Posted on 12/15/2012 3:17:01 AM PST by IbJensen
The Democrat party awaits you with open arms.
And yet when the New England states were mulling over secession during the days of the Essex Junto and the Hartford Convention, Southerners accused them of "treason" for wanting to dissolve the Union.
However, my point is that secession by a whole state at the behest of a large majority of its people is not the same thing as the "insurrection" described by Congress in the Militia Act. I find it extremely unlikely that the 1790s Congress intended their Act to apply to secession.
Thus Lincoln took an existing law and stretched it well beyond the intent of those who had written the law.
Which is not to say that I believe secession was either constitutional or prudent.
All I am saying is that Lincoln stretched the law well beyond its original intent, as he did in other areas, notably by the constitutionally dodgy nature of the admission of WV as a state.
The problem here is that by definition the Constitution and the legal system are not and cannot be designed to function in time of civil war. Lincoln did his best, I think, to respect the laws while still waging effective war. But he was very often forced into breaking the letter of the law in order to uphold its spirit. And of course sometimes he made mistakes.
BTW, you are quite correct about the timing of acts of war. Numerous southern states launched attacks on US military and other installations well before they had "legally" seceded. Notably VA, which started its troops on the march against Harpers Ferry before the convention had even voted for secession. They did not "officially" secede till the referendum in late May, by which time they'd been waging war for over six weeks.
Fort Sumter: “violently seize the property of the Federal government within their territory, without offering compensation”...
Better do a little more research on this subject.
The CSA offered to financially compensate the USA for its seizure of federal property, but only as part of an agreement recognizing its independence.
Since that independence was the major point of contention, this offer went nowhere.
This is factually incorrect.
Vallandigham was gerrymandered out of his House seat, and was not in office when he gave (in OH, not DC) the speech that got him arrested.
The well-meaning but eternally bumbling General Burnside arrested him without Lincoln's knowledge.
He was arrested not for anything to do with domestic policies but for seditious antiwar talk.
Similar public speaking would have gotten the speaker arrested during WWII.
Lincoln would fit right in with the MODERN Democrat Party. I bet your also one of the RINOs today who keeps feeding us the bullshit of how we have to keep “working within the system” too.
Slavery itself is also not necessarily black-and-white (literally!). First of all (and this is going to get me in trouble with everyone) slavery as such is not anywhere forbidden in G-d's Law either for Jews or non-Jews. This does not mean that the form of slavery practiced in the South was Halakhic (it probably was not), but it is important to note that Halakhah regulates rather than forbids slavery. And if G-d did not forbid slavery, to attribute such a prohibition to him is to "add to the Torah" which is strictly forbidden (and which leads to all sorts of trouble).
However, slavery as practiced in the South at that time was more than just slavery--the owning of human beings by other human beings. It was racial slavery in which skin color was used as a mark of identification, so that even free Blacks had to at all times have papers on them to show that they were free. Now this is far from the only case of racial slavery in history; in fact, considering the habit of conquerors to enslave their victims, racial slavery may very well be the norm. But there is a schizophrenia deep within many neo-Confederate apologists (which all palaeoconservatives have inherited to one extent or another) which is to defend slavery while having come to hate (or at least extremely dislike) the slaves themselves. Now certainly in the beginning the white slave owners did not "hate" their slaves. Why would a person hate his own property? But over the years, beginning with the radical abolitionists and continuing down to our own contemporary "political correctness," neo-Confederates and paleocons have picked up an extreme negrophobia as a reaction to the "negrolatry" of the Left. This simply makes no sense. One cannot defend slavery as the bedrock of a stable society (which is what they did) if the slaves one is fighting so tenaciously to hold onto are regarded as a class of evil undesirable left wing "trouble makers." This negrophobia is not so much a product of slavery as the "jim crow" period that followed it, which in many respects was far worse than slavery had been. During slavery the owners had to at least provide the bare minimum of necessaries to their slaves. During jim crow the Blacks were on their own and back to performing the original tasks they had performed during slavery. Plus during slavery the slave owners played the slaves and the poor whites against one another. During jim crow the aristocrats were allied firmly with the poor whites and the Blacks had no one.
At any rate, I have read more than once on this forum the sentiment that "next time we'll pick our own d@mn cotton." I cannot read this line without wondering why the aristocrats did not merely enslave the poor whites who were all around them rather than import an originally alien people whom historical circumstances would eventually turn into their beit noire. Yet early ideologues of African slavery such as Calhoun despised poor whites and actually praised slavery for running them off the land to make room for the more noble slave-owners and their human property. This contempt of the Southern aristocrats for poor whites has been almost forgotten by history, though one catches a whiff of it in Gone with the Wind.
