This just came in from GLAHR. Please take action (at the bottom) and forward widely.

Jessica is a 21-year-old senior at Kennesaw State University who has been looking forward to graduating this coming fall. She is majoring in political science and minoring in French. She is a founding sister of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority Inc., and plans to continue her education and become a lawyer. Her friends affirm that she is a brilliant young woman, an excellent student who studies hard. In addition to studying, in order to pay her tuition, Jessica works nights with her mother, as a janitor, cleaning office buildings in the Atlanta Metro Area. Jessica grew up here in Georgia and has never been in trouble with the law.

So, why is Jessica sitting behind bars in a detention center in Gadsden, Alabama awaiting deportation to a country she hasn’t seen in over 10 years?

Jessica came to the United States as a little girl, more than 10 years ago, with her mother. She has lived, studied, and worked here ever since, contributing to her community, enriching her friends’ lives, paying taxes, living her life.

And then on Monday, March 29^th, everything changed.

That day, a Kennesaw State University campus police officer ‘pulled her over’ when she was parking in the University parking lot. According to the officer, she was “impeding the flow of traffic.”

She was asked for her license and when she informed the officer she did not have one she was told to come to his office the day after or he would issue an arrest warrant for her. Jessica went to the office on Tuesday, March 30^th, 2010 and told the truth. She explained there was no possible way for her to obtain a license because, though she had lived almost all of her life in Georgia, she was legally undocumented. The officer charged with campus security proceeded to detain her. She was arrested and jailed in Cobb County where the county’s 287(g) agreement allows for local sheriffs to enforce federal immigration law. From there she was put directly into deportation proceedings and has been behind bars ever since.

Yesterday afternoon, an immigration judge denied her bond and ordered her to leave the country within 30 days. She is being sent back to Mexico, a country she hasn’t been to since she was 10 years old, only months before she is to graduate from college.

Why is Jessica being deported? Has she committed some terrible crime? Is she ‘sapping precious state resources’ from citizens? Is Jessica the “illegal alien” we’re told we should fear?

No.

Jessica is a hard working, smart college student who enriches the state of Georgia and the United States of America by her presence and her contributions. We want Jessica’s nightmare to end. She represents the kind of young person that makes Georgia a better place; she should be allowed to remain in the state and country in which she grew up.

We support Jessica, we march for Jessica, we fight for Jessica to remain in Georgia!

Contact representative John Lewis at (404) 659-0116 or (202) 225-3801 and ask him to:

1) GET INVOLVED in Jessica Colotl’s case! Tell him to contact DHS and STOP her deportation!

2) SPONSOR the Dream Act to help students like Jessica and thousands of others!

This information is pulled from the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights. The march is set for May Day, May 1. 10am at the Capitol Building in downtown Atlanta. Here's GLAHR's info:

MARCH FOR DIGNITY!

MARCH FOR REFORM!

IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW!

STOP RACIAL PROFILING!

REUNITE FAMILIES!

PASS THE DREAM ACT!

STOP 287G!

MARCH WITH US!!!

Full immigration reform for all now! Stop the raids and deportations!
You are invited to march and rally in Atlanta, May 1st. at 10 AM.
Join thousands in front of the Capitol Building and urge GA Senators to take leadership and move legislation forward in 2010. Keep families together and help our American economy. :)


For info contact GHLAR or ABLE
or call: 770-457-5232

March and Rally Details:

9:30- 10:00am Prayer for ABLE
10:00 am- MARCH TOWARDS THE CAPITOL
10:30- 11:00am - Prayer
11:00-1 pm - homage to Martin Luther King Jr. during the march
1:00 - 2:30pm - RALLY IN THE CAPITOL
2:30 - 3:00pm - clean up

What you can bring:
Personal water and/or food
plastic bag for your trash
White Balloons
Musical Instruments
White Clothes or a White T-Shirt
Posters
Here are some examples:
OBAMA: STOP RAIDS
OBAMA: REUNITE FAMILIES
OBAMA: QUALITY LIFE FOR WORKERS
OBAMA: STOP DEPORTATIONS
OBAMA: FAIR JOBS FOR WORKERS
OBAMA: STOP A REIGN OF TERROR
OBAMA: RELIEF TO THE UNDOCUMENTED
OBAMA: PASS THE DREAM ACT
OBAMA: STOP 287G
OBAMA: STOP RACIAL PROFILING
(but please dont use sticks for the posters or the balloons)

