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For much of the last decade, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) has been roiled by an between and those who want to keep the Southern heritage group a kind of history and genealogy club.

It鈥檚 beginning to look like the racists won.

First came the news, last August, that the SCV was planning a Feb. 19 march down Dexter Avenue here in Montgomery, Ala., to 鈥淐ELEBRATE THE BEGINNING OF THE CONFEDERACY鈥� and ensure that it 鈥渋s remembered and portrayed in the right way.鈥� What the SCV meant by 鈥渢he right way鈥� was made obvious by its website promoting the event, which insists that 鈥渢he South was right!鈥� and claims that 鈥渢here is no difference between the invasion of France by Hitler and the invasion of the Southern states by Lincoln.鈥�

And now, from the Mississippi Division of the SCV, comes this new gem: The group wants the state to issue a special license plate, keyed like the Montgomery march to the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War, to honor 鈥斅燼 millionaire Memphis slave trader before the war, an apparent war criminal who presided over the massacre of surrendering black prisoners at Fort Pillow, Tenn., during it, and the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan afterward, when the Klan鈥檚 terrorist violence paved the way to a Jim Crow South.

apologists in the SCV and elsewhere claim that Forrest has been mischaracterized, that he was a good man who disbanded the Klan when it became violent. Mississippi SCV member Greg Stewart that Forrest had sought 鈥淐hristian redemption鈥� and ultimately rejected the Klan. 鈥淗e redeemed himself in his own time,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e should respect that.鈥�

That is false. Forrest, for all the fawning attention he鈥檚 received from the historical revisionists of the neo-Confederate movement, was certainly a brilliant and highly successful cavalry general 鈥� but he was also a homicidal bully.

Before the war, according to a newspaper account at the time, he was known for personally bullwhipping slaves who were held stretched out in the air by four other slaves. Women slaves were reportedly stripped naked and whipped with a leather thong dipped in salt. Former slaves later backed up these accounts.

In 1864, Forrest demanded the surrender of 580 mostly black troops at Fort Pillow, warning them that otherwise, 鈥淚 cannot be responsible for your fate,鈥� even as he stealthily and illegally improved his position during negotiations under the white flag. Then, when the Union commander refused, Forrest unleashed his men. 鈥淭he slaughter was awful,鈥� an appalled Confederate sergeant later wrote his family. 鈥淚 with several others tried to stop the butchery and at one time partially succeeded, but Gen. Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs, and the carnage continued.鈥� Numerous surviving Union soldiers reported hearing Confederate officers saying that Forrest had ordered them to 鈥渒ill the last God damn one of them.鈥�

Forrest was known for personally executing deserters or Confederates who fled the field. As the war came to a close, he came upon a father and son near Selma, Ala., and decided they were deserters. He ordered them shot and their bodies left out for two days before burial with a sign, 鈥淪hot for desertion,鈥� hung above them. Several days later, it emerged that the pair had, in fact, been entirely innocent.

After the war, even as former Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was urging fellow Southerners to 鈥減romote harmony and good will鈥� in the reborn Union, Forrest initiated hard-line resistance to Reconstruction and secretly became the Klan鈥檚 first national leader. It is false that he disbanded the Klan because it became violent. In fact, Forrest disbanded the Klan 鈥� after lying to Congress about his membership 鈥� only after its work was done and it had come under severe criticism. Klan terrorism had by then already made it impossible for blacks and Republicans to vote.

Both the Montgomery march and the Mississippi license plate request are part of a whole series of events planned by the SCV to commemorate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War. None of them give so much as a nod to the horrors of slavery or to the civil rights movement that finally liberated the South a century later 鈥� and, in fact, the Montgomery neo-Confederate parade, in a particularly ugly and unmentioned irony, follows the same route as the end of the famous 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr.

None of this is much of a surprise if you take a look at the national promoting the series of events, including the Montgomery march, that are meant to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War. There, a series of writers attempt to make the case that slavery had nothing to do with the war, another utter falsehood. In fact, as virtually all serious historians agree, the South seceded because it became obvious that Congress would not allow the extension of slavery to the new Western territories, threatening the slave lobby鈥檚 dominance. The Texas Declaration of the Causes of Secession, for example, said plainly that the free states were 鈥減roclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality for all men, irrespective of race or color,鈥� and added that blacks were 鈥渞ightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race.鈥� Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, said as much in his infamous 1861 鈥淐ornerstone鈥� speech: 鈥淥ur new Government is founded on exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery 鈥� subordination to the superior race 鈥� is his natural and moral condition.鈥�

But these historical facts are of no interest to the SCV. Instead, while most Americans remember the bloodiest war in American history as the nation鈥檚 most trying moment, the SCV is busy promoting a Southern past that never was.