“Lynching and mayhem are not the only dimensions of southern history worth preserving.”

I spoke once at a dinner meeting of the Military Order of Stars and Bars (MOSB), a Confederate heritage society that gathers every once in a while at a nearby Steak ‘n’ Ale restaurant. Most of the time, neo-Confederates and I leave each other pretty much alone, but they had issued the invitation as something of a polite challenge, after some unguarded remarks I had dropped in public about reenactors. I was feeling pretty tense, since my topic was “Liberty, Slavery, and the Coming of the Civil War,” and I didn’t think the Military Order would like it very much. But still, I buckled on my best bravado, figuring that if my paleo-Confederate ancestors had the courage to stare down Yankee gun barrels, I could do the same with their modern-day admirers.