Posted on 06/12/2003 5:58:28 AM PDT by 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.
so what is moral, just & honorable is only defined as whether or not you win your revolution????
does this mean that if the Third Reich had won WW2, that Hitler would have become, magically, a great man???
free dixie,sw
had lincoln & his cronies NOT decided to re-conquer the southland in 1861, slavery would have lasted a MAXIMUM of 10 years. 5 is more likely.
face it, N-S, no matter how much you wish the WBTS had been about freeing the slaves, it was ONLY about the southland's people desiring LIBERTY.
free dixie,sw
it's sort of like when SHRILLery couldn't remember "inconvienient facts", when testifying about the crimes of wee willie klintoon & herself in front of congress.
further, N-S has the tendency to request proof of anything that he disagrees with and when documentation is provided, citing title,author,page & line, he EACH TIME says, "that's not a good source".
evidently, only PRO-lincoln & PRO-damnyankee sources are acceptable to him;anything which makes the damnyankee WAR CRIMINALS look like the hatefilled, arrogant, self-righteous creeps they demonstrably were is false in HIS opinion.
free dixie,sw
In the eyes of the German people, no doubt he would have. Just as had Jefferson Davis won his place in history would have been much different. But he didn't win, so he's just another one of history's losers.
That time frame keeps dropping all the time. Before long you will be saying that had the Civil War not intervened then slavery would have ended in the 1840's, 1852 tops.
how very utilitarian of you.
free dixie,sw
whether slavery would have died in FIVE OR TEN years,the "grand crusade against slavery", by the damnayankee elites, which killed over a MILLION people (1/2 of those innocent civilians) between 1855-1865 seems a bit much,to hasten the demise of a dying institution??
free dixie,sw
-- Douglass to Lincoln, regarding his second inaugural address.
Walt
-- Douglass about Lincoln, when Douglass was not at an Inaugural being polite.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Frederick Douglass said:
Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful conviction that though elected as an anti-slavery man by Republican and Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border States, than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and humanity"
The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass,
edited by Philip S. Foner, 4 Vols, New York, 1955, vol 3, page 268
Frederick Douglass said:
With the single exception of the question of slavery extension, Mr. Lincoln proposes no measure which can bring him into antagonistic collision with the traffickers in human flesh, either in the States or in the District of Columbia .... Slavery will be as safe, and safer, in the Union under such a President, than it can be under any President of a Southern Confederacy"
The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass, edited by Philip S. Foner,
4 Vols, New York, 1955, vol 2, page 527
Frederick Douglass charged Clay, and by implication, Lincoln with "the most revolting blasphemy," saying "You would charge upon God the repsonsibility of your own crimes, and would seek a solace from the pangs of a guilty conscience by sacrilegiously assuming that in robbing Africa of her children, you acted in obedience of the great purposed, and were but fulfilling the decress of the most high God" (FD 1:289)
Lincoln never met a Black law he didn't like. Referring to the Illinois Exclusion law, Douglass expressed his outrage for an act which "cooly" proposed to "sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites [and] to rob every black stranger who ventures among them to increase their literary fund."
Douglass's indictment of Lincoln: "The treatment of our poor black soldiers -- the refusal to pay them anything like equal compensation, though it was promised them when they enlisted; the refusal to insist upon the exchange of colored prisoners when colored prisoners have been slaughtered in cold blood, although the President has repeatedly promised thus to protect the lives of his colored soldiers -- have worn my patience threadbare. The President has virtually laid down this as the rule of his statesmen: Do evil by choice, right from necessity" (FD 3:404, 406-7)
Frederick Douglass attacked Lincoln's logic and his racism, saying that "a horse thief pleading that the existence of the horse is the apology for his theft or a highway man contending that the money in the traveler's pocket is the sole first cause of his robbery are about as much entitled to respect as is the President's reasoning at this point."
"Mr. Lincoln takes care in urging his colonization scheme to furnish a weapon to all the ignorant and base, who need only the countenance of men in authority to commit all kinds of violence and outrage upon the colored people of the country." (FD 3:267)
Frederick Douglass told Charles Sumner: "If slavery is really dead in the District of Columbia ... to you, more than to any other American statesman, belongs the honor of this great triumph of Justice, Liberty, and Sound Policy" (FD 3:233-4)
On July 4, 1862, Douglass said: "our weak, faltering and incompetent rulers in the Cabinet ... and our rebel worshipping Generals in the field" were "incomparably more dangerous to the country than dead traitors like former President James Buchanan..." (FD 3:250)
August 1862, "...ABRAHAM LINCOLN is no more fit for the place he holds than was JAMES BUCHANAN, and that the latter was no more the miserable tool of traitors and rebels than the former is allowing himself to be."
Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white people of this country."
Lincoln was "scrupulous to the very letter of the law in favor of slavery, and a perfect latitudinarian as to the discharge of his duties under a law favoring freedom."
In a January 25, 1865 speech, Douglass said that the system of forced labor inaugurated in Louisiana by General Banks, with Lincoln's approval, "practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion."
Then wouldn't you say that it was even more ridiculous for the Davis regime and the southern leadership to sacrifice those lives to prop up a dying institution??
The short answer, yes he is. In an earlier revisionist work The Shaping of Black America , Bennett credits the American founding fathers in Virginia with inventing racism as an economic strategy to exploit African, Native Indian, and European workers.
But don't let the inconvienent fact that the Black liberation left agrees with you about Lincoln disturb your closed minds. It would be slothful induction to conclude that as a result YOU endorse Black liberation, American founders inventing racism , or any of the myriad other historical nonsense Bennett and his fellow travelers spew.
As you very well know, that was not their motive.
Lincoln said he was in favor of the new territories "being in such a condition that white men may find a home."
Lincoln, Alton, Illinois, 10/15/1862
"His democracy was a White mans democracy. It did not contain Negroes." Oscar Sherwin
Lincoln's dream did not contain Indians or even Mexicans who he referred to as "mongrels."
Lincoln, CW 3:234-5
"Resolved, That the elective franchise should be kept pure from contamination by the admission of colored votes."
That got Lincoln's vote, January 5, 1836.
"in our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beware, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of freedom"
Lincoln, CW 2:276
Translation for the intellectually challenged:
The White Man's Charter of Freedom = The Declaration of Independence
Lincoln wanted the territories to be "the happy home of teeming millions of free, white prosperous people, and no slave among them"
Lincoln, 1854, CW 2:249
The territories "should be kept open for the homes of free white people"
Lincoln, 1856, CW 2:363
"We want them [the territories] for the homes of free white people."
Lincoln, CW 3:311
If slavery was allowed to spread to the territories, he said "Negro equality will be abundant, as every White laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n-----s"
Lincoln, CW 3:78 [Lincoln uses the N-word without elision]
"Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?"
Lincoln, CW 3:79
Bennett words which Garbage Truck conveniently chose not to quote:
The decade of the 1660s: this was the first great fork in the making of black America. For it was at this fork that certain men decided to ground the American economic system on human slavery. To understand that great fork, one must understand first the roads leading to it --roads that were not taken.
1660's. Not to be confused with the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.
You may then read the defense of James Mitchell by the your leader, The Keeper of the Northern Faith, Defender of the Precious, Lord High Protector of the Union, the Commander of the Wlat Brigade, Wlat himself.
By the standards of the Wlat Brigade, James Mitchell is a "very loyal and capable Union man" and a "true patriot." Follow your leader. March with pride. Let the world see what the Wlat Brigade supports.
THE LINCOLN GAMEPLAN DRAFTED BY JAMES MITCHELL [Image file from the Library of Congress]
Transcript of Lincoln Gameplan drafted by James Mitchell
[Wlat 1785] Now, Mitchell was a very loyal and capable Union man. If President Lincon would go out of his way to help rebels, what would he do for true patriots?
LINK
"The decade of the 1660s: this was the first great fork in the making of black America. For it was at this fork that certain men decided to ground the American economic system on human slavery. To understand that great fork, one must understand first the roads leading to it --roads that were not taken." -Lerone Bennett
First of all I didn't convienently fail to quote anything from Bennett's work. I simply provide a link to it, assuming that even a halfwit could see it for themselves in full context. Since that simple concept apparently proved beyond your meager capabilities, I'll provide the exact quote from that same section of the book The Shaping of Black America by Lerone Bennett that YOU chose not to quote.
'Who was responsible for this policy?
The white founding fathers, the Byrds, the Mathers, and Winthrops, the Jeffersons, the Washingtons, the heroes of all the Fourths of July: they divided blacks and whites, they sowed the seeds of division and hate and blood. In an attempt to evade the implications of this fact, some men blame "the English" or "Colonial public opinion." But Colonial public opinion was the public opinion of the planter-merchant aristocracy.'
I'm not sure if Lerone Bennett could be more explicit who he was talking about, do you?. Did you not read through the entire link I provided you before selecting the snipit that falsely contradicted my assertion, or are you attempting to willfully distort my position?
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that you are on here to promote Black Liberation Theory disguised as Neo-confederate scholarship. That would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
http://www.ssbtractor.com/features/Ford_tractors.html
It has a nice history of the Ford/Fordson/Ferguson-Ford lines.
"Also I have a Mark IX Jag, with body by TOURING, too-I'm a glutton for punishment."
