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.
It is indeed unfortunate that you were not there at the time to keep Frederick Douglass up to date.
Well, he seems to have missed all this:
12/24/62:
Jefferson Davis issues a proclamation which states (1) White officers of black troops will not be treated as POWs; (2) The black troops themselves will not be treated as POWs; (3) Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler is to be hanged w/o trial immediately upon being captured; (4) No Union officers will be paroled until Butler is caught and hanged. All four of these provisions were violations of the Dix-Hill Cartel.
12/28/62:
In response to Davis's proclamation, the Federals end the exchange and parole of Confederate officers.
5/25/63:
Non-exchange and parole of Confederate officers is re-affirmed in orders from Halleck to all commanders in the field. This is done largely in response to the CS Congress passing a law implementing a small variation of Davis's 12/24/62 proclamation.
7/13/63:
Secretary of War Stanton orders an end to the exchange and parole of enlisted men. This is done largely because of increasing arguments over the parole provisions of the cartel, and the feeling that this aspect of the agreement is (unfairly) being manipulated by the Confederates to their advantage.
Fall, 1863:
Confederates return to service most of the Vicksburg garrison, an act which the Federals claim is not justified by the cartel. This hardens Federal attitudes towards the exchange process. So, as of 1/1/64, the exchange cartel is more or less entirely disrupted, as a result of reasonable objections being made by the Federals, and we have yet to see US Grant's name being mentioned. Now, here comes his involvement:
4/17/64:
Lt. Gen. US Grant issues orders that exchanges remain halted until the Confederates compensate the Yankees for the release of the Vicksburg garrison, *and* agree to treat black soldiers equally with white. Grant's role was to confirm a policy already in place, a policy reached as a result of difficulties in managing the cartel. Grant's views on exchange are well-known: He thought it was a bad idea. There's a quote from him to the effect that re-opening exchange might be humanity towards the men in the camps, but keeping it closed was humanity towards the men in the ranks. That's a harsh judgment, but it is no less accurate for being harsh.
-- Jim Epperson
[end]
Walt
It sounds as if Owens is making a big deal out of the obvious, so what's your point?
As a newspaper man and a regular public speaker on political issues it is highly likely that he was better versed in the events of the war than your average citizen. Same goes for Horace Greeley who corroborated Douglass' comments about the black confederates.
If that were true, statements such as the following would not exist:
"Sir, I have presented these views in regard to this tariff for the purpose of showing how it will operate upon the whole country; for the purpose of showing how it will operate upon the non-slaveholding States themselves. I have said nothing about my own State [Virginia] or my own section. Within the last four or five years, my State has been reviving; the tide of emigration, which was getting out to a great degree, has ceased; the statistics will show that she has been increasing in population and wealth. But pass this bill, and you send a blight over that land; the tide of emigration will commence - I fear to flow outward - once more, and we shall begin to decline and retrograde, instead of advancing, as I had fondly hoped we should do. And what I say of my own State I may justly say of the other southern States. But, sir, I do not press that view of the subject. I know that here we are too weak to resist or to defend ourselves; those who sympathize with our wrongs are too weak to help us; those who are strong enough to help us do not sympathize with our wrongs, or whatever we may suffer under it. No, sir; this bill will pass. And let it pass into the statute-book; let it pass into history, that we may know how it is that the South has been dealt with when New England and Pennsylvania held the power to deal with her interests." - Sen. Robert M T Hunter on the Morrill Tariff, US Senate, Feb 12, 1861
...but I'm sure you've got a goofy non-response for that too. Let me guess what it will be: To bolster their "revisionist" tariff theory the democrat confederates used their super secret connections within the Knights of the Golden Circle, the freemasons, and the Vatican to sneak into the library of congress and insert anti-tariff speeches into the record that they could then cite as proof of their earlier objections against Mr. Morrill's bill.
Douglass was a newspaper man and a public political speaker. He therefore had better access to the current events of the day than most people.
Horace Greeley was a crackpot.
Calling him names, deserved or not, in no way changes the fact that he was a newspaper man as well with extensive access to current events information that most people of the time did not have.
My "boy" was well known to say that the Declaration of Independence was meant to apply to all men.
Lincoln was a life long opponent of slavery.
He never called blacks inferior. He is clearly on the record as saying that black soldiers should have the vote.
He never suggested that anyone be forced to leave the country.
Walt
I'm not here to argue the merits of the Clinton impeachment, only that opposition to the impeachment on constitutional grounds is NOT a far-left position as you have indicated.
Constitutional scholars may disagree, but the concept of 'high' crimes as consisting of those against the public interest [as opposed to private matters], is well founded in English Common Law. Blackstone himself has written in support of this restrictive interpretation.
Your refusal to acknowlege this simple fact is further evidence of the weakness of your position against McPherson. That you claim to have "researched" the subject before posting your polemic, is, well...laughable.
Do you deny then that newspaper men have generally better access and knowledge of current events than the average citizen?
HG: was a crackpot -- denying it pits you against the facts
Nowhere did I deny Greeley's eccentricities. But attacking his character does nothing to disprove his profession as a newspaper man, which means that he generally had better access to current events than the average citizen.
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