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If Secession Was Illegal - then How Come...?
The Patriotist ^ | 2003 | Al Benson, Jr.

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.


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To: justshutupandtakeit
Just that the mythology/propaganda you inherited was most likely a lie. The probability of that story of the gang-rape being true is as close to zero as anything can be.

Because it doesn't fit with your lincoln is God, Sherman was our saviour cock and bull story passed off as historical evidence? I'd fathom there were more than even reported except some poor women didn't live through the experience

201 posted on 06/13/2003 11:02:20 AM PDT by billbears (Deo Vindice)
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To: billbears
Jefferson's Inaugural Address comes to mind just in itself.

You mean this part"

" If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. "

Doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of your position to me.

202 posted on 06/13/2003 11:02:21 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur
And remembered well by the secessionist movement in 1814 if I remember correctly. Not to mention the outright mercantilist thugs a decade before that
203 posted on 06/13/2003 11:03:43 AM PDT by billbears (Deo Vindice)
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To: JohnGalt
I offer only opinion and a view of history as to how things might have been, I am not in a position to justify any-thing regarding history...that would make me a judge of God himself.
Since Cain, men have always sought to justify murder and in the end evil is always controlled when it is turned against itself. If you want to compare the Civil War deaths as a kind of American Armenia...well that is your point of view.
I am looking at the final result of the civil war as having been like a forest fire that cleared away much of the tangled brush of slavery, outmoded state sovereignty, and injustice; allowing a new sense of federal unity with the blossoming of an economic and military colossus of which the world had never seen before.

Whether this a good thing or whether or not a counter balancing force will be brought into being to counter us as we wax more corrupt, God knows. Nations rise and fall at God's whim but I trust at the end of it all evil will be cut out of the hearts of men!
204 posted on 06/13/2003 11:04:20 AM PDT by mdmathis6
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To: Lunatic Fringe
It never ended.
205 posted on 06/13/2003 11:04:30 AM PDT by Rebelbase (........The bartender yells, "hey get out of here, we don't serve breakfast!")
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To: justshutupandtakeit
"...you are the one who started with the insults/"

I don't think so.

206 posted on 06/13/2003 11:06:58 AM PDT by Aurelius
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To: billbears
And remembered well by the secessionist movement in 1814 if I remember correctly. Not to mention the outright mercantilist thugs a decade before that.

Yeah but they were all talk and no action, billbears. The rebels were all action and no thought.

207 posted on 06/13/2003 11:10:35 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: WhiskeyPapa
Since the Constitution indicates that each state shall have representation in Congress, the lack of representation seems to point to a lack of U.S. statehood. Is there any provision in the Constitution that allows a state's representation to be suspended for any reason? If not, it would seem that a total lack of congressional representation would indicate a loss of statehood in the eyes of that congress.
208 posted on 06/13/2003 11:11:51 AM PDT by RenegadeNC
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To: Aurelius
This is pointless. You keep harping on the Militia Act and the Prize Cases decision although you have been shown again and again why they do not apply in the case of secession. The matter has been settled.

President Lincoln cites the Militia Act in his proclamation of 4/15/61.

The Supreme Court refers to the Militia Act in the Prize Cases.

The matter has been settled and it involved the collapse of the insurgency and the death of the rebellion.

Walt

209 posted on 06/13/2003 11:12:16 AM PDT by WhiskeyPapa (Virtue is the uncontested prize.)
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To: RenegadeNC
Is there any provision in the Constitution that allows a state's representation to be suspended for any reason?

Yes.

Article 1, section 5:

"Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as each House may provide."

Walt

210 posted on 06/13/2003 11:17:01 AM PDT by WhiskeyPapa (Virtue is the uncontested prize.)
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To: WhiskeyPapa
"Right emanates from the muzzle of a gun."
Mao Tse Tung

Obviously a principle shared by Abraham Lincoln.

211 posted on 06/13/2003 11:18:59 AM PDT by Aurelius
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To: Aurelius
Also, the state of West Virginia was formed illegally:

U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 3: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

212 posted on 06/13/2003 11:19:45 AM PDT by Sloth ("I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" -- Jacobim Mugatu, 'Zoolander')
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To: RenegadeNC
Since the Constitution indicates that each state shall have representation in Congress, the lack of representation seems to point to a lack of U.S. statehood.

