Free Republic

Texas' agriculture commissioner says he will back a Confederate group's latest attempt to sell specialty license plates, because "there's no profit in hiding our history." The Sons of Confederate Veterans' Texas chapter proposed a license plate in March that features a rebel soldier carrying a Texas regiment's special flag at a Civil War battle, the Dallas Morning News reported. The specialty tag won't include the Confederate battle flag. Commissioner Sid Miller wrote a letter of support in March that said the Department of Agriculture would sponsor the plate. On Monday, he said he sees nothing wrong with the group's push...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The number of Tennesseans with Confederate battle flag license plates has reached its highest point in a decade.</p> <p>Data from the Tennessee Department of Revenue shows that 3,273 of the license plates benefiting the Sons of Confederate Veterans were active at the end of the 2018 fiscal year, The Tennessean reported. That number represents a 72 percent increase from the end of the 2015 fiscal year.</p>

Robert Wilkie, President Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a conservative Washington insider who would bring three decades of military policymaking and a deep list of Capitol Hill connections to a Cabinet post responsible for serving one of the administration’s most crucial constituencies. But when he appears Wednesday for his Senate confirmation hearing, Wilkie also will draw on a career spent working shoulder to shoulder with polarizing figures in U.S. politics and often defending their most divisive views. Wilkie, 55, has impeccable credentials: three decades at the center of the country’s most important military policies. The...

The N.C. Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has suggested the recent desecration of a grave in Bladen County might have been a protest against Confederate heritage, and is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the vandalism. Maj. Larry Guyton of the Bladen County Sheriff’s Office said that a man cutting the grass at Mount Horeb Presbyterian Church, near Elizabethtown in Bladen County, discovered the damage to the grave of a Confederate Army soldier on Monday and called police.“Someone had dug down into a grave,” Guyton said, creating a hole 2 to 3 feet...

On a warm day in August, a couple dozen people gathered for an afternoon picnic at Shawnee Mission Park. Under the shade of a shelter surrounded by leafy green trees, two men cooked burgers and brats on a charcoal grill next to a row of tables topped with red plastic tablecloths and a summery spread of sliced watermelon, barbecue-flavored potato chips and sopapilla cheesecake. The weather would have been perfect if not for occasional gusts of wind that whipped through the grove and threatened to topple the three flags fixed to portable poles next to the dessert table: an American...

In 1949, the surviving members of the United Confederate Veterans attend the funeral of their commander, James W. Moore. Moore joined the confederate army at the age of 13, died at the age of 99 and was buried in Selma, AL. Here's your chance to see video of some real confederate veterans.

Virginia is recalling the 1,691 specialty license plates featuring a Confederate battle flag, state officials said Thursday. But it's unclear how quickly the flag tags will disappear from roadways. The affected motorists will be sent new Sons of Confederate Veterans tags along with a letter telling them they have 30 days before the old plate is invalid, said Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman Brandy Brubaker. However, the replacement tag doesn't exist yet. The DMV will work with the heritage group to come up with a new flagless plate design, Brubaker said. Then the plate has to be manufactured and sent...

We Sons of Confederate Veterans are charged with preserving the good name of the Confederate soldier. The world, for the most part, has acknowledged what Gen. R. E. Lee described in his farewell address as the “valour and devotion” and “unsurpassed courage and fortitude” of the Confederate soldier. The Stephen D. Lee Institute program is dedicated to that part of our duty that charges us not only to honour the Confederate soldier but “to vindicate the cause for which he fought.” We are here to make the case not only for the Confederate soldier but for his cause. It is...

The Sons of Confederate Veterans It was a week ago, on the Seventeenth day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand fifteen that a mentally disturbed, racist individual entered the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina under the false pretense of worship. It was with Christian love and care that the Pastor and members of the congregation welcomed that young man. There within that Church where the Gospel of the Peace of Jesus Christ was being actively shared we note that Christ's Words in the Gospel of John 13:35 was and still...

I'm not sure how this story was missed, but the division commander of the S.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans, Leland Summers, released a statement on the Emanuel AME Church shooting last Wednesday. In it, he expressed sympathy for the victims and their families, noted there were black Confederate soldiers, and proclaimed there is no connection between the Confederate flag and the Mother Emanuel shooting. Here's what Summers said in its entirety: On the night of June 17, 2015, an attempt was made to break the spirit of all South Carolinians. The deranged mind of a horrendous individual, entered Emanuel AME...

SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS TO REPLACE FLAGS AT UNION SPRINGS Gary Carlyle, Commander of the Alabama Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, announced today that at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, May 23rd, the SCV will replace the memorial flags which were recently removed from a Confederate cemetery in Union Springs, Alabama by an individual in that town. In a statement, Carlyle said that he wished to thank Mayor Saint T. Thomas, Jr. and the City Council of Union Springs for working together with the Sons of Confederate Veterans on the restoration project. "The Mayor and the Council have...

A prominent attorney admits to taking flags from the graves of soldiers, a move that's sparked both positive reaction and calls for him to be arrested and disbarred. He's also received death threats and hate mail. The lawyer says his actions are meant to promote unity. A bag of small Confederate flags sits at Union Springs City Hall. They were removed from graves at an old Confederate cemetery downtown, behind the Red Door Theater, near the intersection of Highway 82 and North Prairie Street. Myron Penn pulled up the flags with his family on Mother's Day. Penn, a founding partner...

One hundred-fifty years after Appomattox, many Southerners still won’t give up. One hundred fifty years ago, on April 9th, 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House and the Union triumphed in the Civil War. Yet the passage of a century and a half has not dimmed the passion for the Confederacy among many Americans. Just three weeks ago, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) appeared before the Supreme Court arguing for the right to put a Confederate flag on vanity license plates in Texas. Just why would someone in 2015 want a Confederate flag on their license...

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments re Texas’s refusal to allow Confederate flags to be stamped on license plates as part of a “Sons of Confederate Veterans” design. I wouldn’t ask sons of Confederate veterans to disown their ancestry; in fact, my mother’s mother’s family was Southern, and four of my great-great-grandfathers fought in the Confederate army. And I know that lots of Americans sincerely see the Confederate flag as a symbol of states’ rights — particularly because virtually no Confederate soldiers actually owned slaves. But, personally, I see the Confederate flag as the symbol of men who, as...

Florida’s first state park has become ground zero for a raging political fight to establish a monument honoring Union Army soldiers who died during the Civil War. The three-acre Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park currently includes three monuments honoring Confederate soldiers who died fighting to secede from the country. The park, first established in 1912, was the site of Florida’s largest and bloodiest Civil War battle that killed 3,000 Union and 1,000 Confederate soldiers. It occurred on February 20, 1864, and raged on for four hours. With no marker respecting the sacrifice of so many northern men, the Florida chapter...

It seems fitting that the de facto anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War, which some people might still be shocked to learn the North won, turned out to be "Dixie." After all, since Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox there's been no shortage of looking away, looking away at the reality of history when it comes to the Civil War. Nowhere is that full flower of denial more apparent than among the followers of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is upset about a proposal to erect a monument to Union soldiers who died in the Battle...

It should be also noted that after the War Between the States, Bedford Forrest returned home with the 'free' black men who fought with him.

Richard “Dick” Poplar a Black Confederate rode with the 13th Virginia cavalry. He was captured during the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg. Poplar then served 5 months at Fort Delaware and 14 months in Point Lookout Prison and refused to sign the Oath of Loyalty that would have freed him in the first month of his captivity.

The Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] published a list of the "30 new activists heading up the radical right." It was published in the SPLC's free magazine called "Intelligence Project." The list includes many mainstream conservatives, including this writer. -snip- The original purpose of the "Intelligence Project" was supposed to be to fight the KKK. Noticeably absent from the SPLC's enemies list is any Klan leaders. The SPLC could not even find one real life Klan leader to talk about. They list three "Neo-Nazis." The SPLC says the first one is lying about having any following. The second one is...

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. -- The battle over a confederate flag at an Elizabethton cemetery wages on...and this time, the Sons of Confederate Veterans are on the defensive. The group filed a police report Sunday after they said someone stole their flag. A member of the group says they've since put up a new, more recognizable confederate flag at Green Hill Cemetery in the other flag's absence. The Sons of Confederate Veterans held a ceremony to dedicate the previous flag last month in recognition of lieutenant Robert J. Tipton and three other confederate veterans buried there. The Watauga Historical Association fought that...