If Secession Was Illegal - then How Come...?

Over the years I've heard many rail at the South for seceding from the 'glorious Union.' They claim that Jeff Davis and all Southerners were really nothing but traitors - and some of these people were born and raised in the South and should know better, but don't, thanks to their government school 'education.'

Frank Conner, in his excellent book The South Under Siege 1830-2000 deals in some detail with the question of Davis' alleged 'treason.' In referring to the Northern leaders he noted: "They believed the most logical means of justifying the North's war would be to have the federal government convict Davis of treason against the United States. Such a conviction must presuppose that the Confederate States could not have seceded from the Union; so convicting Davis would validate the war and make it morally legitimate."

Although this was the way the federal government planned to proceed, that prolific South-hater, Thaddeus Stevens, couldn't keep his mouth shut and he let the cat out of the bag. Stevens said: "The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy...This can be done without violence to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern states were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war...No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union..." And, although he did not plainly say it, what Stevens really desired was that the Christian culture of the Old South be 'reformed' into something more compatible with his beliefs. No matter how you look at it, the feds tried to have it both ways - they claimed the South was in rebellion and had never been out of the Union, but then it had to do certain things to 'get back' into the Union it had never been out of. Strange, is it not, that the 'history' books never seem to pick up on this?

At any rate, the Northern government prepared to try President Davis for treason while it had him in prison. Mr. Conner has observed that: "The War Department presented its evidence for a treason trial against Davis to a famed jurist, Francis Lieber, for his analysis. Lieber pronounced 'Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten'." According to Mr. Conner, U.S. Attorney General James Speed appointed a renowned attorney, John J. Clifford, as his chief prosecutor. Clifford, after studying the government's evidence against Davis, withdrew from the case. He said he had 'grave doubts' about it. Not to be undone, Speed then appointed Richard Henry Dana, a prominent maritime lawyer, to the case. Mr. Dana also withdrew. He said basically, that as long as the North had won a military victory over the South, they should just be satisfied with that. In other words - "you won the war, boys, so don't push your luck beyond that."

Mr. Conner tells us that: "In 1866 President Johnson appointed a new U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanburg. But Stanburg wouldn't touch the case either. Thus had spoken the North's best and brightest jurists re the legitimacy of the War of Northern Aggression - even though the Jefferson Davis case offered blinding fame to the prosecutor who could prove that the South had seceded unconstitutionally." None of these bright lights from the North would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. It's not that they were dumb, in fact the reverse is true. These men knew a dead horse when they saw it and were not about to climb aboard and attempt to ride it across the treacherous stream of illegal secession. They knew better. In fact, a Northerner from New York, Charles O'Connor, became the legal counsel for Jeff Davis - without charge. That, plus the celebrity jurists from the North that refused to touch the case, told the federal government that they really had no case against Davis or secession and that Davis was merely being held as a political prisoner.

Author Richard Street, writing in The Civil War back in the 1950s said exactly the same thing. Referring to Jeff Davis, Street wrote: "He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal." At one point the government intimated that it would be willing to offer Davis a pardon, should he ask for one. Davis refused that and he demanded that the government either give him a pardon or give him a trial, or admit that they had dealt unjustly with him. Mr. Street said: "He died 'unpardoned' by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing." If Davis was as guilty as they claimed, why no trial???

Had the federal government had any possible chance to convict Davis and therefore declare secession unconstitutional they would have done so in a New York minute. The fact that they diddled around and finally released him without benefit of the trial he wanted proves that the North had no real case against secession. Over 600,000 boys, both North and South, were killed or maimed so the North could fight a war of conquest over something that the South did that was neither illegal or wrong. Yet they claim the moral high ground because the 'freed' the slaves, a farce at best.

You have been singularly unsuccessful in finding one contemporary of Lincoln who praised his alleged virtues while he was alive.

I most certainly did.

