Confederate States Of America (2005)

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.

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.

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.

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.

If Davis never ran for office, the provision would not have been applied, so trial for treason was very much a possibility, and as before, said disability could easily have been removed by congress, so the federal government could never use claim that provision as any hindrance to a trial that you allege was open and shut.

Davis could never run for office, even if he wanted to, because of the restrictions of the 14th Amendment. Trial was not a possibility because the provisions of the 14th Amendment did represent punishment for the actions of the southern leaders. And Congress did not remove the restriction, until they did then the provisions against double jeopardy did apply. The the 14th Amendment was indeed an open and shut case preventing prosecution of Davis for his crimes.

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.

Citizens of the Moon are not citizens of the United States, either. And the Moon is as sovereign and the confederate states was.

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.

Because Cuba is a sovereign nation, recognized as such by the United States and most, if not all of the world's nations. The confederate states was not a sovereign nation, was not recognized as such by the United States or the world's nations. See the difference?

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.

Really? If the confederacy was a sovereign nation, as you claim, then what part of the confederate constitution did the people of western Virginia violate? What made them traitors?

[Me] And there was no rebellion

[You] Yes there was.

Against whom? The United States? Where was the shooting?

We're still talking about Virginia in April and May, 1861 -- where was the shooting? What rebellion?

Secession isn't rebellion, secession is secession.

Your saying there was a rebellion imports that the other States have the right to forbid a State to secede......to ratify and amendment to the Constitution (because it might "impact" the forbidding State[s]......to vote to admit another State (same reason)......or to exercise any Power whatsoever, except by let and leave of the other States.

If this were so, it would mean that all the States were sunk in the same impotence (well, some of them, anyway -- and I bet I can guess which ones YOU want to be impotent!), and would not be able to discharge any of these sovereign (not "constitutional", because supraconstitutional) functions, but must always hang in suspense, waiting for a Godot who will never arrive, to give release to each of the encumbered States, to exercise their sovereign Powers.

Which Powers, if they are structurally impaired, are not sovereign at all -- sovereignty must lie elsewhere!

So who is the Sovereign, Non-Sequitur? Who gives permission for secession? Permission to ratify or reject? Who do the States check with, N-S?

The Nazis did not rise to power until the early 1930's and WERE defeat by the Allies in 1945.

The German Nazis were defeated by the allies. Naziism was not defeated, and in fact still exists today.

The South was defeated in the WBTS. Slavery did not end with the defeat of the South, ended in America after the 13th was passed, but slavery has not been ended and in fact still exists today.

The Soviets were defeated in an economic contest. Communism was not ended with the collapse of the Eastern block and the Soviet Empire, and still exists today.

Fascism was not defeated with the end of the Germans. Fascism was not defeated with the end of the Japanese imperialists. Fascism was not defeated with the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Fascism is alive and well today.

The confederate states was not a sovereign nation, was not recognized as such by the United States or the world's nations. See the difference?

We discussed in another thread whether sovereignty is dependent on recognition, and the fact that the United States waged war for something like two or three years after the Declaration before attracting anything like diplomatic recognition and, what was more valuable, French help.

The Confederacy was in the same status diplomatically, but with this crucial difference: the Confederate States had their grants of sovereignty from George III and, in the case of the States admitted later, the United States (Texas, as usual, was different: she won her sovereignty at San Jacinto, and her international recognition afterward). All the States admitted to the Union after 1791 got sovereignty from the United States (except for Texas and maybe Hawaii), but by the writ of Article IV it was the same sovereignty that the original thirteen had won on the battlefield at Yorktown and on the table in Paris.

It was this original sovereignty, its powers resumed, that the Southern States took with them as their patrimony, out of the Union.

If the confederacy was a sovereign nation, as you claim, then what part of the confederate constitution did the people of western Virginia violate? What made them traitors?

They were traitors, those of them who bore arms in Union service, against their native State of Virginia. Their relationship to the Confederacy during the war would have been the same that they'd had to the Union before secession.

It was a little less than a year before France agreed to recognize the United States as a sovereign nation.

Your claim to recognition is the word of a foreign king long dead? Nonsense.

But again, assuming that the confederacy was a sovereign nation as you claim, the people of western Virginia were no longer part of Virginia. They had seceded and joined the U.S. How can they be traitors to a state and country that they no longer were a part of? What part of the confederate constitution prevented that?

Against whom? The United States? Where was the shooting? We're still talking about Virginia in April and May, 1861 -- where was the shooting? What rebellion?

The southern states were in armed rebellion against the United States and Virginia and North Carolina had voted to join that rebellion. They had begun seizing property of the United States at gunpoint. They were in rebellion.

Secession isn't rebellion, secession is secession.

Illegal acts of secession are certainly rebellion.

The states have the right to approve secession, ratify amendments, admit other states, and exercise the powers not reserved to Congress or forbidden them by that document.

