Excerpt from The Gray Book The reasons for the Gray Book are purely defensive and on behalf of the truth of history, and the call for this publication comes from attacks, past, present and continuing, upon the history, people and institutions of this Southern section of our united country. These attacks and untruthful presentations of so called history demand refutation, for the South cannot surrender its birthright and we pray the day may never dawn when it will be willing to abandon the truth in a cowardly or sluggish spirit of pacifism. Nor do we care to see the day come when "The lie, its work well done, shall rot, Truth is strong and will prevail, When none shall care if it prevail or not." During the Great War, when the South and all other parts of our country were straining every nerve to defeat a common foe, strange and unbelievable as it may seem at such a time of crisis, there was a most remarkable flood of misrepresentation, false analogy, and distorted historical statements concerning our American history as it particularly relates to the Southern people. Ignorance, as well as deliberate distortion of facts, contributed to this unfortunate and ill-timed display. A distinguished New Englander writing to a prominent officer of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, stated, "so far as New England is concerned, prejudice is still deep," and those who keep abreast of things know that this state of affairs is not confined to that section. We have the deliberate statement of a well-known writer and literary worker, who knows whereof he speaks, that "much atrocious sectionalism" tries to get into "publications which will have a very wide circulation in a patriotic capacity.' Innumerable examples are on file and could be quoted but no one who reads at all could have failed to note this mass of unfair and untruthful statements which for years has filled newspapers, magazines and periodicals of the North. Nor has this defamation ceased with the end of the Great War - it still goes on, unabated, and there is a constant and strong stream of misrepresentation and false historical statement flowing from the North. Moreover, this constant reiteration of misstatement and falsehood has had the effect of totally misleading and blinding to the truth of our country's history foreigners who would naturally be unbiased and neutral. This was abundantly proven by Lloyd George's remarkable cable to the New York Times on the occasion of Lincoln's birthday during the last year of the Great War, "we are fighting the same battle which your countrymen fought under Lincoln's leadership fifty years ago. Lincoln did not shrink from vindicating both union and freedom by the terrible instrument of war." It is scarcely necessary to call attention to the totally untrue inferences to be drawn from this utterance, addressed to the world at large by England's leading statesman. And in France when Leon Buorgeoise cited the trial and execution of Major Wirz as a legal precedent for the trial of the German Kaiser by the Allies, he exhibited the same total misconception of the truth of our history, misled of course by years of false Northern teaching of our country's affairs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com