Thomas Jefferson has been depicted by many scholars as a pacifist, and a “conciliatorian”: that is, person adverse to conflict to solve problems and issues. He was a strict supporter of limited government and a militia, not a standing army, to defend and protect the country and to preserve liberty for the people. Yet he also birthed West Point Military...| Abbeville Institute
Originally published at Reckonin.com. It is natural and good that we revise our interpretations of past history now and then in the light of new evidence and the emergence of new perspectives on human affairs. But there seems to be going on at the moment a revisionism about World War II that is somewhat distorted in judging good and evil....| Abbeville Institute
At a recent Abbeville Conference, I tackled a subject that’s been hiding in plain sight all along – the Southern accent. I’ve lived in Alabama almost my whole life, so I’m definitely familiar with the Southern accent. Now it’s true that my wife and I lived in Iowa for three years, but we actually kind of liked it up there....| Abbeville Institute
For the past week, Dinesh D’Souza has engaged in an ongoing debate on social media concerning the meaning of American conservatism and the influence of the South in American history. D’Souza—like Victor Davis Hanson, Harry Jaffa, Larry Arnn, Allen Guelzo, and a host of other mainstream conservatives—argue that while Robert E. Lee has admirable traits, the South cannot be integrated...| Abbeville Institute
This piece was originally published in 1931 in the Montgomery Advertiser. God willed that even trees should have an individuality. In the world’s history, there is the “Charter Oak” and there was the “Washington Elm,” and in Athens, Ga., a tree has a deed to its own plot of ground. Most of us have heard of the “Cedars of Lebanon,”...| Abbeville Institute
President James Monroe in 1824 invited the Marquis de Lafayette, an enormous French figure in the American and French Revolutions, to visit the United States after decades abroad in France. Lafayette agreed to visit and the visit would last over a year, from August 15, 1824, to September 3, 1825. Jefferson invited the great Frenchman to pay him a visit....| Abbeville Institute
One of the most interesting research interests for me is exploring the connections between Poles and the American South. Research-wise, this is undoubtedly a niche area and, despite everything, under-researched, primarily due to the difficulty in accessing sources: letters, notes, and diaries. This niche topic of Polish-American history, however, seems so fascinating that it constitutes a treasure trove of mysteries....| Abbeville Institute
Originally published at Mises.org In his book Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, the Marxist historian Eric Foner advances a revisionist history of the Reconstruction Era. In his preface, he explains why revisionist history is important: Revising interpretations of the past is intrinsic to the study of history… Since the early 1960s, a profound alteration of the place of blacks within...| Abbeville Institute
The United States of America, bases its legal argument of national union, and national sovereignty over the individual states; on the premise that the individual states were never individually sovereign nations unto themselves, and that they united to form a sovereign nation or federal state. However, investigation reveals that the individual states were indeed founded as (thirteen) fully separate sovereign nations,...| Abbeville Institute
I have been a big advocate for decentralized power, which in our American context has been connected to “states’ rights;” the most prominent period and example being the American Civil War, where the Southern states resisted centralized federal control and both fought for and applied to their Constitution a strong decentralized states’ rights policy.| Abbeville Institute
Explore the Southern Tradition| www.abbevilleinstitute.org
Will the beloved author of our national anthem, Francis Scott Key, soon join Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, and Robert E. Lee as a demonized whipping-boy of the culture-war?| Abbeville Institute
Earlier this month, a Federal District Court Judge in the Middle District of Georgia, Clay D. Land, ruled against the National Ranger Memorial Foundation in their lawsuit against Biden Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and others, regarding the brick paver honoring John Singleton Mosby at the Ranger Memorial at Fort Moore, formally known as Fort Benning, Georgia, that was targeted for removal by the Naming Commission.| Abbeville Institute
The Episcopal Church USA has long prided itself as hosting the venue for state occasions at its so-called National Cathedral in Washington D.C.| Abbeville Institute
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Julia Winston Ivey, on September 15, 2020, quietly passed away at her house on Parkland Drive in Lynchburg, Virginia. She was a remarkable musical talent, an internationally lauded pianist in her prime years, yet her death created only a small stir in Hill City and her funeral, at her gravesite, was sparsely attended. The irony of her hushed passing is…| www.abbevilleinstitute.org
Gregg Jarrett like most of the “journalists” on Cable TV writes a book and, apparently, as part of his remuneration, can market the book through the cable broadcast (marketing is the backbone of selling books). In this case, he has written something called The Trial of the Century. This version was such a grand event that it apparently, in Jarrett’s mind,…| www.abbevilleinstitute.org