What you can do during the march:

We need people to pass out the papers with the songs that will be sung during the march
Keep your cool and not respond to insults or threats

What NOT to do during the march:
NO ALCOHOL
NO GUNS
NO WEAPONS OF ANY KIND
NO GRAFFITY
NO LOITERING
NO SPITTING
NO FLAGS OF AAAAANNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYY COUNTRY!!!!!

How you can help prior to the March:
Donations to afford cops in the area, sound equipment, etc (with ABLE and GHLAR)
Volunteers to distribute flyers to our community and stores
Volunteers to install equipment and after-march clean up
To offer your help contact GLAHR at 770-457-5232

LETS MAKE THIS HAPPEN PEOPLE!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

EL PUEBLO UNIDO JAMAS SERA VENCIDO ;) ;)

According to a member of the The Repeal Coalition, Rush Limbaugh called the Flagstaff (Arizona) City Council "turncoats" and urged people to express their hatred. They received 100 calls over two days, all against the injunction. They also got death threats. Wherever you are, please call the City of Flagstaff and tell them you support an injunction to stop SB 1070. Their number is 928-779-7600.

The Huffington Post ran this essay by John Carlos Frey about more anti-immigrant legislation coming out of the Georgia state legislature. Stay tuned for information about the May 1 Immigrant Freedom Rally.

Georgia: Making a Scapegoat of Immigrants
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-carlos-frey/georgia-tries-to-drive-im_b_541311.html
by John Carlos Frey
April 19, 2010

Georgia state lawmakers are discriminating against immigrants through proposed legislation SB 67 that would restrict driver's license exams to be issued in English only. Currently the state offers the exam in 13 different languages but according to State Senator Jack Murphy, the chief proponent of the legislation, restricting the privilege to English-only drivers is a matter of safety. The senator believes that foreign language drivers pose a danger because they cannot read English language road signs. If Georgia offered driving tests only in English it would eliminate the perceived problem.

I say perceived because I could find no evidence that non-English speakers are a danger. Even in legislative hearings, as the bill was being debated, there was no testimony by road safety experts to prove that English-only drivers would improve safety. Not only was there no evidence the bill would make Georgia roads safer, the proposed bill offers driver's licenses for illiterate drivers. Fifteen percent of driver's licenses in Georgia are issued to people who cannot read at all. According to Senator Murphy, they qualify as safer drivers than the non-English literate immigrants. If the bill passes, U.S. citizens and legal residents who are not proficient in English will be prohibited from driving.

I tried to speak with Senator Murphy but was told he was not available until after the legislative session. I tried to speak with a representative from the Governor's office, Sonny Perdue, but received no response. I called the Chamber of Commerce of the State of Georgia to see what their position might be -- no response. The immigrant community, civil rights leaders and religious community vehemently oppose the restrictive bill. Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) calls the measure xenophobic and anti-immigrant. "There is no evidence that this measure will make roads safer. It is just an attempt to target immigrants, legal or not." The bill will affect an estimated 60,000 immigrant drivers. People who need their car for employment or transporting their children will have to use an inadequate public transit system or find alternate transportation. Non-English speakers who have a history of safe driving will no longer be permitted to operate a motor vehicle. Bill Nigut, Southeast Regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says, "The economic harm of an English-only policy could have a devastating impact. Many will not be able to obtain a driver's license and will be stranded and unable to go to work."

If there is no substantiated or legitimate basis for the restrictive legislation one can only draw conclusions that non-English speakers are not welcome in the state of Georgia. Some speculate that the bill is aimed at the growing Spanish speaking population and undocumented immigrants. It is a harsh, punitive measure that will not curb illegal immigration but will probably score political points.

