I have no idea how you managed to twist my comments into that, but few of the conclusions you come to really surprise me any more. On the contrary, there was a controlling authority in the United States in the form of a working Supreme Court. Many of Lincoln's actions were taken to the court for judgement. In many cases the court approved of the actions, in others it did not. I do believe that Lincoln's decision should have been taken to the full court, and had the emergency lasted more than a few weeks I'm sure it would have. But the suspension of habeas corpus by Lincoln only lasted a few weeks.
It was Jefferson Davis, as you well know, who would brook no possible interference in the actions he took. His contempt for the judicial system was well known, otherwise why would he have refused to establish a confederate supreme court to begin with, in spite of the fact that his constitution required one? Do you have an answer for that puzzle?
"The North had a potential manpower superiority of more than three to one (counting only white men) and Union armed forces had an actual superiority of two to one during most of the war. In economic resources and logistical capacity the northern advantage was even greater. Thus, in this explanation, the Confederacy fought against overwhelming odds; its defeat was inevitable. But this explanation has not satisfied a good many analysts. History is replete with examples of peoples who have won or defended their independence against greater odds: the Netherlands against the Spain of Philip II; Switzerland against the Hapsburg empire; the American rebels of 1776 against mighty Britain; North Vietnam against the United States of 1970. Given the advantages of fighting on the defensive in its own territory with interior lines in which stalemate would be victory against a foe who must invade, conquer, occupy, and destroy the capacity to resist, the odds faced by the South were not formidable.
Rather, as another category of interpretations has it, internal divisions fatally weakened the Confederacy: the state-rights conflict between certain govern on and the Richmond government; the disaffection of non-slaveholders from a rich man's war and poor man's fight; libertarian opposition to necessary measures such as conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus; the lukewarm commitment to the Confederacy by quondam Whigs and unionists; the disloyalty of slaves who defected to the enemy whenever they had a chance; growing doubts among slaveowners themselves about the justice of their peculiar institution and their cause. "So the Confed- eracy succumbed to internal rather than external causes," according to numerous historians. The South suffered from a "weakness in morale," a "loss of the will to fight." The Confederacy did not lack "the means to continue the struggle," but "the will to do so." --BCF, P. 855
His sources:
Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Stilll jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986), 439, 5S; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York, 1980),255 Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (Collier Books ed., New York, 1961), 250
My emphasis
And this was interesting:
"At the commencement of the withdrawal of the army from the lines on the night of the 2nd [of April 1865], it began to disintegrate, and straggling from the ranks increased up to the surrender on the 9th. On that day, as previously reported, there were only seven thousand eight hundred and ninety-two (7892) effective infantry. During the night, when the surrender became known, more than ten thousand men came in, as reported to me by the Chief Commissary of the Army. During the succeeding days stragglers continued to give themselves up, so that on the 12th April, according to the rolls of those paroled, twenty six thousand and eighteen (26,018) officers and men had surrendered. Men who had left the ranks on the march, and crossed James River, returned and gave themselves up, and many have since come to Richmond and surrendered. I have given these details that your Excellency might know the state of feeling which existed in the army ......" Letter from Lee to Davis dated 20 April 1865, Document 1006, in Dowdy (ed.), THE WARTIME PAPERS OF ROBERT E. LEE (NY: Da Capo Press).
And how about this:
"The people lacked 'patriotic devotion to the South,' he [Pollard] complained. ' Only the utmost rigor of conscription,' he argued, 'forced a majority of it's troops in the field; . . . half of these were disposed to desert on the first opportunities; and . . . the demands for military service were cheated in a way and to an extent unexampled in the case of any brave and honorable nation engaged in a war for its own existence.' 'We have,' Pollard pointed out as proof, 'the remarkable fact that in one year the Confederate States Attorney in Richmond tried eighteen hundred cases in that city on writs of habeas corpus for relief from conscription!'" p. 43-44, Southern Rights, Neely
The secesh could have won the war; they just flubbed it.
Walt