Remembering Mary Surratt; Marylander and Southerner

Canada Free Press ^ | Calvin Johnson

[Sean_Anthony]

The home to the Surratts would be named Surrattsville and today is Clinton

The first woman to be executed in America took place on July 7, 1865. Her name was Mary Surratt.

President Jefferson Davis said;

“I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.”

America had not yet celebrated her 85th birthday when the South seceded from the Union in the year of our Lord 1861. Secession was recognized as a God given right that was also exercised by the 13 American Colonies in their separation from Great Britain in 1776 to form the United States of America.

[DiogenesLamp]

Secession was recognized after writing a long list of grievances which the 13 states had suffered under the British Crown.

The Declaration of Independence describes this list as a matter of courtesy. "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

It is not a requirement, and the right to independence is not contingent upon a list of grievances.

The Secession was the political elites attempt to maintain their political power while selling it to their people as fighting for their unique way of life. Most of the South would not have noticed if the slaves had been freed and sent back to Africa.

That's not true at all. Over the course of the last few months I have discovered that 3/4ths of all US export trade with Europe was produced by the South. Virtually all of these products relied heavily on slave labor.

The North was getting very significant income off of warehousing, insuring, and shipping these Southern produced goods, and they also providing for 3/4ths of all the money to run the US Government at the time.

Yes, everyone would have noticed instantly if the economic conditions produced by slavery were stopped.

This is what that slave produced money looked like in returning imports.

New England was getting rich off of slave labor.

[FredZarguna]

They didn’t fight for the “right to secede.” They made war against the United States of America, which is the very Constitutional definition of treason, for which the justified penalty is death.

[T-Bone Texan]

I will always side with the South.

The War of Northern Aggression was a genocide against the noncombatant people of the South.

[Vigilanteman]

Yep. That was an interesting little sidebar. In those days, capture to trial to hanging lasted less than three months. John Surratt would surely had taken his mother's place on the gallows had he turned up in time. Passions were running very high!

He escaped to Canada, made his way to Europe, lived abroad for a few years and was eventually recognized and extradited from Egypt. After two months of testimony, Surratt was released after a mistrial; eight jurors had voted not guilty, four voted guilty.

The other thing which aided him was that this was a criminal trial by the State of Maryland, not a military tribunal which condemned his mother and three co-conspirators to the gallows. A recent Supreme Court decision had declared the trial of civilians before military tribunals to be unconstitutional (Ex parte Milligan).

[rlmorel]

I understand it is a nice knee-jerk reaction to blame everything bad happening to the country on the North, but I think there are enough homegrown liberals in the south who are doing a fine job of spreading the cancer there and elsewhere too.

Every state in the South has them, even the states who present a front of staunch conservatism have them.

And they aren’t transplants.

Just sayin.

[rockrr]

But apparently you don’t have to win the war to write the myths...

[rockrr]

Yes.

[rlmorel]

I agree with you, even if I might not think she should have been hanged.

I actually went to Surrattsville High School, and dated a girl who traced direct lineage to Dr. Samuel Mudd who treated Booth’s broken leg. I stood for the bus in front of the broken down wreck of her house (that was filled with trash, broken windows, liquor bottles and such) before it was restored to what it is now, so I know a little about those events.

I find the effort (let’s not forget, being initiated in many southern states by southern politicians) to eradicate the memory of the Confederacy to be reprehensible, and no different from efforts by the Taliban to destroy historical artifacts that don’t contribute to a monolithic muslim historical narrative.

But to say she was a great woman is not a statement I would agree with.

[onedoug]

I was really asking, is human nature ultimately self-destructive?

It certainly seems so.

[rlmorel]

Ah. I didn’t read it that way.

There are many who think human nature is ultimately self-destructive.

I disagree with that overarching characterization. I think self-destruction is a part of human nature, but I don’t think it is the sole determinant of human nature (in my opinion)

[onedoug]

Agreed.

[IronJack]

In denying them the right to secede, wasn’t it the US government that made war on them?

[IronJack]

See previous.

[FredZarguna]

Who fired the first shot on US property?

[IronJack]

It was not US property. Fort Sumter was within the sovereign state of South Carolina. That was the very core of the issue.

[FredZarguna]

Wrong. It was a fortress built by the American people, and administered by the Federal government. South Carolina had no authority under the Constitution to raise a standing army; only a militia. South Carolina specifically recognized it had no such power when it ratified the Constitution, so the fort could not belong to South Carolina.

Traitors to the United States of America shot first. Your non-answer answers to the inadequacy of your understanding and the fundamental untruthfulness of the Lost Causers about their cause.

[rockrr]

No.

[rockrr]

the land that Sumter was built upon was deeded in perpetuity to the federal government. The federal government financed the construction of the fortifications and manned it as their prerogative and right. The insurrectionists had no legitimate business going anywhere near the fort and firing upon it was a clear act of war.

[reg45]

New England and New York got rich because of their proximity to European trading partners.

[IronJack]

Your argument about a standing army is not germane. The land on which Fort Sumter stood was the property of South Carolina. When South Carolina voted to secede, it declared its borders sovereign. The garrison at Fort Sumter then became an invading force whose presence could not be tolerated.

There is no provision in the Constitution forbidding secession. However, there IS one enumerating the powers of states where the Constitution does not explicitly assign those powers to the federal government. So if anyone was treasonous in the sense of ignoring constitutional constraints, it was the Union.

And as much as my “non-answer” disqualifies me as a further conversant, I have not resorted to name-calling or personal attacks on your integrity.