The vast majority of non-English speakers in the state of Georgia were most likely marginalized in their home countries, fled oppression, escaped poverty, survived war or were searching for better opportunities. They have run into the arms of America to be embraced by the nation of immigrants where all are considered equal and all have a fair chance at stability and success. To require an English-only driver's license exam is literally forcing immigrants to sit at the back of the bus. They are not safe enough, smart enough or worthy enough for the simple liberty of driving a car. I wonder what any of us would feel like if our driving privileges were stripped for no legitimate reason.

The Georgia state legislature has made a scapegoat of immigrants for some cheap political gain. To further oppress and restrict the mobility of an already vulnerable population is cowardice and shameful. What Senator Murphy and his supporters do not understand is that immigrants are a vital part of what makes this country strong and unique. America was never intended to be a home just for the white, rich and English speakers. If the Statue of Liberty were somehow moved to Georgia, the powerful ode to immigrants by Emma Lazarus would have to be modified to accommodate the bigotry of the Georgia State Legislature:

"Give me your wealthy, I shun the immigrant poor,
Your huddled politicians yearning to be free (of Spanish),
The wretched refusal of your driving test score.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost away from me
I turn off my lamp beside the closed golden door."

I apologize to Emma Lazarus for my unskilled poetry. Please read the real poem here and see if the State of Georgia is living up to her promise.

Paul Krugman, of the New York Times, has noticed that Georgia is leading the nation in bank failures. We're even ahead of Texas. An interesting analysis and more evidence that state politicos (Republican) and local politicos (Democrat) have miserably failed to plan for anything other than their almost guaranteed reelection.

Georgia on My Mind
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/opinion/12krugman.html?src=me&ref=general

As we look for ways to prevent future financial crises, many questions should be asked. Here’s one you may not have heard: What’s the matter with Georgia?

I’m not sure how many people know that Georgia leads the nation in bank failures, accounting for 37 of the 206 banks seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation since the beginning of 2008. These bank failures are a symptom of deeper problems: arguably, no other state has suffered as badly from banks gone wild.

To appreciate Georgia’s specialness, you need to realize that the housing bubble was a geographically uneven affair. Basically, prices rose sharply only where zoning restrictions and other factors limited the construction of new houses. In the rest of the country — what I once dubbed Flatland — permissive zoning and abundant land make it easy to increase the housing supply, a situation that prevented big price increases and therefore prevented a serious bubble.

Most of the post-bubble hangover is concentrated in states where home prices soared, then fell back to earth, leaving many homeowners with negative equity — houses worth less than their mortgages. It’s no accident that Florida, Nevada and Arizona lead the nation in both negative equity and mortgage delinquencies; prices more than doubled in Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix, and have subsequently suffered some of the biggest declines.

But not all of Flatland has gotten off lightly. In particular, there’s a sharp contrast between the two biggest Flatland states, Texas — which avoided the worst — and Georgia, which didn’t.

This contrast can’t be explained by the geography of the two states’ major cities. Like Dallas or Houston, Atlanta is a sprawling metropolis facing few limits on expansion. And like other Flatland cities, Atlanta never saw much of a housing price surge.

Yet Texas has managed to avoid severe stress to either its housing market or its banking system, while Georgia is suffering severe post-bubble trauma. The share of mortgages with delinquent payments is higher in Georgia than in California; the percentage of Georgia homeowners with negative equity is well above the national average. And Georgia leads the nation in bank failures.

So what’s the matter with Georgia? As I said, banks went wild, in a scene strongly reminiscent of the savings-and-loan excesses of the 1980s. High-flying bank executives aggressively expanded lending — and paid themselves lavishly — while relying heavily on “hot money” raised from outside investors rather than on their own depositors.

It was fun while it lasted. Then the music stopped.

Why didn’t the same thing happen in Texas? The most likely answer, surprisingly, is that Texas had strong consumer-protection regulation. In particular, Texas law made it difficult for homeowners to treat their homes as piggybanks, extracting cash by increasing the size of their mortgages. Georgia lacked any similar protections (and the Bush administration blocked the state’s efforts to restrict subprime lending directly). And Georgia suffered from the difference.

What’s striking about the contrast between the Texas story and Georgia’s debacle is that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the issues that have dominated debates about banking reform. For example, many observers have blamed complex financial derivatives for the crisis. But Georgia banks blew themselves up with old-fashioned loans gone bad.

