Paul Graham discusses his book on the slave narratives that described Yankee atrocities during the late stages of the War in 1865 during our March 2026 Zoom webinar. https://youtu.be/pgMfSHTzkks
Abbeville InstituteMarch 28, 2025
February 17th, 2025, marks the 160th anniversary of the burning of Columbia. Although there is already overwhelming proof that General William T. Sherman’s troops deliberately torched the capital city of South Carolina, once in a while, some “new” evidence turns up which can be added to the multitude of other testimonies on record. “Righteous Cause” adherents (beginning with Sherman himself)…
Karen StokesFebruary 17, 2025
For decades academic historians have attributed the causes of the Civil War to two factors: First was to prevent Southern Secession in order to “Preserve the Union” because a United America was a role model for the rest of Western Civilization. Second was to prevent the spread of slavery into the federal territories because the institution was morally repugnant.…
Philip LeighFebruary 7, 2025
You probably learned in school that America began when the “Pilgrim Fathers” landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and really took off when the Puritans founded Boston. Never mind that these events happened some decades after the founding of Virginia. You probably also learned that the American Revolution story centers around Paul Revere and the battle of Bunker Hill, although New England…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 4, 2025
The interesting thing about the relationship of post-colonial American literature to the events of 1776 is the way in which a pious regard for the nation’s founders and for the enterprise which they set in motion has, among our writers, co-existed with a most uncertain response to the Declaration of Independence itself and to the loftiest aspirations which gather upon…
M.E. BradfordFebruary 3, 2025
Although he is not “one of us,” Southern conservatives can certainly learn something from the eloquent blogger Steve Sailer. For instance, Sailer recently summarized a new theory from a book which relates the Woke Cult to the North’s two characteristic religious strains: “Puritans tended to be intense and Quakers nice,” Sailer observes. “Put them together and you get an intolerant…
Jerry SalyerJanuary 23, 2025
“Abraham Lincoln…has almost disappeared from human knowledge. I hear of him, I read of him in eulogies and biographies, but I fail to recognize the man I knew in life.”--Union General Donn Piatt You have to give credit to those who fought to prevent Southern Independence. Post-war, they seized the narrative, stated they were going to “reeducate” Southerners and created…
John M. TaylorNovember 13, 2024
Originally published at Mises.org. In “The Terror of Reconstruction,” Lew Rockwell highlights the dangers of governments seeking to suppress their political opponents by an assault on citizens’ liberties. He draws upon the experience of the South under military dictatorship during the Reconstruction years as an example of what happens when governments embark on social revolution. One tactic described by Rockwell…
Wanjiru NjoyaNovember 4, 2024
In the Low Country of South Carolina and the coastal regions of Georgia, the Gullah people are everywhere because they never left. Although there were significant numbers of Gullah who migrated out of the South at the turn of the 20th Century, the multitudes who stayed replaced them quickly and remained isolated. Their customs, dress, arts, language, and music still…
Tom DanielOctober 29, 2024
Excerpt from The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences: Four Periods of American History by Hilary Abner Herbert, 1912. PREFATORY NOTE BY JAMES FORD RHODES “Livy extolled Pompey in such a panegyric that Augustus called him Pompeian, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship.” That we find in Tacitus. We may therefore picture to ourselves Augustus reading Livy’s “History…
Hilary Abner HerbertOctober 25, 2024
Alfred Emanuel Smith was an American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democratic Party’s candidate for president in 1928. The following unknowingly prophetic speech was delivered to The American Liberty League Dinner in Washington, D. C on January 25th, 1936. A short biography of the man is attached at the end of this…
Valerie ProtopapasOctober 24, 2024
Originally published at Mises.org. Many historians have commented on the extent to which Abraham Lincoln centralized federal power in the course of his war against the South. Less often remarked upon is the fact that this trend continued during the Reconstruction era, 1865 to 1877. In his essay “Wichita Justice? On Denationalizing the Courts,” Murray Rothbard observes that the Reconstruction…
Wanjiru NjoyaOctober 2, 2024
