FUTURE MEETINGS The February meeting will return to the Southern Heritage Complex. If you have any questions about the meeting time or location, call Commander Sam Price (638-2676) or any other camp officer. Visitors lead to new members and are always welcome. Place our monthly camp meetings, first Thursday of each month, on your schedule.

FUTURE PLANS Do not forget we have about 25 headstones on the way to set in the ground. Past Commander McMaster has located four Confederate VA headstones at the Marble Works that need to be set. It appears they were ordered by someone, delivered and never picked up for setting.
Jeff Gambrione has found the name in an old diary of a Georgia soldier who fell in defense of Vicksburg at Chickasaw Bayou. The camp is working with Jeff to order a stone.

SUMMER CONVENTIONS The 2005 Mississippi Division Convention hosted by Sam Davis Camp 596 will be held the first weekend in June (3 and 4). Registration fee is $28 per member. The hotel is the Holiday inn Airport on Hwy 49 in Gulfport. The telephone number for motel reservations is 1/800/327-0200 (ask for SCV rate $65 per night). For information go to http://www.mississippiscv.org/. The 2005 SCV General Convention will be held July 20-23, 2005 at the Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. For information go to http://www.scv2005.com/
For more information about conventions contact Eddy Cresap at 638-5973

REFLECTIONS MONTHLY PROGRAMS
Over the last year the camp commander has tried to get some of our programs with a more local flavor. In keeping with this theme, I have asked Joe Gerache to tell the "Story of the Cannon." He agreed. He will do this in February.
Some time this summer, I would like to get Brantley (From Bolton) and his bunch to come and tell us about their heavy artillery outfit. I understand the Chicago Mercantile was a huge wholesale outfit in Chicago. They did business all over the country and the world. Thus - They equipped Two Companies, one Southern and One Northern. Brantley and his people represent the Southern Company. This could be two or three programs; # 1. The Cannons. # 2. The Politics, why these people would do such a thing, etc. # 3. The Results (What they got for their money.)
Another idea we are looking at is to get Terry Brantley to come and tell us about the Joe Davis - Jefferson Davis Plantation which is located North of Edwards and Bolton. As we all know, Joe Davis fled there when he was forced off Davis Island. Jefferson visited his brother when he came to Vicksburg in the fall of 1862. This is mostly a lost chapter.
Eddy Cresap has agreed to present a program on "Why I became a member of the S C V and What I have accomplished and received from my membership."
To volunteer to present a program over the next year please contact Commander Price

WHAT DID THEY SAY, SLAVERY OR CONSTITUTION ISSUES
From the Charleston (South Carolina) Tri-Weekly Mercury, Saturday, April 20, 1861 For What Are We Contending?
For more than thirty years the people of South Carolina have been contending against the consolidation of the Government of the United States.
Created as a Confederation of Republics whose central power, authority and jurisdiction, were carefully limited by the compact of the Constitution, and made conformable to, and within its proper limits, co-ordinate with the original and reserved powers, authority and jurisdiction of the several States of which it was composed, the United States Government has steadily usurped powers not granted progressively trenched upon States Rights. Not a bald, irresponsible, unchecked, vulgar democracy of mere numbers, was organized by the Instrument of Federation between the States; but a well adjusted, duplicate system, harmonious and complementary the central common Government performing its allotted functions within its prescribed sphere, and each State Government performing all other functions of government not expressly yielded to the other. If that government became practically omnipresent, it was clear that it must be a most fearful despotism- despotism of one section of the Union over the other- despotism of Manufacturing over Agricultural States- of Free States over Slaveholding States. Earnestly and faithfully have our public men at Washington contended against this fatal consummation. It was not for free trade only in 1833- it was not against anti-slavery fanaticism only in 1853- it is not now against our preclusion from our Territories, or the vulgar crew who fill the high places at Washington, that we have set up for ourselves a separate destiny. These are all effects of one great cause- the consolidation of the Federal Government. As facts, we have been obliged to meet them- but the facts themselves were comparatively insignificant. They were like the ship money which HAMPDEN refused to pay- like the three pence a pound on tea, which our fathers resisted. They proved to us that we were slaves of a consolidated despotism- that self government, and the security which self government alone can impart- and liberty, and the priceless self esteem and proud repose, which liberty only can inspire- were no longer our inheritance or possession. It was in vain that South Carolina endeavored to prove that this despotism existed. We had the forms of a free representative government. There was a party in the Northern states professing those principles of limitation and restriction, which might yet be restored to ascendancy in the government, and make it again a free government. There was a deep reverence and attachment to the Union which blinded the understanding of some of the brightest intelligences of the South. These all conspired to carry the South on in the chains of a sectional despotism, which looked, in its final consummation, to nothing short of our absolute subjection and ruin. South Carolina, by her secession, forced the test of the nature of the government under which we lived. It has proved itself. As one scale of hypocrisy after another fell off of its poisonous surface, it stood forth a pure, fierce monster of despotism. The National Intelligencer, of Washington, for forty years the central organ of consolidation, identifies its policy with the New York Tribune. BLAIN, the mouth-piece of JACKSON Democracy in 1838, and JOHNSON of Tennessee, its modern prototype, and DOUGLAS and BUCHANAN, now join with LINCOLN and CHASE and SEWARD in the grand effort to establish, by the sword, what has long existed as a policy- the despotism of a consolidated government under the Constitution of the United States. The matter is now plain. State after state in the South sees the deadly development, and are moving to take their part in the grand effort to redeem their liberties. It is not a contest for righteous taxation. It is not a contest for the security of slave property. It is a contest for freedom and free government, in which everything dear to man is involved. Shall we submit to the sectional and remorseless despotism of a majority of the Northern States, with no restraints on their lawless will, no checks on their omnivorous rapacity? That is the question. Every man, every boy in the South answers No! And they will fight the foul usurpers and tyrants, if they dare the issue of war, as long as the streams run and the sun shines on our valleys.

