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.

They ravaged the country below there to the Oconee River.

How does that text compare with this:

"On March 18th [1943] at Vegesack, the 305th managed to place 76% of its bombs within 1,000 feet of the MPI [mean point of impact] in what proved to be the most precise piece of bombing so far turned out by the B-17's. After two further missions to other French railyards without loss, the Force revisited to Germany. In perfect visibilty 73 B-17s and 24 B-24's dropped 268 tons of high explosive squarely on Bremer Vulkan Schiffbau, the submarine yards at Vegesack that had also been the briefed target for the first raid on the Reich back in January. From the evidence of reconnaisance photographs, seven submarines were assessed as severely damaged and two thirds of the shipyard buildings and much of the plant appeared to have been demolished."

"The Mighty Eighth" by Roger Freeman

The idea is the same -- destroy the enemy ability to resist without killing every single enemy soldier.

Your rant is just sour grapes.

Walt

Food supplied to the Georgia army from Florida means the people of Georgia didn't have to split their relatively exhausted food supplies with the army.

You seem to have missed information on the food situation. If you follow the links on the site I posted, you find the following statements from the fall of 1863. They support the contention that there were food shortages in the South and Georgia, in particular. They argue against your position that the South and Georgia had plenty of food.

Mr. Locke, chief commissary of Georgia, wrote: I pray you, major, to put every agency in motion that you can to send cattle without a moment's delay toward the Georgia borders. The troops in Charleston are in great extremity. We look alone to you for cattle; those in Georgia are exhausted.
It appears that all other resources are exhausted, and that we are now dependent upon your State [Florida] for beef for the very large army of General Bragg.
You know the resources of Tennessee are lost to us; the hog cholera and other causes have cut short the prospect in Georgia and other States.
…the resources of food (meat) of both the Tennessee and Virginia armies are exhausted. This remark now applies with equal force to South Carolina and Georgia, and the army must henceforth depend upon the energy of the purchasing commissaries, through their daily or weekly collections. I have exhausted the beef-cattle and am now obliged to kill stock cattle.
Florida has done nobly in this contest. Her sons have achieved the highest character for their State and won imperishable honors for themselves. These brave men are now suffering for want of food. Not only the men from Florida, but the whole army of the South are in this condition.

Your food argument qualifies you for the coveted and prestigious Benjamin F. "Beast" Butler Award. The current-day Florida Cattle Battalion presents these awards to certain posters. According to them, the award does not carry a cash prize but does include a carefully selected specimen of Florida cow manure wrapped in your post.

I have often claimed that Lincoln never asserted white spremacy, which is good, because it is true. Abraham Lincoln --never-- asserted anything that could be called white supremacy.

FALSE.

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." - Lincoln, 8/17/1858.

"You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence.... It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated." - Lincoln, speaking to a group of former slaves 8/1862

In neither of those quotes does Lincoln suggest that blacks not his "moral or intetellectual" equal. You are looking for implications that are not there. Here is what he said --explicitly--:

"I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment."

Lincoln was too canny for his opponents.

Lincoln never -said- that blacks were racially inferior to whites -- the bedrock of white supremacy -- he said he didn't know. He also EXPLICITLY said on numerous occasions in 1858 and later that all men were created equal. And he CLEARLY advocated voting rights for black soldiers. All of these positions were FAR in advance of most people of the day.

Walt

All you did was confirm that they were looking for food for the army, not that the people of Georgia were starving. After all, Sherman's army managed to eat pretty well on their trip to Savannah. If Georgia cattle was exhausted then that must mean that the people of Georgia were living high on the hog, so to speak, at the expense of the army. And POWs at Andersonville.

If you look back at the history of the Army of Northern Virginia you would see that Lee was forced to scatter his army all over Virginia during the winter of 1862-63 and 1863-64 just to keep it fed. That doesn't mean that the people of Virginia were starving, far from it. It just means that the confederate government was incapable of moving the goods from point a to point b.

Citation please.

"Next time you visit Ms. Joslyn, ask her why, in all her writings about the allegedly immortal 600, she chooses to neglect any discussion of why those men were put on Morris Island?

The sequence of events, as I understand them, goes as follows:

(1) US opens bombardment of Charleston, SC, from batteries on the coastal islands. The Confederates, naturally, object.

(2) CS moves a number of US officer prisoners to a house near the Charleston waterfront, so that the men are at risk of being hit by Federal shells.

(3) In response, US moves nearly 600 CS officer prisoners to Morris Island stockade, so that they are under fire of Confederate guns.

Now, Bob (and Ms. Joselyn), if this is not accurate, I would be pleased to hear so, along with an explanation of how and why the story manages to appear in a number of reputable places? If it is accurate, how come Ms. Joselyn never mentions items (1) or (2) in her books and articles? Even if the circumstances of the confinement on Morris Island justified complaint, even if there were reasons that the Federal retaliation was not justified, a decent respect for the concept of objectivity would require that she at least acknowledge the full story, if only to demolish or dismiss its significance. But she doesn't acknowledge it, which leads me to think she either is unaware of it or doesn't want to admit that it happened; in any event it causes me to have very little respect for her claim to being an historian."

-- Jim Epperson

"I have not read this book on the Immortal 600 and, of course, have no idea why, if at all, the background to the incident was given short shrift. But, the OR allows us to set out the story and the legal issues involved. The key documents are in OR, I, 35, II, page 131-132. The CS commanders, Generals Sam Jones and Roswell Ripley, notified the US commanders, Generals Foster and Shimmelfenning respectively, that five generals and forty-five field officers have been moved into Charleston "for safe keeping." The officers will be "provided commodious quarters in a part of the city occupied by non-combatants, the majority of whom are women and children. It is proper, however, that I should inform you that it is a part of the city which has been for many months exposed day and night to your guns." This letter from Jones addressed to Foster is dated 13 June 1864."