When Lee surrendered at Appomattox a tall gaunt North Carolinian stolidly stacked arms and fell back into line. He was worn, hungry, and dirty. The insistent Yankees had granted him little time during the past weeks for relaxation. Food had been scarce; the opportunities for cleanliness lacking. He had gone on fighting more from habit than purpose. He had quit…
Avery O. CravenSeptember 30, 2024
Many modern Americans believe that slavery was a national unpardonable sin and that slaveholders were evil people unworthy of any respect or admiration. No one escapes this denunciation, including the Founding Fathers. They will give innumerable reasons why slavery was morally wrong, and while modern Western Civilization has generally accepted slavery as a morally reprehensible institution, judging historical actors by…
Jeff WolvertonSeptember 9, 2024
It is common in Civil War circles to hear about the so-called “Lost Cause”, variously termed a myth or a narrative. Are those two terms synonymous? Let’s look. Dictionary.com defines myth as: “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” On the other hand, using…
John ScalesJuly 19, 2024
Prof. David Hackett Fischer gives an overview of the chief characteristics of New England’s ancestors, who hailed from the coastal southeastern counties of England, mainly East Anglia and Essex, in his praiseworthy book, Albion’s Seed. Among them were an inclination toward industrial pursuits, urban living, equality, and rebelliousness against established authorities in religion and politics (Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways…
Walt GarlingtonJune 21, 2024
Ecclesiastical organizations, both North and South, had by the early 19th century developed sensitivities uncomfortable with the institution of slavery. This discomfort was sourced in common Enlightenment ideals regarding liberty and natural law but took on sectional distinctions which led to conflict. An ideological fervor swept the North which influenced a radicalism that played loosely with any consideration of traditional…
Rod O'BarrJune 12, 2024
A review of African American Slavery in Historical Perspective (Shotwell Publishing, 2024) by Clyde N. Wilson This is an extremely important book because putting slavery in historical perspective puts the lie to the worthless presentist history regurgitated ad nauseam by academia and the fake news media. You can not learn from history when the history being taught is a fraud.…
Gene Kizer, Jr.May 30, 2024
In 1853, a newly elected, twenty-six year old State representative stood to defend his "Negro Exclusion" bill against bitter attacks by anti-slavery legislators in his State. He made this a centerpiece of his campaign in 1852, railed against "Negro equality" and supported the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. The bill found support from the majority of the people of his State,…
Brion McClanahanMay 27, 2024
It is almost impossible for 21st century Christians, much less deeply biased contemporary historians, to comprehend that nineteenth century Southerners could, with any sincerity or justification, defend the compatibility of Christianity with the institution of slavery. For the past six decades historians have spilled much ink conjuring up images of insincere and hypocritical commitment on the part of Southern Christians’…
Rod O'BarrMay 21, 2024
“Then the Lord said unto me, out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.” Jeremiah. 1:14. Harvard University has a memorial to all its students who were killed in military service, including several Nazis. The only omission is of some Americans---Confederates. I know of about a dozen Confederate generals who attended Harvard,…
Clyde WilsonMay 13, 2024
Reconstruction is the single most confusing and controversial period in American history. The tinderbox of race relations and the new organization of the central government and the states were not reformed reasonably or to the satisfaction of anyone involved, or to any faction that engages the history today. Explanations and justifications for the extreme policies, punitive laws, and social experimentation…
George BagbyApril 17, 2024
Back in 1949, two researchers, J. S. Bruner and Leo Postman, wanted to sort out the relationship between what we see and how we interpret what we see. They did a proper study of it — “On the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm”, Journal of Personality, 18:206 ff. (1949), if you want to look it up. Bruner and Postman asked…
Kevin Orlin JohnsonMarch 26, 2024
An aspect of preserving the Southern tradition is rescuing books of wisdom that have been lost and forgotten. That is the case with The United States Unmasked, published in 1879 by Gabriel Manigault (1809—1888). Manigault was born in Charleston to distinguished patriot families on both sides and married into another such family. After serving in the defenses of Charleston and…
Clyde WilsonMarch 25, 2024
“I am heir to the greatest civilization the world has ever known. I’d like to defend it but I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” --Alice Teller “By 2050—earlier probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed….shall exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 28, 2024
