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Gray
vs. Gray Columbia, Tenn. --- The Sons of Confederate Veterans, dedicated to commemorating those who lost the Civil War, now finds itself locked in a new war, and there's nothing civil about it. This time, all the combatants wear gray, because the Sons are at war with one another. Looking out from the columned entrance way of "Elm Springs," the antebellum mansion that serves as the Sons' national headquarters, a visitor sees only the pastoral serenity of middle Tennessee's low hills. One would never suspect this 109-year-old organization, comprising descendants of Rebel soldiers and dedicated to the dry business of genealogy, is convulsed by infighting. But the SCV --- the nation's largest Civil War heritage organization, with about 32,000 members (4,243 in Georgia) and assets of $6.2 million --- has shattered into two main factions. On one side are self-proclaimed activists, now in power and set on changing the organization. On the other side are self-styled traditionalists, who fear the SCV has been taken over by extremists. The activists blast their opponents as "grannies" and "headstone polishers," who don't want to fight to preserve Confederate heritage. Traditionalists say activists are racists and extremists who want the South to resecede from the United States. Jeffery Massey, a traditionalist leader from Oklahoma, summed up the mood. "My level of disgust knows no bounds," he said. "They hate us, and I have nothing but contempt for them." Kirk Lyons, an activist leader and a controversial attorney specializing in what he calls "Southern rights," was just as unforgiving. "They need to shut up," he said of the traditionalists. "Then perhaps a healing process can start." The chances of anyone shutting up anytime soon are unlikely. At stake is the future direction of a group that has led the fight against efforts to remove Confederate symbols from public display across the South, from the state flag battles in Georgia to the removal of Confederate statues from Texas university parks. If the activists have their way, they say the SCV will become a powerful nationwide lobbying force. Traditionalists wanted to keep the group more focused on historical preservation, without extremist tactics. Now shunted out of power after recent elections and a court battle, traditionalists have headed off to start alternative heritage groups. They say the SCV controlled by the activists will wither and die as an extremist organization. Hundreds and possibly thousands of traditionalists are leaving the SCV for new groups, which are sprouting up across the country. Calling themselves "the United Sons of Confederate Soldiers" and other names, Confederate heritage groups from Oklahoma to Florida are incorporating, holding meetings and launching Web sites. Longtime leaders of the SCV have resigned. More resignations are expected. "This organization is really in serious trouble," said Allen M. Trapp Jr., an attorney from Carrollton who resigned his SCV membership. Good riddance, says Denne Sweeney, an activist leader and current SCV commander-in-chief, the group's top job. He estimated fewer than 500 people will leave over the dispute and said the departures will have little impact. The new groups, he said, will die out. The battle lines have been fluid and confusing, in part because every one in the SCV is supposed to be on the same side. The internal conflict has been made even more complicated by rumors, half-truths and falsehoods spread in telephone conversations and on the Internet. Once a soporific gentlemen's club that raised money to restore graveyards and burnish plaques, the SCV in recent years has been torn apart by tumultuous conventions, at least two lawsuits, accusations of misspent funds and accusations of ties to white supremacists. It has been downright scary in cyberspace, where sites post death threats against various leaders and hurl insults that would have curled the hair of a backwoods Confederate private. More aggressive Founded in Richmond in 1896, the SCV was apolitical for decades and had only a few thousand members. The group's dusty gentility changed in the 1990s. Growing interest in the Civil War, the dramatic influx of Northerners and immigrants to the South and the resulting fights over Confederate heritage led thousands of Southern men to join the SCV to fight against changes they opposed, such as new state flags. Many new members brought different ideas about how to preserve Confederate heritage. And in an organization that could not be more homogeneous --- white Southern males --- cracks began to appear. New members called for picketing, aggressive lobbying, issue campaigning and lawsuits --- unheard-of tactics in the traditional SCV. Some new members started espousing anti-United States views. Some would not say the Pledge of Allegiance. One Lyons ally, Roger McCredie, estimated thousands of members also belong to the League of the South, which advocates secession from the United States. The battle between the old and new guard came to a head in 2002, when Lyons ran for a regional post in the organization. He lost, after a contentious election in which his opponents discussed his ties to white supremacists, drawing attention of the media. Though Lyons lost, activist candidates