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.
Whoop te do. The states created the federal government. Not "A" state, not ALL states in unison. Not a collective hive Borg mentality. Even Justice Thomas disagrees with Marshall, and Marshall himself disagreed before ratification. The founders explicitly & emphatically rejected the asinine & ludicrous position later espoused by Marshall.
'That decision was made in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, and created such a shock of surprise throughout the country that, at the first meeting of Congress thereafter, the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution was almost unanimously proposed, and was in due course adopted by the legislatures of the States. This amendment, expressing the will of the ultimate sovereignty of the whole country, superior to all legislatures and all courts, actually reversed the decision of the Supreme Court.'Not all states en masse had to ratify, just a portion. The states never have, and never will be a single entity.
Justice Bradley, Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1, (1890)
I think it's Weizenheimer's.
Argument ad hominem, times two.
Either my point is valid, or it isn't. Don't argue that my point can't be valid because I'm not good-looking enough. You abuse our fellow conversants if you do, never mind me.
The point is that the Constitution of the United States does not cover all contingencies or remove all powers from the People of the States that ratified it.
You can't demand negative evidence as an excuse to deny me my rights, or the States theirs.
As an analogy, you might argue that the First Amendment says nothing about street corners, so that I'm arrestable for speaking on one on matters displeasing to you.
The Constitution confers NO authority on the several States -- it couldn't, could it? -- to deny other States the right to resume their sovereign powers and leave the Union.
The Supreme Court was addressing matters ultra vires when it pretended to adjudicate matters involving sovereign States that had left the Union and were no longer under either the Constitution or the authority of the Supreme Court. Is that clear enough for you?
Just because the Court had a gun in its hand doesn't mean it was right. That's appeal to force: "we won the War, so we're right about Article VI issues, no matter what we say."
The Constitution and con law are not a game of Simon Says. But ever since the Civil War, they have been -- can't you feel the noose tightening?
Abbreviation?
To clarify even further, the acts of the States by which they withdrew from the Union and the Constitution's law were sovereign acts of the People, creators and authors -- masters and betters of the Constitution and the Government it created -- and therefore not reviewable by the inferior authority. That is a basic precept of the human pecking order, violated apparently only in Canada, where provincial courts review the national constitution, that inferior authorities do not review their masters. The People are the Masters of this house. Their acts as Sovereign will not be reviewed by anyone whose last name isn't Who Am.
On the contrary, Marshall described a centralized, consolidated State and Government -- he even amalgamated the People in his dicta, which is precisely the teleology that I claim he indulged in. He was on the Supreme Court and Jefferson was not: ergo, the People were to be amalgamated and their reserved Powers despised, because Marshall said so in dicta, and he wouldn't have been Chief Justice if he hadn't been right. Teleology.
I defer to our friend 4ConservativeJustices in documenting the error of amalgamation, which is essential to Lincoln's and Marshall's purposes both but denied by the documentary record of the Founding of the country and the Framing of its only relevant constitutional document.
Marshall in the ratification debate conceded the obvious, which had been written into the Treaty of Paris in 1783, that the States were several, and free, and sovereigns equal to George III himself, by his own free admission.
People = State = Sovereign. That's the unbreakable equation. And that is what Jay and Marshall later attempted to deny, insisting in dicta that People = Union = Sovereign. Not true.
....by his contemporaries, who knew him.
No, I'm arguing that you point isn't valid because it is your opinion only and is backed only by your view of how you think things should be. I disagree with it, obviously. The Constitution did grant the Supreme Court jurisdiction in this matter. The manner in which the southern states chose to secede was illegal and therefore invalid. The southern states did not cease to be members of the Union so Texas had the right to bring the matter of Texas v White to the Supreme Court.
Mr. Justice Grier's opinion was a minority one.
Nah, that would imply that he had a brain.
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