Another area of what I define as schizophrenia (or at least hypocrisy) among palaeoconservatives is their selective outrage not only at the charge of treason for disunion (since Southerners themselves made the same charge against secessionist New Englanders earlier in the nineteenth century) but also at centralization. The vast majority of foreign leaders admired by our liberty-loving decentralist palaeocons were in fact practitioners of centralization (Franco, Salazar, Papadopoulos, Chiang Kai-shek, etc.). There was no localism or regionalism under any of these palaeocon heroes. Why is Lincoln a tyrant for an attitude that made Franco a hero? This simply makes no sense. Even the beloved Confederate President Jefferson Davis was a centralizer! For that matter, for all the hoo-haw about the suspension of habeas corpus, the Birch Society's hero J. Edgar Hoover advocated the same thing during the Korean War, but you won't find the Birch Society criticizing him!
Anyway, the while the situation is not black-and-white as understood by most people, neither is it black-and-white as understood by neo-Confederates.
I am myself a descendant of Southern Unionists (though from the Upper South in my case) whose family has been Republican since Lincoln (there were lots of Union supporters in the South, many of whom fought for the Union--a fact often forgotten). I have had to admit to myself that their cause was not as lily pure as I used to believe. I wish the neo-Confederates would admit the same thing, but I know that they won't.
Lincoln's action, while Congress was not in session, called for volunteers.
Nobody was forced to enlist.
Lincoln specifically recognized this in declaring:
"In the meantime I earnestly invoke the cooperation of all good citizens in the measures hereby adopted for the effectual suppression of unlawful violence, for the impartial enforcement of constitutional laws, and for the speediest possible restoration of peace and order, and with these of happiness and prosperity, throughout our country."
When Congress returned, it supported everything Lincoln had done.
The neo-confeds with their ancestral hatred often confuse regard for idolatry. They commonly refer to their enemies as “Lincoln-worshipers” when all we do is recite the history of the period.
BTW: Did you notice that the confederados who sought to establish their idyllic slavrocracy in Brazil were instead absorbed by their host country?
Just when did the EVIL Republican party become good and the GOOD Democrat party become evil? 1932? 1964? Boy, I bet William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge were hell to live through, weren't they?
Considering that my ancestors were Southerners who fought for the Union and have voted Republican since that time, I can hardly be called a "RINO," can I? Maybe you Dixiecrats are the RINOS.
Are you even aware that George Washington was a FEDERALIST who agreed with Alexander Hamilton about federal supremacy, implied powers, and a whole host of issues that the miserable little G-dless Jacobin Thomas Jefferson didn't like? Did you know that GEORGE WASHINGTON signed the eeeeeeeee-vil NATIONAL BANK into law?
Did you know that your palaeocon hero Pat Buchanan in his book The Great Betrayal says that Washington said that if the North and South ever split he'd side with the North?
Sheesh. Some people know nothing about American history.
Au contraire, mon ami.
(A little French Lingo there to demonstrate my fondness for the wines made by the little froggies.)
On May 19, 1863, President Lincoln ordered Vallandigham deported and sent to the Confederacy.[28] When he was within Confederate lines, Vallandigham said: “I am a citizen of Ohio, and of the United States. I am here within your lines by force, and against my will. I therefore surrender myself to you as a prisoner of war.”[29]
Vallandigham travelled to Richmond, Virginia. Vallandigham told Robert Ould (Vallandigham and Ould both went to the same college) of the Confederate government not to invade Pennsylvania because it would unite the North against the Copperheads in the 1864 presidential election.[30] However, a Letter to the Editor of The New York Times gave a different version, saying that Vallandigham encouraged the invasion.[31]
Vallandigham travelled by blockade-runner to Bermuda and then to Canada, where he declared himself a candidate for Governor of Ohio, subsequently winning the Democratic nomination in absentia. (Outraged at his treatment by Lincoln, Ohio Democrats by a vote of 411 -11 nominated Vallandigham for governor[32] at their June 11 convention.) He managed his campaign from a hotel in Windsor, Ontario, where he received a steady stream of visitors and supporters.[33]
Vallandigham asked the question in his address or letter of July 15, 1863 “To the Democracy of Ohio”: “Shall there be free speech, a free press, peaceable assemblages of the people, and a free ballot any longer in Ohio?”[34] Vallandigham lost the 1863 Ohio gubernatorial election in a landslide to pro-Union War Democrat John Brough by a vote of 288,374 to 187,492,[35] but his activism had left people of Dayton divided between pro- and anti-slavery factions.
