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"On the day Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate authorities, General Braxton Bragg reacted to a newspaper report that might have revealed the position of gun emplacements by placing the correspondent, a Southern loyalist, under arrest. Thus the Confederate army's first detention of a citizen occurred before President Lincoln had even called out troops to suppress the rebellion. During the civil war that followed, not a day would pass when Confederate military prisons did not contain political prisoners. "Based on the discovery of records of over four thousand of these prisoners, Mark E. Neely Jr.'s new book undermines the common understanding that Jefferson Davis and the Confederates were scrupulous in their respect for constitutional rights while Lincoln and the Unionists regularly violated the rights of dissenters. Neely reveals for the first time the extent of repression of Unionists and other civilians in the Confederacy, and uncovers and marshals convincing evidence that Southerners were as ready as their Northern counterparts to give up civil liberties in response to the real or imagined threats of wartime............blah blah blah 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.

Nobody has ever denied that civil liberties were infringed upon in the CSA. They clearly were. It was not however on nearly as large of a scale as happened in the Union under Lincoln. So no, he didn't "prove his case" by citing some instances of civil liberties being infringed upon in the Southern states since nobody ever argued that this did not happen. The question was how much in each comparatively.

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.

But there wasn't nearly as much under Jefferson Davis as there was under Abe Lincoln. So no, I'm not going to "confess" to something that isn't true.

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.

Historians do not know exactly how many people the government arrested for antiwar protests during the Civil War, although estimates vary from just over 13,000 to as many as 38,000.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/arrest-arbitrary-during-civil-war

It was been estimated that between 14,000 and 38,000 were imprisoned and denied access to Habeas Corpus during the war.

https://www.clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/lincolns-suspension-of-habeas-corpus/

As you can see by doing any kind of research of your own, this wasn't an estimate I just invented.

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

You can cite a couple of PC Revisionists? LOL! I can cite others who disagree. Though of course, you won't read them.

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.

How does one prove a negative? You have not provided any document which shows that the CSA declared war. The reason you have not is because they did not.

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.

Agree there. Try Yandex or some other search engine not controlled by Big Tech. You will be simply amazed at the differences in the search results for any remotely political topic......which shows you how much the search results for Google/Bing/Yahoo/DDG etc are "curated".

And yet, the Confederate document of May 6, 1861 calls itself: "CHAP. III.--An act recognizing the existence of war between the United States and the Confederate States; and concerning letters of marque, prizes and prize goods. May 6, 1861." So, are you going to quibble over the wording?

They recognized the existence of conflict. Note they did not declare war.

Then you might compare it to this wording from Pres. FD Roosevelt on December 8, 1941: "I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire." Terms of art do not make it any less a declaration of war in fact and in law.Did you notice the part where FDR asked for a formal declaration of war from the Congress? The Confederate Congress never issued a declaration of war.

Not against the United States

but the constitution does not say the United States. The Constitution says "against them"....ie the states - who were the parties to the constitution after all.

that was Jefferson Davis & company.

No they didn't. They were merely defending themselves from attack. They never sought to rule over the Northern states, to seize any of their territory, etc. They were not fighting a war of aggression. It was Lincoln and the Union which were doing that.

I know you have serious trouble remembering basic facts.,/P>

This is what shrinks call "projection"

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

Only willful blindness or dishonesty prevents you from admitting that federal warships invaded South Carolina's territory. Lincoln sent a heavily armed fleet of warships to invade South Carolina's territory again. Illegal squatters representing the federal government were occupying the sovereign territory of South Carolina and Florida.

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.

No they didn't. This is just a lie on your part.

The war's first actual invasions were by Confederate forces into Union Missouri and West Virginia.,/p>

Yet another lie on your part. The first invasions were by federal warships into South Carolina's territorial waters.

Except that all of that is just Lost Cause propaganda lies, none of it is factually true.,/p>

Except that is just PC Revisionist propaganda and lies. None of it is true.

In 1864 Jubal Early threatened Washington, DC, and Confederate guerilla forces operated in Union states of California, Colorado and Vermont.

Once Lincoln started the war, all bets were off. That however does not mean that he didn't start the war or that the Union was not waging a war of aggression. He did and they did exactly that.

So it was, by definition, a civil war, regardless of whatever other names you might chose to call it.

