Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (review)

556Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril homeward bound from an Austin recording session when at Riverside Drive and I35 , they were broadsided by a drunken driver going sixty-five miles per hour. Their injuries were devastating, with the Austin American-Statesman actually announcing Vince's death in that day's earliest edition. Doctors at Breckinridge Hospital saved him, and he emerged from a coma a week later with brain and spinal cord damage , a mangled right arm, and partial vocal-cord paralysis inflicted by his tracheotomy . Years of lonely rehab followed as Vince struggled to regain himself. He had to cope with anger, depression, and the breakup of his marriage as well as excruciating physical pain. Vince turned part of his home space into "Music School," where he worked to relearn guitar, to remember the songs he had written, to recover a singing voice, and even to start composing again. He enrolled at Austin Community College where he got a two-year degree in commercial art, graduating "magna cum-later than most" (159). He worked at Goodwill for a period and sought day labor on Second Street, not getting hired but picking up inspiration for a new song. Vince slowly resumed performing and recording. One of the things that makes this book so real is the extent to which Vince relates his failures. There was the show at Anderson Fair on the second anniversary of the wreck that he felt good just to get through. Or his month-long stay in the Virgin Islands where he endured several cancellations, played for tips on the street and barely made money to cover his expenses. The triumphs included having his songs covered by Nanci Griffith and LyIe Lovett, releasing his first CD—the aptly titled Phoenix—in 1994 (with a memorable in-store performance at Waterloo Records), and opening for theJayhawks on a series of dates in Holland and Belgium. This is, ultimately, an incredibly inspirational story. I saw Vince BeII play at a campaign event in 1972 in a long-defunct club across the street from the Palm Center in Houston. A loyal handful of us strained to hear him above the jabberings of the social set and the politicians. Little has changed these lifetimes later, as in this book and in his recordings, Vince's voice still rises above the din. Lone Star College-KingwoodStephen K. Davis Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction. Edited by Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, and Edward H. Sebesta. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009. Pp. 354. Illustrations , figures, notes, contributors, index. ISBN 9780292718371, $60.00 cloth.) Neo-Confederacy presents ten essays assessing the "Neo-Confederate movement," an informal alliance of organizations and activists who embrace secession, historical revisionism, and ultra-conservative cultural values. "Neo-Confederate" organizations like the League of the South (LOS), which was founded in 1994, aspire to form a new southern nation from the states of the Confederacy but do not generally advocate violent rebellion. According to the book, Neo-Confederates focus instead on "home rule" for southern states and aggressive protection of "AngloCeltic " southern "heritage." Neo-Confederates also espouse racial segregation, 20ogBook Reviews557 patriarchal family structures, state recognition of Christianity, public display of Confederate symbols, and a decentralized economy. Most essays in Neo-Confederacy address the movement's cultural aspects (music, literature, education) and social tenets (gender, race, ethnicity and religion). All essays reflect the Neo-Confederacy's core historical thesis: that slavery was benign, but not the cause of the 'War for Southern Independence," and that secession from the Union was and continues to be constitutional and morally justified. Other contributors revisit recent squabbles over Confederate symbols, including the Georgia state flag and an internecine fight for control ofthe Sons ofConfederate Veterans (SCV). When compared to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s or the White Citizens Councils of the 1950s, the membership and political clout ofthe Neo-Confederates portrayed in this book remain negligible. According to Neo-Confederacy the LOS and SCV respectively numbered 15,000 (2003) and 27,000 (2006), but diese numbers belie the intensity of the Neo-Confederate worldview. For mainstream constitutional scholars, the Civil War conclusively resolved the secession debate. For Neo-Confederates, secession is a fundamental right, and...