Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is an American national heritage organization with members in all fifty states and in almost a dozen countries in Europe, Australia and South America. SCV membership is open to all [1] male descendants age 12 and over (lineal and collateral) of soldiers or sailors who served the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War [1] The SCV has a network of genealogists to assist applicants in tracing their ancestor's Confederate service.[1] The SCV has programs at the local, state, and national levels for its members, such as marking and restoring Confederate graves and monuments, performing memorial ceremonies, conducting or supporting historical re-enactments, and holding regular meetings to discuss the military and political history, causes and consequences of the American Civil War.[1] Local units of the SCV are called "camps." The SCV publishes books and other media, including the magazine Confederate Veteran. It also provides scholarships to undergraduate students, supports medical research and conducts a national youth camp.[1]
In recent years, the SCV has been active in "heritage defense" in response to what it considers unjust criticism of the Confederacy and its symbols and of the South in U.S. history.[2]
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Following the Civil War hundreds of thousands of veterans, North and South, joined veterans' organizations for mutual support and camaraderie. Union veterans established the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) in 1866. Most of the Confederate veteran organizations merged into the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) in New Orleans in 1889.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans is the direct heir of the United Confederate Veterans.[3] The SCV was organized at Richmond, Virginia, in June 1896.[3] At first the SCV took care of their literal fathers, but as the veterans died, the organization took on the task of maintaining their graves and monuments and keeping the public aware of the principles for which they had fought.
Reflecting the social and charitable nature of the organization, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush tendered letters of commendation to the SCV and affiliates,[4][5] as have members of the United States Congress.
On May 25, 2009, President Barack Obama garnered praise from SCV Commander Chuck McMichael, who stated, “He upheld the tradition of the office to which he was elected. I do intend to send him a thank you letter. This is the kind of thing that transcends politics.” This statement was in response to Obama's decision to continue the tradition going back sixteen presidents of the U.S. President sending a wreath to the Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day.[6]
Some notable members of the SCV are or have been President Harry S. Truman, Country Music Legend Hank Williams Jr., Actor Clint Eastwood, Film Director R. Michael Givens, and Political Commentator Patrick J. Buchanan.
To mark the 150th anniversary of secession, the Georgia chapter of the SCV produced an advertisement in December 2010 which gave their version of events. The History Channel refused to allow the ad to play during their series on the Civil War, calling it "a partisan position on a controversial issue".[7]
The Sons of Confederate Veterans describes its mission as "preserving the history and legacy of Confederate heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause." Stephen D. Lee's 1906 charge to the SCV is widely cited by the organization as one of its organizing principles:
"To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we will submit the vindication of the cause for which we fought; To your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, and the perpetuation of those principles he loved and which made him glorious and which you also cherish. Remember: It is your duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations."[8]
The SCV's most well-known activities involve the organization's campaigns to keep parks commemorating the Confederacy from being renamed or rededicated to non-Confederate themes.[9] The organization uses Confederate parks for rallies. The SCV has protested against Ku Klux Klan rallies in the same parks, arguing that the KKK should not be identified with the Confederacy.[10] However, in the past, the Klan has actively sought out recruits in the SCV.[11]
The SCV's home office remained at Richmond for many years, but was in recent times relocated to Columbia, Tennessee, where it is housed in a historic antebellum mansion, Elm Springs.
Members are not exclusively white: notable black members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans include retired educator Nelson W. Winbush.[12][13], U.S. Army officer, Major Willie Levi Casey Jr.[14], and former NAACP chapter president, H. K. Edgerton (associate member).[15]
One of the most visible evidences of the SCV are the state-issued Specialty Automobile License Plates available to vehicle drivers in Georgia,[16] North Carolina,[17] Alabama,[18] Maryland,[19] Mississippi,[20] Louisiana,[21] South Carolina,[22] Tennessee,[23] and Virginia.[24] In each case, the license plate features the Sons of Confederate Veterans logo, which incorporates the square Confederate Battle Flag.
