Well, if they portrayed anyone as a southern belle they were telling the wrong story. The people in the story were not belles and beaux living an easy and elegant plantation life. They were hill people, descendents of the Scots who emigrated to America in the wake of the battle of Culloden. They didn't own slaves; hell, they barely owned themselves. They survived by dint of hard work and hard bargaining. They were clannish, suspicious of authority, stubborn as all hell, and more beholden to their interpretation of the law of God than to any earthly law.
They were my ancestors, some of them, which is why I know this.
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In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.