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.

[ftD] One cannot take away any individual rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness by a legal decree.

How quickly you forget the FUGITIVE SLAVE CLAUSE of the U.S. CONSTITUTION.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Acceptance of your happy hooey would suppose that slavery never existed. It did. It was bad, wrong, immoral and whatever else you may choose to call it, except for illegal. It was Constitutional.

As for your continuing legal blindness, you ignore that non-Whites could not be naturalized into U.S. citizenship before a post-war amendment, and Chinese were barred until 1943. It isn't pretty, but it is the ugly facts of life.

The Act of March 26, 1790 prohibited naturalization of non-Whites. Chinese were denied naturalization until December 17, 1943. "Separate but [un]equal," i.e., segregation, was not overruled until Brown v. Board of Education.

Chief Justice Taney opined that Blacks were not citizens at the time of the ratification of the Constitution and Federal law made it impossible for Blacks to be naturalized.

http://uscis.gov/graphics/aboutus/history/1790Act.htm

Act of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat 103-104) (Excerpts)

That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the Constitution of the United States, which oath or affirmation such court shall administer; and the clerk of such court shall record such application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a citizen of the United States. And the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: . . .

http://uscis.gov/lpBin/lpext.dll/inserts/slb/slb-1/slb-54067/slb-54949?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm#slb-interp311-46-1

Burmese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Malayans, polynesians, Samoans, and Siamese were held to be racially ineligible,

Afghans, Arabs, Armenians, Egyptians, Kalmuks of Southeast European Russia, Persians, Syrians, Tartars of East Russia, and Turks were deemed qualified in the racial sense.

http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/LegisHist/450.htm

Chinese Exclusion Act of May 6, 1882 (22 Statutes-at-Large 58)

Barred Chinese from naturalization.

On December 17, 1943, the Chinese exclusion laws were repealed.

ftD] Well ofcourse it did, because Taney was determined to get the ruling in. The ruling was 7-2, not 1-0

I believe the Democrats controlled the court at the time, did they not?

[ftD] The case was put up by the Abolitionists to test the legality of slavery in non-slave states. Bring a case on a false basis is grounds for dismissal.

Exactly, why it should have been dismissed.

The case was brought on the theory of diversity of state citizenship, asserting that Scott was a citizen of Missouri, (a slave state) and Sanford was a citizen of New York. Your assertion has no basis in fact.

No my assertion is a fact, the abolitionists were behind the case.

[ftD] Taney abused his power as chief justice and went through intellectual gymnastics to prove that the Founding Fathers did not intend to include the black man when they wrote that all men were created equal. And Washington and Jefferson went back to their plantations and their slaves and kept them until death.

Washington did free all his slaves at his death.

Jefferson was in too much debt.

Now, what does that have to do with the black mans equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

[ftD] Let me see, is Dred Scott still considered constitutional today? Let me see, was Scott overruled, or was the Constitution amended?

The Constitution was amended since that is one way to undo a bad legal decision.

INTRODUCTION TO THE COURT OPINION ON THE DREDD SCOTT CASE Dred Scott's case holds a unique place in American constitutional history as an example of the Supreme Court trying to impose a judicial solution on a political problem. It called down enormous criticism on the Court and on Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney; a later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, described it as a great "self-inflicted wound."

Scott, born a slave, had been taken by his master, an army surgeon, into the free portion of the Louisiana territory. Upon his master's death, Scott sued for his freedom, on the grounds that since slavery was outlawed in the free territory, he had become a free man there, and "once free always free."

The argument was rejected by a Missouri court, but Scott and his white supporters managed to get the case into federal court, where the issue was simply whether a slave had standing -- that is, the legal right -- to sue in a federal court. So the first question the Supreme Court had to decide was whether it had jurisdiction.

If Scott had standing, then the Court had jurisdiction, and the justices could go on to decide the merits of his claim. But if, as a slave, Scott did not have standing, then the Court could dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction.

The Court ruled that Scott, as a slave, could not exercise the prerogative of a free citizen to sue in federal court. That should have been the end of the case, but Chief Justice Taney and the other southern sympathizers on the Court hoped that a definitive ruling would settle the issue of slavery in the territories once and for all. So they went on to rule that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional since Congress could not forbid citizens from taking their property, i.e., slaves, into any territory owned by the United States. A slave, Taney ruled, was property, nothing more, and could never be a citizen.

The South, of course, welcomed the ruling, but in the North it raised a storm of protest and scorn. It helped create the Republican Party, and disgust at the decision may have played a role in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. For further reading: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case (1978); Walter Ehrlich, They Have No Rights: Dred Scott's Struggle for Freedom (1979). http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/21.htm

[ftD] I forget nothing.