There is some opposition in a number of these states to putting the Confederate battle flag on state license plates, given the widespread association of the flag with racist causes. The North Carolina appellate court upheld the issuance of such license plates in SONS OF CONFEDERATE v. DMV (1998) and noted: "We are aware of the sensitivity of many of our citizens to the display of the Confederate flag. Whether the display of the Confederate flag on state-issued license plates represents sound public policy is not an issue presented to this Court in this case. That is an issue for our General Assembly."
In the 1990s, disagreements over the purpose of the organization emerged within the SCV. At issue was an alleged shift in the SCV’s mission from "maintaining gravestones, erecting monuments and studying Civil War history" to more issue-centric concerns. The SCV's new concerns included "fight[ing] for the right to display Confederate symbols everywhere from schools to statehouses."[25]
Increasingly, the more 'activist' members of the SCV gained electoral support and were elected to leadership positions in the organization.[26] Members of the more traditionalist camp alleged that influence of the League of the South had an impact on the new direction the SCV has taken. One ally of the activist wing claimed that thousands of SCV members are also League of the South members.[26] News reports state that the activists advocate "picketing, aggressive lobbying, issue campaigning and lawsuits" in favor of what they term "heritage defense" to prevent "heritage violations," which the organization defines as "[a]ny attack upon our Confederate Heritage, or the flags, monuments, and symbols which represent it."[26][27]
In 2002, SCV dissidents formed a new organization: Save the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SSCV), composed of members and former members of SCV.[28] According to SSCV co-Founder Walter Charles Hilderman, "[a]bout a hundred or so individuals and groups identified themselves on the [SSCV] Web site as supporting Save the SCV" not long after the group was founded, though the current membership numbers for the SSCV are not available.[29] The Southern Mercury responded by asserting that most of the dissension had come to an end by 2003 and that the majority of the members of the SCV were agreeing with the heritage preservation activities espoused by the new SCV leadership.[30]
In early 2005, the SCV council sued to expel SCV president Dennis Sweeney from office. The court initially granted the council temporary control of the organization, but its final decision returned power to Sweeney. Thirteen of the 25 council members were expelled from the council shortly after Sweeney regained control. Nine of the council members expelled were former "Commanders-in-Chief" of the SCV, a status that heretofore had come with a life membership on the council.[31]
By the SCV's summer 2005 convention, the activist wing was firmly in control of the council, and severed much of the SCV's long-standing relationship with the more traditionalist Military Order of the Stars and Bars (MOSB). MOSB, founded in 1938, had been closely involved with the SCV. MOSB had shared its headquarters with the SCV since 1992 and co-published Southern Mercury with the SCV. The MOSB's Commander General, Daniel W. Jones, citing "the continuing political turmoil within the SCV," moved the MOSB out of the shared headquarters, ended the joint magazine publishing enterprise, and separated the two organizations' finances. In 2006, for the first time the two organizations held separate conventions.[26][32] The Southern Mercury declares that most of the SCV's members are now united in the fight against the "War on Southern Culture."[30]
In 2002, the SCV was criticized in the media and by a group of SCV dissenters for the SCV's views of Civil War history and the organization's alleged association with neo-confederate individuals and organizations. Joe Conason, writing in Salon, and Jason Zengerle, writing in The New Republic, have argued that the SCV has morphed from an apolitical organization dedicated to Civil War history to a politicized organization dedicated to preserving the "Lost Cause" version of the history of the Civil War and the 1861–1865 era.[33] The SCV states that "[t]he preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution".[3]
Civil War historian James M. McPherson has associated the SCV with the neo-confederate movement and described board members of the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia as "undoubtedly neo-Confederate." He further said that the SCV and their equivalent for female descendants, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), have "white supremacy" as their "thinly veiled agendas."[34] The incident made McPherson a controversial figure among Confederate history groups and prompted a UDC boycott call and letter-writing campaign against him. In response to this boycott, McPherson stated that he did not mean to imply that all SCV or UDC chapters or everyone who belongs to them promotes a white supremacist agenda. He said that some of the people have a hidden agenda.[35]
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