https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-238
Brion McClanahanNovember 15, 2020
The roots of the myth that slavery was primarily a white Southern institution were planted three decades prior to the War Between the States by the abolitionists in New York and New England. This myth also included the idea that those same abolitionists of the 1830s had introduced the freeing of slaves in America. Actually, however, the first seeds…
John MarquardtNovember 13, 2020
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 DoggrellNovember 12, 2020
‘There has always been this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.’ – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ‘In each one of us there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of common sense. The road to totalitarian domination leads through…
James Rutledge RoeschNovember 11, 2020
While watching a seventy-minute interview with Professor Adam Domby about his book, The False Cause, I was surprised at the number of errors, biased interpretations and even endorsement of "extralegal" conduct by anti-statue mobs. The False Cause focuses on Civil War and Reconstruction memory, particularly involving Confederate memorials. First, and foremost, Domby erroneously proclaims that the signature Confederate statues erected in Southern courthouse squares between…
Philip LeighNovember 10, 2020
As of Friday, November 6, the votes are still being counted in at least six states. The large pro-Trump margins that seemed to prevail late election night have now disappeared as mail in votes, many of doubtful legality have begun to trickle in. Large Democratically-controlled cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta have miraculously produced tranches of almost completely Biden votes—legal…
Boyd CatheyNovember 9, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 2-6, 2020 Topics: Southern Culture, Abraham Lincoln, Elections, Reconstruction, Reconciliation https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-237
Brion McClanahanNovember 7, 2020
Like any other economic exchange, the slave trade developed with a supplier, a consumer, and a trader or merchant that brought the two together. African kingdoms that had access to the western seaboard had a product, people, that they could readily be collected and sold based on labor demand, primarily from the new world during this time period. The English,…
James (Jim) PedersonNovember 6, 2020
In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and the first man to hold that office). The two men were drawn to each other immediately and became fast friends for the rest of their lives. In her biography of…
Karen StokesNovember 5, 2020
‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.’ – Milan Kundera ‘I personally think…
James Rutledge RoeschNovember 4, 2020
Will Rogers had a quip for just about any situation, but he loved to talk politics. Rogers was born on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. His father was a Confederate veteran and political leader in the Cherokee nation. At the height of his career, Will Rogers had the number one radio program in America and was the highest paid actor…
Brion McClanahanNovember 3, 2020
“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns and battles and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those…
Valerie ProtopapasNovember 2, 2020
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 19-30, 2020 Topics: Secession, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-236
Brion McClanahanOctober 31, 2020
As some business owners and residents on King Street described it, “Charleston was raped” on the night of May 30, 2020, as mobs looted and burned the Holy City, turning so-called “peaceful protests” violent. Following numerous calls to remove the John C. Calhoun Monument and repeal the South Carolina Heritage Act, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg took a resolution to the…
Stewart O. JonesOctober 30, 2020
There’s a popular meme floating around the internet that has a middle-aged, pot-bellied, suburban male standing by a charcoal fire with the caption below reading, “I just want to grill for God’s sake!” It has been seen as both an ideal (men just want to go about their weekly business without intrusion by the pet causes of the day) and…
Christopher J. CarterOctober 29, 2020
When asked why he was a Catholic, Southern author Walker Percy liked to provocatively respond, “What else is there?” Savannah-born writer Flannery O’Connor, a Catholic or Irish heritage, once asserted that she was a “hillbilly Thomist,” a nod to Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologiae she piously read. Percy and O’Connor certainly saw no conflict between their Southern identity and their…
Casey ChalkOctober 28, 2020
The political chaos that has accompanied President Trump’s first term will not abate anytime soon. From the Russian Collusion hoax to rioting in the streets to the public policy responses to the Covid-19 so-called pandemic, there appears to be something afoot that does not bode well for the future. Whether the motivation is ideological, economic, official incompetence, or a toxic…
Marshall DeRosaOctober 27, 2020
Through the centuries since Jamestown was founded, the South has held certain values, virtues, and ideals in high esteem: Courage, duty, humility, integrity, courtesy, chivalry, gallantry, self-control, reverence, selflessness, strength, wisdom, and a willingness to defend what was right, no matter the odds. To be noble, to be a gentleman, was to exemplify those ideals. Sir Walter Scott’s novels were…
Earl StarbuckOctober 26, 2020
The Southern Tradition is not something easily defined in a few words. Its specific formulation comes from the work of Richard Weaver as he interpreted the thought of the Nashville Agrarians with significant augmentation by M.E. Bradford. For my purposes here I will just consider it to be the sum of the myriad ways that southern culture, history, and ways…
Mike GoodloeOctober 23, 2020
The United States acquired a vast area of the Southwest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (May 30, 1848), which included all or part of the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, Texas and Utah. As part of the treaty, Mexico agreed to sell the land (more than 1,000,000 square miles) to the United States for $15…
Steve LeeOctober 22, 2020
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