"I must say, and I am proud to say, that I never was treated by any one with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man, Abraham Lincoln, by the grace of God president of the United States for four years more. He took my little book, and with the same hand that signed the death-warrant of slavery, wrote as follows:

For Aunty Sojourner Truth

October 29, 1864"

Gee whiz, Lincoln -was- elected president -twice-. Some of his contemporaries must have liked him pretty well.

Walt

The president asked the black leaders to recruit volunteers for a government-financed pilot colonization project in Central America. If this worked, it could pave the way for theemigration of thousands more who might be freed by the war.
Most black spokesmen in the North ridiculed Lincoln's proposal and denounced its author. "This is our country as much as it is yours," a Philadelphia Negro told the president, "and we will not leave it." Frederick Douglass accused Lincoln of, "contempt for negroes" and "canting hypocrisy." The president's remarks, said Douglass, would encourage "ignorant and base" white men "to commit all kinds of violence and outrage upon the colored people."

Not exactly a revelation. President Lincoln always made clear that his first duty was to save the Union.

Walt

With the single exception of the quesiton of slavery extension, Mr. Lincoln proposes no measure which can bring him into antagonistic collision with the traffickers in human flesh...

Well, that was enough to cause the war, after all.

This is no secret. President Lincoln was always for talking and comporomise before he was for fighting and killing. The measures you condemn him for were part of that.

You seem to be throwing up your hands in disgust because President Lincoln's actions don't meet today's sensibilities. That's just sorta silly.

But the question of slavery expansion..........

As John Stuart Mill wrote at the time: "Abolitionists, in America, mean those who do not keep within the Constitution; the Republican party neither aim nor profess to aim at this object. . . . If they have not taken arms against slavery, they have against its extension. And they know . . . that this amounts to the same thing. The day when slavery can no longer extend itself, is the day of its doom. The slave owners know this, and it is the cause of their fury."

All your pretension to outrage won't impress anyone who knows the record.

Walt

You have been singularly unsuccessful in finding one contemporary of Lincoln who praised his alleged virtues while he was alive.

Are you going to say you never heard of this incident?

"Lincoln had Douglass shown in at once. "Here is my friend Douglass," the President announced when Douglass entered the room. "I am glad to see you," Lincoln told him. "I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my [second inaugural] address." He added, "there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it." Douglass said he was impressed: he thought it "a sacred effort." "I am glad you liked it." Lincoln said, and he watched as Douglass passed down the [receiving] line. It was the first inaugural reception in the history of the Republic in which an American President had greeted a free black man and solicited his opinion."

--"with Malice Towards None", p. 412 by Stephen Oates

Walt

Wendell Phillips said Lincoln was "not an Abolitionist, hardly an anti-slavery man."

"Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States...

-- Jefferson Davis, 1861

Hmmmm........Jefferson Davis seems to have thought that Lincoln was an anti-slavery man.

Walt

Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful conviction that though elected as an anti-slavery man by Republican and Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border States, than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and humanity"

Not a secret.

This letter to A.D. Hodges was published during the war:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took, that I would, to the utmost of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I have publically declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery."

A. Lincoln, 4/4/64

Walt

You have been singularly unsuccessful in finding one contemporary of Lincoln who praised his alleged virtues while he was alive.

I can quote at least one. Too bad for Wlat that he's not exactly the kind of guy that most sane people want to have on their side...

"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." - Karl Marx, letter to Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 29, 1864

From the minutes of the Central (General) Council of the International (Nov. 19, 1864):
Dr. Marx then brought up the report of the subcommittee, also a draft of the address which had been drawn up for presentation to the people of America congratulating them on their having re-elected Abraham Lincoln as President. The address is as follows and was unanimously agreed to.
The minutes continue:
A long discussion then took place as to the mode of presenting the address and the propriety of having a M.P. with the deputation; this was strongly opposed by many members, who said workingmen should rely on themselves and not seek for extraneous aid.... It was then proposed... and carried unanimously. The secretary correspond with the United States Minister asking to appoint a time for receiving the deputation, such deputation to consist of the members of the Central Council.