Perhaps because you have learned nothing.

[ftD] The fugitive slave clause was a compromise to allow the Constitution to survive.

The Fugitive Slave Clause was ratified unanimously by each and every state and was the Supreme Law of the Land. Deal with it.

[ftD] Slavery, however, was meant to end eventually as the Founders considered it immoral.

Washington and Jefferson were slave-owners to their death. The Constitution does not seem to contain the part of ending slavery. Perhaps you can quote it from the Constitution that was ratified and adopted.

[ftD] They had put limits on it and started it on the road to extinction.

They had put NO limits on slavery. It was left up to the states. The only limit in the Constitution is the prohibition of any Federal law interfering with the slave trade for 20 years, and a limit prohibiting any Federal tax exceeding ten dollars on the importation of slaves.

[ftD] The original draft of the Declaration blamed the King for the slaves that were in the colonies.

Nobody ratified the original draft of the Declaration and made it law. All the states unanimously ratified the Constitution and made IT the law.

[ftD] Dred Scott attempted to make slavery moral, which it could not, since the Declaration declared it immoral.

The Declaration is irrelevant. The CONSTITUTION is the law of the land and made slavery CONSTITUTIONAL.

[ftD] Now, go take your legal positivism somewhere else.

Now take your Claremonster B.S. somewhere else.

[ftD] You and your positivistic legalism are a threat to liberty everywhere and represent the philosophy of Calhounism/Facism/Nazism/Communism/ as against the philosophy of the Founding Fathers based on natural law.

Washington and Jefferson were slaveowners to their death. Your silly B.S. is nonsense.

We have an established legal system. If you want to call it Facist-Nazi-Communist, that is your problem, not mine.

Courts must follow the law, not your fantasies. If the law is wrong, then the law must be changed.

If you have a copy of the natural law please post it.

You can tell me all day that abortion is immoral and wrong and whatever else enters your peabrain. Abortion is legal and if you think otherwise, you are invited to go shutdown all the abortion mills.

If we follow your fantasy, who will decide which portions or the Constitution are to be followed and who will decide which ones are immoral? If not the Supreme Court, then who? The President? President Bush? President Clinton?

[ftD] I believe the Democrats controlled the court at the time, did they not?

Research up their party affiliations and get back to me.

[ftD]Exactly, why it should have been dismissed.

Don't blame the Court if your unscrupulous litigators and parties colluded to mislead the Court and got away with it.

[ftD] No my assertion is a fact, the abolitionists were behind the case.

Your assertion that "The case was put up by the Abolitionists to test the legality of slavery in non-slave states," has no basis in fact. The legality of slavery in non-slave states was not at issue.

[ftD] Now, what does that have to do with the black mans equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

It has to do with your silly argument that Washington, Jefferson, et al meant to include their slaves in "all men are created equal."

Let me see, is Dred Scott still considered constitutional today? Let me see, was Scott overruled, or was the Constitution amended?

[ftD] The Constitution was amended since that is one way to undo a bad legal decision.

Which is irrelevant to whether Scott was correctly ruled based on the Constitution as it existed at the time of the case.

I note that you are still unable to even ATTEMPT to proffer any LEGAL argument.

[ftD] Scott, born a slave, had been taken by his master, an army surgeon, into the free portion of the Louisiana territory. Upon his master's death, Scott sued for his freedom, on the grounds that since slavery was outlawed in the free territory, he had become a free man there, and "once free always free."

Try fact-checking. John Emerson died in 1843.

[ftD] The argument was rejected by a Missouri court, but Scott and his white supporters managed to get the case into federal court, where the issue was simply whether a slave had standing -- that is, the legal right -- to sue in a federal court. So the first question the Supreme Court had to decide was whether it had jurisdiction.

No. Try fact-checking. The case that was rejected by the Missouri court was Scott v. Emerson. It was not taken to the Supreme Court. It was decided in 1852 and NOT appealed.

In Scott v. Sandford, the issue was NOT whether a "slave" had standing to sue in Federal court. A slave did NOT have standing. The first issue to be addressed was jurisdiction which hinged entirely on whether Scott was a citizen of Missouri, pursuant to Missouri law. If Scott was not a citizen of Missouri, then the claim of jurisdiction under diversity of state citizenship failed.

Scott v. Sandford is a different case with a different defendant. Emerson was dead about 10 years before the case was filed.

Sanford's name is misspelled as Sandford in the official court reports.

According to an agreed statement of "facts" created and submitted by the colluding parties, Sanford bought Scott from John Emerson long after John Emerson was a corpse.