RETENTION AND RECRUITING BY CIC
What are we doing at the camp level to meet the challenge of the CIC? I don't think there is any great mystery about retention. You may recall I wrote a column about this a year or so ago. I had the distilled wisdom of quite a few camps in that column. The reason members leave are as follows:

1. Social isolation.
   
2. Camp politics
   
3. Lack of activity
   

#1 is the big killer. So long as new members come to meetings and are made to feel like they are social outcasts, the problem will continue. Camp politics and lack of activities are close behind, but members will not stay with any organization where they do not feel welcome at meetings. Most of the members we lose are lost at the end of the first year of membership, a direct result of the social isolation and lack of activity.
This problem cannot be solved at the National, Army or even Division level. Changes have to occur at the camp level. "Quick and dirty" ways to make a dent in the problem:

1. Break up the camp cliques.
   
2. Publish a camp newsletter.
   
3. Mandatory name tags at meetings.
   
4. Use a buddy system with new members.
   
5. Plan good activities and camp programs.
   

Division and Brigade officers can help considerably by working with the camps directly. Brigade officers, for example, should be required to attend all the camp meetings in their Brigade on some sort of rotating basis, and give critiques to the camp commanders on what they find.
I just don't think there is any mystery about what must be done to retain more members. The mystery is in how to get the camps to do it.
We have a similar problem with recruiting. We actually have a pretty good system at National and Division level. But when camps sit on leads and do nothing with them for weeks or months, the potential members lose interest rapidly.

God Save the South,
Denne A. Sweeney
Commander-in-Chief
Sons of Confederate Veterans

LEE JACKSON CELEBRATION 2005
Our January meeting was held at Maxwell's restaurant. It is always a joy to gather around old friends for a good meal. We had a good attendance for our annual Lee Jackson Celebration. Thanks to all that came and to Past Commander Cresap and McMaster for our program.

SCV PROUD TO SUPPORT PROM DRESS LAWSUIT
As the temperature in Lexington Ky. struggled to maintain double-digit status, Jacqueline Duty stood outside the federal courthouse in Lexington, KY, accompanied by her mother, her attorney and representatives from the Kentucky Sons of Confederate Veterans, and showed her prom dress to the gathered media. The Confederate Battle Flag motif for her dress was "to show Southern pride and heritage" she said, "a lot of people fought and died for this". The principal of her school decided at the last minute to prevent Jacqueline from attending her prom due to her display of pride in her heritage; he overreacted as soon as she arrived at the prom by pounding his fist on the car she was in, physically preventing her from even opening her door, and ordering police to remove her. When asked by the media why the lawsuit, Jacqueline told them plainly: "to stand up for what is right". After the frigid news conference Jacqueline and her mother waited in the doorway while her attorney, Earl-Ray Neal of Richmond, KY, accompanied by Don Shelton of the Kentucky SCV, went upstairs to file the suit. "It was an honor to accompany an attorney of Earl-Ray's stature on this historic filing," said Shelton, "and certainly it has been an honor to work with Jacqueline and her family. She is a smart, brave young lady. What happened here today should serve to strongly emphasize to school systems that civil rights and the constitution are for Southerners too." Founded in 1896, the Sons of Confederate Veterans has spent many decades preserving and promoting history and heritage in libraries, cemeteries and symposiums. However, with the activism of today's politically correct extremists, the SCV is having to preserve and promote history and heritage in courtrooms as well. "We can no longer sit around while extremists make it some sort of crime to be a Southerner," Shelton concluded. Please send contributions for the Duty Defense Fund to:
Kentucky Division, SCV
Adjutant Bazz Childress
704 Pinnacle Ct.
Lexington, KY 40515

They are much appreciated. Just be sure to note "Duty" or "prom dress" on the check.