[FLT-bird]

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".

and I'm saying I disagree. Lincoln started the war unconstitutionally, deliberately targeted civilians, ran POW camps that were extermination camps (again deliberately), committed ethnic cleansing and genocide against native peoples and trampled on Americans' civil liberties to a vastly greater extent than was done in the CSA.

So, you claim Lincoln was more of a "tyrant" than Davis and I'm saying the facts don't really support your claims.

But they do.

Yes, clearly, those most oppressed on both sides were people living on the borders -- geographically or politically. 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.

This is just pure speculation on your part. We know there were far more jailed without charge or trial - or at best trial before military tribunals only in the Union. There were multiple congressmen jailed or banished in the Union but none in the CSA. The censorship regime was far more extensive in the Union. There have been multiple allegations from people at the time as well as historians of ballot box stuffing in the Union - none in the CSA. etc.

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.

I'm not willing to concede to self serving guesstimates you pulled out of thin air.

I noticed that your own source does list historian Mark Neely's book as an authority.,/p>

Yes I disagree with them about that. I don't find him the least bit credible.

It doesn't say whether the estimated 38,000 Union arrests came from Neely.

So what? The 38,000 estimate for the high end of the range is a number you see from many historians because there is evidence to support it.

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.

Yeah....another false claim by you.

"Fate has indeed taken a malignant pleasure in flouting the admirers of the United States. It is not merely that their hopes of its universal empire have been disappointed; the mortification has been much deeper than this. Every theory to which they paid special homage has been successively repudiated by their favorite statesmen. They were Apostles of Free Trade: America has established a tariff, compared to which our heaviest protection-tariff has been flimsy. She has become a land of passports, of conscriptions, of press censorship and post-office espionage; of bastilles and lettres de cachet [this was a letter that bore an official seal which authorized the imprisonment, without trial of any person named in the letter] There was little difference between the government of Mr. Lincoln and the government of Napoleon III. There was the form of a legislative assembly, where scarcely any dared to oppose for fear of the charge of treason." the Quarterly Review in Britain

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.

LOL! No it doesn't. Taney ruled against some of Lincoln's more tyrannical actions as he should have. His job as a Supreme Court Justice was to uphold the Constitution after all.

And yet the Confederate document itself says it's a declaration of war.,/p>

And yet it does not. It recognizes there is a war going on. It does not declare war on the US.

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.

No it is not which is why you are all alone in making this claim. Even the vast majority of PC Revisionists in Academia do not support this claim.

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.

Again, no it does not and you are practically all alone in making this ridiculous claim. Even your fellow PC Revisionists in Academia do not support it.

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: Article III, Section 3: "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?

Gee, in 3 years of law school and in passing the bar I never read the constitution. News to me!

Obviously I did read it and noticed it said "THEM"....to wit: the states. The CSA did not declare war against them and was not seeking to impose its rule upon them. The CSA would have been quite happy to live and let live. It was the Lincoln administration which needed war, started the war and which waged a war of aggression.

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!

You realize all of that happened AFTER Lincoln started the war and started waging a war of aggression against them right? They left and made no claims to any US territory. They were quite happy to depart in peace. It was Lincoln who insisted on war. Once he started the war all bets were off. At that point the CSA was willing to do whatever it would take to win just as any other country would.

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.

The CSA did not threaten the Union. They were quite happy to leave in peace and made every effort to do so. They even offered to establish good trade relations with the Union and offered free passage of the Mississippi.

Also your "Democrats always and at all times bad, Republicans always and at all times good" mantra is laughable....what one would expect of a kindergartner. The political parties are broad coalitions which shift and change over time. The Democrats used to be the party of limited government, balanced budgets and decentralized power.....ie in the mid 19th century they used to be exactly the opposite of what they are now. Hell, in my lifetime I've seen them go from being the party of the working man to the party of Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Tech and the Billionaire class.

They used to be the ones who insisted on preventing illegal immigration whereas now they facilitate it. They used to be the ones who were staunchly free speech now they're the biggest fans of censorship. They used to be anti war. Now they support constant Deep State meddling abroad. etc.

