6,251 words
Some eminent notables have claimed that the American Civil War had substantial roots in literature. Mark Twain, for example, said of Sir Walter Scott that he was “in great measure responsible for the war.” That proposition is debatable, of course. This argument hinges on how much the widespread influence of his romanticized chivalric prose bolstered the South’s hyper-thumotic stance — in plainer words, piss and vinegar — which contributed to secession, and shortly thereafter a war that went horribly awry. (more…)
3,334 words
Ron Chernow
Grant
New York: Penguin Press, 2017
Ulysses S. Grant is one of the archetypal Americans. A brilliant general who would only accept unconditional surrender. A modest president who eschewed pomp in favor of simple, democratic attire. (more…)
8,516 words
Thomas R. Pegram
One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2011
The Ku Klux Klan suffers from a positively radioactive reputation, even among fellow Rightists. During the infamous family dinner scene in American History X, at which Edward Norton’s Derek Vinyard assaults his sister and displays his swastika tattoo to the Jewish teacher dating his widowed mother, (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…)
4,517 words
Richard Weaver
The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Postbellum Thought
New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1968
Richard Weaver’s The Southern Tradition at Bay has grown in both poignancy and meaning since its posthumous publishing in 1968. Originally Weaver’s 1943 doctoral dissertation at Louisiana State University, this work offers a survey of the most important postbellum literature produced by Southern writers until 1910 and ties it together with a philosopher’s breadth of vision. (more…)
1,063 words
Although he was a supporter of President Obama, Henry Louis Gates Jr. did the President no favor when Gates made a scene and was arrested by a Massachusetts cop in 2009. Obama unwisely commented on the matter and had to hold a “beer summit” to smooth things over later. The cost of Gates’s temper tantrum was staggeringly high: In no small part due to their racial animus, Gates (and the President) turned a minor misunderstanding into a national firestorm, all during a massive economic crisis and while Obama was trying to navigate his health care reform through Congress. (more…)
4,486 words
Thomas Goodrich
The Day Dixie Died: Southern Occupation, 1865-1866
Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001
Thomas Goodrich’s second book for Stackpole Books followed three years after his revisionist look at the culture of the American Indians in Scalp Dance: Indian Warfare on the High Plains, 1865-1879. (more…)
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…)
Thomas Nelson Page
2,641 words
The great American race novel currently does not even have a Wiki page.
Indeed, Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction by Thomas Nelson Page has generally been out of print since its publication in 1898 and is available these days only through publishers who specialize in reproducing historical works—or second-hand through online auction websites such as eBay. Thomas Nelson Page is one of the great lost American authors, (more…)
3,246 words
The landmark of American motion pictures is an epic, 3-hour long, intersecting story of two white families, one Northern, one Southern, across three periods of time: the antebellum years, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
(more…)
Hinton Rowan Helper, 1829–1909
4,025 words
For most readers having a nodding acquaintance with American history, the term “abolitionist” conjures up a vision of a sentimental housewife like Harriet Beecher Stowe, a homicidal psychopath in the mold of John Brown, or some stone-faced Puritan negrophile. (more…)
6,251 words
