If Secession Was Illegal - then How Come...?

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.

[sw] lincoln was nothing but a CHEAP, LYING politician. nothing more, nothing less.

Ya tthink?

This Lincoln, the one everybody tries to hide, was also a consummate opportunist. Not only was he a trimmer, but he was, Leonard Swett said, "such a trimmer the world has never seen."
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 74 citing Herndon's Informants, edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, Urbana, 1998, p. 165

"Lincoln was a master politician, which means that he was a consummate conniver, manipulator, and liar."

"The difficulty," Senator Sherman said, "was with the President himself. He had neither dignity, order, nor firmness."

"... in our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beward, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of freedom" (CW 2:276)

General James S. Wadsworth said that Lincoln was contemptuous of abolitionists and "spoke ofter of the slaves as cattle."

Donn Piatt said Lincoln expressed "no sympathy for the slave" and no dislike for slaveowners and "laughed at the Abolitionists as a disturbing element easily controlled."

Eli thayer said Lincoln spoke of abolitionists "in terms of contempt and derision."

Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his Journal that Lincoln "thinks emancipation almost morally wrong and resorts to it only as a despearte measure..."

Jessie Benton Fremont called Lincoln "the Pontius Pilate of the Slaves"

[Walt] I'm finding all sorts of good stuff today.

"THE WAR MUST BE PROLONGED" ~Stanton~

On July 26, 1861, Congress, by joint resolution, set forth the principles on which the War between the States was to be fought and the goals that were to be the end of the strife then engulfing the country. The resolution declared that:

. . . the war is not waged in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or the overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those [Southern] States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired . . . as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease.

This resolution, which soon became a mere scrap of paper, was, from the very first, a thorn in the side of the radical element. The Abolitionists, from the haughty Sumner, who thought himself the leader of a holy crusade, to the practical Thad Stevens, who chose a mulatto to preside over his household and who eventually had himself buried in a negro cemetery, took violent exception to this implied recognition of slavery. Other radical politicians contemplated with horror the early return of the seceded states under conditions that would make them again equal to their Northern neighbors. Why was this war being carried on, anyway? If slavery were to be restored, the start of another armed conflict was only a matter of time. The preservation of the Constitution? They cared nothing for the Constitution. What they did care about, and what was really a question of polical life or death to them, was the preservation of their party. The Republicans were a new faction, far from homogeneous, and a minority group at best. In 1860 Lincoln had not received the majority of all the ballots, even disregarding the votes from the Secession states, and could not have been elected against a solid Democratic opposition. If the southern states returned to Congress with their voting strength unimpaired, the end of Republican domination was in sight. This is what had to be prevented, regardless of negro rights and the provisions of the Constitution.

* * *

The war must be prolonged... [Stanton]

Why Was Lincoln Murdered, Otto Eisenshiml, 1937, pp. 309-11

LINCOLN AND REPUBLICAN RADICALS

Stanton's [reconstruction] proposal would have placed Virginia and North Carolina in a single military department under supervision of the War Department, and it seemed to Welles "a plan of subjugation, tending and I think designed to increase alienation and hatred bewteen the different sections of the Union." Lincoln had asked Stanton to change his plan so as to preserve state individuality. It was further proof, if such proof was needed, that the President was incorrigible. Living, he would forever present an almost insurmountable obstacle to Radical plans.

But Fortune smiled on the Radical party. Lincoln was murdered.

"It is usual today, [says George Fort Milton in his Age of Hate], to depict the death of Lincoln as having occasioned an universal outburst of grief throughout the North and particularly amoung the leaders of the Republican party, by whom "the Great Emancipator" has since been made a party god. When a searcher for the truth examines the private records of the time, he can scrace repress a feeling of surprise, for the fact is that the Radical leadership of the Republican party, while not pleased with the sacrifice of Lincoln, the individual, almost rejoiced that Lincoln, the merciful executive, had been removed from the helm of state."

Julian, one of these Radical leaders, boldly stated that the accession of Andrew Johnson to the presidency would prove a blessing to the country. In this sentiment he was not alone. On April 15, only a few hours after Lincoln's death, a caucus of Republican leaders was held, at which the tragedy was described as a gift from Heaven, and it was decided to get rid of Lincolnism. Ben Butler was chosen to be Secretary of State. Unfortunately for that plan, Seward's injuries were not fatal, and his position did not become vacant. Blunt Senator Wade told the new President, "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the government!" Johnson had been ranting for weeks past that secession was treason, that treason must be made odious, and that all Confederates should be hanged.

From the pulpit, the Radical sentiments poured forth with astounding frankness. "I accept God's action as an indication that Lincoln's work as an instrument of Providence ended here," said the Reverend Martin R. Vincent, in the First Presbyterian church of Troy, New York, "and that the work of retribution belonged to other and doubtless fitter instruments. I will not positively assert that his policy toward traitors was so much too lenient that God replaced him by a man, who, we have good reasons to think, will not err in this direction. Yet I say this may be and it looks like it."

