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

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.

[lentulusgracchus 1,913]

I don't doubt the substance of the story, but I have a problem with the author cited. Isn't Lerone Bennett a notorious black separatist and revisionist?
To 1,823

Transcript of Bennett Interview

September 10, 2000
Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream
by Lerone Bennett
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BRIAN LAMB, host: Lerone Bennett Jr., where did you get the title of your book, "Forced Into Glory"?

* * *

LAMB: Well, what about the other half of that? Bill Clinton?

Mr. BENNETT: I--I think his appointment policy has--has--has--has been extraordinary and is an indication of--of--of what we should expect from a president and points in the direction that we ought to go in terms of trying to create a rainbow nation. Lincoln was not going in that direction at all. And again, here's an indication of a direction we need to go in in order to create the rainbow nation that--that was dreamed that has never been lived.

====

I have not heard him called a Black separatist. He was an editor of Ebony magazine for about 40 years, 2 million suscriber base, 10 million circulation. His speaking of our needing to go in the direction of a rainbow nation seems to contradict any such assertion.

As for being a Revisionist, that term requires some definition when it comes to Lincoln history. If one uses the term to mean revision of the popular history (or myth) which abounds, then Bennett is revisionist. Surely, he is controversial.

However, in my humble opinion, the full-scale revisionism surrounding Lincoln began almost immediately following his assassination. This is not a new idea which originates with Bennett. Charles L.C. Minor in The Real Lincoln, first printed in 1904, spends his first chapter on the Apotheosis of Lincoln.

I believe the record demonstrates the truth of this. Prior to his assassination, Lincoln was savaged by virtually all who knew him. You have probably seen the remarks made by his own cabinet members, his own appointed military leaders, abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, and various Republicans.

When writers quote glowing statements about Lincoln, it is no accident that nearly every such statement was made after Lincoln died. It is virtually impossible to find a favorable quote about Lincoln in life by his contemporaries.

If Lincoln were really the saviour of the Black people that he is made out to be, one would expect to find books by Blacks praising the lifelong struggle of Lincoln on behalf of the Black people. Of the 15 thousand or so books about Lincoln, only a handful are written by Blacks. In his interview, Bennett states, "At any rate, the interesting thing is that in predominantly black institutions, in black circles, apart from a few pieces of poetry here and there, Abraham Lincoln has never been the thing in black America that he's always been in white America, which suggests to me--and this is speculation but I say it in the book--I surmise that black people know Lincoln, have always known him at a depth beneath words. At any rate, they have not felt it necessary, they've not felt a need or the interest to address him the way white historians have addressed him."

Near the end of the interview, Bennett addresses what he calls the myth of Lincoln drafting a large part of the Emancipation Proclamation at the Anderson Cottage. Bennett said "500,000 thousand PhDs swearing that Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation in that co -- in that thing will not change the fact that he did not do it. The facts are against the theory and it's the duty of all Americans to begin now to deal with the facts."

While Bennett may be considered a revisionist, I would tend more to believe that he is engaged in smashing long-standing revisionist history.

At any rate, he does a remarkable job of absolutely skewering some of the earlier historians.

I have found three reviews of his book.

New York Times, James McPherson, August 27, 2000 [Negative]

Washington Times, Robert Stacy McCain, May 26, 2000 [positive]

NewsMax, Steve Chapman, May 14, 2000 [Negative]

I provide the NewsMax review below and inject brief comments.

Great Emancipator or White Oppressor?
Steve Chapman
May 14, 2000

Millions of admiring words have been written about Abraham Lincoln, but not one of them was composed by Lerone Bennett Jr. Bennett is the author of an incendiary new book, "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream," which depicts the 16th president as an oppressor, a supporter of slavery and the relentless enemy of black equality.

Racism, says Bennett, was "the center and circumference of his being." Next to Bennett's version of Lincoln, David Duke looks good.

Despite its provocative thesis, the book has been a well-kept secret, most likely because it comes from the obscure Johnson Publishing Co. Time magazine columnist Jack E. White complains that "Forced Into Glory" is "not getting the kind of attention that nonfiction works by white authors have received." To address our racial issues, he says, we need "to stop ignoring Bennett's discomfiting book."

[nc] Calling the Johnson Publishing Company obscure is slightly questionable. It publishes Ebony, among other things, with a subscriber base of about 2 million.

