Americans owe Confederate history respect

After attending the Confederate Memorial Day service on June 1 in Higginsville, I found myself believing our nation should be ashamed for not giving more respect and recognition to our ancestors.

I understand that some find the Confederate flag offensive because they feel it represents slavery and oppression. Well, here are the facts: The Confederate flag flew over the South from 1861 to 1865. That's a total of four years. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in April 1789, and that document protected and condoned the institution of slavery from 1789 to 1861. In other words, if we denigrate the Confederate flag for representing slavery for four years, shouldn't we also vilify the U.S. flag for representing slavery for 72 years? Unless we're hypocrites, it is clear that one flag is no less pure than the other.

A fascinating aspect of studying the Civil War is researching the issues that led to the confrontation. The more you read, the less black-and-white the issues become. President Abraham Lincoln said he would do anything to save the union, even if that meant preserving the institution of slavery. Lincoln's focus was obviously on the union, not slavery.

In another case, historians William McFeely and Gene Smith write that Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant threatened to "throw down his sword" if he thought he was fighting to end slavery.

Closer to home, in 1864, Col. William Switzler, one of the most respected Union men in Boone County, purchased a slave named Dick for $126. What makes this transaction interesting is not only the fact that Switzler was a Union man but that he bought the slave one year after the issuance of the Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Of course, history students know the proclamation did not include slaves living in the North or in border states such as Missouri.

So if this war was fought strictly over slavery, why were so many Unionists reluctant to act like that was the issue?

In reviewing the motives that led to the Civil War, one should read the letters soldiers wrote home to their loved ones. Historian John Perry, who studied the soldier's correspondence, says in his three years of research, he failed to find one letter that referred to slavery from Confederate or Union soldiers.

Perry says that Yankees tended to write about preserving the Union and Confederates wrote about protecting their rights from a too-powerful federal government. The numerous letters failed to specifically say soldiers were fighting either to destroy or protect the institution of slavery. Shelby Foote, in his three-volume Civil War history, recounts an incident in which a Union soldier asks a Confederate prisoner captured in Tennessee why he was fighting. The rebel responded, "Because you're down here."

History tends to overlook the South's efforts to resolve the issue of slavery. For example, in 1863, because of a shortage of manpower, Lincoln permitted the enlistment of black soldiers into the Union Army. Battlefield documents bear out the fact that these units were composed of some of the finest fighting men in the war. Unfortunately for these brave soldiers, the Union used them as cannon fodder, preferring to sacrifice black lives instead of whites.

These courageous black Union soldiers experienced a Pyrrhic victory for their right to engage in combat. However, history has little to say about the South's same effort in 1865. The Confederacy, its own troop strength depleted, offered slaves freedom if they volunteered for the army.

We know that between 75,000 and 100,000 blacks responded to this call, causing Frederick Douglass to bemoan the fact that blacks were joining the Confederacy. But the assimilation of black slaves into the Confederate army was short-lived as the war came to an end before the government's policy could be fully implemented.

It's tragic that Missouri does not do more to recognize the bravery of the men who fought in the Missouri Confederate brigades who fought valiantly in every battle they were engaged in. To many Confederate generals, the Missouri brigades were considered the best fighting units in the South.

The courage these boys from Missouri demonstrated at Port Gibson and Champion Hill, Miss., Franklin, Tenn., and Fort Blakely, Ala., represent just a few of the incredible sacrifices they withstood on the battlefield. Missouri should celebrate their struggles instead of damning them.

For the real story about the Missouri Confederate brigades, one should read Phil Gottschalk and Philip Tucker's excellent books about these units. The amount of blood spilled by these Missouri boys on the field of battle will make you cry.

Our Confederate ancestors deserve better from this nation. They fought for what they believed in and lost. Most important, we should remember that when they surrendered, they gave up the fight completely. Defeated Confederate soldiers did not resort to guerrilla warfare or form renegade bands that refused to surrender. These men simply laid down their arms, went home and lived peacefully under the U.S. flag. When these ex-Confederates died, they died Americans.

During the postwar period, ex-Confederates overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party. This party, led in Missouri by Rep. Dick Gephardt and Gov. Bob Holden, has chosen to turn its back on its fallen sons.

The act of pulling down Confederate flags at two obscure Confederate cemeteries for the sake of promoting Gephardt's hopeless quest for the presidency was a cowardly decision. I pray these men will rethink their decision.

The reality is, when it comes to slavery, the Confederate and United States flags drip with an equal amount of blood.

I wrote :"But neither one of us has had to make the tough decision on "What is my country?" But a country is composed of states which are composed of communities. Is my loyalty to my country, to my state, or to my community?"

You wrote :"It's a no-brainer. Upon your acceptance into the military, you took an oath. That oath is to the Constitution of the United States; further, when you took that oath you swore to obey the orders of the officers appointed over you."

I was talking about the general population, not the military in particular. However, the military folks did have to answer that question when the country to which they swore allegiance became two different countries. Many answered that question by deciding that their allegiance was with the South and then resigned their commissions. The world had changed around them and they simply changed to adapt to the new environment.

I took an oath to obey the "lawful" orders of superior officers. The Marine Corps never asked me to blindly obey all orders. The world settled that question after WWII at the Nierenberg trials. Following orders is not an excuse for illegal and immoral actions.