[ftD] If Scott had standing, then the Court had jurisdiction, and the justices could go on to decide the merits of his claim. But if, as a slave, Scott did not have standing, then the Court could dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction.

Your legal knowledge knows no bounds. Read the opinion of the court.

[ftD] The Court ruled that Scott, as a slave, could not exercise the prerogative of a free citizen to sue in federal court. That should have been the end of the case, but Chief Justice Taney and the other southern sympathizers on the Court hoped that a definitive ruling would settle the issue of slavery in the territories once and for all.

This is pure B.S. The case was originally assigned to Justice Nelson who wrote what would have been the opinion of the court, but for the insistence of Justices Curtis and McLean to write opinions going into all other issues.

[ftD] So they went on to rule that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional since Congress could not forbid citizens from taking their property, i.e., slaves, into any territory owned by the United States.

The Nelson opinion does not mention the Missouri Comproimse and it would have remained unmentioned except for the actions of Justice Curtis. He, of course, saw no need to recuse himself despite what one might term a slight conflict of interest.

[ftD] A slave, Taney ruled, was property, nothing more, and could never be a citizen.

Acknowledging that Federal law then PROHIBITED the naturalization of any non-White, perhaps you would care to enlighten all by telling how Scott, or any other Black person, could become a U.S. citizen if he was not one already?

http://uscis.gov/graphics/aboutus/history/1790Act.htm

Act of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat 103-104) (Excerpts)
That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the Constitution of the United States, which oath or affirmation such court shall administer; and the clerk of such court shall record such application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a citizen of the United States. And the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: . . .

[ftD] What you are pushing is what the German's pushed in the 30's, right is what the state defined it to be.

What you are pushing is having courts simply ignore laws they do not like. If a judge feels a law does not fit with his morality, he can ignore it. That sounds almost like the 9th Circus.

"It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or law-making power; to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. The duty of the court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted."
-- Chief Justice Taney

"When Massachusetts neighbors criticized Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story for having upheld the fugitive slave law in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, he [nc - Story] wrote, "You know full well that I have ever been opposed to slavery. But I take my standard of duty as a judge from the Constitition." (Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor, p. 355)

Taney had early owned slaves, and in 1805 was assessed on three. With marriage his household expanded and we can gather some idea of its growing size from the fact that in 1818 he emancipated seven Negroes and in 1821 an eighth. He also joined with his brother Octavius in freeing two others they inherited from their father. Although he and Anne retained servants, they kept no slaves other than two who were too old to support themselves. Those that they freed were furnished with wallets which, in case of need, they could present for an allowance, paid in small coins as a protection against swindlers. (Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor, pp. 44-5)

"Taney already had emancipated most of his own slaves, and it is known that he made at least one substantial loan to enable a free Negro to purchase his wife's liberty." (Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor, p. 76)

"In other ways he [nc - Taney] showed his interest in the welfare of colored people. On one occasion he and Frederick A. Schley aided a free negro in the purchase of his slave wife by advancing the price of the slave and permitting him to bind himself to them for that amount. The negro repaid the money, and the family was given its freedom. During the same period Taney manumitted his own slaves, providing that they should become free some years hence, doubtless on the assumption that education for freedm was necessary before they could be trusted to take care of themselves. He continued to support those who were too old to earn their living, and to watch carefully over their interests. To each of the older servants he gave a wallet, which was brought each month to him or to a member of his family for replenishment. Some negroes knew too little of mathematics to be aware when they were short-changed by merchants, and there were merchants who in making change intimidated negroes into accepting less than was due them. As a protection against these abuses Taney gave his monthly allowances in small silver pieces with which the negroes were familiar, none of them exceeding fifty cents in value." (Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney, p. 94)

"[I]t would be propagating error to pretend that between 1819 and 1832 Taney had grown callous in his feelings toward negroes. Toward them personally he still had the same feeling of warm solicitude which he had revealed many times in the past, as was shown, for example, by his efforts on behalf of a negro boy named Cornelius. Cornelius, the slave of a Major Hughes, had been permitted by his master to earn small sums of money toward the purchase of his freedom, and to educate himself above the level of most slaves, so that he was able to write letters. Taney in some way became interested in the boy, and discussed with his friend William M. Beall, of Frederick, the possibility of buying the boy and setting him free as soon as he was able to earn the remaining amount necessary to cover the purchase price. "Major Hughes it seems," Taney wrote to Beall, "is willing to let Cornelius go for $450, and he has but a hundred and fifty of his own. Cornelius is a good boy and I am willing to aid him, and therefore send a check payable to your order." The purchase was made, and Taney not only made the boy a free person in effect from the beginning, but looked after him from that time on almost as if he were a member of the family. Yet, believing as he did that the problems of slavery were so intricate and so peculiarly local as to require local handling, he felt it his duty as Attorney General so to interpret law as to leave the control of the subject in local hands, even though some negroes suffered thereby. Doubtless he would have said, as he did say on other occasions, that even the negroes, on the whole, since they were in the country, were better off under the prevailing system of control than they would have been under a system or lack of system brought about by outside interference." (Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney, pp. 158-9)

