If Secession Was Illegal - then How Come...?

The Patriotist ^ | 2003 | Al Benson, Jr.

[Aurelius]

Over the years I've heard many rail at the South for seceding from the 'glorious Union.' They claim that Jeff Davis and all Southerners were really nothing but traitors - and some of these people were born and raised in the South and should know better, but don't, thanks to their government school 'education.'

Frank Conner, in his excellent book The South Under Siege 1830-2000 deals in some detail with the question of Davis' alleged 'treason.' In referring to the Northern leaders he noted: "They believed the most logical means of justifying the North's war would be to have the federal government convict Davis of treason against the United States. Such a conviction must presuppose that the Confederate States could not have seceded from the Union; so convicting Davis would validate the war and make it morally legitimate."

Although this was the way the federal government planned to proceed, that prolific South-hater, Thaddeus Stevens, couldn't keep his mouth shut and he let the cat out of the bag. Stevens said: "The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy...This can be done without violence to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern states were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war...No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union..." And, although he did not plainly say it, what Stevens really desired was that the Christian culture of the Old South be 'reformed' into something more compatible with his beliefs. No matter how you look at it, the feds tried to have it both ways - they claimed the South was in rebellion and had never been out of the Union, but then it had to do certain things to 'get back' into the Union it had never been out of. Strange, is it not, that the 'history' books never seem to pick up on this?

At any rate, the Northern government prepared to try President Davis for treason while it had him in prison. Mr. Conner has observed that: "The War Department presented its evidence for a treason trial against Davis to a famed jurist, Francis Lieber, for his analysis. Lieber pronounced 'Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten'." According to Mr. Conner, U.S. Attorney General James Speed appointed a renowned attorney, John J. Clifford, as his chief prosecutor. Clifford, after studying the government's evidence against Davis, withdrew from the case. He said he had 'grave doubts' about it. Not to be undone, Speed then appointed Richard Henry Dana, a prominent maritime lawyer, to the case. Mr. Dana also withdrew. He said basically, that as long as the North had won a military victory over the South, they should just be satisfied with that. In other words - "you won the war, boys, so don't push your luck beyond that."

Mr. Conner tells us that: "In 1866 President Johnson appointed a new U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanburg. But Stanburg wouldn't touch the case either. Thus had spoken the North's best and brightest jurists re the legitimacy of the War of Northern Aggression - even though the Jefferson Davis case offered blinding fame to the prosecutor who could prove that the South had seceded unconstitutionally." None of these bright lights from the North would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. It's not that they were dumb, in fact the reverse is true. These men knew a dead horse when they saw it and were not about to climb aboard and attempt to ride it across the treacherous stream of illegal secession. They knew better. In fact, a Northerner from New York, Charles O'Connor, became the legal counsel for Jeff Davis - without charge. That, plus the celebrity jurists from the North that refused to touch the case, told the federal government that they really had no case against Davis or secession and that Davis was merely being held as a political prisoner.

Author Richard Street, writing in The Civil War back in the 1950s said exactly the same thing. Referring to Jeff Davis, Street wrote: "He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal." At one point the government intimated that it would be willing to offer Davis a pardon, should he ask for one. Davis refused that and he demanded that the government either give him a pardon or give him a trial, or admit that they had dealt unjustly with him. Mr. Street said: "He died 'unpardoned' by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing." If Davis was as guilty as they claimed, why no trial???

Had the federal government had any possible chance to convict Davis and therefore declare secession unconstitutional they would have done so in a New York minute. The fact that they diddled around and finally released him without benefit of the trial he wanted proves that the North had no real case against secession. Over 600,000 boys, both North and South, were killed or maimed so the North could fight a war of conquest over something that the South did that was neither illegal or wrong. Yet they claim the moral high ground because the 'freed' the slaves, a farce at best.

[stand watie]

chattal slavery was dying by 1861. it might have lasted another 10 years (my guess is perhaps five years.).

even if slavery had lasted another 10 years, the death of a MILLION PEOPLE (half of those were innocent civilians!)seems a very high price to pay for manumission, especially since a large portion of the civilans killed were slaves.

think on it and let me know your opinion.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

me too. and an admission that he's a LIAR & a fool as well.

free dixie,sw

[rustbucket]

"otherwise" means "under different circumstances." This is not an admission by Lincoln that he took unconstitutional measures.

With respect, I think that is a stretch. Let me ask you, do you think that everything Lincoln did was constitutional?

[stand watie]

YEP!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

because he is a fool. that's why.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

what an INCREDIBLY stupid statement! ROTFL!

but, that's the sort of statements that FOOLS make!

free dixie from idiots like YOU.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

YEP!

