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Endless complaints. |
Posted on 12/31/2004 2:21:30 PM PST by Caipirabob
What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?
While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.
Stars with bars:
Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.
Some things are better left dead in the past:
For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.
Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.
Compelling story or KKK wet dream?:
So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?
Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.
This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.
Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.
At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.
So what do you think of this movie?
Where ever does he pick up his ideas?
Andrew Johnson,
President of the United States of America.To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting:
Whereas, On the 30th day of June, in the year 1865, one Samuel B. Arnold was, by the judgment of a military commission, convened and holden in the City of Washington, declared guilty of the specification wherein he was charged in the words and figures following, to wit: And in further prosecution of said conspiracy the said Samuel Arnold did, within the military department and the military lines aforesaid, on or before the 6th day of April, A.D. 1865, and on divers other days and times between that day and the 15th day of April, A.D. 1865, combine, conspire with and aid, counsel, abet, comfort and support the said John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Payne, George A. Atzerodt, Michael O'Laughlin and their confederates in said unlawful, murderous and traitorous conspiracy and the execution thereof as aforesaid; and
Whereas, The sentence imposed by said military commission upon the said Samuel Arnold was that he be imprisoned at hard labor for life, and the confinement under such sentence was directed to be had in the military prison at Dry Tortugas, Fla., and the said Samuel Arnold has been for more than three years and six months, and now is, suffering the infliction of such sentence; and
Whereas, The evidence adduced against said Arnold before the said military commission leaves room for uncertainty as to the true measure and nature of the complicity of the said Arnold in the said murderous and traitorous conspiracy, and it is apparent that the said Arnold rendered no active assistance whatsoever to the said Booth and his confederates in the actual execution of said abominable crime; and
Whereas, The pardon of the said Arnold is strongly recommended by the City Council and more than two hundred other citizens of Baltimore and vicinity;
Now therefore, be it known that I, Andrew Johnson,
President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant to the said Samuel B. Arnold a full and unconditional pardon.In testimony whereof I have hereunto signed my name and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington this first day of March, A.D., 1869, and in the independence of the United States the Ninety-third.
ANDREW JOHNSON.
President of the United States.WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
Secretary of State.
Charles A. Dunham, who testified under the name of Sanford Conover, had brought seven witnesses to a Congressional committee in 1866 to offer testimony on the complicity of Confederate leaders. Two of the witnesses confessed that Dunham had written their stories for them, and that their testimony was false. Ultimately, all eight witnesses were discredited, and Conover was sentenced to ten years in prison for perjury. He was pardoned after serving a year. Conover/Dunham Pardon file B p. 576, in Record Group 204, National Archives.
SOURCE: Otto Eisenshiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, 1937, p. 222-5
A humorous note crept into the sordid proceedings when it was disclosed that conover had run a veritable school for perjured witnesses at the National Hotel. he first wrote out the desired testimony for his pupils and then rehearsed them. what he had overlooked was the possibility of cross-examination. No such thing had occurred at the conspiracy trial and none was expected before the judiciary committee. It was not even considered necessary that the students at this school should be especially brilliant."Not one of these witnesses," said Rogers [nc - Congressman A.J. Rogers of New Jersey], "nor the parties using and instructing them, if any besides Conover, possessed any peculiar talent for imposture other than impudence and military power to awe all questionings." [31]
"I talked with him [Campbell]... and he was a good deal embarrassed," he wrote to his chief. "'This is all false,'" he finally blurted out. "'I must make a clean breast of it; I can't stand it any longer.'" [32] If the house of cards erected by Conover and Hold had stood upright for so long, it was evidently only due to the sfact that no one had dared to touch it.
Conover remained as Holt's last hope. He could not be found in New York, but was finally brought to Washington by a ruse. Congronted with Campbell in the rooms of the judiciary committee, his sangfroid did not leave him for a minute. He indignantly delcared that everyone was out of step but himself; that his former friends had all been bought up by Davis' associates; if permitted to go to New York he would procure such additional evidence as would prove this. The embarrassed majority members of the committee acceded to his request, but insisted that he be accompanied by a deputy on his trip north. Arrived at the metropolis, Conover slipped away from his guard and disappeared. [33]
The astonished and abashed judge advocate, shorn of his support, was left alone and a subject of ridicule. Rogers openly averred that Conover had been assisted in his flight by someone high in authority, in order to make impossible an investigation into the disgraceful culpability of this high Unknown. Stanton's friends on the judiciary committee were in a quandary about how to word their report. They clung to some irrelevant correspondence found in the captured Confederate archives and declared:
These documents are conclusive upon the point that Davis, Benjamin, and Walker, in the years 1861, '62, '63, '64, and '65, received, entertained and considered propositions for the assassination of the chief members of the government of the United states, and thereupon a probability arises that they took steps to accomplish the purpose... [34]More than a probability even the staunch partisans of Holt and Stanton could not wring from the testimony. The perjuries confessed to by the key witnesses had to be admitted, of course; but the chairman Boutwell and his henchmen professed their inablity to decide which statements were the true ones; they artlessly remarked that the disgraced witnesses had failed to give to the committee a reasonable explanation for the sudden reversal of their testimony, and let it go at that.
