[tallhappy]

Sounds like this guy is getting the shaft.

The State ought to pay him whatever he could get at auction plus some.

That'd be the way to settle it.

[HEY4QDEMS]

Another blow to eminent domain, although there is still a chance that this ruling will be overturned at the Federal level.

[Cathy]

I don't know anything about the docketing system - or it's use as an intent to make the letters a public document.

[TheBigB]

"Oops, sorry, they fell in the fireplace. Too bad."

[steveegg]

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the Willcox family for preserving the documents all these years," (Attorney General Henry) McMaster said.

The rest of the quote "...but we don't owe them a dime because we have the weight of the lawgivers in black on our side."

[atomicpossum]

Give the state a bill for 130+ years of storage fees.

[American Quilter]

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the Willcox family for preserving the documents all these years," McMaster said.

Which McMaster will repay by stealing the letters.

[Rodney King]

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Waites issued an order Monday stating that the letters deal with the official duties of the governor and therefore are public records.

Huh? Sure, they are public records if they are in the hands of the government, but that shouldn't mean that the government can steal them from whoever owns them.

Does that mean that if a congressman ever wrote you a letter, that some day the government can come and take it from me?

[texas_mrs]

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the Willcox family for preserving the documents all these years," McMaster said."

Yes, they do owe the guy something. Why not pay him for what the items are worth?

[BostonianRightist]

If it's correspondence between generals or between the general and the government, then it is public record - just as correspondence between Rummy and a current general are public records.

But a good argument could be made that since the Confederate government does not exist, then the letters belong to the owner. But then you get into whether or not the Confederacy was ever a legitimate government.

[xcamel]

This sets a really, really bad precedent.

[StonyBurk]

Dam Activist Judge. And I thought they honored the Life
Liberty,and Property stuff recognized by our Founders.
To claim a man has no right to the property he psseses is
down right UNAmerican and pure D double Despotism as Mr.
Jefferson warned against.

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

Is this a case of seizure of personal property without compensation or warrant?

If the guy was trying to sell them to pay off some debts then more power to him. Unfortunately, it sounds like he got shafted for trying to be a responsible bill-paying citizen.

In hindsight, he probably should have published them, copyrighted it, and sold it. Just Damn

[msnimje]

Give the state photocopies of the letters and let the OWNERS keep the originals.

[taxesareforever]

Property rights thwarted again. This judge is stretching where no man has gone. It truly is assinic.

[Rockingham]

So, let me understand this: Nixon can bunk off to San Clemente with his official papers as personal property based on customary practice and his heirs get millions from the federal treasury to sell them back; but a hundred and thirty plus years after the Confederacy and its state governments fell, the state of South Carolina successfully claims Confederate papers from private persons with customary possession and ownership? And no compensation is to be paid?

[freepatriot32]

Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here

[DustyMoment]

At least it wasn't real estate. If the letters were real estate, the state would steal them from owner and hand them over to a private developer to pave over and put up a mall. In this case, the state simply stole the letters.

Gee, I LOVE big, leftist government!!!






(Yes, that's sarcasm)

[XRdsRev]

My understanding of this case is that it is not as simple as the article infers.

These letters had been part of the official correspondence of the State of South Carolina. The letters were part of a group of documents that were entrusted to a CS government official for safekeeping near the end of the war. His job was to prevent these and other documents from falling into enemy hands so they could be returned to the government once a safe location for their storage could be found. The letters were never the "private" property of the person who held them.

Since the war ended shortly thereafter, the documents remained with the man who had been entrusted with them. He kept them hidden from the Federal authorities who most certainly wanted to investigate them as part of the compilation of the Official Records of the Rebellion.

The letters remained hidden and presumed lost until some of them were offered at auction. That is when the State of South Carolina stepped in, arguing that the letters were state property and that they never had officially deassessed them.

I don't neccessarily agree with the decision but with the added information, it makes more sense.

[Bommer]

What a second. How can South Carolina claim CONFEDERATE papers are government property when the Confederacy was not part of the Union that S. Carolina is now sworn to?