Lincoln’s 'Great Crime': The Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice

Lew Rockwell.com ^ | August 19, 2004 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[capitan_refugio]

"And why was the case dropped against John Surratt?"

Was he the idiot?

[GOPcapitalist]

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.

Will your beloved Lieber Code work then? As surely you know of its Article 16:

"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."

[capitan_refugio]

You haven't been to China lately, have you?

Is the picture from wartime Vicksburg, perhaps?

[capitan_refugio]

Gidiot - "And yet it is El Capitan calling for an ideological cleansing through mass murder."

"[O]ur Southern people have not gotten over the vicious habit of not believing what the don't want to believe." - Charlottesville Chronicle

Jefferson Davis, April 4, 1865 (after fleeing Richmond): "Relieved from the necessity of guarding cities and particular points, important but not vital to our defence with our army free to move from point to point, and strike in detail the detachments and garrisons of the enemy; operating int he interior of our own country, where supplies are more accessible, and where the foe will be far removed from his own base, and cut off from all succor in case of reverse, nothing is now needed to render our triumph certain, but the exhibition of our own unquenchable resolve. Let us but will it, and we are free."

Is it a southern tendency to bluster in the face of reality? Maybe it's due to inbreeding.

Woodrow Wilson, Virginian by birth, spent his childhood in wartime Georgia:

"Because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy."

[capitan_refugio]

Gidiot #1501 - "Provide an example [of misrepresentation]. You cannot.

Gidiot #1501 - "Once might be an honest mistake. Twice? Maybe I could believe that. Thrice, and response of 'big deal' - outrageous and dishonest."

Same post. What a maroon.

[capitan_refugio]

You buddy, NC, posted this in his #1498: "In consequence of certain robberies which have been committed on Union citizens of this county by bands of guerrillas ..."

Bands of guerrillas. Hmmmm. Maybe Milroy had a point afterall.

[capitan_refugio]

An interesting interpretation. I see you continue to deny the founding principles of the American nation, espoused by Jefferson.

[GOPcapitalist]

Bands of guerrillas. Hmmmm. Maybe Milroy had a point afterall.

Are you blind, capitan, or just plain dumb? That order was from Virginia in 1862. Milroy's murders of all those civilians were in Tennessee in 1865.

[capitan_refugio]

Justice Davis himself, author of the opinion, does not support the type of interpretation you attempt to make. It wasn't supportable in the 1860's and it's not supportable now.

[capitan_refugio]

"After signing the [surrender] papers, Grant introduced Lee to his staff. As he shook hands with Grant's military secretary Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian, Lee stared a moment at Parker's dark features and said, "I am glad to see one real American here." Parker responded, "We are all Americans."

[capitan_refugio]

The resolution being which one, exactly? (So there is no mistake about what you actually mean.)

[capitan_refugio]

What you take for "generally accepted facts," no one can be sure.

"what i'm saying to him is that he INTENTIONALLY quotes "phony sources", the most hatefilled of union wartime propaganda & the UNsubstantiated rantings of the most extreme,leftist (some would call them COMMUNIST), southHATING REVISIONISTS out of the NE RADICAL college history departments, as if they were FACT."

Like Woodrow Wilson?

[capitan_refugio]

"are you one of those unionist loonies who doesn't believe ANYTHING that the damnyankees did was WRONG & IMMORAL?"

I've been called worse ... in this thread! I have posted most clearly that I believe that "atrocites" happen in wartime. They happen on both sides. Much of what are called "atrocities" are not. Claims of "atrocities" often do not stand up to close evaluation. It is easy to make an accusation, but it is not so easy to prove it ... unless of course it is Dan Rather making the claim, then we all presume it is phony on its face.

[capitan_refugio]

"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."

All military deaths, for all causes, totaled about 365,000 of the Union, and 135,000 for the confederacy (as per D.O.D.). Add in your 50,000 civilian "casualties" and you are just barely at half of your earlier estimate. And that includes your ever-widening definition of "wanton death."

Since you have divined that every death in the war was unjustified, then what was the purpose of describing them as "wanton." Like Rush says, "Words mean something." "Wanton" has a particular definition and you seem to use it to make emotional hyperbole. Your usage is "gratuitous."

I see it another way. Every death in the Civil War helped ensure a similar war would never again happen. Despite some of the more outrageous statements by your compatriots, indicating the the AZTLAN war is on the way and the second WBTS is imminent, the fact of the matter is that such thinking is fantasy time.

[capitan_refugio]

In the time period being discussed, concerning the orders of General Milroy (c 1864), was after the institution of General Order No. 100 - aka the Lieber Codes. Those superceded, and in part, included, the earlier Articles of War dating back to the first ones adopted by the United States in the Revolutionary period.

[capitan_refugio]

"There is NEVER a legitimate reason in the United States Military to execute by torture"

Your post of Milroy's order doesn't say the United States executed anyone by torture. I believe it says that two bushwhackers were turned over to Mr. Pittman, who, for all you or I know, may have represented the civilian authority in the area. As I said in a much earlier post, when you brought this up, it sounds to me like there were some scores being settled.

[capitan_refugio]

"Makes me wish we had the damned Communists back."

I bet you do.

[capitan_refugio]

You have never answered a question I posed. Do you believe that Taney was correct when he said, "The negro has no rights the white man is bound to respect"?

I consider that the most offensive text ever written by a Supreme Court Justice. It was a statement which made defying or ignoring the Court justifiable.

[capitan_refugio]

"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."

Why not tell the truth? Or are you still working on that historical fiction? What did the so-called "government" of Viginia have to do with it? No such constitutional government existed at the time.

[capitan_refugio]

Prove Finkelman is a marxist. He's a leftie, all right, in stark contrast to the sources I often quote, who you like to call lefties, but who are not! You guys even call the "claremonsters" lefties!