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The Sons of Confederate Veterans (S.C.V.) is a fraternal organization composed of male descendents of the men who served in the Confederate Armed Forces during the War for Southern Independence. Their emblems include the controversial Confederate battle flag. Their core responsibility is articulated in a charge given to them by Lt. General Stephen D. Lee which calls on them to defend the heritage, honor, and reputation of the Confederate soldier and the Cause they fought for. The Cause they fought for was individual liberty, state's rights, the original Constitution and the right to secede. In essence, Confederates fought an aggressive...

AUSTIN, Texas — The Civil War ended nearly 142 years ago, for most of the country anyway, but bitter battles over how zealously that war should be remembered are erupting in Austin, the Texas capital. First, rock musician Ted Nugent wore a T-shirt featuring the Confederate battle flag — a banner sometimes employed by Southern white-supremacist groups — at the Jan. 16 inaugural ball for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, prompting criticism from civil-rights groups. A few days later, the state's elected land commissioner, arguing for a more "balanced" view of history, marked Confederate Heroes Day — an official state holiday...

A Confederate heritage group says its free-speech rights were violated when a landowner removed a billboard promoting Southern history near the famed Darlington Raceway. The Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to demonstrate at the State House next month and buy radio advertisements to complain about losing its billboard on U.S. 52, about two miles from the racetrack. “This is the most chilling thing I’ve seen against freedom of speech,” spokesman Don Gordon said. The Sons of Confederate Veterans bought the billboard this spring in response to remarks by a NASCAR executive about the rebel flag. The billboard featured a Confederate...

Last month, Ithaca High School administrators sent a letter home with students, informing their parents that the flag of the Confederacy had been banned. Ithaca High School students can no longer display the emblem on belt buckles, t-shirts, or anywhere else while on school property. Apparently, the students wearing their Dixie Outfitters t-shirts, in a proud nod to our country’s better half, were white. It is unfortunate that civil liberties apply only to those in privileged groups, such as blacks or Hispanics.Because the United States Supreme Court has ruled in favor of protecting the freedom of speech exercised in displaying...

Confederate flags flown aboard the international space station — and seemingly signed by a NASA astronaut — showed up last week on the online auction site eBay. The original eBay listing indicated that the 4-by-6-inch flags were brought aboard the space station by Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov in 2004, and an accompanying photo showed a sample flag that seemed to bear Sharipov’s signature as well as that of Leroy Chiao, his NASA colleague on the station. Yet another photo showed several of the rebel flags floating in a space station module. The item was pulled from the auction on Monday...

WASHINGTON -- Back in the 2004 presidential primaries, when Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, suggested that Democrats should be competing for the votes of young men with Confederate flags on their pickups, politicians from both parties rushed to accuse him of repeating a vile Southern stereotype: the redneck with antiquated views on race. < SNIP >''Howard Dean knows about as much about the South as a hog knows about Sunday," quipped Georgia Senator Zell Miller, the conservative Democrat who supported President Bush. ''Sure, we drive pickups, but on the back of those pickups, you see a lot of American...

I love history. I’m proud of my Southern heritage. But for me to be angry to the point of protesting a moment in Southern history that happened nearly a century-and-a-half ago would be just, well, nonsensical. And would in some ways tarnish that heritage.

A homosexual advocacy group is planning to hold a discussion on 'gay icons' in US history'--including President Abe Lincoln--at part of its national celebration at Philadelphia's Independence Hall later this spring.Equality Forum is organizing a 'national celebration' to mark the 40th anniversary of the 'gay civil rights movement' which it says began with a small demonstration at Independence Hall years before the Stonewall riots in New York City.The panelists include a 'recognized expert' on Eleanor Roosevelt, and the editor of CA Tripp's new book 'The Initmate Life of Abraham Lincoln' in a panel discusson of 'closeted public leaders.''Governor McGreavey showed...

Confederate heritage groups got excited when Gov. Bob Riley's annual proclamation designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month dropped a paragraph saying slavery was the cause of the Civil War. The groups were pleased because they consider that description of slavery historically inaccurate. Their excitement, however, was short lived. "It was a mistake," said Jeff Emerson, the governor's communications director, on Monday. He said he did not know how the mistake was made. Emerson said the governor was unaware of the deletion until The Associated Press contacted his office. The governor quickly reissued the proclamation with the paragraph on...

Letters from the Front News from the battlefield was not always good, but sad mail was better than none Last of a series. By Deangelo McDaniel DAILY Staff Writer With a heavy heart, Col. Columbus Sykes sat near a tree in Aberdeen, Miss., and wrote a letter to his niece and nephew. "You are yet young, very young," he wrote, "one just emerged from his mother's arms; the other an infant, whose age is numbered only by months." Less than a month earlier on Oct. 26, 1864, Sykes had held his brother, Dr. William E. Sykes, in his arms as...

The Fort Sumter Crisis In 1853, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis tried to replace federal troops with state militia in all forts, mainly to shift the financial burden to the states. Had he succeeded, Fort Sumter probably would have little historical significance. But the states balked, and Sumter was fated for a major role, albeit mostly a symbolic one, in the American Civil War. Once South Carolina leaders meeting in Charleston voted for secession on December 20, 1860, Ft. Sumter, just three miles across the harbor, became a symbol of the tense standoff between federal and state authority that was...

  Staff photo by Doug Koontz Civil War re-enactors from North Carolina prepare to march through the streets of Boonsboro on Thursday morning on a two-day march over South Mountain to raise money for a Civil War monument.     BOONSBORO — Roughly 30 men carrying rifles, wearing slouch hats and dressed in Confederate uniforms marched out of the American Legion parking lot Thursday, heading for Fox's Gap. The scuffed leather boots of the 13th North Carolina Civil War Re-enacting Regiment, and those of a few local recruits, were about to travel the path that Brig. Gen. Samuel Garland's...