One of the reasons for forming the United States in 1789 was to permit the thirteen states to trade among themselves with minimal interference. One example of interference occurred two years earlier when New York state unilaterally increased customs fees and assessed heavy clearance fees on vessels arriving from—or bound to—New Jersey and Connecticut. Similar disputes affected others among the…
Philip LeighFebruary 23, 2024
Mass immigration played a large role in the War for Southern Independence in some obvious ways. It provided a workforce for large scale industrialization, it populated the Midwest and created a large population and economic advantage when war did come, it brought large Catholic and Lutheran populations to the north threatening Yankee cultural purity, and it brought the neo-Marxists 48’ers…
James (Jim) PedersonFebruary 15, 2024
“The literature on Abraham Lincoln is vast, but it isn’t very good.” You have to love a book with a first sentence like that! The book is Kevin Orlin Johnson’s The Lincolns in the White House. While he has some interesting history of the Executive Mansion (the White House) the author is not limited to that one place and short…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 14, 2024
Within two months of taking office, in the midst of what he termed a “rebellion” and an “insurrection” against the national authority, the President of the United States took an extraordinary action. Sending a letter to the army’s commanding general about the deteriorating situation, the commander-in-chief authorized the suspension of habeas corpus, a legal safeguard that requires a detained citizen…
Ryan WaltersJanuary 11, 2024
Anyone who wants to judge how far into corruption our present U.S. regime has sunk needs to view the documentary “The Fall of Minneapolis” which covers the George Floyd case and the official reaction to it. Before the evidence was even finalised, the President of the United States, the Vice-President of the United States, the then Speaker of the U.S.…
Clyde WilsonDecember 12, 2023
Within the purview of post-1950’s modern historiography, anything proclaimed in defense of the South is labeled “Lost Cause Myth” - a product of the “Lost Cause School” of thought. The term “Lost Cause” originates from the title of an 1866 book written in defense of the South but is now applied pejoratively to an entire category of Southern apologetics. Today,…
Rod O'BarrNovember 6, 2023
Presently, the dominant Reconstruction Era narrative portrays the Republican Party’s support for black suffrage as a moral impulse. The likelihood that it would also increase the number of Republican-loyal voters is dismissed as a convenient by product of “doing the right thing.” Today’s experienced voters, however, realize that political parties seek to increase or maintain their political power by default.…
Philip LeighOctober 31, 2023
Most Civil War and Reconstruction Era historians dismiss Southern complaints about tariffs, both as a cause of the War and of postbellum Southern poverty. They contend that the only impact of the tariffs was to raise the price of domestic goods protected by such tariffs. The price inflation, they argue, affected all Americans, not just Southerners. Although most concede that the domestic…
Philip LeighSeptember 26, 2023
Many people tend to think of regions in these United States as homogenous or collectively very defined either by border, culture, or some other parameter. However, the truth is that regional boundaries are much more fluid and crossover exists between each region abutting each other. This can be seen across the country, but is very prevalent in what is called…
Cole BranhamAugust 1, 2023
In 2013, Edward Snowden gained international notoriety by exposing the vast spying capabilities and information network of the National Security Agency. Snowden was born in North Carolina, had a family history of civil service, and became a whistleblower when he realized that the government was using the guise of terrorism defense for “...economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation.” (1)…
Michael MartinJuly 6, 2023
The philosopher and labour advocate Orestes Brownson, a staunch Union supporter, had this to say shortly after the war: “Nothing was more striking during the late civil war than the very general absence of loyalty or feeling of duty, on the part of the adherents of the Union . . . . The administration never dared confide in the loyalty…
Clyde WilsonJune 20, 2023
William T. Sherman was a diagnosable manic-depressive. Such a man should not be in command of an army. Always with superior forces, he seldom won a battle. His famous “March” was almost entirely a terror campaign against undefended civilians. Republicans tried hard to get him to run for President which he refused with annoyance. His son became a Jesuit and…
Clyde WilsonJune 14, 2023