The book is useful because every generation ought to re-examine the received assumptions of our political culture. Bennett's portrayal will surprise both whites and blacks raised to revere the Great Emancipator. But this massive exercise in demonization fails because it misunderstands both Lincoln and his era.

At a superficial level, Lincoln harbored many of the racial prejudices of the time. He grew up in a society where black inferiority was assumed, and he was given to racial jokes and even use of the N word. Before becoming president, he said he didn't favor racial equality. As president, he insisted that "if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it."

[nc] "At a superficial level, Lincoln harbored many of the racial prejudices of the time. He grew up in a society where black inferiority was assumed...." In a society where black inferiority was assumed, with Lincoln the assumption was somehow only superficial. Uh huh.

But Lincoln's racial attitudes evolved as he grew older - to the point that Frederick Douglass said he was "the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color."

[nc] Lincoln did not so evolve until after he was dead. Read what Douglass said about Lincoln when he was still alive. Read what Douglass said about Lincoln at the dedication of the Lincoln memorial. The politically correct quote was issued decades after Lincoln was dead.

Bennett accuses Lincoln of caring nothing about the plight of blacks, but the truth is that Lincoln took the position throughout his career that slavery was a "monstrous injustice." The important thing is not that Lincoln was free of racial prejudice, but that he could rise above it to oppose slavery and work toward its extinction.

[nc] Lincoln said over and over and over that he only opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. He said over and over that the territories should be preserved for White people. Clearly, Lincoln's statements precluded his wanting any Blacks there... free or slave. He referred to Mexicans as mongrels. They were not to be welcomed either.

Part of the fraud Bennett ascribes to Lincoln is the Emancipation Proclamation, which he says did not free any slaves. It's hardly news that the decree applied only to areas under rebel control - where Lincoln's writ did not run. But it did make clear to everyone, North and South, that the war was henceforth a war not only to save the Union but to end slavery.

[nc] Think about this for a moment. WHAT was the war about BEFORE the proclamation? Lincoln's writ did not apply to any part of Tennessee, whether under Union or Rebel control.

It was cheered by abolitionists despite its limitations, while being bitterly denounced by pro-slavery leaders, who saw it as an invitation to slave revolt. Lincoln didn't stop with this: He pushed for a constitutional amendment to abolish the institution everywhere, which he lacked the legal authority to do by himself.

[nc] In a speech made at Music Hall, New Haven, 1863, leading abolitionist Wendell Phillips said: "Lincoln was badgered into emancipation. After he issued it he said it was the greatest folly of his life. It was like the Pope's bull against the comet."

If Lincoln had pushed harder and earlier for abolition, he might have satisfied Bennett. But, says Princeton historian James McPherson, he would have shattered support for the war, with the result that "the Confederacy would have established its independence, and with 14 states instead of 11." And slavery would have survived.

[nc] If Lincoln had pushed harder and earlier for abolition he would have shattered support for the war, according to McPherson. If the North would not agree to fight for abolition, why is it continually maintained that this was a war to free the slaves, and the South seceded to prevent abolition of slavery?

His proposal to resettle blacks abroad is reviled by Bennett as "the ethnic cleansing of America." Lincoln did support the idea, not because he hated blacks but because he knew the depths of racism among whites. If blacks couldn't gain equality here, he reasoned, might they not be better off in a homeland of their own? And wouldn't that prospect defuse white support for slavery? Lincoln eventually abandoned this option, though, and set about trying to create a society where blacks could live in freedom.

[nc] Oh right, Lincoln reasoned the Blacks would be better off in Central America mining coal. One reading of the Mitchell pamphlet dispels this notion. There is no evidence that Lincoln abandoned this option. His overt attempts to colonize Blacks were involuntarily put on hiatus by the withdrawal of funding by Congress.

He pursued his goals with a political skill and cunning that often confused his friends as well as his enemies. But pursue them he did, without cease. Said Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, "Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined."

[nc] Again, read what Frederick Douglass said about Lincoln while Lincoln was still alive.

Lincoln didn't have to embark on a war to put down the rebellion of the slave states, but he did. He didn't have to accept the deaths of 360,000 Union soldiers in the effort, but he did. He could have made peace with the rebels and left the slaves to their fate in a Confederate States of America, but he refused.

[nc] And Lincoln explained it quite simply. Where would the nation get its revenue?

Instead, Lincoln never veered from a painful, costly and bitter course aimed at both preserving the republic and ridding it of slavery. And in the end, he succeeded, to the everlasting benefit of both races. If those achievements were the work of an enemy, black Americans would not need friends.

