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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?
It is a rebellion, just like the one in 1776, only without the legal or moral grounds to do so.
That was from your post (639) not non-sequitor's!
You posted it chiding non-sequitur for leaving it out.
However it was left out with good reason-it wasn't revelant to the situation facing Lincoln.
If Ohio milita had cannons pointed at a federal installation, one would not question the assertion.
You love your little sectional ad-hominems and slurs, don't you?
Goobers, crackers, knuckledragging rapists in slouch hats and suspenders, hatchet-faced Simon Legrees, all dancing around in your head after your 115th viewing of your treasured VHS copy of Mississippi Burning.
Have you ever been to the South? Do you know anything?
Meanwhile, bite me.
This is high politics, dummy, not a class-B misdemeanor charge for carrying a Saturday night special.
Entire STATES are involved here, and their sovereign rights. Not just legislatures, as you guys keep posting -- the People of Virginia voted >3:1 in favor of secession, Tennessee >2:1.
This isn't a parking ticket, Deputy Dawg. This is the People you're screwing with.
LOL! What do you take us for?
The secessionists of 1861 had a hell of a lot more legal and moral right to take their stand than the revolutionists of 1776!
Read a book!
Teleological fallacy. And, bite me.
Thread: Commentary: Truth blown away in sugarcoated 'Gone With the Wind'
Date: 11/26/2004
[nolu chan #1363]
To: fortheDeclaration; lentulusgracchus; capitan_refugio
[fortheDeclaration quoting another meathead Derek Alger who selectively quotes from Hanchett] According to historian William Hanchett in his book, The Lincoln Conspiracy Murders, "While it is unlikely that Holt doubted for a moment that Davis and the others were guilty, as charged, he and Stanton were too able and experienced to fail to recognize that the evidence presented at the conspiracy trial was not proof of guilt but only hearesay and that it was only as credible as the eyewitnesses who gave it."
Continuing on page 73, Hanchett wrote, "How credible were the witnesses? Even while the trial was in progress a flood of letters and affidavits denouncing Merritt, Montgomery, and Conover as liars and imposters was published in Canadian newspapers and reprinted in the United States."
Moving on to page 81, Hanchett wrote:
In fall 1866 Conover was discovered and arrested and brought to Washington to stand trial under his real name, Charles A. Dunham, for perjury and the suborning of perjury. Sentenced to prison for ten years, he confessed that he had coached the lying witnesses in their stories in order to take revenge against Confederate President Davis, by whose order he had been imprisoned for six months in 1863 in Castle Thunder prison, Richmond. But he continued to insist that his testimony against Davis and the Confederate agents in Canada given at the 1865 conspiracy trial was strictly true, and on this point Holt supported him for the rest of his life.In a December 1866 letter to the president, Holt once again urged a military trial for Davis, despite the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Ex parte Milligan that such trials were illegal in areas where the civil courts were open and functioning. No part of the May 2nd proclamation, Holt assured Johnson, had been based on information supplied by Conover, whom he had not even known at that time. The proclamation had been based chiefly upon the testimony of Merritt and Montgomery, as corroborated by many other witnesses. Its validity, he reminded the president, had been confirmed by the military commission, which, "after a long and patient investigation," arrived at verdicts of guilty for each of the eight defendants. The guilt of Davis had "thus become [a] matter of solemn record, and this record stands unimpeached."
If Holt really believed that the record of the military commission stood unimpeached and that the Confederate leaders had been proved guilty as charged, he was doubtless the only member of the administration who did. In May 1867 Davis was released from prison on bail. He was never brought to trial.
And there was perjurer Henry Von Steineker, alias Hans H. Vonwinklestein. On September 2, 1864 Private Von Steineker was court-martialed for "desertion" from the U.S. Army and found guilty. He was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to three years at hard labor. On May 12, 1865 he winds up testifying as a witness for the prosecution in the Lincoln assassination tribunal. On May 30, 1865 General Edward Johnson, then a prisoner of war, testified of Von Steineker, "he belonged to the Second Virginia Infantry, of the Stonewall Brigade, which was one of the brigades of my division." Mr. Aiken asked, "Q. Was he the subject of a court-martial at any time in your camp, and, if so, for what?" Judge Advocate Bingham objected: "I object to the question. The record of such a court-martial would be the only competent evidence of conviction, and if the record were here, it would not impart any verity. I do not think there were any courts in Virginia in those days that could legally try a dog." Mr. Aiken: "Under the circumstances, parol testimony of the fact is the best that can be offered, and therefore I presume it will not be seriously objected to." Mr. Aiken was wrong. The Commission then sustained the objection. Quotations are from the Pitman record of the Trial.
Pitman Assassination Trial Transcript Page 38
Henry Von Steineker.
For the Prosecution. - May 12. [1865]
I was in the Confederate service as an engineer officer in the Topographical Department, with the pay of an engineer, and was on the staff of General Edward Johnson. Altogether I was in the service nearly three years. In the summer of '63, being at Swift Run Gap, near Harrisonburg, I was overtaken by three citizens, and rode with them some eighteen or twenty hours. The name of one was Booth and another Shepherd.