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".

You yourself already listed one. Go back a few posts and read.

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.

It was Lincoln's choice to invade South Carolina's territory so as to provoke war. He did so for reasons he himself confessed to - Money.

"If I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once!" ~ Lincoln, in response to the suggestion by the Virginian Commissioners to abandon the custom house of Fort Sumter. (Housekeeping is a euphemism for federal spending.)

"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on... [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?" ~ Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin, deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861.

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." Lincoln House Divided Speech June 16, 1858

"Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?” Abraham Lincoln

"I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal. . . We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.” -Abraham Lincoln

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ... Abraham Lincoln

“anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, pp. 511-512)

“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. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor 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 ever 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. Abraham Lincoln

"Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man." Abraham Lincoln

There are no quotes of Taney making such immoderate public statements about Blacks though yes, it can safely be assumed he too would be quite racist by modern standards. Even by the standards of the day however, Lincoln was a flaming racist.

Its just inconvenient for your politics." And yet you've cited no others with primary knowledge of the alleged warrant.

And yet I've cited two such sources.

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

Sorry but your denial is a flat out lie. I've provided sources which absolutely do confirm he shut down over 100 opposition newspapers.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "and I'm saying I disagree.
Lincoln started the war unconstitutionally, deliberately targeted civilians, ran POW camps that were extermination camps (again deliberately), committed ethnic cleansing and genocide against native peoples and trampled on Americans' civil liberties to a vastly greater extent than was done in the CSA."

All of that is 100% lies and nonsense, fact-free fantasizing and redefining words to suit your own nefarious purposes.

1. Lincoln didn't start the war.
   By his own confession, that was Jefferson Davis.

2. There was nothing "unconstitutional" about Lincoln's actions at Forts Sumter or Pickens, but Confederate actions there were 100% illegal.

3. Lincoln didn't "target civilians", that's just crazy-talk.
   Indeed, there were remarkably few civilian casualties compared to any other civil war in history.

4. Union POW camps were no more "extermination camps" than were Confederate camps, and Union camp overall death rates were less than in Confederate run POW camps.
   Survival rates averaged over 85% in Union camps, slightly more than in Confederate camps.
   Those are not "extermination" level numbers.

5. There is no evidence whatever that Lincoln himself had anything to do with, or knowledge of, abuses of Native Americans in Minnesota.

6. The fact is that Unionists in Confederate states were treated no better than Copperhead Democrats in Union states.
   Indeed, there is no Union equivalent to the Shelton Laurel Confederate army massacre of Unionist civilians in January of 1863, among other examples.

So it's all just nonsense, Lost Cause fantasies, nothing more.

FLT-bird: "This is just pure speculation on your part.
We know there were far more jailed without charge or trial - or at best trial before military tribunals only in the Union.
There were multiple congressmen jailed or banished in the Union but none in the CSA.
The censorship regime was far more extensive in the Union.
There have been multiple allegations from people at the time as well as historians of ballot box stuffing in the Union - none in the CSA. etc."

Nearly all of which is explained by the absence of a political opposition party in the Confederacy.
There were no Confederate political equivalents of Northern Copperhead Democrats even legally allowed.
So, from Day One, levels of political oppression within the Confederacy were vastly greater than in the Union.

As for total numbers jailed, relative to population sizes, they seem to be roughly the same.

FLT-bird on historian Mark Neely: "Yes I disagree with them about that.
I don't find him the least bit credible."

I see, so, are you telling us that you've actually read Neely's books, both of them, all the way through?
That would be pretty amazing.

FLT-bird: "So what?
The 38,000 estimate for the high end of the range is a number you see from many historians because there is evidence to support it."

And you can name these alleged historians and cite the evidence they used for their estimates?

FLT-bird quoting the Quarterly Review in Britain on the USA: "She has become a land of passports..."

Well, if your Quarterly Review in Britain said it, then how can it not be true?
The Quarterly Review was known for its harsh and often unfair criticisms, one most notably charged as responsible for the death of young British poet John Keats in 1821.