"An essential precept (as we think) of the Catholic Church is confession for the remission of sins -- very humiliating to the pride of human nature; but the well-known humility of Mr. Taney made the practice of confession easy to him. Often have I seen him stand at the outer door leading to the confessonal, in a crown of penitents, majority colored, waiting his turn for admission. I proposed to introduce him by another door to my confessional, but he would not accept of any deviation from the established custom." (Father John McElroy, March 2, 1871, quoted in Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, p. 476) [italics in original]

"Chief-Justice Taney's religion was the moving principle of his life. It filled him with every Christian grace. Faith, hope and charity led him in the high career which we have been reviewing. The humblest received his kindness, while the great were charmed with his courtesy. The servants of his family could hardly understand his kindness, when they contrasted it with the treatment of their servants by others. In early life he manumitted all the slaves he inherited from his father. The old ones he supported by monthly allowances of money till they died. The allowances were always in small silver pieces -- none exceeding fifty cents -- as more convenient, and not so liable to be taken improperly by those with whom they might deal. Each servant had a separate wallet for their allowance, which was brought monthly to the member of the Chief Justice's family who attended to the matter." (Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, p. 478)

"In 1860, the distinguished law-writer, Mr. Conway Robinson, asked Chief-Justice Taney for his photograph in his judicial gown, to be presented-to two of the Judges of the Queen's Bench in England, whose acquaintance Mr. Robinson had made when in England. The Chief Justice, accordingly, had a large-size likeness of himself taken for the Judges. And, at the same time, he had two from the same negative put into gilt frames for his old negro servant-woman and his negro man-servant. At the bottom of one likeness was written: 'To Martha Hill, as a mark of my esteem. R. B. Taney. February 14, 1860, Washington.' At the bottom of the other: 'To Madison Franklin, as a mark of my esteem. R. B. Taney. February 14, I860; Washington.'" (Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, p. 479)

"We cannot consent to buy his safety by yielding to passion, prejudice, and avarice, the control of future discussions, on this great and important question. He must not surrender up the civil and religious rights, secured to him in common with others, by the constitution of this most favoured nation. Mr. Gruber feels, that it is due to his own character; to the station he fills; to the respectable society of Christians in which he is a minister of the gospel, not only to defend himself from this prosecution, but also to avow, and to vindicate here, the principles he maintained in his sermon. There is no law that forbids us to speak of slavery as we think of it. Any man has a right to publish his opinions on that subject whenever he pleases. It is a subject of national concern, and may at all times be freely discussed. Mr. Gruber did quote the language of our great act of national independence, and insisted on the principles contained in that venerated instrument. He did rebuke those masters, who, in the exercise of power, are deaf to the calls of humanity; and he warned them of the evils they might bring upon themselves. He did speak with abhorrence of those reptiles, who live by trading in human flesh, and enrich themselves by tearing the husband from the wife -- the infant from the bosom of the mother: and this I am instructed was the head and front of his offending. Shall I content myself, continued Mr. Taney, with saying he had a right to say this? that there is no law to punish him? So far is he from being the object of punishment in any form of proceeding, that we are prepared to maintain the same principles, and to use, if necessary, the same language here in the temple of justice, and in the presence of those who are the ministers of the law. A hard necessity, indeed, compels us to endure the evil of slavery for a time. It was imposed upon us by another nation, while we were yet in a state of colonial vassalage. It cannot be easily, or suddenly removed. Yet while it continues, it is a blot on our national character, and every real lover of freedom, confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away; and earnestly looks for the means, by which this necessary object may be best attained. And until it shall be accomplished: until the time shall come when we can point without a blush, to the language held in the declaration of independence, every friend of humanity will seek to lighten the galling chain of slavery, and better, to the utmost of his power, the wretched condition of the slave. Such was Mr. Gruber's object in that part of his sermon, of which I am now speaking. Those who have complained of him, and reproached him, will not find it easy to answer him: unless complaints, reproaches and persecution shall be considered an answer." (Roger B. Taney, Gruber case, 1819)

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