Well, that explains a few things ;^)
I simply provide a link to it, assuming that even a halfwit could see it for themselves in full context. Since that simple concept apparently proved beyond your meager capabilities, I'll provide the exact quote from that same of the book The Shaping of Black America by Lerone Bennett that YOU chose not to quote.
'Who was responsible for this policy?
The white founding fathers, the Byrds, the Mathers, and Winthrops, the Jeffersons, the Washingtons, the heroes of all the Fourths of July: they divided blacks and whites, they sowed the seeds of division and hate and blood. In an attempt to evade the implications of this fact, some men blame "the English" or "Colonial public opinion." But Colonial public opinion was the public opinion of the planter-merchant aristocracy.'
I'm not sure if Lerone Bennett could be more explicit who he was talking about, do you?. Did you not read through the entire link I provided you before selecting the snipit that falsely contradicted my assertion, or are you attempting to willfully distort my position?
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that you are on here to promote Black Liberation Theory disguised as Neo-confederate scholarship. That would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
It is unfortunate you are too lazy or incompetent to research your subject and know what you are talking about. The Winthrops, Byrds, and Mathers are from the 17th century.
In 1630, John Winthrop led the first major Puritan settlement under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company.
Fitz-John Winthrop), 1638–1707, American colonial governor of Connecticut, b. Ipswich, Mass.; son of John Winthrop (1606–76).
MATHER "DYNASTY":
a) Richard (1596-1669) was the emigrant, a key leader in keeping the Bay Colony going during the early, hard years.
b) Increase (1639-1723) was the great church father, a dogmatic and conservative politician, who took part in the witchcraft trials of the 1690's. Intellectually, he was incurious and narrow; politically, he was ambitious and self-seeking.
c) Cotton (1663-1728) was brilliant, petulant, spoiled, emotional, high-strung, over-sexed. (Of his 3 wives, 2 died and 1 went insane; he had 15 children). Cotton was egocentric, vain, and misogynistic. Early in his life he had a speech impediment and was miraculously "cured." His diary is a treasure trove of abnormal psychology
William Byrd II, was the founder of Richmond.
[mac truck] The short answer, yes he is. In an earlier revisionist work The Shaping of Black America Bennett credits the American founding fathers in Virginia with inventing racism as an economic strategy to exploit African, Native Indian, and European workers.
inventing racism as an economic strategy
The garbage truck quote asks "Who was responsible for this policy? Bennett goes on to assert all who participated in creating the policy and all those who followed and perpetuated it were responsible. What Bennett does NOT say is that everyone from the Winthrops, Mathers and Byrds invented the policy.
Even a halfwit could see it, but that simple concept apparently proved beyond your meager capabilities. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that you are on here to promote Liberal Theory disguised as scholarship. That would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
FROM BENNETT:
The decade of the 1660s: this was the first great fork in the making of black America. For it was at this fork that certain men decided to ground the American economic system on human slavery.
* * *
Unhappily for the Africans, they had none of the disadvantages of the Indians and poor whites, and they had -- again from the standpoint of the planters -- distinct advantages. They were marked by color and hence could not escape so easily. The supply seemed to be inexhaustible, and the labor of Africans was relatively inexpensive when compared with the cost of transporting and maintaining white indentured servants for a limited number of years. This last fact was decisive, and it was clearly understood by the colonists as early as 1645. It was in that year that Emanuel Downing sent a famous letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop, saying, among other things: "If upon a Just Warre the Lord shold deliver [Narragansett Indians] into our hands, wee might easily have men woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pilladge for us then wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill we get into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business, for our children's children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire free dome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall mayneteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant."
Twenty Africans for the price of one English servant -- how could a Puritan resist such a deal!
* * *
That settled that, but it did not settle the legal question of who could be enslaved. And in 1670 the Virginia legislature spoke again on the subject, saying: "All servants not being Christians imported into this country by shipping shalbe slaves for life." Whether by design or accident, this law excepted blacks who had been baptized in Africa, Europe, the West Indies, or other colonies. But this loophole was eliminated in the act of 1682 which declared that ". ..all servants except Turks and Moores ...which shall be brought or imported into this country , either by sea or land, whether Negroes. ...Mullattoes or Indians, who and whose parentage and native country are not christian at the time of their first purchase of such servant by some christian, although afterwards, and before such their importation. ..they shall be converted to the christian faith. ...shall be judged, deemed and taken to be slaves. ..." In plain English, this meant that all Jews, Asians, and Africans (except Turks and Moors) were subject to slavery in Virginia. It meant also that Virginia was embarking on the process (completed in the eighteenth century ) of basing slavery on race rather than religion. (The Virginia legislature finally said that a Negro was anyone with one Negro grandparent.)
