Posted on 08/20/2004 5:43:21 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
They're still here. They just trot around in disguises and under various pet causes, among them the cause of the Abratollah.
Gidiot - "[El Capitan, #1462] Big deal."
Your reading comprehension must be at the grade school level. I "admitted" to making a mistake in the citation. Which isn't lying or deceiving. It is a mistake. Considering that I've made some 5,000 posts in the last 4 years, a few errors are bound to creep in. But when identified, they are gladly corrected.
But you FAIL to answer the real question. Was the substance of the post correct (i.e. the case was about an American citizen)? The answer is obvious yes. The reason you don't want to answer the question is that your house of cards will again begin to crumble.
If you wish to number yourself among the paranoid crowd with nolu chump and the others, be my guest. I don't expect much better of you, in any case.
This is from a Civil War FAQ. It was the first google hit.
The following statistics are from J.C.G. Kennedy, Supt. of Census, Agriculture in the United States in 1860 (Washington: G.P.O., 1864)
[ratios calculated by JMS]
State Slave- Slaveholders in slaves per
holders white pop. (%) slaveholder
AL 33,730 6.4 12.9
AR 11,481 3.5 9.7
DE 587 0.65 3.1
FL 5,152 6.6 12.0
GA 41,084 6.9 11.2
KY 38,645 4.2 5.8
LA 22,033 6.1 15.0
MD 13,783 2.7 6.3
MS 30,943 8.7 14.1
MO 24,320 2.3 4.7
NC 34,658 5.5 9.6
SC 26,701 9.2 15.1
TN 36,844 4.4 7.5
TX 21,878 5.2 8.3
VA [5] 52,128 5.0 9.4
VA1 [5] 48,523 7.0 9.7
WV [5] 3,605 1.0 5.1
Total 393,967 4.9 [8] 10.0
"The number of free households in the 15 slave states was 1,515,605. Since the census generally counted only one slaveholder per household, the number of slaveholding households will be roughly equal to the number of slaveholders. So there were roughly 393,967 slaveholding households in 1860. Taking the ratio shows that 26% of Southern households were slaveholding households."
Epperson's website calculates a higher figure.
I note that your assertions are wholly unreferenced.
Do you have any additional support other than your own tortured rendering of Lincoln's statement? Lincoln was a renowned lawyer. He knew what the constitutional amendment and ratification process was. You need to read more about Lincoln, in his own words. I can suggest several books, if you would like.
"Lice" with it?
Well, for starters my reading is anything but tortured. Lincoln's support for it was, as you like to say, unequivocal. In addition to that I have the statement of Henry Adams, an eyewitness to the whole thing (his father was the House sponsor before Corwin), who recorded for history that the amendment itself was a direct product of Lincoln's efforts to get it through congress.
I can suggest several books, if you would like.
Thanks but no thanks. Your "recommendations" have a bad tendency to turn out to be marxists.
It's a mistake the first time and with the first case. But when you do the same thing with at least four separate cases over a period of several weeks, a natural and justified tendency is to suspect something more than a simple mistake.
What you pretend to be war crimes are largely lawful (under the laws of war) efforts to destroy the war-making capacity of the enemy.
This is not to say that isolated war crimes did not occur. On both sides. They did. But your wholesale accusation about widespread Union "war crimes" are unsupported by any evidence you have posted.
Wrote Major Henry Hitchcock, a native of Alabama on Sherman's staff, about the campaign through Georgia,
"[W]hile I deplore this necessity daily and cannot bear to see soldiers swarm as they do through fields and yards ... nothing can end this war but some demonstration of their helplessness.... This Union and its Government must be sustained, at any and every cost; to sustain it, we must war upon and destroy the organized rebel forces, must cut off their supplies, destroy their communications... [and] produce among the people of Georgia a thorough conviction of personal misery which attends war, and the utter helplessness and inability of the 'rulers,' State or Confederate, to protect them.... If that terror and grief and even want shall help to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting us ... it is mercy in the end."
And what Major Hitchcock speculated would happen, did happen. By the end of the war, Lee's army was melting away with desertions. The poor foot soldiers felt the need to take care of family first, and leave Ol' Jeff and the Confederacy to fend for itself.
And you also forget, among the founding principles, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" rank equally. To enslave a fellow human being is as bad as killing him. If Taney's law is to be believed, killing him was of no consequence in any case - the slave had no rights worth respecting.
Sin attends sin, and where there is sin, further sin follows because sin is corrupting. The sins themselves are still individual though, thus the effect of murder does and will always constitute a more grievous deprivation than that of slavery.