[Grand Old Partisan]

"A supreme court ruling issued by the north after the fact has no meaning."

issued by the north?
after the fact?
has not meaning?
unless Hacksaw says so?

[rustbucket]

As I pointed out in several other posts, Taney's Ex parte Merryman meant nothing. It had no effect because it was ignored by both the President and, later the Congress.

You are certainly correct that Ex parte Merryman didn't mean anything to Lincoln or his officers.

Richard B. Carmichael, a judge of the Maryland State court, tried to apply Ex parte Merryman to the many arrests by the Lincoln administration. Carmichael was arrested by the deputy provost-marshal of Baltimore, J. L. McPhail, and held without charges.

So much for the rule of law, I guess.

[Grand Old Partisan]

"Once seceded, US laws did not apply to them"

Secession is illegal, unconstitutional, impossible, and meaningless.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Here is a lengthier excert of the 1866 speech by Senator Oliver Morton, whose statue is in the U.S. Capitol rotunda:

“Every unregenerate rebel…every deserter, every sneak who ran away from the draft calls himself a Democrat….Every man who labored for the rebellion in the field, who murdered Union prisoners by cruelty and starvation…calls himself a Democrat. Every wolf in sheep’s clothing who pretends to preach the gospel but proclaims the righteousness of man-selling and slavery; every one who shoots down negroes in the streets, burns up negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat….In short, the Democratic party may be described as a common sewer and loathsome receptacle, into which emptied every element of treason North and South, every element of inhumanity and barbarism which has dishonored the age.”

[WhiskeyPapa]

They believed the Constitution allowed them to secede. Once seceded, US laws did not apply to them -- they were no longer part of the US.

They knew they dare not try that line in front of the Supreme Court, which ruled -unanimously- the first the issue was presented that secession was null and that the secessionists were traitors.

And you well know it.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

They believed the Constitution allowed them to secede.

They did not believe that. They aimed to get what they wanted at the point of a gun.

See the Judiciary Act of 1789. Were they just ignorant of the law, these noble scions of the south?

This is section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789:

"And be it further enacted, That the Supreme Court shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies of a civil nature, where a state is a party, except between a state and its citizens; and except also between a state and citizens of other states, or aliens, in which latter case it shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction."

Now unless the actions of the secessionists in the ACW were in fact a criminal act (got my vote), it was a civil controversy. And since the Supreme Court has jurisdiction, no ordinance or act of secession can withstand that challenge, can it? The Supreme Court has the final say. It's not -only- the Constitution that is the supreme law of the land, but the laws passed also. There is no reasonable interpretation that allows of unilateral state secession, and few put it forward at the time, relying instead on natural rights -- the right of revolution, about which there is no controversy.

Walt

[Grand Old Partisan]

A previous poster made the excellent point that the secessionists violated Article I, Section 10, Item 1: "No state shall into any treaty, alliance, or CONFEDERATION"

Also, the CSA law voiding southern debts with northern creditors also violated that constitutional provision.

And, the rebel states violated that provision by keeping troops without the consent of Congress.

[Gianni]

Here is a lengthier excert...

You seem to be missing the point: Temper tantrums by partisans do not make good citations.

[Gianni]

A previous poster made the excellent point that the secessionists violated Article I, Section 10, Item 1: "No state shall into any treaty, alliance, or CONFEDERATION"

And that previous poster must've also missed the fact that seceeded states were no longer bound by that instrument.

[sandydipper]

Lets do it!

[Grand Old Partisan]

No, you are missing the point, which is that the treasonous, criminal tendencies within the Democratic Party did not begin recently -- they go back to the Civil War and beyond.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Secession is illegal, unconstitutional, impossible, and meaningless.

[capitan_refugio]

With respect to the quorum issue for the Congresses from July 1861 to the next election, that issue has been debated, and will continue to be debated.

In short, each House of Congress has the authority to establish its own rules. When the Congress adjourned in March, 1861, it did so "sine die." When Congress was recalled in July 1861, it had the oportunity to revise its rules.

"Quorum" is not an exact term. In the past two centuries the Congress has revised their quoroum rules several times.

As I recall, the theory that the July 1861 Congress used was that the former States in secession had ceased to be "organized states." Although they remained the territory of the United States, they longer warranted representation in the Houses of Congress, and no longer counted toward total membership. This was consistant with how the territories were administered.

In the November 1862 and November 1864 general elections, it was obvious that there was no participation from 11 Confederate states (Missouri and Kentucky, under Union control, held elections, as did the new state of West Virginia after 1863)