In this manner Virginia (and America) crossed a great divide, a divide that requires some elaboration. For what was involved here was the idea of racism, which is not an individual idea or peculiarity but an institutionalized ideology that commits the institutions of a society to the destruction of a people because of race. The idea developed by the Virginians (and Americans) was simple and profitable. The idea was that all whites were biologically superior to all blacks, who were infidels and heathens, a dangerous and accursed people who embodied an evil principle that made them dangerous to the morals and the politics of the community . The truth or falsity of this idea disturbed few men then ( or now) . The only thing that mattered was that this idea or something like it was necessary to justify past, present, and future aggression against blacks.
With the institutionalization of this idea, the structure of slavery was almost complete. There remained only the fourth phase, a phase that continued for two hundred years and involved the destruction of the legal personality of the slave.
The first step in this direction was the declaration that the slave was the property of the master. As such, the slave could not hold property or engage in trade or commerce. Nor could the slave as a piece of property move without the express consent of his master. He could not leave the plantation without a pass, he could not gather in large groups, he could not commit himself to a marriage vow. More ominously, he could not even defend himself. In the words of the codes, he was in the "condition of a natural person, in which, by the operation of law, the application of his physical and mental powers depend[ed] ...upon the will of another. ..."
By these words and acts, and in these stages, the masters of Colonial America committed themselves and America to the institution of human slavery. Having made that decision, the masters had to make another decision, for neither the masters nor the servants had been prepared for the new script of roles in the statutes. Nature does not create masters or slaves. Nor does it create blacks or whites. In order to make masters and slaves, in order to make blacks and whites, it is necessary to kill them -- it is necessary to separate them by rivers of blood. But terror alone is not enough. One must condition the mind and the eye and the heart. And the conditioning of one generation must be repeated in the next generation and on and on ad infinitum. The men who ran Colonial America did not shrink from these exigencies. Moving swiftly and ruthlessly, they began in the middle of the seventeenth century to separate blacks and whites and to create a race problem in America.
Curiously enough, there is no full-length treatment of this process. Most historians avoid the subject by positing a natural or cultural bias in the European psyche. But this maneuver fails to explain why this natural or cultural bias manifested itself in one way in 1619 and another way in 1819 or why it developed in one way in Maryland, another way in Massachusetts, and a third way in Brazil. Nor is it possible, from the traditional standpoint, to explain why the laws against blacks became progressively worse and differed significantly in different demographic and economic situations. From time to time, some historians admit, in so many words, that the traditional view is untenable. Stanley Elkins, for example, who has advanced a fanciful theory of slavery, said that "the interests of white servants and blacks were systematically driven apart." After reading the same evidence, the Handlins said that "the emerging difference in treatment [of blacks and whites] was calculated to create a real division of interest between Negroes on the one hand and whites on the other." [my emphasis]
No one reading the evidence can doubt this. Nor can it be doubted that blacks and whites had to be taught the meaning of blackness and whiteness. This is not to deny "differences" in color and hair formation, etc. It is only to say that perceptions had to be organized to recognize the differences and that men had to be organized to take advantage of them. The so-called differences were not the cause of racism; on the contrary, men seized on the differences and interpreted them in a certain way in order to create racism. Not only did they exploit "differences," but they also created "differences" and preserved them by force and violence. The differences, in other words, were rationalizations and excuses, not the causes of racism. Once established, however, the ideology of rationalizations assumed a calamitous autonomy and influenced the interests from which they derived.
Who was responsible for this policy?
The white founding fathers, the Byrds, the Mathers, and Winthrops, the Jeffersons, the Washingtons, the heroes of all the Fourths of July: they divided blacks and whites, they sowed the seeds of division and hate and blood. In an attempt to evade the implications of this fact, some men blame "the English" or "Colonial public opinion." But Colonial public opinion was the public opinion of the planter-merchant aristocracy. As T. J. Wertenbaker, Philip A. Bruce, James Hugo Johnston and scores of other scholars have pointed out, the colonies were run by a closed set of men who monopolized political, ecclesiastical, and economic power . "The system of life built up in the agricultural colonies," James Hugo Johnston writes, "resulted in planter control. Both social and governmental institutions 'were devices wrought by the planters. The system of Negro slavery may have been thrust upon them by England, but the problems arising from it were first of all the planters' problems; and on the governing class is the responsibility for the system of slave institutions worked out in the colonies." There is corroboration on this point from another authority , Philip A. Bruce, who says that "the whole power of Virginian society even in the times when universal suffrage prevailed, was directed by the landowners. That society was composed entirely of the landed proprietors and their dependents. ...The public sentiment was exclusively the sentiment of men who, like the landowners of England, looked to agriculture for the income which went to the support of their families, and whose only material interests were those associated directly with the soil."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.