Here's the truth: there is no evidence confirming the British Quarterly Review's implication that internal passports were required of citizens in Union states.
They were, however, required in Confederate states for citizens and slaves alike.

FLT-bird: "LOL!
No it doesn't.
Taney ruled against some of Lincoln's more tyrannical actions as he should have.
His job as a Supreme Court Justice was to uphold the Constitution after all."

SCOTUS never ruled on Lincoln's "more tyrannical actions".
Crazy-Roger Taney, expressing his personal opinions as a circuit court judge with zero authority, then attempted to physically enforce his own crazy opinions.
That was law-fare then, just as it is today.

FLT-bird on the CSA declaration of war: "And yet it does not.
It recognizes there is a war going on.
It does not declare war on the US."

Of course, it does because it's the same thing -- there is no legal or practical difference between "recognizing" war and "declaring" war.
Such documents, under whatever words are used, give a country's political leaders extraordinary powers to wage war against their identified enemies.

"In modern international law, a declaration of war signifies the recognition between countries of a state of hostilities."

Therefore, logically, a recognition of hostilities is, by definition, a declaration of war.
Now, can we stop with the absurd nonsense?

FLT-bird: "No it is not which is why you are all alone in making this claim.
Even the vast majority of PC Revisionists in Academia do not support this claim."

Then you can quote examples of valid historians who claim that "recognition" is not effectively the same thing as "declaring" war?

FLT-bird: "Gee, in 3 years of law school and in passing the bar I never read the constitution.
News to me!"

You've obviously failed in everything.

FLT-bird: "Obviously I did read it and noticed it said "THEM"....to wit: the states.
The CSA did not declare war against them and was not seeking to impose its rule upon them.
The CSA would have been quite happy to live and let live.
It was the Lincoln administration which needed war, started the war and which waged a war of aggression."

Every word of that is lies... lawyerly lies or course, but why else hire a lawyer except to invent plausible sounding lies?

FLT-bird: "You realize all of that happened AFTER Lincoln started the war and started waging a war of aggression against them right?
They left and made no claims to any US territory.
They were quite happy to depart in peace.
It was Lincoln who insisted on war.
Once he started the war all bets were off.
At that point the CSA was willing to do whatever it would take to win just as any other country would."

And the pro-Confederate lawyer-lies just never stop...

The truth is that secessionists were waging war against the Union from Day One in December 1860, and most notably on January 9, 1861, with firing on, and striking, the Union civilian steamer Star of the West.
Secessionists' warfare included threats and illegal seizures of dozens of Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals and mints -- some even before secessionists had formally declared themselves.

FLT-bird: "The CSA did not threaten the Union.
They were quite happy to leave in peace and made every effort to do so.
They even offered to establish good trade relations with the Union and offered free passage of the Mississippi."

Nooooo... from Day One in December 1860, secessionists began threatening Union officials and seizing Union properties.
As early as January 20, 1861, Jefferson Davis himself threatened civil war in a letter to his close friend, Copperhead Democrat former Pres. Pierce:

"When Lincoln comes in he will have but to continue in the path of his predecessor to inaugurate a civil war"
[Jefferson Davis to Franklin Pierce, 20 Jan 1861]"

There is simply no doubt that, from Day One, secessionists - Confederates intended to start war.

FLT-bird: "Also your "Democrats always and at all times bad, Republicans always and at all times good" mantra is laughable....what one would expect of a kindergartner.
The political parties are broad coalitions which shift and change over time.
The Democrats used to be the party of limited government, balanced budgets and decentralized power.....ie"

My formula for parties (not people!) is this: Democrats = 100% evil, Republicans = 51% good.
In reality, Democrats were never, ever, what you claim here.
Democrats only ever posed and pretended to be such when they were the minority party in opposition to majority Federalists, Whigs or Republicans.
Whenever Democrats came to political power, they almost immediately threw off their pretenses of "small government" and "strict construction" and got on with the serious business of oppressing their political opponents.