Recent surveys clearly demonstrate why “Civil War” history is so skewed to support Leftist ideology. Leftist ideologues dominate the modern history discipline by a 33:1 margin. Gone is any semblance of balance so necessary to the free exchange of ideas. Gone is the opportunity for reasoned evaluation of all viewpoints regarding secession and war. Gone is the very opportunity for…
Rod O'BarrMay 31, 2023
I made the online “mistake” recently of speaking of the Bush bunch here in Texas as “carpetbagging with a white trash persona.” It was part of a reply on Facebook-- the Walmart of mental magic for clear-headed and erudite gray matter scrubbing --to someone who had pointed out how George Bush (the boy) and his gang of the dishonorable had…
Paul H. YarbroughMay 25, 2023
Many books over the years have given me insights into history—insights that occasionally cause things to come together to produce a “Road to Damascus” moment. Recently the remembrance of one caused me to revisit my long-held belief that the attempt by the States of the South to establish a confederated republic upon the North American continent was doomed to failure…
Valerie ProtopapasApril 4, 2023
In today’s fast-paced society, much communication has been truncated into a few hundred ”tweets.” Far too many words have been needlessly abbreviated. All manner of proper names reduced to acronyms and newscasts have become little more than a cacophony of biased sound bites. Even the concept of history has fallen victim to this maddening trend, with the complexities of major…
John MarquardtFebruary 20, 2023
The primary source record is clear. A main reason 19th century Southerners were forced to defend slavery as a practical matter was the absolute unwillingness of the North to allow dispersion and integration of the freed people across the Union and its territories. A chronic Northern racism was intent on keeping all blacks bottled up in the South if freed.…
Rod O'BarrFebruary 15, 2023
From the 2005 Abbeville Institute Summer School. My topic for this morning is the “Lincoln Myth and Civil Religion,” and my intention is to try to understand this very loose term “civil religion” in order to see how it is that a man such as Abraham Lincoln could become not only the primary voice beckoning America to accept and remain…
William WilsonJanuary 6, 2023
The ever-widening chasm that separates the North and the South today has a long history with many fissures, but one would hardly consider the celebration of Christmas to be one of them. However, in the years prior to the founding of America’s first English colonies in Virginia and Massachusetts, Christmas was a highly controversial subject in Great Britain, and that…
John MarquardtDecember 16, 2022
William S. Plumer, born in 1802 in Pennsylvania, was a renowned Presbyterian pastor and theologian. Though he was raised and spent many years in the North, he held the pulpit of several Southern churches before the war between the states broke out. It was during his time in the South that many people, including some within his own church, accused…
David CrumDecember 9, 2022
In North Carolina and South Carolina native observers have noticed a phenomenon frequent enough to have a label--Halfbacks. This does not refer to football. It refers to well-to-do Northerners who have moved to Florida, become discontented, and moved halfway back. The coastal areas of the two States are full of gated communities of mini-mansions already occupied by Northerners who the…
Clyde WilsonDecember 8, 2022
From the book, Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History (Facts on File, 1984). The long-standing practice of delivering political sermons on Thanksgiving Day, which made Thanksgiving both a revolutionary holiday and the occasion of Federalist era political contention, now made Thanksgiving the tool of free-soilers and abolitionists. Thanksgiving was, above all, a New England holiday, and New England was…
Diana Karter AppelbaumNovember 22, 2022
From the book, Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History (Facts on File, 1984). New England’s unique culture—featuring free schools for every child, a religious tradition in which ordinary folk wrestled with complex theological questions and two centuries of self-government—produced in the early nineteenth century a generation of young people uniquely well fitted to fill the demand for educated professionals…
Diana Karter AppelbaumNovember 21, 2022
And so, the final blows fall around us, in our institutions and on our streets, and we can say as God Himself once said, “It is finished.” He said it of His great work of redemption, but we can now say it of the noblest experiment of government ever attempted by man—the “united” States of America. As in all things,…
Valerie ProtopapasNovember 18, 2022
On November 3, 2022, in response to an invitation of group of Thomas Jefferson mavens, I went to Jefferson’s get-away residence at Poplar Forest. I was asked to join their tour, to begin at 12:30 p.m., and to field questions after the tour. I was asked also to bring any books on Jefferson that I wished to sign and to…
