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To: BroJoeK
I'm betting you have no data which contradicts the point Neely made -- that numbers of Confederate political arrests did not change whether Jefferson Davis was operating under lawful habeas corpus suspensions or not. Nor have you contradicted my math which says that relative to populations Confederate political arrests were roughly the same as the Union's.

Its up to him to prove his claims - not up to me to disprove them.

I'm also betting you will never explain to us how Confederate political arrests under suspended habeas corpus are not "tyranny", but the same thing in the Union is "tyranny".

Strawman alert! I never said that.

Relative to populations, it was roughly the same.

only if you believe a number very close to the extreme low estimate of those jailed without charge or trial or at best trial before military tribunal in the union.

The existing evidence supports my math that habeas corpus related arrests in the Confederacy were roughly the same as in the Union, relative to populations. It's a fact there are fewer available Confederate records, so actual numbers may well have been higher.

Except you have failed to provide any of this supposed "existing evidence"

You provided no link to prove your claim that there was never a Confederate Declaration of War against the United States.

Yes I did. Go back and look. Hell, ask even Google which has a hardcore pro federal government/pro leftist bias.

I provided a link showing the actual Declaration of War on May 6, 1861.

Except that link did not show an actual declaration of war.

You can see the actual Confederate Declaration of War yourself, and nobody has claimed that 1861 secession alone was treason.

Except there was no Confederate Declaration of War and your link did not show any.

By the Constitution's definition, treason against the United States consists in: "levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort".

Yes, levying war against the states. That's what Lincoln did.

And yet again: secession itself was not considered treason in 1861, but waging war against the United States was, by the Constitution's own definition.

Waging war against the states is considered treason. But of course, the CSA did not declare war and was only seeking to defend themselves. It was the Lincoln administration which launched a war of aggression against the Southern States.

The Confederate Declaration of War against the United States is available for you or anybody else to see.

The lack of a confederate declaration of war is available for anybody to not see since it never happened. You can query in any number of places though and find out that there was no Confederate Declaration of War.

And even if you resolutely deny there was ever an official Confederate Declaration of War, you cannot deny that Confederates waged Civil War against the United States, beginning in 1861 and ending... well, some of you guys never do give up, do you?

No it didn't. The CSA never sought to rule over the US or any Northern states. They merely sought to defend themselves after being attacked by the Lincoln administration. In an actual civil war, two sides fight for control over the central government. That is not what happened. It was no more a civil war than the 1775-1783 affair was. It was a war of Independence.

LOL! Crazy-Roger Taney was indeed certifiably lunatic, and the evidence is overwhelming, consisting of, at least: Crazy-Roger's Dred Scott 1857 opinions denying slaves and former slaves citizenship. Crazy-Roger's 1861 circuit court habeas corpus opinion. Crazy-Roger's irrational fears of being arrested, which he never was.

LOL! Thanks for proving my point. He made some decisions you didn't like and knew that Lincoln had signed an arrest warrant for him. So you claim he must be "crazy". By the way, a majority of the SCOTUS ruled that way in Dred Scott. Taney was not a majority all by himself.

Your high-end number of 38,000 is not justified by any data I've seen.

it is by some of the sources I've seen.

The number 14,401 seems entirely reasonable to me.

of course it does because its at the extreme low end of the estimates produced.

If you had a link you'd provide it, but you don't, which means you're pulling your claims out of thin air.

Nope! I told you the book that listed it. Feel free to read for yourself.

No, I'm saying Lincoln didn't censor or shut down 100 newspapers. The US Post Office did refuse to deliver those newspapers.

Refusing to deliver papers is effectively censoring them in the same way that denying someone a platform to express their views is censoring them.

FYI, many years ago, when I was a boy living in California, I was a paper-boy with two different newspaper routes, neither of which used US Post Office services. So the US Mail's refusal to deliver newspapers, should it happen, was not an issue then.

Yes it was. It was censorship in a way very similar to the censorship imposed by Big Tech in recent times.

