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You will never convince some that true history is a little different than what you read. I remember my great grandfather telling stories about growing up in Mississippi and how it differed from what I was taught and seen on tv.

There is a good book out there Politically Incorrect Guide to the South by Clint Johnson.

Here are some points he covers:

* The first of the 13 colonies to formally legalize slavery? (Hint: it’s not in the South)

* How Georgia banned slaves - and lawyers - in its founding charter

* Why the South is more important to the American Founding than the North

* Throw away those history textbooks: How the South,not the North,started -and won — the American Revolution

* How Southerners led the way in drafting the Declaration of Independence,the U.S. Constitution,and the Bill of Rights

* Why Northerners - not Southerners - wanted slaves to be counted as property instead of people in the Constitution

* Peculiar fact about the wealthy slaveholder whose court cases helped legalize slavery in Virginia: he was black

* How Virginia militiamen created the American Midwest

* Why Northern states threatened secession long before the Confederacy - and why they considered it Constitutional

* How the expansion of the U.S. across the continent from 1830-1850 - which gave us the term “Manifest Destiny” - was largely a Southern achievement

* Lewis & Clark? Southerners,of course

* The first two Jewish members of the U.S. Senate? Yep,you guessed it

* How Southerners outnumbered Northerners almost four to one among the heroes of the Alamo

* Why slavery,which spread across all thirteen colonies,was far crueler in the North than the South

* How the Northern colonies grew rich on slave trading - and revived slavery in the South just before it collapsed

* New York City’s largest industry in 1860? The outfitting of slave ships

* The site of a mass grave for slaves who were literally worked to death? Hint: it’s not in the South

* Why economics - not slavery - was the driving force behind the War Between the States

* How Lincoln twice refused — or actually revoked — orders for emancipating slaves

* How Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation left more than 800,000 slaves in bondage in states aligned with or occupied by the Union

* Black heroes of the Confederacy - and other great Southern blacks you won’t hear about during Black History Month

* How the more civilized Southern way of war contributed to its defeat - in contrast to the North’s brutal “total war” against civilians and property

* How the Northern victory dealt a death blow to states’rights - leading eventually to today’s all-powerful federal government

* Why “Reconstruction” is the most misnamed period in American history

* Why segregation,which didn’t exist in the antebellum South,was a legacy of Northern-imposed “Reconstruction”

* How virtually all of America’s highest-ranking World War II generals had Confederate roots

* How Southerners won World War II in the Pacific theater

* How the South was making movies when Hollywood was nowhere

* Why race relations in today’s South are much better than in the North - or anywhere else in America

* What Yankee reporters don’t understand about the South

* Why faith and family come first in the South

* Why the South is naturally conservative (and the North is naturally liberal)

* Why limited government and low tax rates are a Southern tradition

* Why Northerners - white and black — keep moving South

* Statistics show Southerners are happier than people in other regions - Clint Johnson shows you why

* It’s a fact: Southern women dominate beauty pageants,and Southern men dominate in sports

* Why blacks have been moving back to the South in droves

* How American jazz,blues,and rock ‘n’ roll (when it was still music) all came from the South

* Why blacks hold more - and more powerful - political offices in the South than in the North

* Why Southern industry is booming,while the North’s is going bust

* The second war against the South — the campaign to erase memory and history - and how it serves liberal interests

* Why Southerners are overrepresented in the military - and no,it’s not poverty

* The best American literature? Southern,of course - and our high school and college reading lists confirm it

* 10 Things Southerners Don’t Understand About the North (#1: Why isn’t Ted Kennedy in prison?)