starting winning SCV elections. Racists? Lyons, who does not hold national elected office in the group but is closely allied with the current leaders, denies being a racist, though he acknowledges that his father-in-law was a member of the Aryan Nation and that Lyons himself was married in an Aryan Nation church. "I'm controversial," he said. Lyons has represented members of the Ku Klux Klan. He is a co-founder of the Southern Legal Resource Center in Black Mountain, N.C., which files lawsuits over Confederate heritage issues and has received thousands of dollars from the SCV for "heritage defense." A page on the Southern Legal Resource Center's Web site discusses the "daily fight for respect and dignity faced by Confederate Southern-Americans." Traditionalists accuse activists of bullying to take control. SCV members who have opposed activists have been deluged with hate calls, threats and nasty e-mails. Those who oppose them at conventions have been harangued. "The SCV had devolved into storm troopers and show trials," said traditionalist Massey. Earl Faggert, of Heidelberg, Miss., a past SCV commander, said he is leaving the group after 35 years. He said he has been attacked by activists as elitist, but he said that charge is a screen to obscure his opponent's plans to funnel SCV money to groups opposed to the U.S. government. "The neo-secessionists, anarcho-extremists, whatever you want to call them, they put the elitist label on anyone who disagrees with them," Faggert said. "If being a loyal American means being an elitist, then go ahead and label me one." Showdown Tensions exploded last summer after Sweeney, the activist leader, won the commander election at a convention in Dalton. By the fall, he was feuding with the SCV's General Executive Council, which was controlled by traditionalists. In February 2005, the council sued Sweeney to get him out of office. A judge in Columbia granted the council a temporary order to take over the organization. They put Anthony Hodges, a dentist from Chattanooga, in as new commander. But Sons from the activist camp around the country rose up to denounce the council's legal action as a coup d'etat. The court reversed itself a month later and gave power back to Sweeney and his supporters. Within months, all traditionalists were kicked off the council. The case now is settled, except for who will have to pay the legal bills. Hodges, 50, recently resigned from the SCV after 35 years as a member. "Certain individuals are bubbling to the surface and I don't want them representing an organization that I am a member of," he said. "I just plain old don't like what they espouse." The organization's legal troubles aren't over. Robert Murphree, an attorney in Jackson, Miss., and a longtime member, recently filed a request asking a Mississippi court to determine whether an SCV endowment, worth about $3.1 million, should remain under SCV control. If the group were to lose that money, its total assets would be cut in half. "It's like you woke up one morning and your beautiful house is run over with termites," Murphree said of the activist movement. "Nut-case groups, racist groups and anti-Semite groups try to usurp our Confederate symbols and our Confederate history. . . . We don't want anything to do with them." A house divided Sweeney supporters don't want anything to do with traditionalists. At the summer convention in Nashville, the activist majority voted to expel a key faction of traditionalists --- the Military Order of the Stars & Bars. This is a subgroup for descendants of officers or Confederate government officials that has been part of the SCV since 1938. The Military Order, with 2,200 members, has shared the Elm Springs headquarters with the Sons since 1992. All of which leaves headquarters staff with the awkward task of dividing up the property in a house abruptly divided. These days the boardroom at the mansion is stacked with boxes full of Military Order papers and memorabilia ready to be shipped out. The Order is looking for a new headquarters. Soon, the two groups, linked for generations, will have nothing to do with each other. The job of working out the separation has fallen on Ben Sewell III, who since 2000 has been executive director of both the Sons and the Military Order. He said he has tried to keep out of the infighting, despite a daily barrage of angry e-mails, phone calls and letters from members across the country. The internal conflict does have historical precedent, right here in Columbia, site of one of the more embarrassing Confederate losses of the Civil War. On Nov. 29, 1864, Rebels had Yankees surrounded when night set in. Under cover of darkness, Union troops sneaked past sleeping Confederates, snoring only yards from them, and fled north. The next morning, Rebel commanders spent hours arguing about who screwed up. During the delay, federal troops prepared their defenses at Franklin, where they later slaughtered the Rebel army. The irony of Confederate leaders bickering near the very spot of the current SCV's headquarters isn't lost on Sewell. "I've had at least a hundred people say to me, this is why we lost the damn war," Sewell said, as he sat in his office, the walls covered with portraits of dour generals in gray uniforms.
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