According to a NY court ruling at the time. Treasonous newspapers were not allowed in the Confederacy either.

"Treasonous" was any disagreement with government policy to them. New England elites think the same way today.

I've got four examples: Richmond Examiner's content was carefully curated by Confederate authorities. Charleston Mercury was shut down in 1863 for its criticism of Confederate authorities. Mobile Register's editor, John Forsyth, was replaced by the Confederate government for his lack of loyalty. The new editor, Dabney Maury, ensured that the paper adhered to the official line, avoiding criticism of the government. Atlanta Intelligencer was forced to close in 1864 due to its opposition to Confederate conscription policies. Of course, most Confederate newspapers were loyal to the Confederacy, but those that criticized too much were dealt with by authorities.

It happened in the CSA but much like the arbitrary arrests and suspension of habeas corpus, it happened on nothing like the scale it happened in the Northern States. Newspapers in the Southern states were if anything far more harsh in their criticisms of President Davis than Northern newspapers dared to be of Lincoln.

Those are your numbers. Here are some different numbers: "Records indicate the capture of 211,411 Union soldiers, with 16,668 paroled and 30,218 died in captivity. Of Confederate soldiers, 462,684 were captured, 247,769 paroled and 25,976 died in captivity. Just over 12% of the captives in Northern prisons died, compared to 15.5% for Southern prisons.[1]" What those averages conceal is that some camps were much worse than others, so for every truly deadly camp there were others merely uncomfortable. I see no need to exaggerate conditions either way.

Those are your numbers. What is not mentioned, is that there was no shortage of food or medicine in the Northern states while there was in the Southern States as a result of the naval blockade. As for Andersonville.....

During the amnesty debate in the House of Representatives in 1876, Hill, of Georgia, replying to statements of Blaine, discussed the history of the exchange of prisoners, dwelling on the fact that the cartel which was established in 1862 was interrupted in 1863, and that the Federal authorities refused to continue the exchange of prisoners. "The next effort," he said, "in the same direction was made in January, 1864, when Robert Ould, Confederate agent of exchange, wrote to the Federal agent of exchange, proposing, in view of the difficulties attending the release of prisoners, that the surgeons of the army on each side be allowed to attend their own soldiers while prisoners in the hands of the enemy, and should have charge of their nursing and medicine and provisions; which proposition was also rejected."

Continuing, Mr. Hill said: "In August, 1864, there were two more propositions. The cartel of exchange had been broken by the Federals under certain pretences, and the prisoners were accumulating on both sides to such an extent that Mr. Ould made another proposition to waive every objection and to agree to whatever terms the Federal Government would demand, and to renew the exchange of prisoners, man for man, and officer for officer, just as the Federal Government might prescribe. That proposition was also rejected. In the same month, August, 1864, finding that the Federal Government would neither exchange prisoners nor agree to sending surgeons to the prisoners on each side, the Confederate Government officially proposed, in August, 1864, that if the Federal Government would send steamers and transports to Savannah, the Confederate Government would return the sick and wounded prisoners on its hands without an equivalent. That proposition, which was communicated to the Federal authorities in August, 1864, was not answered until December, 1864, when some ships were sent to Savannah. The record will show that the chief suffering, the chief mortality at Andersonville, was between August and December, 1864. We sought to allay that suffering by asking you to take your prisoners off our hands without equivalent, and without asking you to return a man for them, and you refused."

The death toll at Andersonville was indeed high but that was due to shortages of medicine and food. Confederate authorities were not wantonly cruel. They tried to alleviate the lack of medicine by offering to let the Union send its own doctors with medicine to take care of them. The offer was refused. They offered to let the Union pick up the particularly sick and wounded POWs and that offer was ignored for months while they were dying.

the high death tolls of Confederates in Union POW camps like Camp Douglas, Hellmira and Point Lookout have no such excuse. They could have been adequately fed, housed and provided with adequate medical care. The federal government just didn't want to. That is in addition to widespread reports of deliberate murder and cruelty I've quoted before.