Gregg Jarrett like most of the “journalists” on Cable TV writes a book and, apparently, as part of his remuneration, can market the book through the cable broadcast (marketing is the backbone of selling books). In this case, he has written something called The Trial of the Century. This version was such a grand event that it apparently, in Jarrett’s mind,…| www.abbevilleinstitute.org
Gregg Jarrett like most of the “journalists” on Cable TV writes a book and, apparently, as part of his remuneration, can market the book through the cable broadcast (marketing is the backbone of selling books). In this case, he has written something called The Trial of the Century. This version was such a grand event that it apparently, in Jarrett’s mind,…| www.abbevilleinstitute.org
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Gregg Jarrett like most of the “journalists” on Cable TV writes a book and, apparently, as part of his remuneration, can market the book through the cable broadcast (marketing is the backbone of selling books). In this case, he has written something called The Trial of the Century. This version was such a grand event that it apparently, in Jarrett’s mind,…| www.abbevilleinstitute.org
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On a recent episode of The War Room (here) with Stephen K. Bannon the following exchange between Bannon and Mike Davis of the Article III Project took place. Davis is a constitutional lawyer and a very active and successful supporter of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, as is Bannon. The segment reference runs from 16:25 to 17:50 (transcript taken from closed captions).| Abbeville Institute
In the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” When that consent is withdrawn—when the government becomes the destroyer, rather than the protector, of life, liberty, and property—then the people retain the right, indeed the duty, to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to the abusers.| Abbeville Institute
In a previous article I compared the 2024 election to the Battle of Gettysburg and said that I was cautiously optimistic that developments after the election would result in a rearrangement of American institutions (governmental and otherwise) so that they would more closely resemble those of the constitutional republic envisioned by the Founders. If this occurs it will be a Second American Revolution[1]. But this revolution is not going to occur without a determined opposition from the i...| Abbeville Institute
As with most departures from prescribed constitutional procedure the immigration process has over the years resulted in disaster after disaster. The current flare-up in this area is no exception. Several states which have long claimed to be “sanctuaries” for undocumented persons residing within the boundaries of the United States have indicated that they will not cooperate with the Trump administrations’s efforts to remove these individuals and return them to their country of origin...| Abbeville Institute
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 in Paris until he moved to Greece in 1939 and lived there for a year or so before returning to the United States in 1940. In 1942 he settled in California where he spent the rest...| Abbeville Institute
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 of life are distinguished from other ways of life found in the larger American culture around it. One thing that is characteristic of...| Abbeville Institute
In the Partisan’s last issue, I raised the question of why the United States has not been troubled in this century by regional nationalisms of the sort that are currently disturbing most other industrialized countries. In particular, I asked, why has there not been a serious version of Southern nationalism? Answering my own question, I suggested that (1) the outcome in 1865 was discouraging, (2) the United States as a whole offered a compelling object for nationalistic sentiment, and (3) id...| Abbeville Institute
For as long as people have been writing about Southern character—and that’s getting to be a pretty long time now—they’ve been inclined to mention Southern individualism. From Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Marquis de Chastellux to Charlie Daniels’ “Long-haired Country Boy,” Southerners have been inclined to mention or exemplify this trait themselves. W.J. Cash has probably discussed it most thoroughly, in The Mind of the South. He did not entirely (or even mostly) approv...| Abbeville Institute
This essay was published in Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I’ll Take My Stand, edited by Clyde Wilson, 1981.| Abbeville Institute
Originally published in the March 1998 issue of Reason magazine.| Abbeville Institute
This article originally appeared on www.TheAmericanConservative.com. Copyright 2019| Abbeville Institute
This essay was originally published in Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The American South: Portrait of a Culture, 1979, 27-37.| Abbeville Institute
This essay was originally published in the August 1995 issue of Chronicles magazine.| Abbeville Institute
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In 1985, Daniel Jordan—a Ph.D. in history from University of Virginia—became president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and runs Monticello. He would preside over Monticello for the next 24 years, during which time Thomas Jefferson’s life and legacy would be radically transformed through information made readily available by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.| Abbeville Institute
