Replies

woodpusher: "The Confederacy did not surrender in April 1865.
The Army of Northen Virginia surrendered at Appomatox."
Johnson surrendered to Sherman in April 1865, so the war was effectively over, though it's true that some Lost Causers to this very day continue the battle to redefine Civil War issues and its outcome.

As detailed in my #100, and by the U.S. Supreme Court as quoted from The Protector, the Civil War was most certainly did NOT end with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.

As is your crazed wont, you now appear to maintain that the U.S. Supreme Court is a Lost Causer. Desperate measures for a desperate mythologer.

woodpusher: "I am not a Lost Causer but a Yankee who insists on history being based on facts and not the fictional, ahistoric tales partican hacks, such as yourself, persist in spinning."
And that is yet another total lie -- in fact you are a committed Lost Causer, to the core, here to sell us the whole panoply of Lost Cause lies by wrapping them up in lengthy quotes and specious arguments.

Of course, you are a blustering mythologer, incapable of defending your regurgitated mythology on its merits.

woodpusher: "The United States Supreme Court in the case of The Protector, 79 U.S. 700 (1870)
there were two proclamations declaring that the war had closed, one issued on the 2d of April, 1866..."
Since when has any Lost Causer ever respected a SCOTUS ruling regarding the Civil War?

As the Supreme Court opinion in The Protector demolishes your mythology, you must resort to claiming that your mythology somehow overrules the U.S. Supreme Court, because Lost Cause.

The Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to hold that abortion (Roe) and same-sex marriage (Obergefell) are rights protected the Constitution. After Plessy, seperate but equal was the law of the land. After Brown, sepearate but equal was unconstitutional. Regardless of your opinion, or that of anyone else, the Supreme Court opinion is the law of the land.

The fact is that, first, Lincoln's Emancipation declared all slaves in rebel regions freed and, second, by the time of Confederate surrenders in April 1865, slavery itself was declared abolished in every state except two: Kentucky and Delaware.
[...]
In the 1860 census New Jersey reported 18 slaves.
Of those 18, 16 remained to be freed by the 13th Amendment in 1865.

If 16 slaves remained in New Jersey, to be freed by the 13th Amendment, it is obvious even to a moron that slavery continued in New Jersey until the 13th Amendment.

Lincoln's proclamation NEVER proclaimed all slaves in rebel regions to be free. It exempted the entire state of Tennessee, various parishes of Louisiana, and 55 counties of Virginia. It did not even pretend to have any affect on slaves in states not in rebellion.

It was a proclamation, not a law. It has no more legal significance than your beloved Joe Biden bestowing the National Medal of Freedom to Corn Pop.

The 13th Amendment was adopted to free the slaves who had not been freed by the war; to ensure the legal status of those who had been freed; and to avoid a legal challenge in court to the proclamation.

woodpusher: "During the war, it was declared that slaves were considered property and could be seized as contraband property.
Slaves seized as property became Union property and were set free by their new owner.
Slaves not seized as contraband property had no legal status as free.
The end of the war (the actual end) signified the end of any authority to seize any slave as contraband, and it ended any Federal government authority to seize slaves as contraband property and set them free."
And so, here woodpusher comes as close as he dares to confirming DiogenesLamp's claim that slaves freed during the war should have been returned as slaves after Confederate surrenders.

What a steaming pantsload. I have never voiced my support of returning freedmen to their prior owner. You are welcome to quote me doing so if you can find your fictional bullshit.

Congress readily admitted in debate that one of the reasons the 13th Amendment was required was the dubious legality of the Emancipation Proclamation. In addition were those slaves in Union states such as New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky.

Now therefore I ... by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy ... in time of actual armed rebellion … , and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do … order and designate … the following [as rebellious districts], to-wit:

Try comprehending the authority sought to be invoked by Lincoln. It was that of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, not Chief Executive.

See James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln, University of Illinois Press, 1951, pp. 378-80, footnotes omitted.

In considering the grounds on which Lincoln himself justified the proclamation, we must remember that he really favored emancipation by State action with Federal compensation to the owners, but realized that there was no prospect of this proposal being adopted by the seceded States. We must remember, also, that prior to the issuance of the proclamation he had been “prompt and emphatic in denouncing any interference by the general Government with the subject.” On various occasions he declared his conviction that Congress (even during the war) had no legal power to strike at slavery in the States. He thought, however, that the executive had powers which Congress did not have.
He based his proclamation solely upon the “war power.” He issued it “by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy
Having observed the basis upon which the proclamation rested, we must now inquire as to its legal effect and validity. In this connection the limitations within the proclamation itself should be carefully noted. Those portions of Confederate territory which were within the control of the military forces of the Union were, in general, excepted from the terms of the proclamation. These exceptions were made, as President Lincoln said, because “military necessity” did not require the application of the proclamation in these regions. Largely for this reason, the proclamation has been frequently described as a measure having little or no effect.
“Immediate practical effect it has none,” said the New York World, “the slaves remaining in . . . the same condition as before.” “So long ... as the present political and military status continues, the freedom declared by this proclamation is a dormant, not an actual freedom. . . . The proclamation is issued as a war measure. . . . But that cannot be a means of military success which presupposes this same military success as the condition of its existence.” “We show our sympathy with slavery,” Seward is reported to have said, “by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them, and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”
The Emancipation Proclamation is commonly regarded as a measure which marked a distinct change in the purpose of the war, so that from the time of its issuance the war was pursued with the object of overthrowing slavery. There is truth in this view, and one does note after the proclamation an increasing determination on the part of the Government to conduct the conflict as a war against slavery; but if the seceded States had done all that Lincoln asked and returned to the Union in response to his preliminary proclamation of September, 1862, there was nothing in the proclamation to prevent the war from ending with slavery still preserved. Preservation of slavery in non-rebellious regions seemed to be implied in the proclamation. Russell made a true observation when he said that Lincoln’s proclamation contained “no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery.”
Comments by Lincoln’s critics on the futility of the proclamation were common enough; but we read with wonder the following language of Lincoln himself, uttered after the proclamation had been presented in Cabinet and decided upon as a policy of the administration: “What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do?” was the President’s question to a church delegation. “I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is there a single court, or magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by it there?”

It appears you may have to add Abraham Lincoln to your ever growing list of Lost Causers.

Bottom line:

Bottom line: you blather endlessly while remaining utterly ignorant of your chosen subject matter.