Your claim here without evidence is just empty words, meaning nothing.

Precisely what I say about your claims.

So, roughly equivalent to Lincoln and the 1862 Dakota War.

Except Confederate authorities in Richmond had no control over the guerilla war in Missouri.

193 posted on 02/18/2024 10:43:20 AM PST by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird; cowboyusa; x; jmacusa; DiogenesLamp
FLT-bird on historian Neely's claim that numbers of political imprisonments in the Confederacy were unchanged whether Confederate congress had authorized them or not:
"Its up to him to prove his claims - not up to me to disprove them."

This is Neely's book, from 1999:

Here is the Amazon description:

So, I'm betting Neely did prove his case, though naturally, if you refuse to read his book, you can always claim there's "no evidence" to support it.
I'm betting that's just what you'll do.

FLT-bird: "Strawman alert! I never said that."

Well then, if you are perfectly willing to confess there was just as much "tyranny" under Jefferson Davis' Confederacy as in Lincoln's Union, then I think we've reached common ground and this particular debate is more-or-less over.

FLT-bird: "only if you believe a number very close to the extreme low estimate of those jailed without charge or trial or at best trial before military tribunal in the union."

This is Neely's 1991 book on Union Civil Liberties:

I've seen no evidence to support your higher numbers, and if they amount to nothing more than statistical projections, then we can easily do the same with Confederate numbers and the ratios remain unchanged.

Here is Amazon's book description of Neely's book:

FLT-bird: "Except you have failed to provide any of this supposed "existing evidence""

I can point you to two books full of "existing evidence" but, of course, I can't force you to read them.

FLT-bird on CSA Declaration of War: "Yes I did.
Go back and look.
Hell, ask even Google which has a hardcore pro federal government/pro leftist bias."

Your repeated claims notwithstanding, you've provided no link and no evidence to prove that the Confederacy never declared war on the United States.
My link, and here it is yet again, shows you the actual document.
All you have to do is read it, regardless of what google tells you.

By the way -- and this might be a good place to mention it -- I've now done many Bing AI inquiries and sometimes they are very helpful, but other times the results are complete nonsense.
How often for each?
About half and half, I'd say.
So, neither google nor Bing AI is ever a magic truth-telling answer machine.
Yes, sometimes it's OK, but just as often it's pure nonsense.

FLT-bird: "Except that link did not show an actual declaration of war."

And yet, the Confederate document of May 6, 1861 calls itself:

So, are you going to quibble over the wording?
Then you might compare it to this wording from Pres. FD Roosevelt on December 8, 1941: Terms of art do not make it any less a declaration of war in fact and in law.

FLT-bird: "Yes, levying war against the states.
That's what Lincoln did."

Not against the United States, that was Jefferson Davis & company.
I know you have serious trouble remembering basic facts.

FLT-bird: "Waging war against the states is considered treason.
But of course, the CSA did not declare war and was only seeking to defend themselves.
It was the Lincoln administration which launched a war of aggression against the Southern States."

Only willful self-inflicted blindness prevents you from seeing the real facts which are:

  1. Jefferson Davis ordered Fort Sumter be "reduced" by CSA Gen. Beaureguard, if it didn't surrender, long before any Union "war fleet" began to arrive, offshore from Charleston, late on April 11.
    On April 3, Davis also ordered Fort Pickens to be captured and occupied by CSA Gen. Bragg long before any shots were fired there.

  2. On May 6, 1861 the Confederate Congress formally declared war against the United States, though for inexplicable reasons, our Lost Causers all insist that clear Declaration of War was not really a Declaration of War.

  3. The war's first actual invasions were by Confederate forces into Union Missouri and West Virginia.

  4. In the Civil War's first year more battles were fought in the Union than in the Confederacy and more Confederate soldiers died invading Union soil than in defending their own states.
FLT-bird: "No it didn't.
The CSA never sought to rule over the US or any Northern states.
They merely sought to defend themselves after being attacked by the Lincoln administration.
In an actual civil war, two sides fight for control over the central government.
That is not what happened.
It was no more a civil war than the 1775-1783 affair was.
It was a war of Independence."

