[jmacusa]

Wow another one on whom irony is lost. My ‘’spewing insults'' is only my returning fire. I've been called every name in the book on these CW threads but big deal. Before Grant left for Appomattox Lincoln told him ''Let them up easy''. None of the men and officers of the Confederacy were tried for taking up arms and engaging in violent secession from the Union. It was a measure of Lincolns compassion for a defeated foe and his eye for political expediency . The war had cost the nation dearly in lives, ruined farms and business. The nation wanted it over and Lincoln rightly saw that putting Lee and Davis on trial, which he could have done would only further divide the nation. The South instituted a violent secession from the Union and took up arms against a duly elected government in violation of the Alien& Sedition clause of The Constitution. After Gettysburg Lee and Davis should have seen the handwriting on the wall. They could have seen that "The Cause'' was lost but they continued the slaughter for another two years. Had the South prevailed would it have ended slavery? Would the South have been magnanimous to the North? I'm not against monuments to the Confederacy. What I'm against is them being on government property. Property my taxes pay for and out of respect to my ancestor who served with The Army Of The Potomac it don't like it. I'm not a ''Yankee'' or a "Northerner''. I'm an American. What are you?

[Texas Mulerider]

None of the men and officers of the Confederacy were tried for taking up arms and engaging in violent secession from the Union. It was a measure of Lincolns compassion for a defeated foe and his eye for political expediency.

Lincoln's "compassion" is irrelevant, inasmuch as he was assassinated five days after Appomattox. The new U.S. president, Andrew Johnson, was a personal enemy of Davis since their days together in the Senate. Nor did Johnson share any of Lincoln's "compassion" toward the South.

The Johnson administration very much wanted to prosecute Davis for treason. It hired respected jurist Francis Lieber of Massachusetts to prepare the case against him (and, for good measure, to see if he could link Davis to the Lincoln murder). Lieber spent months poring over Confederate documents and could find absolutely zero evidence connecting Davis to Lincoln's assassination. So then the administration fell back on the charge of treason, and was advised by Lieber, "Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten." (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3). Davis was released from Fortress Monroe after one year in solitary confinement.

The unconstitutionality of the doctrine of secession was not, in the mid-19th century, a cut-and-dried notion. In fact, when Mississippi seceded from the Union on Jan. 9, 1861, then-U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis did not immediately return to his home state, as did his other Southern colleagues. He stayed in D.C. for almost two weeks, hoping to be arrested for treason, thereby putting the constitutionality of secession in front of the courts...and possibly averting the war. The arrest never came. While Davis was incarcerated at Ft. Monroe, he spent much of his time preparing his legal defense, which of course would be a constitutional defense of secession. He never got the opportunity to use it.

Except for a backhanded slap at secession by a Reconstruction-era SCOTUS (1869) in an obscure bond case (Texas v White), the constitutionality of secession has never been specifically litigated. Until such time as it has, any reference to Lee, Davis, or any other Confederate as "traitors" is merely personal opinion without judicial concurrence. Surely you can understand how some people might find that offensive.