Clearly, Robert E. Lee’s reputation has plummeted from the lofty height it once occupied. It is time to clear a path through the rubble of toppled statues and discarded plaques to examine the qualities of the authentic Lee, as well as the turn of mind that would relegate him to historical ignominy. I. “What excellence [...]
The Union soldiers defending Forts Sumter and Moultrie in Charleston Harbor had come to believe that their honor, as well as the honor of the Constitution and the federal government, was at stake. Shortly after dawn, around 6 am, on January 9, 1861, Captain Abner Doubleday spotted a steamer preparing to enter Charleston Harbor by [...]
“It's all now you see. Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind [...]
History is the “remembered past,” remembered according to values and virtues that are the inheritance of a particular people. The story as told gives meaning to the “facts,” and the story must be told to be remembered. “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will [...]
Demands for statesmanship tend to hold up a model of greatness in political leadership that is profoundly dangerous. The desire to be “great” by upholding the interests of the nation as a political whole promotes a massive increase in the extent and centralization of political power. I recently attended a conference on statesmanship. Truth be [...]
To those Americans who revere him—sadly, a dwindling number these days—Robert E. Lee is still much a "Marble Man": the noble face of the antebellum South, the tragic embodiment of the Lost Cause, the "perfect" man, as a contemporary deemed him. Even his admirers are unaware of the some of the more interesting details of [...]
Gene Kizer’s practical advice and his notations of political correctness and anti-Southern bias make The Elements of Academic Success an ideal purchase for any current or potential college student, especially those of a conservative and pro-Southern bent… The Elements of Academic Success by Gene Kizer, Jr. (364 pages, Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014) I wish I had read [...]
Here are four recently-published books and four new classical music albums that I have greatly enjoyed this past year… Books I’ve read several excellent biographies (and one great autobiography) this past year. Foremost among the former is Jan Swafford’s magisterial Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, which could easily be termed the definitive biography of perhaps the greatest [...]
Reinhold Niebuhr finds that, ironically, we turn our virtues into vices when our virtue is “too complacently relied upon” or naively affirmed or trusted in—maybe even brazenly signaled to others—just as our power becomes problematic if we have an overweening confidence in our wisdom to employ this influence or force justly. The Irony of American [...]
At his death, Robert E. Lee was not fully a citizen despite the efforts he made in his last years to regain his citizenship. This final aggression against the name of a great man continued to trouble many Americans, both in the North and the South. At the time of his death, was Robert E. [...]
If anything identifies a conservative, it is his realistic appraisal of human nature—his appreciation of what is good and admirable, and his recognition of what is base. As some renditions of American history would have it, the conservative pedigree in the United States begins with, or at the very least includes, Alexander Hamilton and his [...]
If racism was not the primary motivation for Confederate monument-building, what exactly was? In the wake of the current controversy over Confederate monuments, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has created a timeline that has made its way around the worldwide web like wildfire. It purports to show that two spikes in the building of [...]
Eighteen months after the first shot at Fort Sumter, there were certain truths that the soldiers had come to know. Death in war was neither picturesque nor peaceful, and dying bravely didn’t make you any less dead, or mean that you would not be dumped into the cold earth of a mass grave with everyone [...]
Because the Civil War is the American Iliad, it is constantly being refought in the public memory. Much is at stake, for myths make meaning, meaning makes politics, and politics make myths… Jesse Jackson made a remarkable run for the presidency in the early months of 1988—two decades before America would elect its first black [...]