M. Andrew HolowchakNovember 14, 2022
Don Livingston discusses Northern profit and interest in slavery at the Abbeville Institute Summer School, July 5-8, 2022, at Seabrook Island, SC. https://youtu.be/ZUsclaam8Dc
Donald LivingstonOctober 26, 2022
Don Livingston discusses Northern profit and interest in slavery at the Abbeville Institute Summer School, July 5-8, 2022, at Seabrook Island, SC. https://youtu.be/xeLF8Qxef_c
Donald LivingstonOctober 20, 2022
In 1860 your average Southerner did not have, by far, the same worldview as his Northern counterpart. He was, thanks to solid preaching in Southern pulpits, extremely doubtful about the “goodness” of human nature. He believed in the sovereignty of God and the sinfulness and depravity of man. He knew enough of man’s fallen nature to realize that secular political…
Al BensonSeptember 28, 2022
Texas Senator John Regan was right when he argued in the chamber three months before the opening Civil War shots at Fort Sumter: “Suppose the people of the South would today voluntarily surrender $3 billion in slave property and send their slaves at their expense to the free states, would you accept them as freemen and citizens of your States?…
Philip LeighSeptember 23, 2022
No doubt the media and the activists tearing them down justify the destruction of Confederate monuments on the premise that the South fought to perpetuate slavery and the North entered and fought the Civil War to end it. Today’s academics are comfortable acquiescing to that false public impression because it serves their anti-Southern agenda. Only if directly asked, “Did the…
Philip LeighAugust 23, 2022
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…
Carey RobertsAugust 1, 2022
In yet another attack on American history and heritage, the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. is changing the name of their sports team, which is known as the Colonials. GW Today, the University’s official online news source, reported, “The George Washington University Board of Trustees has decided to discontinue the use of the Colonials moniker based on the recommendation…
Timothy A. DuskinJuly 20, 2022
Perhaps the biggest falsehood ever pedaled about Abraham Lincoln is that he was devoted to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Exactly the opposite is true; he repudiated every one of the main principles of the Declaration with his words and, more importantly, his actions. In our time the odd and ahistorical writings of Harry Jaffa and his “Straussian”…
Thomas DiLorenzoJuly 5, 2022
In a penitent act of fiscal flagellation, Harvard University recently reported that it was establishing a hundred million dollar “Legacy of Slavery Fund” in an effort to atone for its century and half history of using enslaved people. In the report, it was cited that from its founding in 1636 until 1783, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared slavery to…
John MarquardtMay 10, 2022
It has been over a century and a half since Lincoln’s assassination did much to deify his image and place him as the centerpiece of the American Pantheon. Such behavior is hardly unexpected; as the leader of his country during America’s deadliest war, a war directed towards enacting unprecedented changes in the structure of government and American society, Lincoln’s partisans…
Shaan ShandhuMay 9, 2022
Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama. Most Americans believe the War and Southern history are synonymous, so much so that to many, the War has come to define the South. If you are reading this post and have followed the Abbeville Institute for any length of time, you know that our mission to "explore what is true and valuable…
Brion McClanahanApril 25, 2022
The federal government facilitates fundraising for traitors. That’s the claim made by the Washington Post’s Joe Davidson in a 14 January column. This occurs, says Davidson, through the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), a philanthropic funding operation managed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which enables federal employees to donate to charities they choose through automatic payroll deductions. This may…
Casey ChalkJanuary 25, 2022
In the warped minds of today’s so-called “woke,” even such an evocative holiday song as Irving Berlin’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” can take on a far different connotation than when Bing Crosby sang it eight decades ago. Going back much further in time, the simple “OK” hand gesture which has been in use around the world for well…
John MarquardtDecember 9, 2021
John Rock was an American teacher, doctor, dentist, lawyer and abolitionist. Rock was one of the first African-American men to earn a medical degree. In addition, he was the first black person to be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. On January 23, 1863, John Rock made a speech at the annual meeting of…
