[BroJoeK]

achilles2000 to Sherman Logan (#358): "Your claim regarding the Tories is quite debatable, but also beside the point.
You are talking about a period before the Constitution by which the states had created a federal republic that was to be bound by certain rules."

In fact, Sherman Logan understated our Founders' rough treatment of Loyalists to Britain during the Revolutionary War.
By comparison, Lincoln's treatment of Confederates & Copperheads was relatively mild & legalistic.

"Bound by certain rules" -- in fact, the Constitution is clear in expecting & authorizing military & legal responses to "invasion", "rebellion", "insurrection", "domestic violence" and "treason" -- specifically defined as:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." (Article 3 Section 3)

So: far from preventing Lincoln from defeating the military force which started & declared war on the United States, our Constitution expects & requires it.

[Sherman Logan]

The life, liberty and pursuit of happiness the Founders denied the (to them) traitorous Tories were claimed (again by the Founders) to not be rights created by a legal document such as the Constitution.

They were supposedly innate and inalienable. That the Founders nevertheless chose to treat the Tories so harshly is an indication of how thoroughly they recognized the danger of internal dissension in time of war.

I wonder how those who today denounce Lincoln would react to similar circumstances today. Such as an internal Communist revolution supported by about 1/4 of the people, with secret supporters embedded in the army, civil service, etc.

I’m sure in such circumstances they would support leaving strongly suspected subversives strictly alone unless and until they could prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt in a civil court of law.

To my mind the Founders recognized that in time of war any and all civil rights were if necessary up for potential temporary abridgement. That’s what happens in war. What makes the abridgement constitutional is its necessity.

Unlike some today, they recognized that if the government established by the Constitution were overthrown, perhaps due partially to an overly punctilious insistence on “rights,” ALL those rights would be permanently destroyed.

Temporary limitation of civil rights, when necessary to protect the Constitution, allows at minimum for their eventual restoration.

BTW, to some extent the CSA fell apart because too many of its politicians refused to recognize this. They insisted on states’ rights and such even in the face of an existential threat which did indeed eventually destroy their government.

Where were their states’ rights then?