The product of over twenty years of research, The South Was Right! sets the historical record straight with one of the most persuasive, authoritative and compelling defences of the Southern Cause for Independence ever published anywhere.

     James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy, in their book The South Was Right! debunk the Yankee myth that the South never had a right to be a free nation.  In this text the authors demonstrate how the majority of what is taught as "civil war history" in this country is misleading and false. The South Was Right! effectively illustrates how Northern wartime propaganda was utilized by the victorious Yankees during the war to cloak in moral robes of self-righteousness their naked aggression against the Southern people.

Here are some currently accepted "facts" (Yankee Myths) about the "Civil War" challenged by The South Was Right!

Most Southerners supported slavery.

Southerners fought the "Civil War" to protect their slave property.

States never had a right to secede from the American Union.

Appomattox settled forever the issue of secession and State's Rights.

No patriotic American would ever support the breakup of the U.S.

Lincoln loved black people and fought for racial equality.

     The South Was Right! is not content, however, to merely give the reader a new perspective on the War for Southern Independence.  The authors go beyond the 19th century and into the present day to show how the Federal Government's conquest of the CSA continues to negatively impact the lives of modern-day Southerners and, indeed, of all Americans.  Through meticulous research and with flawless logic, they demonstrate how the Yankee victory was used to alter the functional relationship between the States and the federal government in ways that have negatively impacted the freedom and well-being of Americans ever since.   For the first time, modern Americans reading this book will come to fully comprehend how the oppressive "big government" so hated today is the lineal descendant of Confederate defeat at Appomattox.

     In addition to explaining the legal ramifications of the war, the authors also debunk liberal, anti-South, demagoguery over the race issue by documenting how the South has been unjustly made the national "whipping boy" for America's racial frictions.  Several chapters discuss the New England origins of the American slave trade and they delve into the true nature of race relations in the antebellum South --emerging with a picture which doesn't quite mesh with the fictional hype of Hollywood's "ROOTS" and other anti-Southern, revisionist television " docu-dramas" that have taken the place of historical scholarship in the education of our people.

One of the most valuable services rendered by the Kennedy's is the chapter they devoted to telling the story of the long-ignored military service of black Southerners in the Confederate ar med forces.  The Kennedy's description of the contributions of Southern black Confederates to the Confederate war effort punctures the "conventional wisdom" which holds that the Southern cause revolved solely around a monolithic Southern effort to preserve slavery.

The South Was Right! goes to the source by citing the actual testimony of these black Confederates regarding their service to the Confederacy and their motivations for defending Dixie from the Northern invaders.  It also includes eye-witness testimonials from Northern soldiers about their numerous military encounters with black Confederate soldiers.  The Kennedy brothers' documentation of the voluntary and enthusiastic participation of black Southrons in the military defense of Dixie is a jarring factual rebuke to the tired old lie that the War was viewed by most of its participants and especially by most Southern blacks as a struggle to end slavery.

     Speaking of Yankee Myths -- readers of The South Was Right! will learn in painstaking detail how the wartime propaganda of the New Englanders was institutionalized into a politically correct, but historically inaccurate, "history" of the War designed to cow the opponents of centralized rule from Washington by de-legitimizing the sovereignty of the States of the American union.  The Kennedy's refer to this official history as "The Yankee Myth of History" -- an apt description of the story line propagated by the advocates of "Big Government" to hide their destruction of the original constitutional relationship of the States vis-a-vis the the national government in Washington.

     The product of over two decades of research and meticulous scholarship, The South Was Right! contains an extensive bibliography and footnotes section detailing the unimpeachable sources of information drawn upon by the authors.  Ironically, the great majority of the damning evidence cited by the authors is derived from the first person accounts of Yankee participants in the invasion and conquest of the Confederate States and not from writers of the Southern apologia.  Students of the War and of contemporary Southern political thought will appreciate the many references to original source materials found in the book.

     If you are a Southerner, you owe it to yourself and your family to read The South Was Right!  If you have children who are about to study the history of the War in school, they will appreciate having access to a book that lays out the inconvenient facts of history that the politically correct textbook authors chose to leave out.

- Now Available at the Quartermaster's Table -