And for all the concern about banks that are too big to fail, Georgia suffered, if anything, from a proliferation of small banks. Actually, the worst offenders in the lending spree tended to be relatively small start-ups that attracted customers by playing to a specific community. Thus Georgian Bank, founded in 2001, catered to the state’s elite, some of whom were entertained on the C.E.O.’s yacht and private jet. Meanwhile, Integrity Bank, founded in 2000, played up its “faith based” business model — it was featured in a 2005 Time magazine article titled “Praying for Profits.” Both banks have now gone bust.

So what’s the moral of this story? As I see it, it’s a caution against silver-bullet views of reform, the idea that cracking down on just one thing — in particular, breaking up big banks — will solve our problems. The case of Georgia shows that bad behavior by many small banks can do as much damage as misbehavior by a few financial giants.

And the contrast between Texas and Georgia suggests that consumer protection is an essential element of reform. By all means, let’s limit the power of the big banks. But if we don’t also protect consumers from predatory lending, there are plenty of smaller players — both small banks and the nonbank “mortgage originators” responsible for many of the worst subprime abuses — that will step in and fill the gap.

April 26 is Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia. The state also observes Robert E. Lee's birthday. I, for one, will not be joining the festivities. I view the idea of celebrating the Confederacy in any way the same as I would view celebrating the Third Reich. Yes, a lot of people died. It is deeply saddening that so many suffered. It is also deeply saddening that so many suffered because the Confederacy (and the Nazis) were dedicated to upholding a brutal system of white supremacy.

Politics Daily ran this column by Carl Cannon. I do not believe liberalism can protect democracy from Nazis or neo-Confederates, but I like his myth-busting analysis.

Why Liberals Are Right to Refuse to Honor the Confederacy
by Carl Cannon

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/12/why-liberals-are-right-to-refuse-to-honor-the-confederacy/

You wouldn't think, 145 Aprils after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, that we'd still be arguing about the causes of the conflict that led them to that place, and cost 620,000 Americans their lives. But we are, and arguing as well over a related question: Who should be honored – and who should be blamed?


Perhaps it is precisely because the price of keeping the union together was so dear that the passions endure, erupting every so often over one pretext or another. This month, the proximate cause of debate was the decision by Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia to keep a campaign promise he made to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 2005, when he was running for attorney general.

McDonnell's six-paragraph proclamation declared April to be "Confederate History Month." The governor appears to have seen the offending document as innocuous, and much of it was, but it was underpinned by a sentiment that does not reflect a universal view among Virginians; namely, that it is important to pay homage to "the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War." The proclamation also had had an important omission, these critics asserted, namely any reference to slavery.

In the outcry that followed, including personal protests from some high-profile African American Democrats from Virginia who had bolstered McDonnell's 2009 Republican candidacy, McDonnell quickly made amends. A new paragraph was inserted into the document:

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history ...

This is a pretty thorough mea culpa, and as direct a refutation of Southern revisionism as anyone could ask for, so continued criticism of McDonnell from liberal Democrats can understandably be viewed as partisan posturing. But political jockeying notwithstanding, liberals are indeed right to confront this issue forcefully, whenever it arises.

McDonnell's edict was issued on April 7, the date in 1865 on which a weary Robert E. Lee, his crumbling and starving Army of Northern Virginia near collapse, answered a letter from General Grant by saying he shared the Union commander's desire to avoid the further "useless effusion of blood" and inquiring what the terms of surrender might be.

Those terms did not include humiliation, Lee soon learned. On April 9, the Confederate commander was informed that his men could keep their lives, their horses, their dignity and their sidearms – including a handsome sword that Lee, in a new buttoned-up Confederate gray uniform, wore by his side when the two men met at the home of Wilmer McLean. Union Gen. Horace Porter, a Medal of Honor winner (and later Grant's personal secretary in the White House), thought the swordless Grant rather envied Lee's "long sword of exceedingly fine workmanship, the hilt studded with jewels."

But it is a historic fact that Grant never asked for it; moreover, in his own memoirs, published in 1885, Grant noted that the famous story – still repeated in some quarters to this day – of Lee proffering his sword to Grant only to have his Union counterpart respectfully hand it back is "the purest romance." In fact, Grant added, no mention of sidearms passed between the generals: Grant simply wrote it out in the terms of surrender, which Lee accepted.