Rod O'BarrNovember 11, 2021
In the dis-United States today, far too many of its people have now lost all sense of proportion and as movie magnate Richard Rowland said over a century ago . . .“the lunatics have taken over the asylum.” What was formally accepted as standard American history and sociology are now being replaced with the 1619 Project and…
John MarquardtOctober 6, 2021
Thomas Carlyle said that it takes men of worth to recognize worth in men (1). Among the many worthy men across Western Civilization who recognized the worth of General Robert E. Lee was Sir Winston Churchill who summed it up, saying Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains in the annals…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.October 4, 2021
Who has not heard of Wounded Knee? Most know at least the general facts surrounding what is acknowledged as an atrocity committed by the army of the United States. On December 29th, 1890, the 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers—a spiritual movement of the Lakota Sioux—near Wounded Knee Creek. The soldiers demanded that the Indians surrender their weapons.…
Valerie ProtopapasSeptember 28, 2021
My wife, Elizabeth, comes from a village called Greenwich in northern New York state. Among the keepsakes preserved by her family is a box of letters from her great-great uncle Reuben Stewart, a young draftee who served in the 123rd New York regiment as it marched through the South, leaving a trail of desolation, suffering, and death. One of those…
Barton CockeySeptember 27, 2021
Daniel Webster was one of the most notable Northern statesmen of his day. He was an American lawyer who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress. His list of accomplishments is impressive: Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 1st district; Chair of the House Judiciary Committee; United States Senator from Massachusetts; Chair of the Senate Finance Committee.…
Rod O'BarrJuly 29, 2021
John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750, one year before James Madison, and the boys were neighbors; but Taylor afterwards moved to Caroline County, where he lived for the rest of his life, and died in 1824, at the age of seventy-four years. To distinguish him from others of the same name as himself he was called…
Gaillard HuntJuly 28, 2021
After the end of the War Between the States, the Union army established the District of Texas under the command of Major General Gordon Granger. The Emancipation Proclamation had been enforced by the Union army in every other state of the Confederate States of America which it had occupied. Texas escaped Union occupation during the war and the Union army…
Timothy A. DuskinMay 10, 2021
Editor's Note: This speech was delivered before the Senate on March 12, 1910, at the dedication of John C. Calhoun's statue in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. Address of Mr. (Henry Cabot) Lodge, of Massachusetts, United States Senate, 1910 Mr. PRESIDENT: When the senior Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Tillman), whose illness we all deplore, did me the…
Henry Cabot LodgeMarch 18, 2021
It is time to consider the crimes committed against Southern prisoners of war by their federal captors. In 1903, Adj. Gen. F. C. Ainsworth estimated that more than 30,000 Union and 26,000 Confederates died in captivity (that is 12% died in the North and 15.5% in the South). However, the numbers and the death rate of Confederate prisoners were vastly…
Valerie ProtopapasMarch 15, 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
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
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 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
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
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
Antebellum California secession is a little known topic, but the Southern portion of the State nearly broke free from Northern California in the years just before the outbreak of war in 1861. California gained statehood in 1850 with a Senate vote of 34 ayes and 18 nays and a House vote of 156 ayes to 56 nays with Jeremiah Clemens…
Justin PedersonOctober 1, 2020
Travel writing about the American South is a genre of its own. One such observer was Henry Miller, who traveled through the South in 1941. Miller was born in 1891 in New York City and lived almost all of his life there until 1930 when he moved to Paris. He spent almost all of the years between 1930 and 1939…
Mike GoodloeSeptember 22, 2020
Kwanzaa is an invented tradition. Billed as a kind of “black Christmas”—you can even buy Kwanzaa greeting cards at the store and mail them with Kwanzaa stamps—the odd holiday was created out of spite by a certain Ronald Everett in the 1960s in a fit of pique after the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Kwanzaa begins the day after Christmas,…
