Posted on 05/12/2015 3:00:03 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
We Sons of Confederate Veterans are charged with preserving the good name of the Confederate soldier. The world, for the most part, has acknowledged what Gen. R. E. Lee described in his farewell address as the “valour and devotion” and “unsurpassed courage and fortitude” of the Confederate soldier. The Stephen D. Lee Institute program is dedicated to that part of our duty that charges us not only to honour the Confederate soldier but “to vindicate the cause for which he fought.” We are here to make the case not only for the Confederate soldier but for his cause. It is useless to proclaim the courage, skill, and sacrifice of the Confederate soldier while permitting him to be guilty of a bad cause.
Although their cause was lost it was a good cause and still has a lot to teach the world today.
In this age of Political Correctness there has never been a greater need and greater opportunity to refresh our understanding of what happened in America in the years 1861–1865 and start defending our Southern forebears as strongly as they ought to be defended. There is plenty of true history available to us. It is our job to make it known.
All the institutions of American society, including nearly all Southern institutions and leaders, are now doing their best to separate the Confederacy off from the rest of American history and push it into one dark little corner labeled “ Slavery and Treason.” Being taught at every level of the educational system is the official party line that everything good that we or anyone believe about our Confederate ancestors is a myth, and by myth they mean a pack of lies that Southerners thought up to excuse their evil deeds and defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at abbevilleinstitute.org ...
MikefromOhio - My inquiry was to determine if you know of some legal finding of Treason against Confederates or were you just using the word Treason in a generally derogatory, non-serious way.
Except, pursuant to the Constitution, South Carolina had absolutely no claim to Ft. Sumter.
Art. I, Sec. 8:" [Congress shall have the Power] To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, ..., and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings..."
Seeing how the legislature of South Carolina ceded the reef that Sumter was being constructed on to the Federal government in 1836, said reef being underwater at high tide, and that all construction was done with Federal expenditure on Federal land created by Federal work to infill the reef, I don't see how South Carolina had any sort of legal claim to it whatsoever.
https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/who-owned-fort-sumter/
There were several peace commission in DC pre war from SC and the Confederacy to discuss this very issue but they were not met with and Lincoln wanted nothing to do with them. He said so in his second inaugural send paragraph.
Maybe because the commissions were not there to discuss paying for property seized or debt repudiated but were instead there for the sole reason of getting recognition for Confederate independence and admission that their actions were legal. Or, as Lincoln said in his second inaugural, the "...insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy (the Union)..."
Neat site though. I'll have to check it out. Do you post there as well?
Lincoln also supported sending freed slaves to Africa.
I don’t post there but i might start to.
I may start lurking but judging by the posts those people are way more knowledgeable about the Civil War than I am. And it doesn't look like bush leaguers like me fare well.
I want to post what they think the significance of Lincoln mentioning the peace effort (pre war) in his SECOND inaugural? Why would he talk about a footnote in history and “old news”? Again why did he do that? Was he worried about what his historical legacy would be? The bellicose President, not the great emancipator?
So did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Breckenridge, and a lot of of other leaders of the time. Even Robert E. Lee paid passage for some of his former slaves to Africa, though for black people remaining in the U.S. he still believed slavery was the best place for them.
If you do then it looks like you’ll get a lot of answers from people on both sides of the question.
So what? That doesn't give them the right to steal Federal property, legally ceded to the Federal govt. by the legislature of South Carolina.
There were several peace commission in DC pre war from SC and the Confederacy to discuss this very issue but they were not met with and Lincoln wanted nothing to do with them.
Again, so what? Are you familiar with the logical fallacy of "begging the question"? The fallacy is that the argument is based on accepting that the conclusion is true before proof.
In order to treat with a so-called peace commission as a legitimate envoy, Lincoln would have had to accept the premise that the secession was legal. Since he did not accept that premise, the "peace commission" was without authority to negotiate anything. The Constitution is clear: forts are the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government, over which States have no say. South Carolina is a State, therefore their claim on Sumter was invalid and an act of insurrection.
Does anyone know how much the United States paid Britain for Forts and other properties (owned by the crown) after the colonies successfully seceded from Britain?
What made it illegal? Certainly not the US Constitution.
Sooooooo, Lincoln wouldn't consider the CSA peace representatives as legitimate because they were still US citizens in his twisted mind. Shouldn't he have met with them then, they were just regular old citizens? It is circular logic that doesn't work. He would rather kill them in a war I guess then deign speak with them.
Your premise is flawed. The colonies didn't secede. They had a revolution and a war, and broke free from the mother country by force. Britain ceded the lands by treaty, after losing, not before the war began.
Certainly it did. See Texas v. White, and you will see that the SCOTUS agreed that unilateral secession was not lawful.
You get out of the Union the same way you get into it, by the agreement of the rest of the States. You are not allowed to take Federal property, owned by the Union as a whole, and appropriate it for one State. Ft. Sumter did not belong to South Carolina by any legal interpretation, including the legal ceding of it by South Carolina state law in 1836.
The only way they could have laid claim against the will of the Federal govt. which owned it, would have been by successful revolt (like the American Revolution), which they did not manage. But, by attempting to, they did fall into insurrection, which the Constitution authorizes the Federal government to suppress in Art. 1, Sec. 8.
"The Congress shall have Power ... To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions..."
That’s what I thought - the colonies didn’t pay anything to Britain for the properties.
I don’t think you have come to terms with natural law: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle . . .”
“You get out of the Union the same way you get into it. . .”
And where is that procedure found in the Constitution?
“The only way they could have laid claim against the will of the Federal govt. which owned it, would have been by successful revolt (like the American Revolution), which they did not manage.” In other words, might makes rights. Now we get to the essence of the northern argument for Lincoln starting an optional war.
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