So who is the Sovereign, Non-Sequitur? Who gives permission for secession? Permission to ratify or reject? Who do the States check with, N-S?

The people of the United States are sovereign. They give the permission to secede, ratify and reject. They are supreme over the states, not the other way around.

Pre 14th Amendment, the state of Missouri amended it's state constitution, viz.:

[N]o person shall be deemed a qualified voter, who has ever been in armed hostility to the United States, or to the lawful authorities thereof, or to the government of this State; or has ever given aid, comfort, countenance, or support to persons engaged in any such hostility; or has ever, in any manner, adhered to the enemies, foreign or domestic, of the United States ... But the foregoing provisions, in relation to acts done against the United States, shall not apply to any person not a citizen thereof, who shall have committed such acts while in the service of some foreign country at war with the United States, and who has, since such acts, been naturalized, or may hereafter be naturalized, under the laws of the United States and the oath of loyalty hereinafter prescribed, when taken by any such person, shall be considered as taken in such sense.

To which Justice Field, writing for the US Supreme Court in Cummings v. State Of Missouri, 4 Wall 277 (71 U.S.) (1866) wrote,

The deprivation is effected with equal certainty in the one case as it would be in the other, but not with equal directness. The purpose of the lawmaker in the case supposed would be openly avowed; in the case existing it is only disguised. The legal result must be the same, for what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows. Its inhibition was levelled at the thing, not the name. It intended that the rights of the citizen should be secure against deprivation for past conduct by legislative enactment, under any form, however disguised. If the inhibition can be evaded by the form of the enactment, its insertion in the fundamental law was a vain and futile proceeding.
... By an ex post facto law is meant one which imposes a punishment for an act which was not punishable at the time it was committed; or imposes additional punishment to that then prescribed; or changes the rules of evidence by which less or different testimony is sufficient to convict than was then required.
... The clauses in the Missouri constitution, which are the subject of consideration, do not, in terms, define any crimes, or declare that any punishment shall be inflicted, but they produce the same result upon the parties, against whom they are directed, as though the crimes were defined and the punishment was declared. They assume that there are persons in Missouri who are guilty of some of the acts designated. They would have no meaning in the constitution were not such the fact. They are aimed at past acts, and not future acts. They were intended especially to operate upon parties who, in some form or manner, by action or words, directly or indirectly, had aided or countenanced the Rebellion, or sympathized with parties engaged in the Rebellion, or had endeavored to escape the proper responsibilities and duties of a citizen in time of war; and they were intended to operate by depriving such persons of the right to hold certain offices and trusts, and to pursue their ordinary and regular avoications. This deprivation is punishment; nor is it any less so because a way is opened for escape from it by the expurgatory oath. The framers of the constitution of Missouri knew at the time that whole classes of individuals would be unable to take the oath prescribed. To them there is no escape provided; to them the deprivation was intended to be, and is, absolute and perpetual. To make the enjoyment of a right dependent upon an impossible condition is equivalent to an absolute denial of the right under any condition, and such denial, enforced for a past act, is nothing less than punishment imposed for that act. It is a misapplication of terms to call it anything else.

The amendments to the Missouri constitution were held to be ex post facto, and illegal Bills of Attainder.

Davis could never run for office, even if he wanted to, because of the restrictions of the 14th Amendment. ... The the 14th Amendment was indeed an open and shut case preventing prosecution of Davis for his crimes.

The prohibition was not against running for office, it was for WINNING an election (something some here allege he could not do) and being seated. If Davis never ran for office, or never won, then he had not been penalized by the 14th.

Considering Davis was in jail, it seems unlikely that he would be in any position to run for office. Furthermore, the penalty for treason is DEATH, Which would prevent Davis from ever running for office.

Chase's dubious reasoning was an escape clause for morons to grab hold off, a specious line of reasoning that allowed the US Government to abandon a case it could never win.

Chase's dubious reasoning was an escape clause for morons to grab hold off, a specious line of reasoning that allowed the US Government to abandon a case it could never win.

Almost as dubious as your reasoning. The amendment said that he could not hold any office, not just elective office. That would include cabinet and senate, as well as House and state and local offices. Whether or not he ever planned to run for office again was irrelevant. He was prevented from holding almost any office whatsoever because of his actions in leading the rebellion against the United States. He had been punsihed for those activities. Call it what you will, Chase's reasoning concerning the 5th Amendment was sound and it saved the U.S. from a divisive trial and conviction of Davis. In the end perhaps it was an excuse to drop the whole matter and get on with the task of putting the southern rebellion behind us, but to call it invalid or bogus is wrong.

If he were unjustly accused then why were his lawyers all for taking the proposal that Chief Justice Chase held out regarding the 14th Amendment?

'In the autumn of 1867 Mr. O'Conor, after incessant efforts, aided by men of all parties succeeded in getting a time appointed for the decision of Mr. Davis's case, either for trial or a nolle prosequi, but both would have preferred the former as a test question. As winter drew on Mr. Davis was summoned to Richmond, but the nolle prosequi was filed.'

