FLAT ROCK, North Carolina - A fledgling group of Southern nationalists gathered at a Civil War-era inn in the North Carolina mountains on Saturday to launch a political party seeking to revitalise the secessionist movement in the South. The Southern Party, which unlike other separatist movements of generations past claims to oppose white-supremacy ideologies, will seek to place candidates on local ballots in up to 16 states in the 2000 elections, including all the states of the old Confederacy. „I welcome you here to this historic occasion to announce the formation of the Southern Party, dedicated to limited government, low taxes, maximum individual liberty, a free market and self-determination for Dixie,“ Southern National Committee board member Ron Holland said. Holland was flanked by men wearing Civil War uniforms on a platform draped with an oversized Confederate flag. The Southern Party is an outgrowth of the League of the South, a Southern nationalist group headquartered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which formed a committee last November to explore the creation of a new political party. Despite adopting the Confederate battle flag as one of its symbols, party leaders say they‘ll try to realise their goal of an independent Southern nation not through violence or overthrow of the U.S. government, but through the ballot box.