The Reverend Warren E. Cudsworth, in Boston, also expressed his satisfaction, "His [Lincoln's] death under God will do as much for the cause he had at heart as did his life. We know that already several of the leading supporters of his administration had taken issue with him on Reconstruction in the rebel states."

The Reverend Mr. Crane was convinced that the assassination was the work of Providence. "Abraham Lincoln's work is done," he stated solemnly. "From the fourteenth of this April his work was done. From that time God had no further use for him ..."

* * *

It is remarkable how closely the wishes of the Radicals and the ways of Providence chanced to meet on "the fourteenth of this April." ... An attempt had also been made on the life of Seward, the only other prominent Republican who was lenient and conciliatory.

* * *

The Reverend S. D. Brown of Troy, without intending to do so, came perhaps closer than anyone to summing up the case against the Radicals. "God has a purpose in permitting this great evil..." he declared. "It is a singular fact that the two most favorable to leniency to the rebels, Lincoln and Seward, have been stricken. Other members of the cabinet were embraced in the fiendish plan, but as to them, it failed" Singular indeed.

Only one man ventured to utter publicly the suspicion that the Radicals had been instrumental in causing Lincoln's death. That man was Andrew Johnson. In a speech from the steps of the White House, on February 22, 1866, he announced that there had been

innuendos in high places ... that the "presidential obstacle" must be got out of the way, when possibly the intention was to institute assassination. Are those who want to destroy our institutions and change the character of the Government not satisfied with the blood that has been shed? Are they not satisfied with one martyr? Does not the blood of Lincoln appease the vengeance and wrath of the opponents of this Government? . . . Have they not honor and courage enough to effect the removal of the presidential obstacle otherwise than through the hands of the assassin?

Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, Otto Eisenshiml, 1937, Little Brown & Company, pp 368-71

[Wlat] This is the relevant paragraph from the 142-year-old article in The North American Review: ... It is a perversion of terms to call the "supreme law of the land" a compact between the States, which any State may rescind at pleasure.

Keep that feedback coming Wlat. It is only by the volume and pitch of your squeal that I can accurately judge how well I'm doing. I can see I did real good yesterday. :-))

You cite the North American Review. If you can find something in print in any obscure location it must be true. That being the case, here is the information for a reproduction from The Shreveport Journal you might like to purchase. Surely The Shreveport Journal is as authoritative as the North American Review.

http://www.bolerium.com/cgi-bin/bol48/67544.html

Bolerium Books
2141 Mission Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94110

[civil rights] What Lincoln said about integration reprinted by popular request. Shreveport Journal, Shreveport. no date, the 60s, Single leaf on lightweight stock, 8.5 x 6.5 inches, reproduces the editorial page masthead with six lines specific to this handbill, then the brief "editorial" --about 300 words. Edgeworn, a little scorched, by age or heat uncertain.

The Shreveport Journal is pleased to reprint--by popular request--its recent editorial.. the demand for extra copies has been so great that our supply of Journals for that date has been exhausted.. Lincoln quoted as "not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes .. physical difference .. no greater calamity than assimilation..

Price: $10.00 Cat.No: 67544

A constitutional position that 'high' crimes and misdemeanors meant only 'public' crimes as supported by English Common Law, is a restrictive not loose interpretation of the US Constitution.

It is indeed loose when one defines "public" crimes to EXCLUDE what was specifically INCLUDED in that term by Blackstone, the basis of American common law as derived by the founding fathers.

One might simply point out that had the founders meant all crimes and misdemeanors they would have omitted the word 'high'.

Actually, Blackstone did not typically use the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" to describe impeachable offenses. That is a legal term of art taken from a 1386 English impeachment case. Blackstone's terms for the same concept are usually printed as "crimes and misdemeanors," "high misdemeanors," and "offenses against the public justice."

It is your position that requires a loosening of the construct, not mine.

Not so. Blackstone did not typically use the 1386 term "high crimes and misdemeanors." He used other terms that described the same concept. The 1386 term, by then in increasingly common acceptance, was chosen by the founders in the Constitution. They understood it to mean the same thing as Blackstone did though. Hamilton described impeachable offenses in terms virtually identical to Blackstone's concept of them. From Federalist 65:

"The subjects of [the impeachment power's] jurisdiction are those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."

False. You've shown no evidence that is what the founders meant at all.

