CIVIL WAR, U.S.
1. Gary North on the Right Way to Study the U.S. Civil War.
CAUSE(S) OF THE WAR: SLAVERY, SECESSION, TARIFFS, or SOMETHING ELSE?
SECESSION, STATES’ RIGHTS, & SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE
1. When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, Charles Adams, 2000. Here is a review of the book by Richard Ebling.
2. Southern Independence: Why War?: The War To Prevent Southern Independence –
3. Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence – Clyde N. Wilson, 2016.
4. States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Impirio, 1776-1876, Forrest McDonald, 2000.
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3. “Who Caused the Bloodbath of 1861-1865?” Thomas Di Lorenzo.
4. Clyde Wilson books.
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7. Civil War Volumes, 1-3 Box Set, Shelby Foote, 1986.
8. The Unvanquished: The Corrected Text, William Faulkner, 1991.
[SOUTHERN] RECONSTRUCTION, 1863-1877
1. North Against South: The American Illiad, 1848-1877, Ludwell H. Johnson, 2003. Recommended for its critique of “Reconstruction.” This is a textbook.
No period of Southern history has been covered by more distortions in recent times than has 1865-1876. Not too long ago, nearly everybody, including Northerners, regarded this period as a shameful un-American exercise in military rule and limitless corruption. Now, it is established academic “truth” that the only thing wrong with Reconstruction was that it was not ruthless enough. The South should have been subjected to a complete Marxist, egalitarian revolution. –Clyde Wilson.
2. Deconstruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War (Southern Classic Series), 1998, Richard Taylor.
3. American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War, Charles P. Roland, 2004.
INDIVIDUAL BATTLES
WAR ATROCITIES
1. The Burning: Sheridan’s Devastation of the Shenandoah, John L. Heatwole, 1998.
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EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, JANUARY 1, 1863
1. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, Allen C. Guelzo, 2006.
2. “Jefferson Davis Answers the Emancipation Proclamation,” Brion McClanahan, 2023.
3. Wiki on Emancipation Proclamation.
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Tom DiLorenzo explains that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to “rebel territory,” where no slave could have been freed and specifically exempted West Virginia, the last slave state to enter the union, and the parishes of Louisiana that were at that time under Union Army occupation. It worked mightily to get the 13th Amendment passed.
THE CIVIL WAR IN FICTION & MOVIES
1. The Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter, 1976.
“Then there is the saga of the Alabama writer Forrest Carter, friend and supporter of Governor George Wallace, who wrote the book Gone to Texas upon which Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales was based. Carter also wrote The Education of Little Tree, about the sufferings of an Indian boy at the hands of puritanical authorities. The book was reprinted by the devotedly multicultural University of New Mexico Press and became celebrated in Native American studies. Any reader other than an American intellectual could see right away that the book is really about the persecution of Southerners by Yankees. Imagine the consternation when Carter’s background was revealed! (The movie version became anti-Southern, of course.” Yankees are the intellectual class.
2. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the South’s greatest 19th-century writer, despised New Englanders, their pretensions, and their baneful influence on American culture. His collected essays and criticism, which can be found in many libraries, take a look at his “Boston and the Bostonians,” “Brook Farm,” and “The Literati of New York City.” If you want to know what the people who settled Boston were really like, watch Vincent Price’s Puritan Witch Hunter in the film “The Conqueror Worm,” originally titled “The Witchfinder General,” [can be found here] is based on a Poe story.
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16. “The Cause of the Civil War: Historian, Thomas Fleming, Discovers the Yankee Problem in America,” Thomas Di Lorenzo.
17. Robert Lewis Dabney was a Southern Presbyterian minister and biographer of General Stonewall Jackson.
18. The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, Mark E. Neely, Jr., 1992.
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22. The Truth of the War Conspiracy of 1861 –
23. The Legacy of the Civil War, Robert Penn Warren, Howard Jones (Introduction), 1961.
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CIVIL WAR FIGURES
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
America has a Lincoln problem. Professor Tom DiLorenzo explains why our nearly deification of “Honest Abe” presents a fundamental problem for our understanding of both the American past and the American present.
“The union of the founding fathers was a voluntary union of sovereign states,” explains Dr. Tom DiLorenzo. “The post-1865 union was a coerced union, held together by military force, much like the Soviet Union.” Lincoln’s war destroyed the voluntary union of the founding fathers; he did not save the union. Americans are also taught that Lincoln launched an invasion of his own country. Keep in mind, he never admitted that secession was legitimate in order to free the slaves. Lincoln himself, and the U.S. Congress, adamantly denied in his first U.S. inaugural address that he had no intention whatsoever to do anything about slavery except to support the Corwin Amendment of the Constitution which would have ever prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery. He calls it “The Lincoln Forever” speech.
1. Lincoln, David Herbert Donald, 1996.
2. Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement, Philip W. Magness & Sebastian N. Page, 2011.
3. The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: The Story of America’s Most Reviled President, Larry Tagg,
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ROBERT EDWARD LEE, 1807-1870
from Abbeville Institute.
JEFFERSON DAVIS, 1808-1889
from Abbeville Institute. 
CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS
Historians on both the left and the right have called for the removal of Confederate monuments. The mob has illegally and violently torn many down and others are winding up at sewage treatment plants. Philip Leigh explains why this is un-American.
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, NOVEMBER 19, 1863
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address invented history in 1863. Professor Brion McClanahan explains that his fairy tale speech was neither popular at the time nor historically accurate either then or today.
Dr. McClanahan has assembled an incredible array of illuminating historical courses at McClanahan Academy where he presents authoritative lectures on a wide variety of subjects that touch on American History, particularly those concerned with Southern history. As a lifetime learner, I have enrolled in thirteen of the courses, and would highly recommend Ten Myths of American History, The Declaration of Independence, The Founding Fathers, Secession, The War for Southern Independence, Reconstruction and Recreation 1862-1975, The American Presidents, and his four-part series on Southern Cultural and Intellectual History. All excellent, edifying, and highly entertaining.
Find the Abbeville Institute here.
WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN, 1820-1891
Union Terror: Debunking the False Justification for Union Terror Against Southern Civilians in the American Civil War, Dr. Jeffrey F. Addicott, 2023.
The Lieber Code adopted by Union Army in 1863.
“The Destruction of Old Sheldon Church and Other Ravages of War,” Gail Jarvis, March 22, 2016.
“Sherman’s Army in North Carolina,” Karen Stokes, April 14, 2016.
San Gabriel Tutor 