1,807 words

Thomas Nelson Page
Bred in the Bone
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904

Bred in the Bone, a 1904 novella by Thomas Nelson Page, epitomizes race realism through the proxy of horses and horse racing. It also embodies the author’s characteristic nostalgia for the aristocratic white supremacy of the antebellum South. (more…)

1,335 words

So they want to ban Gone With the Wind? Pity, because a movie they would really like to strangle is Santa Fe Trail. Made in 1940, Santa Fe Trail is an Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland Western with lots of action and romance that discusses slavery and the Southern point of view in rational terms.

Errol Flynn plays Jeb Stuart, and Ronald Reagan plays George Custer. They are classmates at West Point in 1854 (more…)

Auguste Raffet, Attack and take of the Crête-à-Pierrot, 1839.

2,671 words

Part I

As Saint-Domingue sank ever deeper beneath the churning waves of black filth, those whites fortunate enough to survive fled for the greater Caribbean, including the antebellum American South. The colonists were no longer welcome in their home of France, (more…)

2,365 words

After the Civil War, the American South was in ruins. Beyond the poverty, oppression, and the rapid demise of the old regime, however, the inheritors of the former Confederacy found themselves without defense in the national court of moral opinion. They were a defeated people who had drawn arms against a tolerant and progressive government in order to cling to outmoded ways of life, including (most offensively to some) the ancient practice of slavery.

Those who pined for the South’s days of greatness needed a champion. During the postbellum period, Thomas Nelson Page was one such champion. (more…)

William Faulkner

4,880 words

A novelist can have tremendous influence beyond his own time if he depicts major historical trends and invents characters that react in conflicting ways to these trends. If a story is vivid enough, readers might come to identify with or even emulate such characters, since the historical pressures bearing down on them bear down on the readers as well. William Faulkner accomplishes such a feat in his 1942 novel of interrelated short stories, Go Down, Moses.

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Edward Williams Clay, America, 1841.

2,701 words

Thomas Nelson Page
The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904

After the Civil War, the defeated South needed a champion. It needed someone who could articulate the rationale behind the lost Southern cause in such a way that would allow for the reincorporation of the former Confederacy back into the Union without alienating its former enemies. (more…)

4,734 words

Shortly after the Civil War, the American South found itself in ruins. Much has been written about the devastation of the war and the indignities and strife which followed during Reconstruction. Beyond the poverty and oppression and the rapid demise of the old regime with its “outdated” culture of honor, loyalty, and heroism, the inheritors of the former Confederacy found themselves without defense in the national and international courts of moral opinion. (more…)