Blackstone's Commentaries were a pervasive influence upon the framing and adoption of the constitution. As historian Forrest McDonald puts it, "Next to the Bible and Montesquieu, Blackstone was the most frequently quoted source in American political writing from 1760 to 1800." To suggest, as you do, that nothing exists to substantiate him as the basis on which the founders constructed their legal system is absurd. There are even references to Blackstone in Madison's records of the convention: "Mr. Dickenson mentioned to the House that on examining Blackstone's Commentaries, he found that the terms "ex post facto" related to criminal cases only" - August 29th

There are also references that indicate their widespread familiarity to of the founders: "I will refer you to a book which is in every man's hand--Blackstone's Commentaries" - James Madison, speaking in favor of ratification to his fellow founding fathers, June 19, 1788

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.

Yet they were the central basis of the American legal system that the founders designed. To suggest that predating the American system somehow disqualifies them is absurd as no author of any sort could serve as a basis for that system if he did not predate it.

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?

Here's a newsflash for ya, mac. The founders DID intend and approve lifetime appointments for federal judges. They also applied the exact same impeachment standards to elected presidents as they did to judges - both of which may be removed for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Federal judges are appointed for life. Presidents are not. Yet they may be impeached by the same means and for the same offenses. Thus your attempted distinction lacks relevance.

[Wlat quoting] It is a perversion of terms to call the "supreme law of the land" a compact between the States, which any State may rescind at pleasure. [Wlat's boldface]

Bandwidth Bob provides another lithium-free comment.

B: The War Between The States, Albert T. Bledsoe

Mr. Story

"The obvious deductions which may be, and indeed, have been, drawn from considering the constitution a compact between States, are that it operates as a mere treaty or convention between them, and has an obligatory force no longer than suits its pleasure or its consent continues...."

Thus the great controversy is narrowed down to the single question -- Is the Constitution a compact between the States? If so, then the right of secession is conceded, even by the great jurist, as well as by "the great expounder" of the North. (B:14)

"The name 'United States of America', is an unfortunate one, and has, doubtless, led many minds into error. For it may be said, if the States do not form a confederacy, why are they called 'United States?'" (B:25)
The American Question, by William H. Story

James Madison

"a compact to which the States are parties." (B:67)

"This Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare that it views the powers of the Federal Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties." (B:67)

James Wilson

the only object ainted at by the Convention of 1787 was to enable the States "to confederate anew on better principles"; and, if no more could be effected, he would agree to "a partial union of the states, with a door left open for the accession of the rest."

Alexander Hamilton

If the new Constitution shouldbe adopted, says he, the Union would "still be, in fact and theory, as association of States, or a confederacy."

"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act."

Patrick Henry

If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great consolidated government of the people of the United States."

Daniel Webster

"The North finds itself, in regard to the relative influence of the south and the North, of the free States and the slave States, where it did not expect to find itself when they agree to the compact of the Constitution." (B:87)

"When the constitution was framed, its framers, and the people who adopted it, came to a clear, express, unquestionable stipulation and compact." (B:87)

"These States passed acts defeating the law of Congress, as far as it was in their power to defeat it. Those of them to whom I refer, not all, but several, nullified the law of 1793. They said, in effect, 'we will not execute it. No runaway slave shall be restored.' Thus the law became a dead letter. But here was the Constitution and compact still binding; here was the stipulation, as solemn as words cold form it, and which every member of Congress, every officer of the general government, every officer of the State government, from governors down to constables, is sworn to support." (B:87)

"I do not hesitate to say and repeat, that if the Northern States refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which repsects the restoration of fugitive slaves, the south would be no longer bound to keep the compact. A bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides." (B:88)

the Constitution "is founded on consent or agreement, or on compact" (B:33)

Gouverneur Morris

"He came here to form a compact for the good of America. He was ready to do so with all the States. He hoped and believed that all would enter into such a compact. If they would not, he would be ready to join with any States that would. but as the compact was to be voluntary, it is in vain for the Eastern States to insist on what the southern States will never agree to." (B:28-9)

Mr. Gerry

"If nine out of thirteen [States] can dissolve the compact, six out of nine will be just as able to dissolve the new one hereafter." (B:29)

Thomas Jefferson

"The States entered into a compact which is called the constitution of the United States." (B:31)

"that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party; that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itselt, since that would have made its discretion, not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; BUT THAT, AS IN ALL CASES OF COMPACT AMONG POWERS HAVING NO COMMON JUDGE, EACH PARTY HAS AN EQUAL RIGHT TO JUDGE FOR ITSELF, AS WELL OF INFRACTIONS AS THE MODE AND MEASURE OF REDRESS." (B:187)

John Jay

Mr. Chief Justice Jay, of the supreme Court of the Union, in the case of Chisholm vs. the State of Georgia, expressly declares that "the Constitution of the United States is a compact." (B:30)

John Quincy Adams

"Our Constitution of the United States and all our State Constitutions, have been voluntary compacts, deriving all their authority from the free consent of the parties to them." (B:30)

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