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.
Precisely - I appreciate your brevity. The point I was making was that even Jefferson Davis knew that secession was a radical course of action. The South wagered the North had no stomach for fighting.
Interestingly, although Sherman is credited with developing a "new type of war" (striking at the enemy's will and ability to make war, rather than just meeting and defeating his armies on the battlefield), the concept is at least as old as Hannibal. In fact, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson twice proposed that type of offensive early in the war. Again I quote from Bevin Alexander:
Without doing anything further, Jackson had achieved a great Southern victory (note: Jackson's 1862 Shenandoah Campaign). However, Jackson believed he was in a position to win the war. The vast bulk of the Federal army was locked in front of Richmond and would be unable to react for days and perhaps weeks if Jackson swept behind, seized Baltimore, and perhaps Philadelphia, severed the rail connections with the capitol, and began systematically destroying Northern factories.
Jackson had asked that his army be brought to a strength of 40,000 men. Bevin continues: When Col. Boteler (Jackson's aide/messanger) arrived at Lee's office and presented Jackosn's letter, Lee responded, "Colonel, don't you think General Jackson had better come down here first and help me drive these troublesome people away from before Richmond?" ... Neither Lee nor Davis understood the strategic opportunity that McClellan had presented when he placed his army east of Richmond, where it could not block the North from invasion. They were obsessed with defeating the North's main army and were unwilling to look at Jackson's wholly different strategy: striking at the North's will to win.
This is why some of the great Generals of WWII looked at the campaigns and tactics of Stonewall Jackson and Tecumseh Sherman, rather than those of Grant and Lee, for their inspiration. Jackson and Sherman knew how to win wars.
With regard to the original premise of this thread, I am surprised that no one has mentioned that, following the proposal and approval of the 14th Amendment, specifically Section 3 - which provided for the punishment of rebels such as Davis, Chief Justice Salmon Chase opined that a civil trial of Davis would amount to double jeopardy. Trying Davis in a Virginia civil court would have been about as useful as trying O.J. Simpson in downtown Los Angeles. It wasn't the case that there were no grounds to put him on trial, but rather, political events had caught up with the circumstances, and a Constitutional Amendment was already in place. Furthermore, President Johnson had made it known that he was considering amnesty (pardons) for many of the Southerners still under detention or in legal risk. By 1868, it made no sense to try Davis.
Now you are grasping at straws to escape the error of your previous statement. You will note that Jefferson's quote clearly refers to the new territories being settled and organized, upon which the determination would be made to stay or leave. Hence your straw grasping fails along side your previous attempts at excuse making. But go ahead. Insist that the goal doesn't count since you secretly called "time out."
You keep telling yourself that since it obviously makes you feel better. But seeing as you could not even make a straight forward and unqualified admission with your erronious characterization of Jackson as a founder, it is with little wonder that you are making such slothful inductions over Jefferson's letter. In ANY straight forward and honest reading of its words, that letter indicates a willingness to split the union under certain circumstances. That is precisely what you denied of Jefferson in your first claim (though you have since tried to evade that claim and its sloppy language, among other things). Above all else it is evident that your problem lies not with the obvious but rather with the truth and your own inability to concede when you are wrong.
Ok. Here's one meeting your requirement:
[W]e have found the take-title provision of the Act irreconcilable with the powers delegated to Congress by the Constitution, and hence with the Tenth Amendment's reservation to the States of those powers not delegated to the Federal Government.
Justice O'Connor, New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992)
Good day.
The truth is, this idea of the existence of any necessity for clothing the President with the war power, under the Act of 1795, is simply a monstrous exaggeration; for, besides having the command of the whole of the army and navy, Congress can be assembled within any thirty days, if the safety of the country requires that the war power shall be brought into operation.The Acts of 1795 and 1805 did not, and could not under the Constitution, confer on the President the power of declaring war against a State of this Union, or of deciding that war existed, and upon that ground authorize the capture and confiscation of the property of every citizen of the State whenever it was found on the waters. ... This great power over the business and property of the citizen is reserved to the legis lative department by the express words of the Constitution. It cannot be delegated or surrendered to the Executive.
So the war carried on by the President against the insurrectionary districts in the Southern States, as in the case of the King of Great Britain in the American Revolution, was a personal war.
EVERY founder that voted to support ratification supported SECESSION from the Articles, leaving those non-ratifiers in the ash-heap of history.
Davis was captured in 1865. The government had three years to present an open-and-shut case. Despites Davis' insistance for a speedy trial, they found excuse after excuse, knowing that a jury trial would find Davis innocent, and condemn Lincoln and the radical Republicans.
Not exactly, but your point is well taken. Many of the States in rebellion were not able to resume normal civil functions for some time. It varied from state to state, and I don't have my references with me to look up when Virginia was "reconstructed."
If I am not mistaken, when Davis bailed out in 1867, he left the country for Canada, and then went to Europe. I am not sure if that is consistent with demanding a "speedy trial."
Two issues:
1. You did NOT make any claim about Jefferson's position on secession to begin with. Your initial statement was about splitting the union and said nothing of the means or legal doctrines used to do it, one of which is secession. Therefore to dismiss Jefferson's quote on the grounds that it did not invoke secession, which was not even your claim to begin with, is fraudulent. I may further conclude that this fraud on your part is willful since you persist in blurring this distinction even though it has been pointed out to you previously.
2. ANY reference to a split of ANY form that has not yet taken place is, by necessity, speaking of a future which could occur. Thus your latest claim is as fraudulent as your previous attempts to dismiss the quote.
It would seem that you are playing fast and loose with words when they suit your needs (i.e. randomly interchanging "split" from your initial poorly worded claim with "secession"), yet the second they get in your way (i.e. the Jefferson quote) you apply a screen of linguistic absurdity such that the entirity of the quote is rendered meaningless. Your behavior is characteristic of a classic psychological inability to concede error as indicated by your retreat into outright slothful reasoning and word games the second you are pressed on your initial gratuitous claim's errors.
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