Posted on 04/14/2005 6:40:53 PM PDT by kellynla
At Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally wounds President Abraham Lincoln. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.
Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.
Learning that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene's acclaimed performance in Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater on April 14, Booth plotted the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into a paralyzing disarray.
On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward's home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln's private theater box unnoticed, and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth jumped to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]--the South is avenged!" Although Booth had broken his left leg jumping from Lincoln's box, he succeeded in escaping Washington.
The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a cheap lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, he died--the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and secret service forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other persons eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed.
But his death at the hands of a southerner, no doubt connected with the Davis government? You don't think that would have been a rallying point for the North?
I didn't say I like or dislike the North or the South. I live in Texas and I'm a freedom loving American. I"m someone who loves freedom and willing to see that others have the same opportunity. That's why I'm on FreeRepublic.
Not like some people who think they should have the freedom to enslave others.
This so called 'stirring document' was nothing more that legal mumbo-jumbo. It was no more 'stirring' than the fine print on the back of a car lease agreement.
The thing is, most people have never read this so called great document and wouldn't understand most of it if they read it. It reads just like something that Bill Clinton would put together, in other words, what the meaning of is is.
The following is from this so called great document:
"That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States."
Exactly.
This so called Emancipation Proclamation actually freed few people. It did not apply to slaves in border states fighting on the Union side; nor did it affect slaves in southern areas already under Union control. Naturally, the Southern states did not act on Lincoln's order.
So, you can call this a 'stirring document' if it pleases you but if you really believe that then you're as big a dunderhead as any left wing liberal on the planet.
One other thing. If what happened in the US during the period of the War for Southern Independence would happen today, i.e. Southern states seceding, and you were in opposition to that action, then you would be standing arm in arm with Hitlary, Splash, Gigolo, KKK Byrd and the rest of the left wing wackos.
In 1862, probably not.....later, absolutely.
If you had any sense, you would realize that I don't nor ever have approved of slavery. Both of my ancestors from Texas, (Bastrop Area) who fought for the Confederacy, fought for the bigger issue of states-rights, and to drive away the invader. Texans had very few slaves to begin with.
It is the idea, just as most Texans feel now, that we can solve our own problems, and that everyone else needs to mind their own business.
My problem with YOU, is that you spout the PC line with little or no knowledge of Texas History.
[cr]: Unsourced and probably an exaggeration.
Lee was appointed general in chief of all Confederate armies in February, 1865. In that sense most of the Texans in the Confederate Army at that time were serving under him, though not in Virginia. However, the Western theater was essentially independent of Lee, given the poor communications and the Union control of the Mississippi.
I don't know how Texans were in the Confederate Army in February 1865. There was also the matter of state troops which would not have been under Lee's command. Based on the names of the various Texas troop units, I suspect that most Texans who served were in the Confederate Army rather than the state troops.
Your point? If this is accusatory, then I stand guilty. I used to be married to a lawyer and it kinda rubbed off.
You mean the War of Northern Aggression.
True enough, even though I prefer War for Southern Independence.
The term 'civil war' when applied to the Confederate States vs the union is incorrect.
A 'civil war' is defined as a war between factions in the same country, usually for political control by one of the factions for the existing government.
This was absolutely not the case in the Confederate States vs the union. The Confederacy legally seceded from the union, formed a government, ratified a constitution, printed money, elected officials, formed an army, established diplomatic relations with foreign powers, etc.
disHonest Abe then forced action at Sumpter Island and subsequently invaded a sovereign nation.
But a 'rebellion' is defined as open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government. By that definition then "War of Southern Rebellion" is the most accurate term.
"Not that YOU would care. I doubt if any of your kin bled for Texas."
You lost kin? Do you cry for them? BTW, I think you're a loon.
The states claimed the right to secede. Hence the War of Northern Aggression.
The states were wrong, there is no right of unilateral secession. Hence the War of Southern Rebellion.
Duck, RunningJoke, it's non-seq's unsupported theory of no unilateral secession. Talk about a running joke.
Yeah, that's why "some people" go back after 50 years and seek out Medal of Honor winners, and other "some people" want to work on cold cases -- because they were crimes, and because justice delayed, etc. If something's been broke for 140 years, it's time to get out the Elmer's.
Too bad they can't realize that President Lincoln was the best friend the South had in Washington.
You're joking, right? You mean before, or after Lincoln won? Caesar once laid down that it's just good policy, when dominating and overmastering someone, to show them a great deal of liberality and open-hanededness -- sort of like training a horse, so one can ride on his back. It's something Americans know not to accept, coming from a military strongman.
His measures during the war were rather more.......draconian. Try reading up on the Confiscation Act, for example.
His death resulted in Reconstruction being just as damaging as the war itself.
This is arguable, and for any number of reasons. Andrew Johnson persisted, artlessly, with Lincoln's policy for about 18 months after Richmond fell, after which "presidential Reconstruction" was succeeded by "congressional Reconstruction", which was the eagles ripping the South's liver out every day for several years.
Both policies had one element in common: both made free men their playthings, reducing the whites in the South to the level of the emancipated slaves, who, with their descendants, have never known what it was to be a free man in Jacksonian America, the America described by DeTocqueville.
Come to think of it, neither have we.
After the Civil War began, they pretended to rule in the validity of secession acts in 1862 (the Prize Cases) and 1869 (Texas vs. White) (I've seen various dates given for this case). But these were wartime cases, and as Chief Justice Rehnquist points out in All the Laws but One (1997, I think), in wartime the Supreme Court tends to bend over backward to give the Executive fighting the war anything he wants.
In Texas vs. White, the opinion was written by Salmon P. Chase, who had been a member of Lincoln's cabinet and was appointed by Lincoln to be Chief Justice when Roger Taney died. Talk about homering -- Chase shouldn't have participated in the case, but he wound up writing the opinion and holding forth that the secession act of Texas, though taken by the People in convention assembled and ratified by the whole People in a referendum, was "a nullity". And where did he get his authority?
Answer: he didn't have any -- he just delivered the goods in a blatantly political decision that needs to be revisited and overturned.
No, they didn't. Even Lee Harvey Oswald didn't give up his name when he shot President Kennedy.
Ah, so you surrendered the same day Bobby Lee did!
Excuse me? Ever hear of a little old Southern town named New Orleans? As in, Emeril LaGasse and Paul Prudhomme? Jeez.
The cooking in Houston isn't shabby, either, and I defy you to rise from the table hungry after a steak in the Fort Worth Stockyards district. Or anywhere in Tex-uss!
The North had had more exposure to the outside world and tends to be more progressive.
I guess that explains the crabs.
That hasn't been the issue since the 13th Amendment was passed, and the war wasn't fought for the 13th Amendment, either. By either side. It was fought over a power play by the Northern industrialists, who wanted to (and did) transform the country and enrich themselves in the process -- but that's a whole conversation in itself.
Show me where the States agreed to give that up in the Constitution -- along with coining money, granting titles, and treating with foreign powers pro se.
Gotta be in Article I, Section 10 somewhere, right?
Point to the words, amigo.
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