A perfect example -- the only Democrat president between Buchanan (1857-61) and Wilson (1913-21) was former NY Governor Grover Cleveland, whose reputation is as the epitome of "conservative Democrat".
And maybe he was, in some respects, but in 1894 he supported a Democrat majority bill in Congress, and then signed into law, an unconstitutional peacetime income tax, which was struck down by SCOTUS the following year.
Democrats were never truly conservative.

FLT-bird: "They used to be the ones who insisted on preventing illegal immigration whereas now they facilitate it.
They used to be the ones who were staunchly free speech now they're the biggest fans of censorship.
They used to be anti war.
Now they support constant Deep State meddling abroad. etc."

Sorry, but still no: Democrats were never truly any of those things in principle, because Democrats have no principles, only the politics of winning.

1. Democrats always supported immigration, legal or otherwise, because those are their voters, going all the way back to the election of 1800, when NY Tammany Hall Democrats helped elect Thomas Jefferson president over Federalist John Adams.

2. Democrats' alleged opposition to illegal immigration was strictly for public consumption of their labor union supporters, which seems to be a non-factor today.
   Democrats never made a serious effort to even slow down illegal immigration.

3. "Free Speech" for 1960s hippy Democrat protesters was strictly a slogan they used while not in total power over government and academia.
   Once in power, they began shutting down free speech -- beginning with "political correctness" -- just as they always did historically, most notoriously with "Gag rules" in Congress from 1836 to 1844.

4. Democrats were never, ever, truly "anti-war", and we can see that with a list of wars, military operations and "meddling" under Democrat presidents:
   • Barbary Wars (Jefferson & Madison)
   • War of 1812 (Madison)
   • Monroe Doctrine (Monroe's meddling abroad)
   • Trail of Tears (Jackson)
   • Mexican War (Polk)
   • Ostend Manifesto on Cuba (Pierce meddling abroad)
   • Paraguay Expedition (Buchanan)
   • Civil War (Davis)
   • Hawaii and South America (Cleveland)
   • First World War (Wilson)
   • Second World War (FD Roosevelt)
   • Korean War (Truman)
   • Vietnam War (Kennedy-Johnson)
   • Iran Revolution (Carter meddling abroad)
   • Former Yugoslavia (Clinton)
   • Isis, Libia & Ukraine (Obama meddling abroad)
   • Ukraine (Biden)

   The saddest part of this legacy is that since WWII, while Democrats are just as eager as ever to go to war, they've been utterly unable to figure out how win our wars and end up skedaddling disgracefully, most notoriously from Vietnam and Afghanistan.

FLT-bird: "You yourself already listed one.
Go back a few posts and read."

Then you misread my words, and your obfuscations here tell us you know perfectly well you're telling us just another lawyerly lie.

FLT-bird: "It was Lincoln's choice to invade South Carolina's territory so as to provoke war.
He did so for reasons he himself confessed to - Money.
"If I do that, what would become of my revenue?
I might as well shut up housekeeping at once!"
~ Lincoln, in response to the suggestion by the Virginian Commissioners to abandon the custom house of Fort Sumter.
(Housekeeping is a euphemism for federal spending.)"

Pro-Confederate lies confirmed by nobody without an anti-Lincoln ax to grind.

FLT-bird: "There are no quotes of Taney making such immoderate public statements about Blacks though yes, it can safely be assumed he too would be quite racist by modern standards.
Even by the standards of the day however, Lincoln was a flaming racist."

Crazy-Roger Taney was in a class by himself, along with every other Southern slaveholder.
They weren't just "racists", because the word "racist" doesn't do them justice.
What Crazy Roger expressed in his 1857 Dred Scott decision was his fantasy that Africans were, in effect, not human beings and therefore did not need to be considered as "all men are created equal".
From this, Crazy decided that Africans, enslaved or free, could never be citizens -- that's the worst of his Dred Scott nonsense.

FLT-bird: "And yet I've cited two such sources."

You cited only one primary source, a bodyguard who first reported it 25 years later.
There are no other primary sources.

FLT-bird: "Sorry but your denial is a flat out lie.
I've provided sources which absolutely do confirm he shut down over 100 opposition newspapers."

It's not what your source said, and you can simply prove me wrong by quoting where it says exactly what you here claim.