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Today is John C. Calhoun’s 243 birthday. Several years ago, I took some time to visit John C. Calhoun’s grave in Charleston, SC., a massive stone monument at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church erected in the 1880s to honor the State’s greatest son. Calhoun’s body had been exhumed three times, once from Washington D.C. after he died in 1850 so it could be moved back to South Carolina, once to protect it from marauding Union soldiers during the War (he was placed in an unmarked grave), and...| Abbeville Institute
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When the newly-minted Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, named Fort Liberty, North Carolina “Fort Bragg” after Roland L. Bragg, a native of Maine, who served in WWI, instead of the original namesake, many were quick to excuse it saying “he did the best he could” and, or “the law prevents any military installation to be named after a Confederate”.| Abbeville Institute
Arguably, few who have read the United States Constitution, noticed the three words that support the argument that the Naming Commission and implementation of its recommendations were unconstitutional: “Bill of Attainder”. And those who did, most likely paid little attention.| Abbeville Institute
The Naming Commission of the Department of Defense has made the ill-considered determination to remove Moses Ezekiel’s monument from Arlington National Cemetery. It leads one to wonder if they even know who he was.| Abbeville Institute
Tommie D. Boudreau, chairwoman of the African American Heritage Committee of the Galveston Historical Foundation in Galveston, Texas, recently stated that the Juneteenth national commemoration “gives an accurate picture of United States history because so much has not been shared. African Americans are the only immigrants that were forced to come to America – or the colonies. This gives people an opportunity to understand all of U.S. history.” However, she is mistaken. An accurate pictu...| Abbeville Institute
I have been studying the War Between the States for 53 years. In all those years, the one quotation I have read which summarizes the true reason for the differences between the North and the South which led to that war was stated by James Henley Thornwell (1812-1862). He was the President of Columbia Theological Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina, founder of the Southern Presbyterian Review, and editor of the Southern Quarterly Review. This is what he said in the Southern Literary Messenger...| Abbeville Institute
When National Socialism came to power in Germany in 1933, it sought an ethnic and cultural cleansing of the country. Jewish culture and art was not considered fully human and underwent a purge. Once Nazi Germany started World War II in 1939, it also sought the same purge for all of Europe. Art considered Germanic was confiscated from all over Europe and brought to Germany. Adolf Hitler planned to create a massive museum in his home town of Linz, Austria, the Furermuseum, which he envisioned t...| Abbeville Institute
On June 19, 1865, Union forces arrived in Galveston, Texas and declared to the population of that state that the Emancipation Proclamation had freed its slaves. Called “Juneteenth,” it was initially celebrated in Texas, but it is now recognized in one way or another by 45 states and the District of Columbia. But what is it a celebration of? President Abraham Lincoln had no constitutional authority to free slaves, so no slaves were legally freed under the Proclamation.| Abbeville Institute
Cindy L. Arbelbide, a historian of holidays, has written, “Historic dates, like stepping stones, create a footpath through our heritage. Experienced by one generation and recalled by those to come, it is through these annual recollections that our heritage is honored.” The celebration of the birthday of George Washington began during his lifetime and continued after his death. He was born on February 11, 1731 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, under the Julian calendar, which was then in u...| Abbeville Institute
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 did not occupy the state or any part of it until after the war’s end. General Granger issued General Order No. 3, which he read publicly i...| Abbeville Institute
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 of the Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker. Both the board and the special committee ultimately...| Abbeville Institute
As someone who grew up during the decade of the 1960’s, I am| Abbeville Institute
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A review of African American Slavery in Historical Perspective (Shotwell Publishing, 2024) by Clyde N. Wilson| Abbeville Institute
As editor-in-Chief of the inaugural issue of the now-defunct theme-based journal, The Journal of Thomas Jefferson’s Life and Times, I was asked to write the feature, introductory essay, which I titled “‘A silent execution of duty’: The Republican Pen of Thomas Jefferson.” It was a daunting task, as I aimed to introduce the journal by constructing an essay that would give readers some feel for the breadth and depth of Jefferson’s mind. Given the obvious spatial constraints, there w...| Abbeville Institute
A review of Southern Story and Song: Country Music in the 20th Century (Shotwell, 2024) by Joseph R. Stromberg| Abbeville Institute
Brion McClanahan is the author or co-author of six books, How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America (Regnery History, 2017), 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her (Regnery History, 2016), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, (Regnery, 2009), The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), Forgotten Conservatives in American History (Pelican, 2012), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes, (Regnery, 2...| Abbeville Institute