-- Moderated ACW Newsgroup

Walt

But what would you have done with a starving, ragtag arnmy? Keep fighting, and let your men be slaughtered?

Robert E. Lee did that for month after futile month.

This is interesting:

"During the first month of 1864, Lee penned the following to Jefferson Davis (Document # 602 of Dowdy & Manhurin's THE WARTIME PAPERS OF ROBERT E. LEE): " We are now issuing to the troops a fourth of a pound of salt meat & have only three days supply ..... I can learn of no supply of meat on the road to the army, & fear I shall be unable to retain it in the field." Davis advised him that the emrergency justified impressment -- advice which was ignored. At the time Lee wrote, the standard daily Union army meat ration was one and a fourth pound of salt or fresh beef. J. E. Johnston reported that month from Dalton that his men had only 8 day's rations in reserve and Longstreet complained from East Tennessee that the lack of supplies in his area precluded the possibility of offensive action. Yet, in the midst of this critical food shortage, that same month, Mary Boykin Chesnut attended a party given by Varina Davis for the elite ladies of Richmond society in which the table fare was described as "gumbo, ducks and olives, supreme de volaille, chickens in jelly, oysters, lettuce salad, chocolate jelly cake, claret soup, champagne, &c&c&c." (31 January 1864 diary entry in Woodward's MARY CHESNUT'S CIVIL WAR). Several of those menu items were imported luxury items."

-- from the AOL Civil War forum.

Walt

I see I misrremembered a detail. It wasn't black Union POW's, it was white POW's who were placed by the insurgents in an area where they could be killed by friendly fire.

Thank you. This helps clarify things. I never could make sense of the argument that it was black POWs put out to be exposed to Federal fire that led to the 600 Confederate POWs being placed in front of a Federal fort being shelled.

You might be interested in a statement by the five generals among the 50 white Federal POWs mentioned in your post above that were supposedly exposed to Federal fire. From Joslyn:

The journals of this morning inform us, for the first time, that five general officers of the Confederate service have arrived at Hilton Head, with a view to being subjected to the same treatment that we are receiving here. We think it is just to ask for these officers every kindness and courtesy that you can extend to them in acknowledgment of the fact that we, at this time, are as pleasantly and comfortably situated as is possible for prisoners of war, receiving from the Confederate authorities every consideration that we could desire or expect, nor are we unnecessarily exposed to fire.

A fundamental question here is what were the Federals doing shelling civilian parts of Charleston. I've documented before on these threads civilian casualties -- men, women, and children -- from the Federal shelling.

I also question what the incident with the 50 Federals, including the 5 Federal generals above, has to do with the 600 Confederate POWs. From Joslyn again:

The situation was deemed so uncivilized by both parties, that negotiations were started between Ould and Mumford, hoping to reach a conclusion to such an embarrassing position of intentional harm to prisoners. Finally, after three weeks, an exchange agreement was reached and all ended amiably.

The 50 officers were exchanged on August 3, 1864. The 600 Confederates were placed in harms way after that. From US General Foster:

They have already been obliged to remove our officers from Macon, and 600 of them have already arrived in Charleston and others are to follow; this from its being the only secure place.
He [CSA General Jones] stated he did not place them there to be under fire, but that they were merely enroute. The truth is they are so short of men as guards that they have no place to put their prisoners except Charleston and Savannah. ... As far as injury goes to them there can be none, for I know there exact position and direct the shells accordingly.

Foster, who is the Union general later roasted in Congress for deciding to retaliate on Confederate prisoners on his own, then decided to place 600 Confederate prisoners in front of the fort.

If it is accurate, how come Ms. Joselyn never mentions items (1) or (2) in her books and articles?

If you are relying on this sort of information from this Moderated ACW poster, Walt, I suggest you look for another source.

Joslyn goes into quite a lot of detail. She describes the place where the 600 Federal prisoners were put in Charleston. Initially they were in "the vicinity of the Roper Hospital and the O'Connor house at 180 Broad Street. Others were located on the race course."

Joslyn quotes a couple of the Federal prisoners who did not like this arrangement. It was too hot and they were initially kept out in the sun in a crowded small prison yard. Later though, one of the same prisoners who had complained about where they were put upon arrival at Charleston, was happy with where they were moved a few days later. "August 14, 1864. Transferred this evening to the Marion Hospital a large building adjoining the prison. It is quite commodious and are really the best quarters I have had the pleasure of enjoying since my advent into the Confederacy. My present location is room no. 6 second floor where all communications may be addressed"

In neither of those quotes does Lincoln suggest that blacks not his "moral or intetellectual" equal.

Your Lincolnian bullsh*t artistry aside, there are many more types of inequality than moral and intellectual. Lincoln readily said that blacks were not equal in color and also said that he opposed social and political equality with them. That makes him a white supremacist by any definition of the term. Live with it.

The relative handful of neo-Confederates who sympathize with a Democrat attempt to destroy the United States of America in the 1860s does immense damage to our Grand Old Party, especially when they pretend to be Republicans.

I suppose it is just my opinion as that may be yours, but I have always believed that the Republican party has far more to fear from people who:

1. Are willing to alienate the party's most loyal and solid base, the south, by attacking its people and history with no measureable gain in votes elsewhere to show or compensate for those losses, and

2. Are willing to align themselves with the forces of the radical left for the purpose of indulging in their very own trademark tactics at race hustling and political correctness to an end that, in its immediacy, is virtually indistinguishable from their own.

You are a practitioner of both of these things, Partisan, and thus do immeasureably greater damage to the Republican Party than I could ever dream of.

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