Those terms could not, and did not mean facing up to what they had done – and why – and dealing with it honestly. It is often said that history is written by the victors, but this is not strictly true. The most chilling account of Agincourt that I've ever read didn't come from Henry V's side, or even Shakespeare. It came from by a Flemish knight named Jehan de Wavrin, who rode with the French and whose father and brother were killed in the battle.

So it is with Sons of the South and their famous "Lost Cause." Brandishing selective quotes from Abraham Lincoln, citing slogans about "states' rights," and emboldened by hagiographic histories of Lee and his lieutenants, the Sons (and daughters) of the South have convinced themselves, and many others, of something that never was.

"To most soldiers in the Confederate Army, the war was not about slavery," writes a gentleman from Beltsville, Md., named Lawrence Ink in a recent letter to the editor of The Washington Post. "It was about patriotism for one's state. Most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves and were not fighting to protect slavery. ... Nor did President Abraham Lincoln initially view the war as about slavery. His objective was to preserve the union. Those who claim the war was only about slavery need to read some history."

Well, I've read a good deal of American history, and written some as well, and my belief is that it's important to confront this view forcefully because the claim that this conflict was not about slavery is wrong, deeply wrong, no matter how sincerely those who adhere to it may feel – or how bravely the rebels acquitted themselves in battle. Grant himself felt that he could separate his feelings of the Southern soldiers, including Lee, from the perverted institution that induced them to take up arms against their own nation.

"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly," he wrote, "and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."

And what exactly was that cause?

The answer is not to be found in any of the Douglas Southall Freeman's three-volume histories of Lee and his men or in Martha Mitchell's nostalgic recreation of the Old South. It can be found other places, however, if one looks a little deeper. University of Kentucky historian William W. Freehling called the decades' long argument over slavery in the U.S. Congress in the 1830s and 1840s the "Pearl Harbor" of the Civil War. In a brilliant book called "Arguing About Slavery," scholar William Lee Miller notes that what made this chapter in American history so compelling is precisely that there were no bombs as at Pearl Harbor. There were words many hundreds of thousands of them that, in the end, couldn't forestall the shells fired on Fort Sumter.

It was not a coincidence that the Civil War broke out there, in South Carolina. That state had always been been home to a special breed of Southern politician, men like Rep. James Henry Hammond, who said this on the House floor in an 1836 speech sarcastically castigating those who would confer freedom, or even common humanity, on blacks:

"Are we prepared to see them mingling in our Legislatures? Is any portion of this country prepared to see them enter these halls and take their seats by our sides, in perfect equality with the white representatives of an Anglo Saxon race ... to see them placed at the heads of your Departments; or to see, perhaps, some 'Othello' or 'Toussaint' or 'Boyer' gifted with genius and inspired by ambition grasp the presidential wreath, and wield the destinies of this great Republic? From such a picture I turn with irrepressible disgust."

Well, it took 172 years, but an African-American with a name a lot more exotic than Othello or Toussaint did indeed become president of these United States. And it was particularly tin-eared, historically speaking, for a member of that self-same South Carolina delegation to hector Barack Obama at last year's State of the Union address. In truth, James Henry Hammond's racist diatribe was milder than those by other Southern "statesmen" who stirred hate and fear among their countrymen in the days leading up to the Civil War.

Jefferson Davis, in a speech to the Confederate Congress in April 1861, extolled slavery as a benevolent invention that allowed a "superior race" to transform "brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers." Alexander H. Stephens, Jefferson Davis' vice president, proclaimed that Jefferson and the Founders' high-minded declarations of universal liberty were "in violation of the laws of nature." This was profoundly wrong, Stephens said.

"Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite idea," thundered the vice president of the Confederacy. "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."

This was the kind of thing said by a group of now-forgotten men called "secession commissioners." They were dispatched in 1860 from South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama to other state capitals in the South urging state legislatures to prepare for secession. These men outlined a bloody apocalyptic scenario of black rebellion and the attendant slaughter of whites – with frequent allusions to mass rape and throat-slitting. They invariably mentioned Haiti as the relevant example, and stated flatly that this is what Lincoln wished on the South.