So rather than a personal letter to Lincoln from Marx as you insinuate, it is an address from the International Workers Association (IWA)General Counsel to the American people, delivered through our London embassy.

Nice try though...

This has no relation to Marx, but is interesting:

"As these sentiments [expressed by the English workmen] are manifestly the enduring support of the free institutions of England, so am I sure that they constitute the only reliable basis for free institutions throughout the world.... The resources, advantages, and power of the American people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded to equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to test whether a government established on the principles of human freedom can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the new evidence which your proceedings furnish that the magnanimity they are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true friends of freedom and humanity in foreign countries."

A. Lincoln

The letter itself, which your excerpt shows to have been written by Marx, opens as follows:

"To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America

Sir:
We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority."

In other words, the letter, which was written by Marx and signed onto by his commie club, went to Lincoln himself and not the general people as you claim.

It was indeed delivered to the American embassy as that was the means of transmitting it TO Lincoln at the time. The records further show that it was transmitted from the embassy to its intended recipient, Abe Lincoln, in January 1865. Charles Francis Adams, the ambassador at the time, sent a response to Marx and his commie club informing them that the letter to Lincoln "was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United States, has been received by him."

Interestingly enough, Karl Marx's adoration for Lincoln did not cease upon the latter's death. In May 1865 he drafted a letter to Andrew Johnson in praise and adoration of Lincoln:

"It is not our part to call words of sorrow and horror, while the heart of two worlds heaves with emotion. Even the sycophants who, year after year, and day by day, stick to their Sisyphus work of morally assassinating Abraham Lincoln, and the great Republic he headed, stand now aghast at this universal outburst of popular feeling, and rival with each other to strew rhetorical flowers on his open grave. They have now at last found out that he was a man, neither to be browbeaten by adversity, nor intoxicated by success, inflexibly pressing on to his great goal, never compromising it by blind haste, slowly maturing his steps, never retracing them, carried away by no surge of popular favour, disheartened by no slackening of the popular pulse, tempering stern acts by the gleams of a kind heart, illuminating scenes dark with passion by the smile of humour, doing his titanic work as humbly and homely as Heaven-born rulers do little things with the grandiloquence of pomp and state; in one word, one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good. Such, indeed, was the modesty of this great and good man, that the world only discovered him a hero after he had fallen a martyr."

Communists have always adored Lincoln. They were among his first cheerleaders during his own lifetime and remain so to this day through the likes of James McPherson.

ROFL

Don't forget Dr. Farber.

"It was Lincoln’s character – his ability, judgment, courage, and humanity – that brought the Union through the war with the Constitution intact. It was as much dumb luck as anything else that placed Lincoln in the White House in this critical time. To expect another Lincoln would be foolish. Nor should the legal system be designed on the assumption that all leaders will have his qualities. Even the wisest rulers must be restrained by law. But no matter how many checks and balances and protections we build into the system, we must keep in mind Hamilton’s admonition. “Sir, when you have divided and nicely balanced the departments of government; when you have strongly connected the virtue of your rulers with their interest; when, in short you have rendered your system as perfect as human forms can be – you must place confidence; you must give power.” In the end, all power can be abused, so we must take the risk of putting confidence in those who exercise power. This as much true of generals and justices as it is of presidents. We had best take care that, like Lincoln, they are worthy of our trust.”

--Lincoln’s Constitution” p. 200 by Daniel Farber

Actually, the address to the American people from the International Workers Association General Counsel opens as follows.

Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

At least the IWA knew the fight was about slavery, not tariffs.

Communists have always adored Lincoln. They were among his first cheerleaders during his own lifetime and remain so to this day through the likes of James McPherson.

You've nothing to show for this false accusation against McPherson other than old transcripts from some interviews given to a socialist radio station. You give conservatives a bad name with these cheap, guilt by association, sleights of hand.

Grow up.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.