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.
free dixie,sw
ignore him and maybe he'll head back to DU, where FOOLS DWELL.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
southrons call your location "the people's republic of kalifornistan" and sometimes things WORSE!
are you folks REALLY going to dump gray davis & install the TERMINATOR in his place????? it sure sounds like that will happen, when i listened to the news this am.
free dixie,sw
Original intent by the founders in the case of impeachment means Blackstone's commentaries on offences against public justice
False. You've shown no evidence that is what the founders meant at all.
Blackstone's Commentaries on English Law pre-date the American Presidency and his commentary on Offenses Against Public Justice refer to judicial appointments, not Presidents who face election every four years.
I'm quite sure the founders did not intend the US Presidency to be a lifetime appointment. So why should they apply the same impeachment standards to elected presidents that England did to appointed judges? Try again.
You seem to be fixed on sitting in a corner attempting to think off, being unsuccessful in the attempt due to limited resources.
The New York Express has the following:The Republicans and others in the North who denounce Southern secession, forget that the records of the Massachusetts legislation have them in resolutions to the following effect:
"Resolved, That the annexation of Texas is, ipse facto, a dissolution of the Union."
"Resolved, That Texas being annexed, Massachusetts is out of the Union"These resolutions, we are told, stand unrepealed. With the personal liberty bill, these resolutions embody nullification in a two-fold form. Supposing now that Massachusetts repeals her "out of the Union act," and with it her personal liberty bill, and thus restores herself to the Union under the constitution.
For all these years, Massachusetts has been out of the Union. Maybe this means Teddy Kennedy can't vote in the Senate anymore.
The Supreme Court said otherwise.
Walt
Based in natural law, not U.S. law.
Under U.S. law, no state may get out of the Union on its own mere resolve.
Walt
Probably not. But they got the phrase "this Constitution and the laws made in pursuance shall be the supreme law of the land..." into the Constitution.
Then they made sure to pass the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the Militia Act of 1792.
And that was all it took -- under law.
Walt
Let's see. Southern states couldn't be represented in Congress unless they passed the 14th Amendment and made it law. However, conditions put upon ratification of the Constitution by the states that formed the Union can be ignored. OK, got it.
"The conduct of S. Carolina has called forth not only the question of nullification; but the more formidable one of secession. It is asked whether a State by resuming the sovereign form in which it entered the Union, may not of right withdraw from it at will. As this is a simple question whether a State, more that an individual, has a right to violate its engagements, it would seem that it might be safely left to answer itself. But the countenance given to the claim shows that it cannot be so lightly dismissed. The natural feelings which laudably attach the people composing a State, to its authority and importance, are at present too much excited by the unnatural feelings, with which they have been inspired against their brethren of other States, not to expose them, to the danger of being misled into erroneous views of the nature of the Union and the interest they have in it. One thing at least seems to be too clear to be questioned; that whilst a State remains within the Union it cannot withdraw its citizens from the operation of the Constitution laws of the Union. In the event of an actual secession without the Consent of the Co-States, the course to be pursued by these involves questions painful in the discussion of them. God grant that the menacing appearances, which obtruded it may not be followed by positive occurrences requiring the more painful task of deciding them!" (Emphasis in original).
Madison also states (c. 1832):
"An inference from the doctrine that a single State has the right to secede at will from the rest is that the rest would have an equal right to secede from it; in other words, to turn it, against its will, out of its union with them. Such a doctrine would not, till of late been palatable anywhere, and nowhere less so than where it is now most contended for."
otoh, if they hate all those things they will be "encouraged" to go north to the land of the "oh, so PC and wunerfull,wunerfull" Socialist States of Amerika.
the southland has always been more tolerant of "difference" than the north.
one of the things that galls me about the north is my business partner, who happens to be beautiful, female & Jewish, is STILL discriminated against by those wonderful yankees that you think are so great. damnyankees make me gag.
FRee dixie,sw
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