No it wasn't. Again, the CSA never sought to take control over the federal government. Nor did it seek to impose its rule on the Northern states. What they were fighting was a war of independence. They would have been perfectly happy to depart in peace. They tried to do exactly that. It was Lincoln who insisted upon war.

"A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.[3]"

This definition is false. There is a difference between a war of independence a la the 13 colonies from Britain or the Southern states from the US vs a true civil war for control over the central government a la the English Civil war, the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Civil War the Chinese Civil War, etc. The protagonists have completely different aims.

Thanks for proving my point.

the only point you proved is that you resort to namecalling because you disagree with him.

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.

Guess what. anti Black opinions were the absolute norm for most White people in the mid 19th century - North....South....European....wherever. It was a time we in our modern world would consider to be both very racist as well as very sexist. Taney's opinions were not unusual for the time. Lincoln himself was a flaming racist.

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.

It has been confirmed by multiple people. Its just inconvenient for your politics.

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

I provided two more quotes and links to the 38,000 number. Here's yet another:

Estimates of the number of civilians arrested by military authorities during the Civil War range from 13,000 to 38,000

https://constitutingamerica.org/essay-54-ex-parte-vallandigham-1864-ex-parte-milligan-1866-guest-essayist-gennie-westbrook/

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.,/p>

I'll repeat, Lincoln shut down over 100 opposition newspapers and censored all telegraph traffic.

Nor did the Confederacy ever allow disloyal newspapers to publish there.

Just as with the arbitrary arrests, they happened in the CSA too, but on a significantly smaller scale than in the Union.

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.

The Confederate government's hands were not clean when it came to scrupulously upholding civil liberties and I do not claim they were. They just weren't as bad as the Union government when it came to repression and censorship.

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

You've claimed the opposite based on no evidence. I have provided quotes from even PC Revisionists supporting the fact that the Confederate authorities were not as oppressive as Union authorities were.

Confederates had enough food for their own populations and armies, but couldn't bring themselves to feed their POWs.,/p>

WOW! you really are ignorant. The Confederates definitely did not have enough food for their own populations and armies. You really need to study more.

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.

Few were outright starved to death. But they were starved to the point that they were weakened and thus far more susceptible to disease. Disease killed more people than outright murder in the Nazi death camps too - for the same reason. People were weakened after having been deliberately starved.

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

One side had numerous instances of cruelty and deliberately starved prisoners and denied them medicine despite there being no shortage there. The other side had dire shortages of food and medicine which accounted for the vast majority of the deaths. Again, they even offered to let the Union send their own doctors with their own medicine to treat Union POWs and were ignored. Conditions in those camps were terrible but they tried to alleviate it.

FLT-bird: "Nobody has ever denied that civil liberties were infringed upon in the CSA.
They clearly were.
It was not however on nearly as large of a scale as happened in the Union under Lincoln.
So no, he didn't "prove his case" by citing some instances of civil liberties being infringed upon in the Southern states since nobody ever argued that this did not happen.
The question was how much in each comparatively."

So, just to be clear, this whole discussion is over your word "tyrant" -- you claim Lincoln was a "tyrant" and I'm saying if you can define Lincoln as "tyrant" then Davis was also a "tyrant".
So, you claim Lincoln was more of a "tyrant" than Davis and I'm saying the facts don't really support your claims.

So, what are the facts?
Well, you've cited one book and I've cited two books, none of which we've read, but all of which will provide us with data and examples of who and how much people were oppressed by the "tyrants" Lincoln and Davis, during the US Civil War.
Will they let us say for certain who, exactly was oppressed more?

Yes, clearly, those most oppressed on both sides were people living on the borders -- geographically or politically.
For the Union, those would be people in Border States like Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.
For the Confederacy, it would be Unionist regions like Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Northern Alabama and Northern Arkansas.

So, how many oppressed whites were there?
Well... if we look at pro-Confederates in Border Union States like Maryland, Kentucky & Missouri, then rough estimate we can say maybe one million oppressed pro-Confederates in Union states, out of a total Union white population of around 22 million.

What about oppressed Unionists in Confederate regions like Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, etc.?
My estimate is there were about a million of those too -- oppressed white Unionists living in the Confederacy, out of a total white Confederate population around 5.5 million.
Now, maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe there were only half as many oppressed whites in the Confederacy, say only half a million, not a full million.
That still makes the overall percentage of oppressed whites around 10% in the Confederacy compared to just 4% in Union states.

