Posted on 10/29/2002 6:24:06 PM PST by stainlessbanner
BUMP on a good article of truth! Can't you just hear the patter of the damnYankee feet running to defend their sainted tyrant?!
Good luck to everybody!
Stonewalls
Bump for an article of crap. A depot is a tyrant, a description more fitting of Jefferson Davis than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was elected and reelected in open elections. Davis was appointed to office and then ran unopposed. Lincoln's actions were subject to review by the Supreme Court. Davis never got around to establishing such a court, despite the fact that his constitution required one. Davis nationalized business, siezed private property for the war effort, crapped all over the idea of states rights.
Walt
Davis absolutely maintained that the central government had the right to coerce the states in the matter of conscription. He seems to have forgotten about that later on.
Walt
He tried that, and tried it and tried it again.
If you see his special address to the Congress in 12/1/62 he put forward a scheme that would have emanciapted all slaves by 1900. He had previously tried border state emancipation in 1862. The border state people would have nothing to do with it. In a seeming paradox Lincoln opposed the aboltion of slavery in the District of Columbia, which the Congress passed as soon as the slavers had left town. Lincoln went slow on this, because he knew the 1862 elections would be very important. He was a pretty canny guy. Once he judged the feel of the country, he promulgated the tentative Emancipation Proclamation on 9/22/62. The Republicans lost seats in the Congress but still maintained a working majority. Frederick Douglass:
"Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined."
Lincoln pushed the envelope throughout the war that led to equal rights for all Americans.
All this anti-American neo-nazi/neo-confederate crap won't change that.
Walt
What Stampp thinks is a lot less important that what many people thought at the time. And many thought the rebels had forfeited all rights of citizenship. Even President Lincoln referred to the rebels as traitors and their actions as treason.
The rebels were lucky not to been hanged by the hundred -- the way they did to many loyal citizens in a display absolutely NOT matched by the Yankees, who by the way, WERE the masters after rebellion and treason were thrown down.
Walt
This is just not true.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1862 that the acts and ordinances of secession of the so-called seceded states had no basis in U.S. law.
There were many other cases well prior to the war which cannot be squared with a legal right to secession, including Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), McCullough v. Maryland (1819) and Cohens v. Virginia (1821). Any ONE of these cases is a bar to legal unilateral state secession, and the slave power well knew it. That is why they made no appeal to the court, but tried to extort their demands at the point of a gun.
Walt
All these neo-reb rants need to be deleted.
Walt
And when the Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney had the temerity to disagree and even castigate Lincoln's actions in 1861, then Lincoln had a writ of arrest issued for Taney. Not to mention the closing down of several Northern newspapers who didn't subscribe to Lincoln's view on the war in 1861. Uhhhhhhhhh ... I believe that is a distinct violation of the 1st Amendment ... you know ... FREEDOM OF THE PRESS! You saying Jeff Davis was a tyrant while trying to defend a despot (correct spelling of the word) is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. You see the Confederate government was brand new and still in its infancy (they're called growing pains old son) ... the Federal government was 80 years old and running on well oiled skids. Given time I'm sure the Confederacy would've adhered to all facets of its Constitution.
And while you're bullsh*ttin, you spoke of Davis' siezing private property for the war!? What about what the Federals did when out in the field? "Foraging" is called seizure of private property. Confiscation of horses for the military is called seizure of private property. And lets not forget the thousands of dollars in private property looted by the Yankee invaders and sent northward and to Kansas ... which wasn't for the war effort! So don't try to run that tired assed argument you're stumping on. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaahhh ... how many businesses were shut down in the North if they didn't go along with Lincoln's great scheme? Uhhhhhhhhh ... those pesky newspapers ... that too was private property!
Yes, well Jefferson Davis didn't have to worry about minor issues such as supreme court decisions, did he? After all he didn't bother to appoint a supreme court. Which made it handy when he shut down newspapers and jailed dissidents. He was good at that, too. On a per capita basis the confederacy locked up more political prisoners than Lincoln is accused of doing. Little things like a lack of a justice system didn't bother Davis. And why should it? He knew exactly what he was doing. As he himself said, "...the true and only test is to inquire whether the law is intended to and calculated to carry out the object...If the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional." The ends justifies the means. Karl Marx had nothing on him. So your protest that the confederacy might someday have actually adhered to it's constitution is ridiculous. It just got in Jeff's way.
The confederate army foraged quite liberally during their forays up North but that wasn't what I was talking about. I was talking about theft from his own population. The Davis placed a levy on all agricultural produce for the war effort. Imagine, the poor slob in the confederate army, can't make enough to feed his family what with run away inflation and all, and Davis steals a percentage of what his family is raising in an attempt to keep from starving. Lincoln never tried anything like that. When it comes to tyranny old Jeff wrote the book.
That has never been proven. It is just part of the neo-reb rant.
Walt
You see the Confederate government was brand new and still in its infancy (they're called growing pains old son) ...
I find it interesting that in the 6 weeks or so before Davis started the war he had time to staff a cabinet, which was not a constitutional requirement but didn't have time to create a supreme court, which was a constitutional requirement. He had time to create an army general staff and an army of 100,000 men, but not create the third branch of government that the constitution called for. During the first two months of the war Davis had time to institute a protective tariff but still no justice system. During the first year of the war Davis had time to mismanage the war effort, institute conscription, force soldiers to serve past their enlistment but no time to focus on a court system. The only possible explanation is that a court would just have gotten in his way.
It's interesting to note that Judah Benjamin, the so-called 'Brains of the Confederacy", spent most of his service in the confederate cabinet in the two most worthless offices in it. He was Attorney General for a government which did not give a damn about justice, and Secretary of State for a government that did not have diplomatic relations with a single country. Talk about easy money.
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