More constitutionally important than public support, Congress had authority and endorsed the President's actions in every respect.
Congress did not insist, in the face of national emergency, that Lincoln follow every constitutional procedure before acting.
Where-ever it felt necessary, Congress passed authorizing legislation, after the fact.
I see consistency in Lysander's POV and also support the proposition of a "right to be independent" - as long as it is accomplished legally and equitably. See donmeaker's post #68.
I am unclear what in my post you disagree with.
I don’t disagree with anything in yours, which just recounts the facts.
Most excellent post.
Neither side, as in all human affairs, was entirely right or entirely wrong. Each had good and bad arguments on its side and there were honorable men and opportunists on both sides.
Which means one has to decide which side was in the right on a net basis. For me, that was Lincoln and the Union.
YMMV
Let me state again at the outset that I am a Southerner, the descendant of Southerners who fought for the UNION. Many Southerners fought for the Union just as many Northerners fought for the Confederacy.
I've come to understand the Civil War was less black-and-white than I used to believe, but the neo-Confeds will never come to the same conclusion. Never mind that Jeff Davis did everything Lincoln did and did it first; he's a great "states' rights hero" and Lincoln is a tyrant. Never mind that these same lovers of localism consider Francisco Franco, George Papadopoulos, Rafael Trujillo, and Chiang Kai-shek to be heroes even though they were all centralizers who wouldn't tolerate localism of any kind. Never mind that J. Edgar Hoover advocated suspending habeas corpus; he's a great hero. Never mind that their own ancestors thought the New England secession advocates were "traitors" for wanting to leave the Union. Never mind that George Washington was a Federalist. Never mind any of that stuff. The Confederacy was pure and noble and born with no original sin (like the "indigenous pipples") and the evil United States of America was a demon from Hell (like old white males are today).
I often wonder what the neo-Confederates would do with contemporary Blacks (and I am one of the harshest critics of contemporary Black political behavior on this forum, if not THE harshest). If slavery is so essential to "Western civilization," would they re-enslave them? But then unlike their ancestors, today's "Confederates" consider these same Blacks (whom their ancestors loved so much they fought a war to keep) to be evil incarnate, an entire race of pointy-headed Marxist eggheads who came over here specifically to subvert "chrstian civilization" (apparently chrstianity isn't a belief but caucasian genes and chromosomes). Good gravy. What a dilemma!
What these palaeocons like the Birch Society (whose founder was a Massachusetts Unitarian who admired Ralph Waldo Emerson) also conveniently forget is that while certain sectors of the anti-slavery movement were indeed proto-leftist, others were merely moralist, opposing slavery for moral reasons just as they opposed polygamy, alcohol, gambling, etc. Though my religious beliefs are no longer the same as my ancestors, I am very proud of the Republican party's puritanical and moralistic heritage (a far cry from the "brandy and cigars on the veranda" cavaliers). We in the Upper South may be less Anglp-Saxon and more Celtic than our Deep South brethren (though so far as I know I am 100% Anglo-Saxon), but we are much more puritanical than they. I like to think of us as "Southern New England." That's why we voted for Hoover in 1928 while they voted for Smith.
I am so sick and tired of the Jacobin Thomas Jefferson's personal opinions being regarded as "the official and only true interpretation of the United States Constitution."
Then I suppose I disagree with everything in yours.
Merry Christmas.
Oh I disagree with everything you’ve written.
Vallandigham was deported! Lincoln knew about it because he GAVE the order!
Gerrymandering had nothing to do with this deportation!
Lincoln reacted just like Bronco Bama would in such a case!
This may not be a free country today, but it was supposed to be in the time of the bewhiskered ape. (Nast’s description of (dis)honest ape.)
Complete propaganda.
First of all, nobody -- not Lincoln, not Congress, no northern state government -- ever "declared war" on secessionists.
The reason is simple: a formal declaration of war is normally restricted to actions between independent nations, not rebellions, insurrections, uprisings (think Indian wars), or "domestic violence" within a nation.
Northerners did not consider the self-declared Confederacy an independent nation, thus no formal declaration of war.
And for those same reasons, the Confederacy was eager to formally declare war against the United States (May 6, 1861) -- because that helped establish the fact of their independence.
Of course one problem is: once you've started and formally declared war on the United States, how can you then claim the status of "innocent victim"?
Second, all of Lincoln's actions were fully supported, indeed demanded by, Congress and the Northern public.
Yes, everybody wanted some peaceful resolution of the crisis, but they also wanted the laws enforced and the Union preserved.
And that's what Lincoln set about to do.
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