Jason MorganSeptember 7, 2020
Northern secession was openly in the political brew again. Eleven (11) years before, Jefferson had cautioned New England's desire to secede while accepting their sovereignty to choose as they wished. Since then extensive changes had come about. Jefferson was retired and Hamilton deceased. Our landmass more than doubled with the Louisiana territory. 2 more States, Ohio and Louisiana, were added…
Vito MussomeliJuly 31, 2020
While Fake News may be a new term, the concept has a long history. We have been taught that a free, independent, and ethical press is essential for a free society to function and thrive; however, in practice, the American press has typically been far from these ideals. The press has been most malicious in times of crisis, acting not…
James (Jim) PedersonJuly 14, 2020
The government is not going to rescue all the businesses that go under as a result of the Corvid-19 virus panic. It doesn’t matter how much money is printed, printed money is not real, It is a fiction of the mind insofar as legal tender. The only business survivors will be the giants, Wal Mart, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Most of…
Paul H. YarbroughApril 3, 2020
In the beginning, there was no segregation, certainly not in the sense that we commonly use that term today. Consider in evidence our Southern distinctiveness, which is rooted in a folk culture compounded of black and white influences: our modes of speech; our rich cuisines and rites of conviviality; our varied and original musicality; our arts and crafts; our story-telling…
Jack TrotterApril 1, 2020
A review of Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) by Bradley C.S. Watson At the height of the Progressive Movement in 1914, William P. Merrill published a poem he called “The Day of the People Is Dawning.” The liberal Presbyterian minister and ally of Andrew Carnegie’s world peace movement bid farewell to…
Richard M. GambleMarch 31, 2020
Just as the Earth revolves on its axis each day and travels around the Sun in an equally regular pattern, so has world history tended to be cyclical in nature throughout the centuries, with many episodes seemingly being repeated countless times over. In many cases the basic cause behind such recurring cataclysmic events as war, radical changes in political systems…
John MarquardtMarch 13, 2020
The common impression about the Klan is that it is a Southern anti-Black White Supremacist group and that the group’s characteristics and methods have been consistent since its inception. As anyone with more than a superficial knowledge of history knows, this is far from true, yet modern historians and commentators, many of the neo-conservative variety, seemingly purposely perpetuate these myths. …
James (Jim) PedersonMarch 9, 2020
A review of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Encounter Books, 2019) by Wilfred M. McClay. Two Visions of America What is America? If America is a place, then it will have a history like other places. People will do things, those things will have consequences, other people will be pleased or embittered or indifferent, and…
Jason MorganFebruary 4, 2020
Despite his unrivaled popularity after the Civil War, Republcan Ulysses Grant won the presidency merely three years later in 1868 by a popular vote margin of only 53%-to-47%. In fact, if not for the votes of ex-slaves that had only gained suffrage during the preceding twelve months, he would have lost the popular vote. Thus, he was the choice of…
Philip LeighNovember 26, 2019
In his recent book, Call Sign Chaos : Learning To Lead, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis cited what he termed the current “tribalism” in America as the greatest threat to the nation’s future. Mattis stated in the book that “We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our…
John MarquardtSeptember 11, 2019
I don’t like the thing. I hate what it stands for, and I respect the givers even less than I respect the gift. Most of the problems we face today can be traced to the Statue of Liberty. If we’d just send it back to the French, crime in the streets would disappear, we’d have a surplus in the federal…
Thomas LandessAugust 9, 2019
In 1715, Colonial Governor Charles Craven remarked that his front line troops in the fight against a hostile American Indian tribe comprised "two hundred stout negro men." Just five years prior, Indian agent Thomas Nairne wrote that the colonial militia in this same colony possessed "a considerable Number of active, able, Negro Slaves; and the Law gives everyone of those…
Brion McClanahanJuly 31, 2019
As noted in earlier posts, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and many academic historians are promoting a false narrative that the Confederate statues erected between 1900 and 1920 were celebrations of white supremacy. In reality, the statues were built because the old veterans were dying-off, which is why there was also a simultaneous surge in Civil War memorial-building in…