From Bouvier Law Dictionary Rev. 6th ed. (1856), NOLLE PROSEQUI, practice. An entry made on the record, by which the prosecutor or plaintiff declares that he will proceed no further.

The federal government abandoned the case, not Davis. Specifically, due to the complete pardon by Johnson 25 Dec 1868. A pardon that Jefferson Davis did not want.

'If my opinion is worth anything, you can ALWAYS say that few people could have done better than Mr. Davis. I knew of none that could have done as well.' - R. E. Lee

The federal government abandoned the case, not Davis. Specifically, due to the complete pardon by Johnson 25 Dec 1868. A pardon that Jefferson Davis did not want.

"Thus, Davis still faced a charge of treason. At court in Richmond, Chief Justice Chase finally joined Judge Underwood on the bench. In the mean time, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution had been ratified by the states and had gone into effect on July 28. Its third section stipulated taht no person could hold office who had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and subsequently had participated in the rebellion. To Chase this provision offered a way around the morass of a Davis trial because there could be no double jeopardy. In conversation with George Shea, Chase made clear his viewpoint.

"Chase's opinion dictated the strategy of the Davis defense. Davis's lawyers readily admitted that in 1845 he had taken an oath to support the Constitution. They submitted a motion asking that they indictment be quashed on the grounds that the 14th Amendment had already inflicted punishement on their client. The government's attorneys contested the point. The chief counsel, Richard Dana, countered that the Constitution was not criminal law...On December 5 the court handed down a divided ruling. Chase stated that he and Underwood could not agree. He accepted the arguement tendered by the defense; Underwood rejected it. Counsel for the defense requested that the facts of the disagreement be certified to the Supreme Court. Chase so ordered. As the indictment remained in force, the federal attorney wanted a trial date set. Chief Justice Chase saidn the date could be announced after the completion of the upcoming Supreme Court term.

"William Evarts, who had become U.S. attorney general in July 1868, decided the government would push no further." -- "Jefferson Davis, American" by William J. Cooper, Jr. pp 581-582

Looks like Davis' attorneys jumped at the chance to avoid a trial.

I agree with you fully in terms of the likelihood of our difference on this one particular issue there would be agreement on the typical issues which bind conservatives. On President Ronald Reagan I totally concur this giant of a man was indeed the greatest President of my lifetime as well.

I shall never forget the very special occasion, on a cold winter night, when I had the great privilege to meet Ronald Reagan, prior to him become President.

Ronald Reagan's autographed photo is proudly looking down at me in this office.

One of the real tests of conservatives is not simply joining the crowd simply because the majority of the population is more or less of own mindset. Where I have live & lived it was not in the least popular to stand on moral principals as a conservative. Being surrounded by snotty radical limousine liberals holding most of the political power is not a task I wish on anyone. I once lost an employment position once it became known I was in the regional Reagan campaign, caused by vicious, vindictive, women's lib type socialist. In retrospect the pinko bitch did me a huge favour lol.

The two buffoons on here attempting to discredit those which they disagree with as commies, I wonder how many man hours they invested to get real conservatives elected, deep behind enemy lines, directly the midst of the bastions of extreme liberalism(?) Or for that matter even voted.

For the record, based on your reasonable response to me, and extending me the opportunity to respond, in no way do I view you in the same light as those two mentioned above.

I am watch a fine lady here in Condi Rice on FOX being drilled by the putz Kerry, and she is holding her own! but, I must depart for now and will try and check in later on.

Have a good and far warmer day then I am having in this bone chilling cold. It wakes people up and is better then roasting! :)

[Non-Seq] "William Evarts, who had become U.S. attorney general in July 1868, decided the government would push no further." -- "Jefferson Davis, American" by William J. Cooper, Jr. pp 581-582

Three years had passed. Rewards had been paid for the arrest of Davis and other Confederate officials. NONE was EVER tried. ALL were released without trial. The government clearly NEVER pushed at all for a real trial in a real court. The only thing the government clearly pushed for was an eternal continuance.

Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis, A Memoir, 1890, Vol 2, p. 777

The Chief Justice, the Attorney-General, and the Secretary of War were opposed to an early trial. Many efforts were then made with President Johnson to procure the pardon of Mr. Davis. He said, he made it an inflexible rule, "never to grant a pardon on petition, unless it was accompanied by an application from the individual seeking the executive clemency." Mr. Davis, on the other hand, always said, "to ask for pardon was a confession of guilt," and that such an application would prejudice his case.

Davis never applied for the pardon and Johnson waived his "inflexible rule."

The attorneys favored accepting Chase's creative reasoning regarding the 14th Amendment because its scope would have applied universally to all remaining Confederate officers and function in a manner similar to the unconditional pardon that Johnson issued.

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