And you also forget, among the founding principles, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" rank equally. To enslave a fellow human being is as bad as killing him.
Incorrect. While they are equal as sins, they are not equal in effect. Slavery deprives liberty while murder deprives life. Liberty may be exerted to some degree even under deprivation, and may always be regained. Life, once taken, cannot be regained. Thus murder's effect is ultimate in nature while slavery's is not.
Life "wantonly deprived." Malicious, unjustified, cruel. Now unless you believe every death caused by war is "wanton," your hyperbole must imply some degree of excessiveness or butchery.
You are talking about deaths - not just battlefield "casualties." And not death by disease (lots of soldiers died in the service without hearing a shot fired in anger). The Department of Defense sets the "battlefield" death figure for the Confederates at about 74,500. Since some of your compatriots will go ape$hit over this official figure and claim all sorts of assassinations and "death camp" murders, go ahead and double that figure and call it 150,000. (Even though records suggest only 220,000 rebels were ever held in POW camps.)
You are still 850,000 "wanton" deaths short of your claim. Now I can't imagine that the Union suffered any "wanton" deaths, according to your cockamamie version of history. so let's add up the "wanton" civilian deaths (Northerners need not apply) - just "wanton" southern civilian deaths. One web source writes: "Across the South, where more than 50,000 civilian casualties augmented the military losses, many towns and cities, railroads, farms, and mills lay in ruins, and frightening specters loomed over the region's economic, social, and political future." So I will give you another 50,000 "wanton" deaths, which is a much inflated figure over 50,000 casualties.
Okay, let's do the math 150,000 + 50,000 = 200,000. We're still at only 20% of your hyberbolic estimates. Why is that? Where did you go wrong?
Article 12 left that up to the "chief commander." There was no requirement to give, for instance, bushwhackers and guerrillas "due process." Your premise that the executions were done "without proper procedures" is unsubstantiated.
"Second, we do know "why" they were ordered - Milroy was seeking a loot and found the person of Moses Pittman to provide him a means to one. He asked Pittman (who was apparently very disliked by the locals as an illiterate ne'er do well and scam artist) to draft up an "enemies list" of all the people in the area he didn't like, which then served as a basis for Milroy's death lists. Pittman was "rewarded," of course, by being given a few extras to torture to death."
All from that order you posted?? Wow! You have concocted a very imaginative story. Have you ever considered writing Civil War historical fiction?
I do indeed believe that every death caused by an unjust and unnecessary war, of which Lincoln's was, is unjustified.
You are talking about deaths - not just battlefield "casualties."
I am talking about every single death caused by Lincoln's decision to invade the south. That would include battlefield kills, deaths from later wounds and later diseases, deaths from disease in general, deaths from starvation, and deaths from the displacement and abuse of the civilian populations. In total, that means somewhere in the 800-900 thousand range.
Nice try, but it simply does not withstand scrutiny. Aside from all of the other problems with the Lieber code that I pointed out previously and to which you have not responded, Article 12 said nothing of the sort. Here is what Article 12 says:
Whenever feasible, Martial Law is carried out in cases of individual offenders by Military Courts; but sentences of death shall be executed only with the approval of the chief executive, provided the urgency of the case does not require a speedier execution, and then only with the approval of the chief commander.
Note the words "sentences of death." That means an actual sentence of death against the accused must be carried out EVEN WHEN IT IS THE "CHIEF COMMANDER" ACTING IN THE ABSENCE OF THE EXECUTIVE. Thus we find that, contrary to your claims, sentencing MUST occur, MUST happen individually, and should be done in military courts whenever possible (as if Milroy, operating far behind the lines on Sherman's supply train, had no time to conduct a court hearing! Garbage!).
All from that order you posted?? Wow!
Let's consider what I've posted for you then. First, I posted one of the shorter Death Lists of Milroy to give you an idea what they entailed. Second, I posted you the reference location where you may find all of the relevant orders and descriptive details, which I am not about to post because it would entail scanning or transcribing what is probably in excess of 50 pages. Third, I provided you with the name of a book that discusses Milroy's atrocities in great detail. Fourth, I provided you a synopsis of the remaining documents that I do have. So yes, out of all that you have more than enough information to verify every word I have said on this subject and more than enough sources on which I am confident in to substantiate what I have said.
Military necessity does not admit of cruelty - that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.
Reviewing your posts #1397 and #1398 in which you first posted from the Lieber Code, I also notice that you neglected to include Article 16 and several others that denounce battlefield atrocities. Your post skips directly from Article 15 to Article 17, indicating conclusively that you had to either remove it from the excerpt you chose to post. We may thus add it to the ever-growing list of willful deceptions you have perpetrated on this thread and others.
