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.

[Non-Sequitur] Since we haven't gotten nolu chan's opinion on the subject it's hard to say what I think about it.

nolu chan 2012 to Non-Sequitur

[Non-seq] Mr. Bennett has called slavery "the greatest crime in human history." So how do you feel on the subject? Is slavery worse than the Holocaust? Is it worse than, say, Reconstruction?

It seems somewhat pointless to grade two evils such as slavery and the holocaust. No merit can be imputed to the one which is apparently less evil. Considering the scope and duration of slavery, I believe slavery would probably win the prize. To its dubious merit, the purpose of slavery was not extermination.

As you are comparing the subjects of the holocaust and slavery, you may recall that the Jews also spent a few years in slavery.

Wars are fought over power and money. The American Civil War was no great exception. It was not started as some philanthropic effort to free slaves.

Let us consider the hypothetical that the Southern states had not joined the original Union, rather they formed a completely separate nation with all the international rights that entails. The C.S.A. if you will.

Now, if the U.S.A. had simply decided in 1861 that it had seen enough of slavery and could endure no more of such human degradation in its sight, and told the C.S.A. that either it would abolish slavery, or the U.S.A. would invade and kick its ass to kingdom come until it abolished slavery, I could support that.

What I cannot support is the towering hypocrisy that Lincoln was defending the Constitution, that all he did was lawful, or that the war was fought as a philanthropic effort to free slaves. It was a white man's war, and the slaves were pawns.

The Constitution was bent, broken, and raped.

The District of Columbia was under Federal control with no state government control involved. Slavery was maintained there for a significant period of the war until Congress finally voted to end it.

With the passage of the Confiscation Acts, NOTHING stopped the Union Army from freeing slaves. The WHOLE justification was that slaves were property and could be seized. The Union troops were able to seize just about any property imaginable. They took livestock, furniture, silverware, and even ladies dresses. About the only piece of property they seemingly could not seize and take back North was negroes. The only thing they had to do was seize them, take them to a free state, and let them go free. And now I ask you, what state or states would have accepted them?

Certainly not New York. I seem to recall that at one certain time New York City had strange fruit hanging from the lamp posts.

The Underground Railroad went to Canada for a reason.

At the start of the war, the free Negro population of the South was greater than that of the North. But wait a minute, the North had freed its slaves by gradual emancipation. The children of slaves born after some date certain would be free after some period of servitude or somesuch.

Where did all those free Negroes in the North disappear to? I know they were exposed to the bible up North and all, but surely that did not make them forget how to begat.

During gradual emancipation the Northern slave owner had a choice. He could hold his slave and watch the value diminish greatly. He could just sell his slave to a neighbor at diminished value. Or better yet, he could sell South at full value.

It worked like the Negro Mass Migration Program or Northern Ethnic Cleansing Program. Many Northern negroes went South to some Southern Gentleman. And the Southern Gentleman's cold, hard cash went North into the pocket of the Northern Gentleman.

Once that process had matured sufficiently, it was time for the Northern Gentlemen to throw their hands in the air and denounce slavery.

The fact is, slavery was legal. The problem was not Chief Justice Taney and the Dred Scott decision. The problem was the Constitution. As a price of getting the Southern states to join the Union, slavery was permitted and protected.

The choice of the Founding Fathers was not as simple as that may appear. An argument can be made that it was more important to have one united nation than to preclude slavery [slaves dissenting]. From the time of the Constitution, slavery continued about another 75 years. It may have been the hope of the Founding Fathers that the nation would find some way to end it more quickly, and without a civil war. On the other hand, they may well have contemplated the wars and horrors that have visited the many nations of Europe. Since 1790, how would one compare all the horrors that have visited Europe, to slavery? Over one million died in the siege of Leningrad alone. Consider the holocaust, what Britain did to Ireland over the years, the horrors of Stalinist Russia. While it is easy to say the Founding Fathers made a pact with the Devil when they accepted slavery, the alternative may have entailed a different horror.

It was not the goal of the North to preserve the Constitution as it was, but to change the Constitution, and change it they did. The 13th Amendment most definitely changed it for the better. The 15th Amendment changed it for the better. The 15th Amendment should have included the 19th Amendment. The 14th Amendment significantly added to the power of the central Federal government.

The object of the exercise was for the North to dominate the South and to expand the power of the Federal government. The North imposed its will upon the South.

Slaves were freed. It was a good thing. It just wasn't the purpose of the war. Shortly thereafter, the nation went back to business as usual, more or less, and few gave a crap about the slaves that had been freed.

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