The Constitution guarantees that each state will be allocated two senators and at lease one representative in the House. It doesn't say that such seats have to be filled, or that not allowing representatives from a state to be seated means that the state is no longer a state.

213 posted on 06/13/2003 11:23:14 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: WhiskeyPapa
Sorry...but that addresses each House's dealings with "it's own members" and the authorization to "compel the attendence of absent members"...nowhere does it state that representation can be denied to a state within the Union.
214 posted on 06/13/2003 11:24:54 AM PDT by RenegadeNC
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To: billbears
How did you ever get the idea that the government was doing fine under the Articles? It wasn't. It was in a state of collapse. Nor was there any prospect of an amendment of them because of the requirement of unanimity. They had to be ditched. However, many of their ideas were incorporated in the new document.

Far from being a lie your comment indicates you are either unfamiliar with the inaugural address or can't read well. Jefferson ridicules the idea of secession in it.

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason if left free to combat it." In other words J. is saying secession is IRRATIONAL. Where did you learn to read?

No, none of the founders of note were involved in the secessionists movements in 1814 or earlier in 1803-4. One of the reasons Hamilton was killed was for opposing Burr's election to the governorship of NY in 1804 for fear he would join the Yankee screwballs and divide the Union.

States have no rights which impact the Union as a whole which secession would certainly do. The rights referenced were merely police powers and issues which ONLY affect a state. This has been repeatedly pointed out and just as repeatedly ignored.

There is NO evidence it included the right to withdraw and the reason Madison and others refused to allow a conditional ratification by any state was to prevent secession. Check the history of the NY convention and his communications to Hamilton on this very subject. He did not want to give any state the ability to come back later and say "We withdraw because our conditions have not been met." It is also why state legislatures were not allowed to ratify since any legislative action can be undone by another legislative action. That was not going to be allowed to happen.

It is so tiresome to have to correct these mistaken ideas and outright lies every time this issue comes up. There is no difficulty in determining the truth when one is concerned with the truth. But that is the last thing those attempting to justify the destruction of America are concerned with except as it is an obstacle to their falsehoods gaining credence among the ignorant, easily deluded or anti-Americans.

There is no constitution if secession is possible. It loses all its meaning and is nothing more than a bunch of words if it is not the Supreme Law of the Land. Union is the only thing which makes it sensible or possible. If a State law or act can trump the constitution then it is nothing of value.
215 posted on 06/13/2003 11:25:07 AM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (RATS will use any means to denigrate George Bush's Victory.)
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To: Aurelius

216 posted on 06/13/2003 11:26:18 AM PDT by mac_truck (Neo-confederate scholarship is an oxymoron)
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To: Aurelius
Your thinking has no impact on the truth. Re-read the thread, I said nothing insulting to you personally until you started slinging the sh.. .
217 posted on 06/13/2003 11:26:37 AM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (RATS will use any means to denigrate George Bush's Victory.)
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To: Sloth
Also, the state of West Virginia was formed illegally...

Why would that be illegal from the confederate standpoint? Western Virginia was not becomming a confederate state. There was nothing in the confederate constitution which prevented a state or a part of a state from seceding from the confederacy. The south had nothing to complain about.

From the Northern standpoint the entire transaction met the constitutional requirements because the U.S. Congress recognized a body of men as the loyal legislature of Virginia, and it was this body which petitioned Congress to approve dividing the state.

218 posted on 06/13/2003 11:26:49 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur
secession as practiced by the southern states was illegal

So there would be some instance where secession WAS legal?

Tell me more.
219 posted on 06/13/2003 11:27:45 AM PDT by tet68 (Jeremiah 51:24 ..."..Before your eyes I will repay Babylon for all the wrong they have done in Zion")
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To: justshutupandtakeit
"There is no difficulty in determining the truth when one is concerned with the truth. "

That pretty much leaves you out.

220 posted on 06/13/2003 11:27:45 AM PDT by Aurelius
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