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.
You can try that; how do you think it will turn out?
If you think that is the way things work, you should never pay another nickel in taxes.
Walt
The disunion occurred before the Union initiated the use of armed force.
Secretary of War Stanton: "... the great ... aim of the war was to abolish slavery. To end the war before the nation was ready for that would be a failure. The war must be prolonged, and conducted so as to achieve that."
It seems there was a Confederate army in the way and a Secretary of War who wanted to prolong the war. There's two reasons for you.
No. Not everyone from Illinois is close-minded. My brother lives there.
Of course, your irrelevent remark is just further indication of the paucity of your ideas...
No, it merely expresses my exasperation with those who have entirely swallowed the party line one is fed in Illinois schools. I too remember being taught the Official Doctrine when I was a child in Illinois: St. Lincoln, the evil Southern traitors who inexplicably wanted to spend their days whipping the noble black man, etc. Fortunately I began reading original documents at the Chicago Historical Society and sometimes at Regenstein, and changed my views.
...or the inability to understand the meaning of treason. Only by claiming it has NO meaning could your position be upheld.
There is no way for any debater to persuade one who refuses to admit that when a large group of people wish to govern themselves, they should be permitted to do so. On this premise our nation was founded. What the Confederacy did might be treason, but so then was what Washington did.
I haven't heard another view from you, merely pathetic attempts to re-write American social history. Since I lived through much of last century I know what the reality of the era was like. You, on the otherhand, get your views from those who would deny the truth for a policical agenda.
Don't jump to conclusions. I am only six years younger than you are. I too recall the last half of the twentieth century, and I too studied history at the graduate level. In fact, I studied at some of the same institutions you did. Perhaps the difference is that I was able to broaden my study and thus expand my vision.
Look at John Marshall's decisions handed down from the Supreme Court bench, in which, vide supra, he insisted that the United States is a Hamiltonian centralized state. That was not what he argued when the Constitution was up for ratification: then he argued it round. Later he argued it flat, because he was a partisan Hamiltonian using the Supreme Court bench to try to reinterpret the Constitution, even with its Antifederalist Bill of Rights (yes, the BoR was the child of the Antifederalists who disbelieved Hamilton's lies about the government's respecting the rights of individuals and the reserved powers of States).
John Marshall tried to renege on the ratification compromises of 1787 from the bench by reinterpreting them. In doing so he followed John Jay, the first Chief Justice, who was also a Hamiltonian and did the same thing for the same reason. Neither of them ever respected the compromises the Federalists had had to make in 1787 with majority opinion, which was opposed to the strong powers they proposed to give themselves, in order to secure the assent of the Peoples of nine of the thirteen States, and once in office they tried to go back on them.
That's one example. The Hamiltonians won, and now we are taught in school that the Federalists were noble Founders, when they were liars, scoundrels, and wheeler-dealers determined to make the federal government their toy. We are also taught -- as you evidently were -- that their interpretation of the Constitution and Constitutional history is the correct one. Buncombe. It's a wider story than that, and you have to read the Antifederalists and understand that theirs was the more common point of view in the Confederation period, and you have to read what the Federalists did to get ratification through, in order to understand what was done, what was agreed to, and what is revisionism perpetrated by Federalists after the fact.
Another example is the argument you hear from people like Non-Sequitur and his friends who insist that no State can leave the Union on its own initiative, and who rely on Hamiltonian revisionism to deny the States their rightful authority both under the Constitution and beyond it, to preserve and defend their Peoples and their liberties. How do Non-Sequitur et al. know that that is true? Because the South lost the Civil War, and in the war's wake, the Supreme Court, with one of Lincoln's cabinet officers presiding, handed down a decision ultra vires, viz., beyond the Court's scope, in 1869 that said that secession was "illegal". Secession was "illegal" because the South lost and was the captive thrall of the Government -- that's teleology. The North won, therefore the Northern sectional sentiment was washed clean, Northern and Unionist courts and governments were washed clean, and every onus and burden went to the conquered South, whose States were forbidden even to pay their own debts. The ends are deemed to have justified the means retroactively, and seen in the light of outcomes, the actors on the losing side of the controversy are seen in hindsight to have been wading in moral turpitude.
That's teleology.
"The state governments did not derive their powers from the general government; but each government derived its powers from the people, and each was to act according to the powers given it. Would any gentleman deny this? He [Marshall] demanded if powers not given were retained by implication. Could any man say so? Could any man say that this power was not retained by the states, as they had not given it away? For, says he, does not a power remain till it is given away?"Again, for the brain-dead neocon-artists posing as experts on the subject, the issue of the state legislatures ratifing the Constitution was defeated 3-7. Having it ratified by 'assemblies chosen by the people' was accepted 9-1. Plural for a reason."All the restraints intended to be laid on the state governments (besides where an exclusive power is expressly given to Congress) are contained in the 10th section of the 1st article."
John Marshall, 16 Jun 1788, (Elliot's Debates, Vol. III, p. 419)
'Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS moved, that the reference of the plan be made to one general convention, chosen and authorized by the people, to consider, amend, and establish the same.' The result for the hundredth time: 'Not seconded.' (See Eliott's Debates Vol. V., p. 356.)
Not even a second. Not from Hamilton or any other Federalist attending. Not one person other than Morris would argue for consolidation. John Marshall et al, in dicta or otherwise, cannot do what the convention REFUSED to do.
Walt
It's pretty obvious that by 1860 a lot of people figured he'd goten it right.
Walt
"LG"
And thanks for the post on Marshall, otherwise Wlat would go on lying about U.S. history until the red cows come home. You noticed, I take it, that he always jumps in with the same two points in every thread, on which you beat him senseless three or four threads ago. Talk about dishonesty, and hiding behind a keyboard. Thanks for bringing the antidote -- and the Lysol.
Talk about pathetic.
In its considerations, the court stated, "The writ of error is given rather than an appeal, because it is the more usual mode of removing suits at common law; and because, perhaps, it is more technically proper where a single point of law, and not the whole case, is to be re-examined."
In considering the writ of error in the case of Cohens, a case about the right to sell lottery tickets in Virginia, the single point of law re-examined by the Supreme Court was not the right of a state to secede from the union.
The Court said:
Cohens v. Virginia
6 Wheat. 264 (1821 )
Mr. Chief Justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a writ of error to a judgment rendered in the Court of Hustings for the borough of Norfolk, as an information for selling lottery tickets, contrary to an act of the Legislature of Virginia. In the State Court, the defendant claimed the protection of an act of Congress.
The counsel for the defendant in error have . . . laid down the general proposition, that a sovereign independent State is not suable, except by its own consent.
This general proposition will not be controverted.
The Court said:
"The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void. These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."
Walt
It is sad to see someone that far gone isn't it? Could it be some form of Alzheimers?
Again, John Marshall et al, in dicta or otherwise, cannot do what the convention REFUSED to do.
The truths hurts, but it is the truth. Sorry if you think it's pathetic.
Again, John Marshall et al, in dicta or otherwise, cannot do what the convention REFUSED to do.
The judicial power of the United States lies in the Supreme Court. Marshall was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He wrote the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in a Supreme Court case styled Cohens v. Virginia.
Your attempts to dodge the plain facts are pathetic.
Walt
And once again we see that apparently the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over the matter merely because lentulusgracchus said that they didn't? And that a Suprem Court decision is invalid because lentulusgracchus said it is? I must have missed the part in the Constitution that laid that out.
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