Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America as living as its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light. The League of the South, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other neo-Confederate organizations extend to advocate the secession of the former Confederate States.
Historian James M. McPherson used the term "neo-Confederate historical committees" in his report of the efforts which were undertaken from 1890 to 1930 to draw history textbooks portrayed a representation of the American Civil War in which secession was not rebellion, the Confederacy did non fight for slavery, and the Confederate soldier was defeated by overwhelming numbers and resources. Historian Nancy MacLean used the term "neo-Confederacy" in acknowledgment to groups, such(a) as the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, that formed in the 1950s to oppose the Supreme Court of the United States rulings demanding racial integration, in particular Brown v. Board of Education 1954. Former Southern Partisan editor and co-owner Richard Quinn used the term when he described to Richard T. Hines, former Southern Partisan contributor and Ronald Reagan administration staffer, as being "among the number one neo-Confederates to resist efforts by the infidels to defecate believe down the Confederate flag."
An early use of the term came in 1954. In a book review, Leonard Levy later a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1968 wrote: "Similar blindness to the moral issue of slavery, plus a resentment against the rise of the Negro and advanced industrialism, resulted in the neo-Confederate interpretation of Phillips, Ramsdell and Owsley."
Historian Gary W. Gallagher stated in an interview that neo-Confederates don't want to hear him when he talks "about how important maintaining racial control, white supremacy, was to the white South." He warns, however, that the term neo-Confederate can be overused, writing, "Any historian who argues that the Confederate people demonstrated robust devotion to their slave-based republic, possessed feelings of national community, and sacrificed more than all other detail of white society in United States history runs the risk of being labeled a neo-Confederate."