Except that all of that is just Lost Cause propaganda lies, none of it is factually true.
The truth is that Confederates invaded and contested many Union states, especially in the war's first year or two, including:

  1. Maryland
  2. Pennsylvania
  3. West Virginia
  4. Ohio
  5. Indiana
  6. Kentucky
  7. Missouri
  8. Kansas
  9. Oklahoma
  10. New Mexico
In 1864 Jubal Early threatened Washington, DC, and Confederate guerilla forces operated in Union states of California, Colorado and Vermont.
So it was, by definition, a civil war, regardless of whatever other names you might chose to call it. FLT-bird re: Crazy-Roger: "LOL!
Thanks for proving my point.
He made some decisions you didn't like and knew that Lincoln had signed an arrest warrant for him.
So you claim he must be "crazy".
By the way, a majority of the SCOTUS ruled that way in Dred Scott.
Taney was not a majority all by himself."

The vast majority of SCOTUS did support its Dred Scott decision, but only Taney himself, and one or two others, supported the full flowering of Taney's insane anti-black opinions.
The alleged Lincoln arrest warrant is an unconfirmed rumor, which a few crazy people, then and now, took seriously, but which had no proven physical existence, ever.

FLT-bird: "Nope! I told you the book that listed it.
Feel free to read for yourself."

Let's see that link again.
Regarding estimates of US Civil War political arrests, with habeas corpus denied, I'll read your book when you read mine. 😂

FLT-bird: "Refusing to deliver papers is effectively censoring them in the same way that denying someone a platform to express their views is censoring them."

I'll repeat -- the reason I know better is because many years ago I was a paper boy delivering newspapers -- without any connection to the US Post Office.
Newspapers did not use and did not need the US Post Office to get delivered.
The Post Office could have refused to deliver my papers and it would have had no effect on anything we did.

That's why I'm saying, Union Post Office actions may have inconvenienced some of those alleged 100 anti-Lincoln newspapers, but he didn't "shut them down".
Nor did the Confederacy ever allow disloyal newspapers to publish there.

So, if you call that "tyranny" for one, then it's just as much "tyranny" for both and "tyranny" also in other wars where censorship was practiced.

FLT-bird: "It happened in the CSA but much like the arbitrary arrests and suspension of habeas corpus, it happened on nothing like the scale it happened in the Northern States.
Newspapers in the Southern states were if anything far more harsh in their criticisms of President Davis than Northern newspapers dared to be of Lincoln."

That is your claim, based on no evidence or statistics whatever.

FLT-bird: "Those are your numbers.
What is not mentioned, is that there was no shortage of food or medicine in the Northern states while there was in the Southern States as a result of the naval blockade."

Confederates had enough food for their own populations and armies, but couldn't bring themselves to feed their POWs.
And my understanding is that very few Confederate deaths in Northern POW camps came from starvation, but rather from diseases and exposure in cold Northern winters.

The statistics clearly say that POWs were mistreated on both sides and anyone can debate whether one side or the other was measurably worse.

FLT-bird: "They offered to let the Union pick up the particularly sick and wounded POWs and that offer was ignored for months while they were dying.
the high death tolls of Confederates in Union POW camps like Camp Douglas, Hellmira and Point Lookout have no such excuse.
They could have been adequately fed, housed and provided with adequate medical care.
The federal government just didn't want to.
That is in addition to widespread reports of deliberate murder and cruelty I've quoted before."

I won't attempt to defend anything in any of those CW POW camps, except to point out that some were much worse than others, and that overall something like 85% of prisoners on both sides did survive their experiences.

The politics which ended POW paroles and prisoner exchanges are too mind-boggling for me to really understand.

245 posted on 02/20/2024 8:33:06 AM PST by BroJoeK (future DDG 134 -- we remember)
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