[A photograph of John Wilkes Booth being shown to the witness, he identified a resemblance between it and the person referred to. The photograph was offered in evidence.]
I was asked by Booth, and also by the others, what I thought of the probable success of the Confederacy. I told them, after such a chase as we had just had from Gettysburg, I thought it looked very gloomy. Booth replied, ''That is nonsense. If we only act our part, the Confederacy will gain its independence. Old Abe Lincoln must go up the spout, and the Confederacy will gain its independence any how." By this expression I understood he meant the President must be killed. He said that as soon as the Confederacy was nearly giving out, or as soon as they were nearly whipped, that this would be their final resource to gain their independence. The other two engaged in the conversation, and assented to Booth's sentiments.
They being splendidly mounted, and my horse being nearly broken down, they left me the next day. Three or four days afterward, when I came to the camp of the Second Virginia Regiment, I found there three citizens, and was formally introduced by Captain Randolph to Booth and Stevens. That evening there was a secret meeting of the officers, and the three citizens were also present. I was afterward informed of the purpose of the meeting by Lieutenant Cockrell of the Second Virginia Regiment, who was present. It was to send certain officers on "detached service" to Canada and the "borders " to release rebel prisoners, to lay Northern cities in ashes, and finally to get possession of the members of the Cabinet and kill the President. This "detached service" was a nickname in the Confederate army for this sort of warfare. I have heard these things spoken of, perhaps, a thousand times before I was informed it was the purpose discussed at this meeting, but I always considered it common braggadocio. I have freely heard it spoken of in the streets of Richmond among those connected with the rebel Government. Cockrell belonged, I believe, to the Second Virginia Regiment, and to the same company to which Captain Beall belonged, who was executed at Governor's Island. Cockrell told me that Beall was on "detached service," and that we would hear of him.
I have heard mention made of the existence of secret orders for certain purposes to assist the Confederacy. One I frequently heard of was called a Golden Circle, and several times I heard the name of the "Sons of Liberty."
[No cross-examination.]
And here is a document on Von Steinaker from the records of the Judge Advocate in charge of the prosecution.
This appears to be sort of a modus operandi with these cases. In the assassination conspiracy trial, Gen. Lew Wallace was a member of the panel. In theWirz trial, Gen. Lew Wallace was the head of the panel. In each case the U.S. government prosecutor used a U.S. Army deserter testifying under a false name to provide perjured testimony.
In the assassination conspiracy trial a copy of the General Court Martial Orders of September 2, 1864 was later found with the files of the judge advocate in charge. The document serves as proof that Von Steinaker was a convicted U.S. Army deserter who was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor for three years.
From a General Court-Martial sentence of DD and 3 years imprisonment on 9/2/1864 we find Von Steinaker testifying on 5/12/1865.
Note: The photo purported to be of John Wilkes Booth, identified as trial exhibit #1, was actually a photo of his brother, Edwin Booth.
The trial exhibit list identifies the photo only as "Booth's Portrait," which was legally accurate whether the photo was of John Willkes Booth, Edwin Booth, or Shirley Booth.
In his closing argument, prosecutor John Bingham referred to "the photograph which is of record here." (Pitman trial transcript, page 400) Mr. Bingham was being legally accurate as well.
1,363 posted on 11/26/2004 9:57:07 AM CST by nolu chan
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It was 'certified' the day that the forces of the southern rebellion fired on a federal facility in Charleston harbor. How much more proof did he need?
You know as well as we do, he just ordered out his Wide Awakes-become-Militia and his favorite governors' and co-conspirators' Militias to take over the governments of the Southern States and rule them by decree and military power.
ROTFLMAO
And while you're at it, perhaps you could explain how the Militia Act can be made to withstand constitutional scrutiny when dealing with acts of the People that some salaried joker stands up and labels "insurrection".
When those 'acts of the people' are illegal, and the insurrection involved attacks on the government's forts and seizure of the government's facilities then I can see how it would withstand Constitutional scrutiny. But I'm not the Supreme Court so it would be up to them to rule. To the best of my knowledge the matter was never taken before the courts.
Nancy Pelosi and Babs Boxer would have a field day with that one -- Ohio is in "insurrection"! Yeah, right.
I'd have to look into that but I'm sure that the Militia Act has been superseded by other legislation over the course of the last 140 years.
Thread: Commentary: Truth blown away in sugarcoated 'Gone With the Wind'
Date: 11/26/2004
[nolu chan #1390]
To: nolu chan; capitan_refugio
[ftD #1364] I stated that I had very little knowledge regarding the level of involvement that the Southern leadership had in Lincolns murder. That was not the point of the article I cited.
Lack of knowledge has not stopped you from lecturing about legal opinions you have not read.
You keep serving up internet sources with no known creditials. You served up someone named Derek Alger with the following quote:
By Derek AlgerThe problem of Davis, however, still remained. He was in custody, accused of guilt in the assassination conspiracy by Holt, with the judge advocate general logically maintaining that Davis should be charged with treason, tried before a military commission, and a date with the gallows the logical outcome.