FLT-bird: "But there wasn't nearly as much under Jefferson Davis as there was under Abe Lincoln.
So no, I'm not going to "confess" to something that isn't true."

So, for sake of argument, I'm willing to concede there were only half as many oppressed Unionist whites in the Confederacy as oppressed pro-Confederates in the Union.
That still makes the overall percentage of oppressed whites more than double in the Confederacy than in the Union.
Do the math.

FLT-bird: Arrest, Arbitrary, During The Civil War

I noticed that your own source does list historian Mark Neely's book as an authority.
It doesn't say whether the estimated 38,000 Union arrests came from Neely.
I also noticed your source claimed the Union required internal passports for travel, but that was not true.
Only Confederate authorities required passports for internal travel of citizens, the same as for slaves.

FLT-bird: Lincoln’s Suspension of Habeas Corpus

Your own link here portrays Democrat Crazy-Roger Taney as waging law-fare (warfare by law) on Lincoln the same way despicable Democrats today wage law-fare on Pres. Trump.

Democrats have always been politically mentally ill.

FLT-bird: "How does one prove a negative?
You have not provided any document which shows that the CSA declared war.
The reason you have not is because they did not."

And yet the Confederate document itself says it's a declaration of war.

FLT-bird: "They recognized the existence of conflict.
Note they did not declare war."

Your repeated denials notwithstanding, that is a declaration of war for every practical and legal purpose.
That document did for the Confederacy everything a declaration of war is intended to do, only somehow allowing Lost Cause Democrats to claim for centuries afterwards that it wasn't really.

But it was a declaration of war, for all legal and practical purposes.

FLT-bird: "Did you notice the part where FDR asked for a formal declaration of war from the Congress?
The Confederate Congress never issued a declaration of war."

There is nothing in FDR's request for a declaration that the Confederate declaration of May 6, 1861 did not accomplish.
Both acknowledged that war existed and accomplished the same purposes of a declaration of war.

FLT-bird: "but the constitution does not say the United States.
The Constitution says "against them"....ie the states - who were the parties to the constitution after all."

Now I see what your real problem is -- since you never actually read the Constitution, you have no real idea what it says.
Here it is, yet again:

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

Are we clear on this now?

FLT-bird: "No they didn't.
They were merely defending themselves from attack.
They never sought to rule over the Northern states, to seize any of their territory, etc.
They were not fighting a war of aggression.
It was Lincoln and the Union which were doing that."

Notice 13 stars:

You and everyone else well know that's not true.
The truth is that Confederates not only invaded Union states like Kentucky and Missouri, plus Union territories like Oklahoma and New Mexico, Confederates also declared those Union states & territories to be Confederate!
For crying out loud -- Missouri and Kentucky were the 12th & 13th stars on Confederate flags!

So, it's simply a Democrat lie to claim the Confederacy did not threaten the Republican Union.
And of course, lying is what Democrats do, it's how Democrats make their livings, and Confederates were overwhelmingly Democrats.

FLT-bird: "Only willful blindness or dishonesty prevents you from admitting that federal warships invaded South Carolina's territory."

On way we know that's not true is because you refuse to cite a specific example of a Union warship that "invaded South Carolina's territory".

FLT-bird: "It was Lincoln who insisted upon war."

Obviously, it was Davis' choice to fire the first shots, and by his own confession, he did so for reasons which had nothing to do with Lincoln's actions.

FLT-bird: "Guess what. anti Black opinions were the absolute norm for most White people in the mid 19th century - North....South....European....wherever.
It was a time we in our modern world would consider to be both very racist as well as very sexist.
Taney's opinions were not unusual for the time.
Lincoln himself was a flaming racist."

Taney's insane anti-black opinions were noted as such at the time, even by "moderate" anti-salvery men like Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln fully understood what Crazy-Roger's words meant:

"We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

FLT-bird: "It has been confirmed by multiple people.
Its just inconvenient for your politics."

And yet you've cited no others with primary knowledge of the alleged warrant.

FLT-bird: "I'll repeat, Lincoln shut down over 100 opposition newspapers and censored all telegraph traffic."

Sorry, but those are flat-out lies since even your own sources don't confirm them.

Lincoln's House Divided Speech, June 16, 1858, Springfield, Illinois.