"The [Haitian] Negro ... arose with all the fury of the beast, and scenes were then enacted over a comparatively few planters, that the white fiends [of the North] would delight to see re-enacted now with us," Andrew Pickens Calhoun – son of John C. Calhoun – said in Columbia, S.C.

"Our deliverance from this great danger, in my opinion, is to be found in the reserved right of the states to withdraw from injury and oppression." So said Gov. John J. Pettus of Mississippi in his own capital on Nov. 26, 1860. The "injury" he alluded to was the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. The "oppression" was Lincoln's avowed opposition to the expansion of slavery to any new states – a stance that was the organizing principle of the newly formed Republican Party.

In Pettus' speech that day, Lincoln's as-yet-unformed administration was referred to as "Black Republican rule." That phrase "Lincoln and the Black Republicans" was mentioned a thousand times by Southern politicians, and quoted faithfully in the Southern press. It is a reminder that the key issue in the 1860 campaign was slavery, that Southerners were openly discussing withdrawing from the Union before Election Day, and that secession was accomplished before Lincoln arrived in Washington. Indeed, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as president of the Confederacy before Lincoln took office himself. And all of this was brought about by the South's fears that slavery's days were numbered.

Secession, Pettus insisted, was the only way of escaping "Black Republican politics and free Negro morals," something he assured his fellow Mississippians that would turn Mississippi into "a cesspool of vice, crime and infamy."

Over in Charleston, the General Assembly authorized a convention in Columbia when word reached the capital of Lincoln's victory. Even before it took place, both U.S. senators resigned their seats in Congress and the Legislature appropriated money to equip an army of 10,000 men. John Archer Elmore, a native South Carolinian then practicing law in Montgomery, was dispatched as Alabama's secession commissioner. Lincoln's election, he told the delegates, was "an avowed declaration of war upon the institutions, the rights, and the interests of the South."

The sole institution he alluded to, of course, was slavery. Occasionally secession commissioners would mention "states' rights." But the only imperiled "right" they ever got around to mentioning was the custom of holding other human beings in bondage. There was nothing subtle about this, nothing genteel or evocative of "Gone with the Wind" in the contemporaneous appeals. Lincoln was routinely drawn in Southern newspapers with ape-like features, bent on the destruction of the South and even the white race itself.

"Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the Negro as an ignorant, inferior barbarian race incapable of self-government, and not therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political or social equality," Mississippi secession commissioner William L. Harris told Georgia's Legislature. Lincoln, he said, was committed on a course "to overturn and strike down this great feature of our Union."

These accounts, and many others, are contained in a thin paperback volume of only 103 pages called "Apostles of Disunion." It was written by Charles B. Dew, a son of the South whose ancestors on both sides fought for the Confederacy. At age 14, Dew's father Jack – named for Stonewall Jackson – presented him with a .22-caliber rifle and the "Lee's Lieutenants" trilogy. Charles Dew grew up and became a professor of history at Williams College. His groundbreaking 2001 book was published by the University of Virginia Press, and in its opening chapter Professor Dew takes note of the 1998 flap over "Confederate History Month" then roiling Richmond under Gov. James Gilmore.

Using the words uttered by the South's secession commissioners and its elected leaders themselves, Dew debunks the myths he learned as a boy. Among those he quotes are William L. Harris, who had turned down an offer from President James Buchanan to serve on the Supreme Court. A native Georgian who was well known as an orator and debater, Harris ended his 1860 speech to Atlanta's secession convention with this florid oratorical flourish:

"Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish – the part of Mississippi is chosen. She will never submit to the principles and policies of this Black Republican administration. She had rather see the last of her race, men, women and children, immolated in one common funeral pyre than see them subjected to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the Negro race."

That was the true face of the "Lost Cause." It's a hard one to credit. Yes, most men in the Confederate army did not own slaves. Many believed they were fighting for their honor, and out of love of their native states. Some, like Robert E. Lee, did so reluctantly. But that doesn't change either the nature of the rebel government under whose banner they marched, or the depraved institution that the Confederate government had been formed to perpetuate.