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[31] House of Representatives, Report No. 104, p. 39
[32] Official Records, II, vol. 8, p. 922
[33] DeWitt, Assassination, p. 171
[34] House of Representatives, Report No. 104, p. 25
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SOURCE: David Miller DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of President Johnson, 1903, pp. 278-81.
On this eventful fifth day of August, another startling revelation was made, touching the Judge-Advocate, if not the Secretary of War, just as close. John M. Binckley, acting Attorney-General in the absence of Stanbery, laid his report respecting the pardon of Charles A. Dunham, alias Sanford Conover, before the President. This document consisted of a recital of the contents of two parcels left at the executive office and referred to the Attorney-General. The first -- left on the twenty-seventh of July, it is not stated by whom -- was composed of four, or rather three, papers:1. A letter from A. G. Riddle -- one of the counsel for the United States in the preparation of the case against Surratt -- to the President, dated the twentieth of July, eulogizing the services which Dunham, although in jail, had been able to render before and during the trial of Surratt, in ''giving much valuable information both as to the facts and witnesses for the United States," and, also, "the history of and facts concerning witnesses called for the defence," and in "communicating important facts and suggestions," for which, the writer states, "the Government are under great obligations to him" and should mark its appreciation of them in a way not to be mistaken.
2. On a leaf of the same sheet, a communication from Judge Holt, dated the twenty-fourth but unaddressed, in which, after signifying his concurrence in '' the estimate of the value and importance of the services of Charles A. Dunham" made by Mr. Riddle, he, likewise, recommends his pardon.
3. A note from Ashley, dated July twenty-second, to Holt and Riddle suggesting that a petition for the pardon of "Mr. Dunham" -- a draft of which was to have been forwarded with the note but was wanting -- should be prepared and signed by them; Ashley adding: "I think he (Dunham) is clearly entitled to it, and I hope you will aid him all you can.''
4. The last paper was a petition addressed to His Excellency, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, dated July twenty-sixth and signed "Chas. A. Dunham," praying for a pardon.
It appears from the records of the court that, at this last-mentioned date, Dunham's final motion to suspend sentence further was denied, and he was taken at last to the Albany penitentiary. Abandoning all hope of aid from his present friends, he suddenly resolved to treat them to a dose of their own poison. The second parcel, left on the thirtieth of July by Mrs. Dunham, was composed of: (1) A long letter from Dunham dated the twenty-ninth, and addressed to the President, in which he denounced "the diabolical designs" of Ashley and the other "traitors and conspirators"; the ''nefarious conspiracy" of "Ashley and Co.,'' by which, in consideration of the pardon they were to obtain for him, he should procure testimony connecting Andrew Johnson with Booth.
His charges were most explicit. Ashley, he said, "thought it would be very plausible to prove" four circumstances, viz: 1. That Booth paid Johnson several visits at the Kirkwood House. 2. That Johnson corresponded with Booth. 3. That the placing of Atzerodt with weapons at the Kirkwood was a sham to make it appear that the Vice President was intended as a victim and thus divert suspicion of Johnson's connivance at Lincoln's murder. 4. That Booth stated just after the fourth of March to intimate friends at New York that he was acting with the knowledge of the Vice President; that it was arranged to kill Lincoln on the day of the inauguration, which accounted for Johnson's strange conduct on that occasion. Dunham confessed without hesitation that he assured Ashley he "should have no difficulty in finding persons of good standing and moral character to prove these matters, and it was agreed that" he "should do so as soon as released." "As an earnest" of what he could do in this line, Dunham tells that, at the desire of Ashley and Butler, he forwarded memoranda of the subject-matter of the testimony they were in need of to a "trusty friend" with "instructions for him to procure two other friends to commit to memory the statements enclosed to him, and, when sent for, to come here (to Washington) and repeat them." And these two persons, he stated, actually did come, "were inspected by Ashley and Butler, and were found to possess the requisite qualifications as to intelligence and personal appearance"; were "passed" and "introduced to several Radical members of the House." "Butler desired to have taken the depositions of these men at the time," but Dunham "would not consent to its being done" before his release.