Philip LeighJuly 26, 2019
When the majority of people think of the Ku Klux Klan, there undoubtedly comes to mind a relic of post-Confederate racism that has now morphed into dangerous groups of rabidly anti-Black Southerners dressed in white hoods, burning crosses and waving Confederate Battle Flags. However, the real story of the White Knights of the Invisible Empire, as they were also referred…
John MarquardtMay 24, 2018
It was the purchase of Louisiana, therefore, which gave impetus to a plan which had been creeping upon New England, aided and stimulated by the Essex Junto. They agreed that the inevitable consequences of the annexation of this vast territory would be to diminish the relative weight and influence of the Northern section; that it would aggravate the evils of…
Charles Raymond BrownMay 4, 2018
Social activist Julia Ward wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861, the same year that Henry Timrod composed his “Ethnogenesis” (the poem which kicked off part 2 of this series). In it, she penned that God will use His “terrible swift sword” to bring judgment upon “condemners” and “crush the serpent with his heel.” The wicked this New…
Dissident MamaMarch 23, 2018
A review of Two Against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition (University Press of Kansas, 2017) by William C. Harris In a speech before the Senate in 1863, James A. Bayard of Delaware stated that “The truth will out, ultimately…though they may be voted down by the majority of the hour, though they may not…
Brion McClanahanMarch 13, 2018
“Religion, taking every mortal form But that pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven!” — From “Ethnogenesis,” by Henry Timrod South Carolinian Henry Timrod penned these words in February 1861 at the meeting of the First…
Dissident MamaMarch 2, 2018
Recently, Business Insider editor, MSNBC contributor, and public-radio personality Josh Barro called the left’s war on American culture “annoying.” He explained that “Liberals have supplanted conservatives as moralizing busybodies.” New York Magazine‘s Jonathan Chait even tweeted support of Barro’s “sensible thoughts,” calling out the Democrats’ supposedly new-found misadventure of “liberal sanctimony.” Funny that in all his talk condemning such “moralizing,” neo-liberal Barro went on to further pontificate about the Dems suffering “from a cultural disconnect…
Dissident MamaFebruary 23, 2018
White privilege has become a major leftwing talking point and justification for a plethora of progressive initiatives that can best be described as reverse racial discrimination. White privilege is the mirror image of white supremacy. Both are evil ideas based upon race consciousness linked to a political ideology that denies the value of the individual. White supremacy is the outward…
James Ronald KennedyJanuary 17, 2018
In 1933, General Smedley R. Butler blew the whistle on an attempt by American fascists to overthrow president Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this speech he detailed the following: “I appeared before the congressional committee, the highest representation of the American people, under subpoena to tell what I knew of activities which I believed might lead to an attempt to set…
Michael MartinJanuary 11, 2018
Advance the flag of Dixie For Dixie’s land we take our stand To live or die for Dixie And conquer peace for Dixie Anyone singing the above lyrics from the patriotic Confederate song of 1861, “Dixie to Arms,” would today, as with its earlier counterpart “Dixie,” be considered most politically incorrect and would probably ignite a firestorm of protest demonstrations…
John MarquardtJanuary 10, 2018
The following is an excerpt from a 1946 pamphlet dedicated to the Public Schools of North Carolina by the Anson Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy in honor of its author, Dr. Henry Tucker Graham of Florence, South Carolina. Dr. Graham was the former president of Hampden-Sydney College and for twenty years the beloved pastor of the First Presbyterian Church…
Bernard ThuersamJanuary 8, 2018
The Setting Postcolonial studies have been all the rage for many decades. A great number of contributors to the field have come from India and their work wrestles (in part) with the socio-psychological situation of Indian bureaucrats in the British Raj. These functionaries were, after all, Indians of some kind working for His Majesty’s Government – not the one in…
Joseph R. StrombergDecember 20, 2017
If you listen to the modern historical profession, Southern secession in 1861 represented "treason." David Blight, Professor History at Yale University, has made this belief the part of the core of his attack on Confederate symbols. If we should not take them down because they represent "white supremacy," then they should be removed because Southerners were "traitors." Traitors to whom…
Brion McClanahanNovember 16, 2017
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