According to historian William Hanchett in his book, The Lincoln Conspiracy Murders, "While it is unlikely that Holt doubted for a moment that Davis and the others were guilty, as charged, he and Stanton were too able and experienced to fail to recognize that the evidence presented at the conspiracy trial was not proof of guilt but only hearesay and that it was only as credible as the eyewitnesses who gave it."
One would think it relevant to mention that several witnesses were proven to be known army deserters who conspired with the prosecution to commit perjury. One was convicted for perjury in the case.
Derek Alger wastes many words treating Louis Weichmann as some sort of legal expert. But then, Derek Alger wastes many words thinking of himself as legally competent. The following quote will testify to the competence of Derek Alger.
A month later, John Surratt, who had been serving as a zouave in the papal guard at the Vatican before being turned over to the United States government, stood trial for murder for his alleged involvement with Booth in the plot to assassinate Lincoln. It was a trial before a civil court and in many respects a replay of the case against Mrs. Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the United States government. Her son was acquitted, with eight jurors reportedly in favor of a not guilty verdict and the other four against.
This is probably the only case in American judicial history where the defendant was ACQUITTED by an 8-4 split jury.
John Surratt was turned over by the Vatican, he was captured in Egypt.
As for "eight jurors reportedly in favor of a not guilty verdict and the other four against," such writing does not inspire confidence.
8-4 is a hung jury, not an acquittal. The government knew it could not win the case and chose not to retry it. The charges were therefore dropped.
Alger writes, "In his narrative, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865, not published until 1976, seventy-five years after his death, Weichmann maintained that a military tribunal was justifiable under the circumstances, but added, that had the assassination occurred sixty days later, then all individuals implicated in the plot would have justifiably been tried in civil courts."
I have a 1975 first edition of Weichmann's book, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Alger should check his facts.
Weichmann was a clerk in Stanton's War Department, and may have been a conspirator or mole. Why cite his legal opinion?
[ftD] The article made mention that the only reason that Davis was not tried was because the radical republicans were going after Johnson and had lost interest in Davis.
The article was written by another of your idiot internet sources who does not know that an 8-4 jury cannot be an acquittal.
When they had to use a civilian court, it became perfectly clear that the government had little chance of winning the case, and could not afford to lose the case. Because habeas corpus had been suspended nationwide for years, for years attorneys could do nothing for clients who were locked up without charges. A dream team of defense attorneys had volunteered to defend Davis. The government attorneys had not tried a case before anything but kangaroo courts for years. They were much safer in a case such as Texas v. White where the Federal government of Texas set up a sham case. Your source is too discredited to be taken seriously.
[ftD] You do know you lost-don't you?
I thought you lost. When you serve up an idiot source, and you get slam-dunked, you lose.
[ftD] Do you consider yourself an American or a Southerner?
Do you consider yourself a human or a reptile?
Your question is based on a false assumption.
A rebellion is defined as "open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government." The southern actions were most certainly a rebellion, especially in the 'unsuccessful' part.
Yuh. Slavery trumps 'no taxation without representation' every time. </sarcasm>
memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/civil_war_maps
These are supposedly being posted now or in the immediate future -- many docs never before seen on the Net. Being put up by the Library of Congress, the Va. Historical Society, and others. Org charts, battlefield maps, many other items.
No, it is from Non-Sequitur's #638, quoted and LINKED again below.
[ftD] You posted it chiding non-sequitur for leaving it out.
No, I chided Non-Sequitur for not HIGHLIGHTING that part which appeared in his #638
[nc #639] Non-Squirter, you FAILED to highlight the BEST PART. Shame on you.
[NON-SEQUITUR #638] | LINK |
"And be it further enacted, That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, the same being notified to the President of the United States, by an associate justice or the district judge, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. And if the militia of a state, where such combinations may happen, shall refuse, or be insufficient to suppress the same, it shall be lawful for the President, if the legislature of the United States be not in session, to call forth and employ such numbers of the militia of any other state or states most convenient thereto, as may be necessary, and the use of militia, so to be called forth, may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the ensuing session."
Black boldface as in Non-Sequitur #638.
Blue boldface added to show what I was chiding Non-Sequitur for not highlighting.
A woman working at EPA just sent me that link a few minutes ago, thinking it would interest. She was so right.
Teleologically bound definitions need rewriting. What happens when the "defiance of or resistance to" is successful?
"Treason never prospers, what's the reason?
For where it prospers, none dare call it treason."
Howsome-ever, we are not talking about the morally dicey revolutionism of 1776, but of the perfectly moral, legal, and ethical act of picking up one's marbles and going home.
As well accuse me of stealing my own car, because I moved it somewhere that my scapegrace college roommate can't find it to "borrow" it again!
The States belonged to the People. They didn't steal them, they didn't "destroy" them, they didn't "destroy" the federal government -- they just resigned from the Union. Period.
All legal and aboveboard.
The rights of free, sovereign, independent states are superior to the rights of colonies.
How many times do you have to get trampled to death over that "it was all about slavery" canard?
It was about being able to govern oneself. And to the Texans, about not getting killed by Comanches because the Congress had left them naked.
But mostly it was about the slavery.
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