[nc] Lincoln can hardly be said to have steered a constant course aimed at ridding the nation of slavery. If Lincoln is truly the Great Emancipator created by post-assassination myth, where is the glowing biography of Lincoln written by a Black historian? Why is there not a veritable library of books by Black historians praising Lincoln as their saviour?

However, in my humble opinion, the full-scale revisionism surrounding Lincoln began almost immediately following his assassination.

President Lincoln received many kudos in life.

The [London] Spectator continued" "He is not malignant against foreign countries; on the contrary, thinks they have behaved rather better than he expected. No power in Europe can take offense at the wording of the [12/01/62] Message, nor can anyone say that the Republic bends to dictation, or craves in any undignified way for foreign forbearance. The words might have been more elegant, bur the astutest diplomatist could have accomplished no more, and might, perhaps, have shown a reticence less complete."

The gist of the message was epitomized: "Mr. Lincoln has from the first explained that he is the exponent of the national will. He has not merely recognized it. Amidst a cloud of words and phrases, which, often clever, are always too numerous, a careful observer may detect two clear and definite thoughts. 1. The President will assent to no peace upon any terms which imply a dissolution of the Union. 2. He holds that the best reconstruction will be that which is accompanied by measures for the final extinction of slavery." '

In the President's discussions of peace, said the Spectator, "He expresses ideas, which, however quaint, have nevertheless a kind of dreamy vastness not without its attraction. The thoughts of the man are too big for his mouth." He was saying that a nation can be divided but "the earth abideth forever," that a generation could be crushed but geography dictated that the Union could not be sundered. As to the rivers and mountains, "all are better than one or either, and all of right belong to this people and their successors forever." No possible severing of the land but would multiply and not mitigate the evils among the American States.

"It is an oddly worded argument," said the Spectator, "the earth being treated as If it were a living creature, an Estate of the Republic with an equal vote on its destiny." In the proposals for gradual emancipated compensation there was magnitude: "Mr. Lincoln has still the credit of having been first among American statesmen to rise to the situation, to strive that reconstruction shall not mean a new lease for human bondage." The President's paragraph was quoted having the lines; "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation," as though this had the attractive "dreamy vastness" that brought from the English commentator the abrupt sentence "The thoughts of the man are too big for his mouth."

Greeley and others could not resist the impact of some judgments pronounced on Lincoln abroad. Greeley did not accept these judgments. He questioned them sharply. He saw, however, that they had significance and they were of historic quality. Under the heading "Mr. Lincoln in Europe" the New York Tribune of January 10, 1863, reprinted from the Edinburgh Mercury:

“In Mr. Lincoln’s message, we appreciate the calm thoughtfulness so different from the rowdyism we have been accustomed to receive from Washington. He is strong in the justice his cause and the power of his people. He speaks without acerbity even of the rebels who have brought so much calamity upon the country, but we believe that if the miscreants of the Confederacy -were brought to him today, Mr. Lincoln would bid them depart and try to be better and braver men in the future. When we recollect the raucous hate in this country toward the Indian rebels, "we feel humiliated that this 'rail splitter' from Illinois should show himself so superior to the mass of monarchical statesmen.

"Mr. Lincoln's brotherly kindness, truly father of his country, kindly merciful, lenient even to a fault, is made the sport and butt of all the idle literary buffoons of England. The day will come when the character and career of Abraham Lincoln will get justice in this country and his assailants will show their shame for the share they took in lampooning so brave and noble a man, who in a fearful crisis possessed his soul in patience, trusting in God. ‘Truly’, Mr. Lincoln speaks, 'the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.' There is little doubt what the verdict of future generations will be of Abraham Lincoln.

"Before two years of his administration has been completed, he has reversed the whole constitutional attitude of America on the subject of Slavery; he has saved the territories from the unhallowed grasp of the slave power; he has purged the accursed institution from the Congressional District; he has hung a slave trader in New York, the nest of slave pirates; he has held out the right hand of fellowship to the negro Republicans of Liberia and Hayti; he has joined Great Britain in endeavoring to sweep the slave trade from the coast of Africa! There can be no doubt of the verdict of posterity on such acts as these. Within the light of the 'fiery trial' of which Mr. Lincoln speaks, another light shines clear and refulgent—the torch of freedom—to which millions of poor slaves now look with eager hope."

--Abraham Lincoln, The War Years, Vol. II, pp.331-333, by Carl Sandburg

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