When most Americans think of the “First Thanksgiving,” they think of the Pilgrims in Plymouth who sat down for a Harvest Festival meal with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The Pilgrims had arrived on the Mayflower in November of 1620 and nearly a year later celebrated the abundance of provisions that God had provided. The Thanksgiving tradition recalls to memory Indians like Squanto (1580–1622) and Englishmen like William Bradford (1590–1657), who was elected governor in early 1621. Ma...| Abbeville Institute
A review of The Gentler Gamester (Green Altar Books, 2024) by James Everett Kibler| Abbeville Institute
The central issue of the 2024 election was the question, what is democracy? The Democrats in particular claimed that they were the defenders of “democracy.” They were sincere, although to their opponents this claim seemed the epitome of gaslighting. Their view is that democracy is top-down, whereby elite institutions (e.g., universities, foundations, the science establishment, big business, the media, government itself) use government power to formulate and impose the will of those ...| Abbeville Institute
In 2018, the Abbeville Institute hosted a Summer School on Southern music. I gave a talk titled “That’s What I Like About the South” based on the song written by Andy Razaf and made famous by Phil Harris in the 1940s. Much has changed in eighty years, but the things that Harris and Razaf “liked about the South” have not: good food, good people, good company, and sunny weather.| Abbeville Institute
Originally published in Southern Partisan in 1979.| Abbeville Institute
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. As the Indians made to comply, a fight broke out between an Indian and a soldier and a shot was fired. When it was over, it ...| Abbeville Institute
A review of Black Reason, White Feeling: The Jeffersonian Enlightenment in the African American Tradition (University of Virginia Press, 2024) by Hannah Spahn| Abbeville Institute
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I have a new favorite song. I discovered it during the promotional build-up to the annual football contest between two worthy academic institutions: The University of Michigan and The Ohio State University. I don’t know whether the song has a title, but it is sung to the tune of “ The Old Grey Mare” (she ain’t what she used to…| www.abbevilleinstitute.org
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“The American Conservative” founders: Scott McConnell, Patrick J. Buchanan, and Taki Theodoracopulos| Abbeville Institute
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 remain, and they will probably never stop laughing at “kumbaya.”| Abbeville Institute
Traditional community life is nearly non-existent in the modern United States, the natural effect of the venomous ideologies that have been imbibed in copious quantities over the decades by both Left and Right, progressives and conservatives. Voting days are one of the few remaining vestiges of those earlier times, one of the few communal gatherings left to us – when folks at the polling places might run into old neighbors or friends and catch up with one another, or meet new people and s...| Abbeville Institute
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 [*defined by borders] 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 article. Interspersed with Smith’s speech are my comments on the relevancy of the matter both historically and in t...| Abbeville Institute
John C. Calhoun was a brilliant political theorist and distinguished politician, and a noted champion of rights for minorities. The importance of his thoughts is reflected both in the doctrine of states’ rights, as well as in relation to the federal system which serves as a textbook example of effective state management. Calhoun was also one of the first to observe that constitutional provisions which set limits on government powers, if open to interpretation, will almost always be in favor...| Abbeville Institute
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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 present moral and ethical standards destroys real historical inquiry and u...| Abbeville Institute
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My Talk at the 129th Annual Reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Charleston, South Carolina, July 16, 2024| Abbeville Institute
After a lengthy respite due to tensions between the two that began during Adams’ presidency, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, with the intervention of Benjamin Rush, resumed their correspondence with a brief letter from Adams to Jefferson on January 1, 1812.| Abbeville Institute
The following remarks were delivered at the fourth annual Jefferson Davis Conference at Mount Crawford, Virginia on June 27, 2024.| Abbeville Institute
Originally published at Truthscript.com| Abbeville Institute
Recently, I watched the Abbeville Institute’s Zoom conversation with Mike Kitchens on the loss of historic antebellum homes. Many have been lost to demolition or neglect. But there is another kind of loss threatening these historic sites. While it is important to discuss the people who built and kept these plantations afloat, some house museums are focusing disproportionately on the subject of slavery to the detriment of the original white inhabitants. But also because of how it is being ...| Abbeville Institute
A Critique of Thomas Fleming’s The Great Divide: The Conflict between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation| Abbeville Institute