Accompanying this letter were (2) a specimen of the memoranda used to coach the false witnesses (which will be given hereafter at the date it was produced before the Impeachment committee), (3) four notes of Ashley on the business in hand, and (4) one of the Rev. Mr. Matchett. The last note of Ashley bears date July 8, 1867, and in it he writes: "If you can put the originals (i. e., letters of A. J. to Davis and Booth) in my hands, I will say that no one shall take or destroy them without your express order in writing except you are released."
The foregoing report appeared in the public press on the morning of the tenth of August;* on the afternoon of which last-mentioned day, it may be stated in passing, the jury in the Surratt case, after three days' and three nights' deliberation, was discharged because of inability to agree. **
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* See Washington newspapers of that date. Dunham was pardoned, in February, 1869, by the President on the ground of ill-health.
** Surratt's Trial, Vol. 2, p. 1379
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Ronnie bump.
Oh, and if they repeal the exclusion of naturalized citizens from the Presidency, Ahnuld will have to wait -- Maggie's first in line in my book.
Like Ronnie said about her after the Libyan strike, "That Maggie Thatcher is the best man in Europe."
Brazil ended slavery by decree of the Emperor. There was no great change in the status of the former slaves in Brazil, either.
Two-part reply:
a. As an amendment to the Constitution itself, the 14th would override, in its particulars, any earlier prohibition against ex post facto legislation and writs of attainder ("taint of blood" and all that, too), since it is a sovereign act of the People taken at a supraconstitutional level and imposed on the Constitution by the People's power.
b. The 14th Amendment was never properly ratified and is, and ought to be declared, a dead letter by SCOTUS, Congress, or the People -- probably the latter, to correct SCOTUS, which has worked the 14th to death in casting its penumbras into innumerable interstices. The 14th should be rewritten and its salient clauses that people want to retain resubmitted to the States for a proper ratification, curing this chancre on the Constitution and on American history.
It isn't arrogant at all -- if the Constitution says the President must be a natural-born American citizen, then that's what it says. Why should I have to look up some opinion of Justice Story or Learned Hand to tell me the same thing? That's what you're telling me -- that my own words have zero weight, are worthless, et cetera, and that I have to back everything up with a Supreme Court opinion. Well, bite me -- that's your arrogance, Billybob.
Oh, so you're reading Imboden's mind now -- he was dead-set on bloodshed, was he? Where do his memoirs say that?
It's impossible to know how things would have played out when he got there, if the federal troops had still been there. We can't know now, and you are just imputing dark motives to John Imboden and Thomas Jackson.
As it turned out, there was no confrontation.
Seizing property which did not belong to them. If Virginia was still a state in the Union, as you insist, then they had no claim to federal property at Portsmouth or Harper's Ferry. But if they set out to seize said property then that would indicate that they no longer considered themselves a state in the Union, bound by the Constitution.
With Gosport Navy Yard and the Harper's Ferry arsenal as your examples, you can't support that statement. Both were burned and abandoned -- abandoned, not seized.
You might have a better point with that mint in Tarheel, but not with the Virginia examples. Do you have another?
Wanton destruction of public property for narrow, factional political purposes.
And there was no rebellion.
Necessary action taken to keep the property out of the hands of those out to seize it and use it against the government.
And there was no rebellion
Yes there was.
Brazil decreed slavery was ended. They continue to work on actually abolishing slavery and recently estimated there were 25,000 enslaved Brazilians.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2842219.stm
Brazil unveils anti-slavery plan
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2003/03/12 10:54:15 GMT
Brazil's newly installed President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has unveiled a plan to wipe out slavery, a practice which still persists in some remote areas of South America's largest country.
He says that the country needs tougher laws allowing farms where slavery occurs to be confiscated, as well as the political will to eradicate the practice.
In areas of the Amazon, there are frequent stories of landless peasants being lured to remote farms with promises of work only to find themselves caught in a web of debt from which they cannot escape.
They are charged exorbitant rates for everything from food and water to the tools they work with.
Armed guards stop them running away.
Fines ignored
A unit set up by the outgoing government has freed almost 850 slaves in the last two months alone.
But human rights groups complain land owners guilty of slavery only face a fine which is hardly ever paid.
Lula, as Brazil's first left-wing president is known, says he wants to change the constitution to allow the land of slave owners to be confiscated, but he said that more important than laws would be the determination to eradicate slavery.
Brazil was the last country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery in 1888 and it imported the most slaves from Africa.
Official estimates suggest that today there are still more than 25,000 enslaved Brazilians.
============================
Without the fact of an armed confrontation over either the arsenal or the Navy Yard, what you've got is a solid imputation of impure thoughts to John Imboden and John Letcher.
