So Good a Cause: A Decade of the Southern Partisan

Edited by Richard M. Quinn and Oran P. Smith and published by Charles S. Hamel, Southern Partisan is a magazine dedicated to defining and defending traditional Southern values. This volume is a collector’s edition that includes much of the best work offered during the years of the existence of the magazine. Published quarterly, each issue of Southern Partisan is an eclectic mixture of politics, history, literature, religion and culture from a Southern perspective. With subscribers in all the American states and most European countries, the magazine is a major intellectual outlet for Southern conservatism. Regular features include a “Partisan Conversation,” or interview, with a notable person; “Obiter Dicta,” a collection of stinging editorial comments; “Civil War Trivia” by Webb Garrison; “Anguished English” by Richard Lederer; “Southern Sampler” by Bill Freehoff; and its most famous staple, the “Scalawag Award,” which is given each issue to a Southerner who the editors believe has conspicuously betrayed the heritage or the values of the South. President Bill Clinton, Tom Wicker, Bill Moyers, Vice President Al Gore, Jr., and David Gergen are examples of notable recipients of the infamous Scalawag Award. Much of the writing in the magazine draws inspiration from the twelve Southern “fugitive agrarians” who produced the famous defense of the South, I’ll Take My Stand, in 1930. Typical articles have included “The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln,” “Twenty Years After Richard Weaver: The Battle Continues,” “The Second Burning of Atlanta,” “Black Fighters for the South,” “Did the Founding Fathers Talk Like Yankees?,” “James Thornwell and Southern Religion,” “The Last Confederate Widow,” “Is the South A Nation?,” and “The Yankeefication of Conservative Thought.” The Southern Partisan Quarterly Review was founded in 1979. The magazine was purchased in 1981 by the Foundation for American Education and publication was resumed under the shorter title, Southern Partisan, in the summer of that year. Southern Partisan was purchased by Southern Partisan Corporation in 1984. Subject divisions: Antebellum Matters: The World Our Forefathers Made; Regional Color: What is it that Makes the South the South?; The War and Related Struggles: The Truth About the “Late Unpleasantness”; The Battle Continues: Is It True What They Say About Dixie?; Memorable Conversations: Great Southerners Speak Out. Authors: Richard M. Quinn, Charles S. Hamel, Eugene D. Genovese, M.E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, Paul Gottfried, Otto J. Scott, Charles Goolsby, James Everett Kibler, Mark Royden Winchell, Holmes Alexander, Robert Whitaker, Richard M. Weaver, James J. Thompson, Jr., Sheldon Vanauken, Rod Gragg, Peggy Robbins, Ludwell H. Johnson III, Thomas H. Landess, J.O. Tate, Robert McHugh, Edward Shapiro, Warren Leamon, Forrest McDonald, Donald Davidson, Andrew Nelson Lytle, Cleanth Brooks, Daisy Cave, James Dickey, J. Evetts Haley, Jesse Helms, Brigid Kerrigan, James Meredith.