The writ of habeas corpus
A fully justified emergency power, later ratified and authorized by the Congress
The first amendment via suppressing dissenting newspapers
It is often alleged that Lincoln violated the "prior restraint doctrine" of the 1st Amendment. In the few cases where newspapers were closed or presses destroyed, there existed evidence of collaboration. And these cases were relatively few. If the "freedom of the press" had been "suspended," how is it so many newspapers opposed to the Lincoln administration continued to operated openly and freely?
The second amendment via widespread gun confiscation
You can take guns away from enemy combatants and civilians in a war zone. It is a prudent measure. Nobody in a state that had purported to secede had any Constitutional rights.
The doctrine of the separation of powers via harassment of the judiciary
From what you have posted, the only judges temporarily detained attempted to "dictate" to a co-equal branch of government. Even in 1861, the Jacksonian view of the Constitution allowed for each branch of the government to come to their own interpretation of the Constitution in the absence of an authoritative interpretation. As it was, Lincoln lawfully suspended the habeas privilege as a war time necessity, and the judges overstepped their jurisdiction.
Splitting a state, Virginia, without its consent
The loyal people of "western Virginia," finding themselves in an area with no recognized government, petitioned the Congress for statehood.
Instituting an income tax
Found unconstitutional many decades later, but not a "suspension" of the Constitution! (You're reaching now.)
Amendments 4, 5, and 6 through the suspension of the civil authority
The establishment of military rule and military tribunals in war zones was approved by the Supreme Court. Where the Court later found military tribunals operating in areas they thought unacceptable, the tribunals ceased. Again, no "suspension" of the Constitution.
...and those are just a few of them.
Yada, yada, yada.
Such as??? Put up or shut up, as they say.
Today, we choose not to use such techniques. You apply today's standards to the 1860's. You need to judge the 1860's by the standards of those days. The Articles of War have some interesting admonitions in them, well worth reading. But it must be remembered that war is very much an exercise in natural right. To establish a "set of rules" governing the belligerents is a wholly artificial construction. When you get right down to the basics, war is two guys duking it out until one concedes or is killed. There are no consequences for the victor. There is no justice for the loser. It is the law of the jungle.
...which puts the duration of its unconstitutional suspension at right around two full years.
In the few cases where newspapers were closed or presses destroyed, there existed evidence of collaboration. And these cases were relatively few.
Not so. You would do good to see what happened to the papers in Baltimore not long after Lincoln's army arrived. One of them was edited by Francis Scott Key's grandson, who found his paper shut down and himself imprisoned without cause or evidence in Fort McHenry of all places.
You can take guns away from enemy combatants and civilians in a war zone.
...a clear violation of the intent and spirit of the second amendment, which was directly intended to provide civilians with protection against an oppressive government. Lincoln also suspended firearms rights in several non-confederate states, so the assertion that it was confined to enemy combatants and war zones is false.
It is a prudent measure. Nobody in a state that had purported to secede had any Constitutional rights.
And I have no doubt you believe that, Stalin boy.
From what you have posted, the only judges temporarily detained attempted to "dictate" to a co-equal branch of government.
Incorrect. Judge Merrick sought only to determine a case that both precedent and the standing law of Congress gave him the jurisdiction to rule upon.
As it was, Lincoln lawfully suspended the habeas privilege as a war time necessity, and the judges overstepped their jurisdiction.
There was nothing lawful about it and every single judge acted within the full jurisdiction of the Judiciary Act of 1789. You know this to be so yet you persist in fibbing because you cannot bring yourself to admit a fault in Saint Abe.
The loyal people of "western Virginia," finding themselves in an area with no recognized government, petitioned the Congress for statehood.
Actually, they purported themselves to be the government for all of Virginia, held a mock Saddam Hussein style referendum that carried by 99.9% to partition themselves, and ran to Lincoln asking for admission for themselves plus a couple dozen counties to their south who wanted nothing to do with him. Lincoln orchestrated Congress behind their admission. All the while, the government of Virginia never once agreed to the partition.
Found unconstitutional many decades later, but not a "suspension" of the Constitution! (You're reaching now.)
It is indeed a suspension - a suspension of the clause prohibiting direct taxes and capitations by legislative fiat.
Amendments 4, 5, and 6 through the suspension of the civil authority The establishment of military rule and military tribunals in war zones was approved by the Supreme Court.
...but thoroughly renounced and declared unconstitutional for their use in non-war zones by Ex Parte Milligan.
Such as Finkelman.
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