Which is about all you've got. Virginia was still in the Union pending the referendum and preparing to become an independent country if the People assented to the secession declaration, but Virginia was undertaking hostile actions neither toward the United States nor any of the other States, either those allegiant to the Union or those that had seceded and reconfederated. Virginia was in political limbo but in legal and functional Union with the rest of the United States. Postal service was not discontinued for several weeks thereafter, and only then at Lincoln's order.
The only shots fired between April 17th and the referendum were those two incidents involving federal warships firing on fortifications occupied by Virginia Militia and batteries at Gloucester Point and Sewall's Point -- things Virginia was allowed under the Constitution to build, arm, and possess.
Not his mind, his account. "Jackson at Harper's Ferry in 1861" by John Imboden. Included in Volume I of "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War"
With Gosport Navy Yard and the Harper's Ferry arsenal as your examples, you can't support that statement. Both were burned and abandoned -- abandoned, not seized.
Both were burned because the Virginia militia were on their way to seize them. But burned or not, abandoned or not, they were still the property of the U.S. government. If Virginia did still consider herself a state in the Union, as you claim, then on what authority did they occupy property belonging to the federal government?
When it comes to deciding what is Constitutional and what is not that is pretty much the case. Your words ARE worthless, have zero weight, etc. So do mine. The only ones that count are those of the members of the Supreme Court.
I concur with lentulusgracchus and would like to clarify one additional point.
The pardon issued by President Johnson did not moot the 14th Amendment itself, but did render moot such litigation as the divided court opinion of Chase/Underwood pertaining to quashing the indictment of Jefferson Davis which was pending before the Supreme Court. As the pardon removed any legal basis for the indictment, there was no longer any justiciable issue before the Supreme Court.
So you say.
Um, you omitted the part in which the persons levying said war against the United States have to be United States citizens. The citizens of the States of the Confederacy were no longer citizens of the United States, by their own acts of repudiation.
Funny, you would readily concede that a person can travel to Cuba, settle on a farm there, and repudiate his allegiance to the United States, but you wouldn't allow the same freedom to a State of the Union whose People saw their future in the Union to be either going nowhere, or bleak to dismal.
You'd let every single Confederate emigrate -- but not his State, as a State, if the People all took the same step together.
And since Merriam-Webster defines 'insurgent' as "a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government" then that term fits, too.
The only people who fit that description in Virginia were the West Virginians who conspired with Lincoln and his ministers first to wage war on, and then to sunder a State. After secession, the only "established government" in Virginia was Virginia's, until she joined the Confederacy.
Check your timeline. Chief Justice Chase had already taken care of that problem on 14th Amendment grounds. He had voted for dismissing the indictment over three weeks before Johnson issued his pardon.
If Davis were the scoundrel that the neo-bolsheviks here claim, he would have taken the pardon and ran.
He did.
Davis wanted the trial, the North knew that the South was Right, so therefore the trial never happened.
ROTHLMAO.
And of course you completely overlooked de Tocqueville's condemnation of southern slave owners. Why am I not surprised?
I did not find the "stink" comment, however it seems pretty clear that per De Tocqueville, this was the attitude of the Northeast.
Of course not. You made it up, you got caught, and you tried to tap-dance your way out of it.
But why didn't you post more of de Tocqueville's quotes? Why did you ignore this one? "The legislation of the Southern states with regard to slaves presents at the present day such unparalleled atrocities as suffice to show that the laws of humanity have been totally perverted, and to betray the desperate position of the community in which that legislation has been promulgated." Or, as you poke fingers at Northern racism, why didn't you come across this quote? "If I were called upon to predict the future, I should say that the abolition of slavery in the South will in the common course of things, increase the repugnance of the white population for the blacks...I have remarked that the white inhabitants of the North avoid the Negroes with increasing care in proportion as the legal barriers of separation are removed by the legislature; and why should not the same result take place in the South?" In other words, blacks were tolerated in the south so long as they were property. If freed, then they would be no more welcome down south than they were up North. And he was right, too.
[N-S] Nolu chan? Nolu interested.
Tex, this is another good example of Non-Sequitur's moral arrogance. Here nolu chan has been bringing in source documents until hell won't have it to back up his opinions (remember that "your opinion" sneer N-S directed to me at least twice in the last 100 posts?), and "Nolu interested" is the response.
N-S, buddy, I'm going to make a hobby out of busting your chops on this stuff. If nc brings in a pile of testimony supporting his contention that A did to B but not C, then either have the good grace to stipulate to it, or offer a demurrer -- but don't patronize and belittle us with this "you're just spamming"/<yawn> stuff. (Capitan does that, too.)
The reason nolu chan posts it twice is that you repeatedly ignore the evidence he adduces and just tell him his posts don't count.
You don't play by different rules, poster. Just telling people they don't have an argument and just waving them off is BS.
</flame off>
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