While the question of loyalty and allegiance might be a "no-brainer" for some, for others it was an ethical dilemma and each man had to answer for himself. We can argue whether he made the right decision, but there is no argument that each faced an ethical decision, that hopefully, you and I will never face. You already think you know what you would do. I would only hope that I would act honorably in the face of a difficult ethical problem.

"Facts evidently mean nothing to you."

Is that the best argument you have, an adolescentesque put-down?

Listen bud, maybe you're not initiated in the unbiased, legal history of the USA, but I have a suggestion for a book to help you get a jump-start:

The Creature from Jekyll Island...by G. Edward Griffin

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0912986409/ref=pd_sim_books_3/104-4195324-3008769?v=glance&s=books

Here's another interesting tidbit for ya:

Senate Report 93-549 War and Emergency Powers Acts

(93rd Congress, 1st Session, 1973)

http://www.barefootsworld.net/war_ep.html

"Roosevelt compared this principle of "stewardship" to what he called the Jackson-Lincoln theory, and contrasted it to the theory ascribed to William Howard Taft.

"Roosevelt's ideas on the limit of presidential authority and responsibility were vigorously disputed by Taft. In lectures on the presidency--delivered at Columbia University in 1915-1916-Taft responded that: ". . . the wide field of action that this would give to the Executive one can hardly limit. A President can exercise no power which cannot fairly and reasonably be traced to some specific grant of power." And he cautioned that: ". . . such specific grants must be either in the Federal Constitution, or in any act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest."

"Taft's successor, Woodrow Wilson, was no less zealous in observing what he thought the Constitution demanded. Faced with the exigencies of World War I, Wilson found it necessary to expand executive emergency powers enormously. In many respects, this expansion ofpowers in wartime was based on precedents set by Lincoln decades earlier. Unlike Lincoln, however, Wilson relied heavily on Congress for official delegations of authority no matter how broadly these might be.

When the Southern states walked out of Congress on March 27, 1861, the quorum to conduct business under the Constitution was lost. The only votes that Congress could lawfully take, under Parliamentary Law, were those to set the time to reconvene, take a vote to get a quorum, and vote to adjourn and set a date, time, and place to reconvene at a later time, but instead, Congress abandoned the House and Senate without setting a date to reconvene. Under the parliamentary law of Congress, when this happened, Congress became sine die (pronounced see-na dee-a; literally "without day") and thus when Congress adjourned sine die, it ceased to exist as a lawful deliberative body, and the only lawful, constitutional power that could declare war was no longer lawful, or in session.

The Southern states, by virtue of their secession from the Union, also ceased to exist sine die, and some state legislatures in the Northern bloc also adjourned sine die, and thus, all the states which were parties to creating the Constitution ceased to exist. President Lincoln executed the first executive order written by any President on April 15, 1861, Executive Order 1, and the nation has been ruled by the President under executive order ever since. When Congress eventually did reconvene, it was reconvened under the military authority of the Commander-in-Chief and not by Rules of Order for Parliamentary bodies or by Constitutional Law; placing the American people under martial rule ever since that national emergency declared by President Lincoln. The Constitution for the United States of America temporarily ceased to be the law of the land, and the President, Congress, and the Courts unlawfully presumed that they were free to remake the nation in their own image, whereas, lawfully, no constitutional provisions were in place which afforded power to any of the actions which were taken which presumed to place the nation under the new form of control.

President Lincoln knew that he had no authority to issue any executive order, and thus he commissioned General Orders No. 100 (April 24, 1863) as a special field code to govern his actions under martial law and which justified the seizure of power, which extended the laws of the District of Columbia, and which fictionally implemented the provisions of Article I, Section 8, Clauses 17-18 of the Constitution beyond the boundaries of Washington, D.C. and into the several states. General Orders No. 100, also called the Lieber Instructions and the Lieber Code, extended The Laws of War and International Law onto American soil, and the United States government became the presumed conqueror of the people and the land.

Martial rule was kept secret and has never ended, the nation has been ruled under Military Law by the Commander of Chief of that military; the President, under his assumed executive powers and according to his executive orders. Constitutional law under the original Constitution is enforced only as a matter of keeping the public peace under the provisions of General Orders No. 100 under martial rule. Under Martial Law, title is a mere fiction, since all property belongs to the military except for that property which the Commander-in-Chief may, in his benevolence, exempt from taxation and seizure and upon which he allows the enemy to reside.

President Lincoln was assassinated before he could complete plans for reestablishing constitutional government in the Southern States and end the martial rule by executive order, and the 14th Article in Amendment to the Constitution created a new citizenship status for the new expanded jurisdiction. New laws for the District of Columbia were established and passed by Congress in 1871, supplanting those established Feb. 27, 1801 and May 3, 1802. The District of Columbia was re-incorporated in 1872, and all states in the Union were reformed as Franchisees of the Federal Corporation so that a new Union of the United States could be created. The key to when the states became Federal Franchisees is related to the date when such states enacted the Field Code in law. The Field Code was a codification of the common law that was adopted first by New York and then by California in 1872, and shortly afterwards the Lieber Code was used to bring the United States into the 1874 Brussels Conference and into the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

BTW, there is forthcoming a book describing a Lincoln-circle cabal that will probably blow the top off this whole discussion...and no, it's not being written by neo-confederates, it's being researched and written by credentialed patriotic journalists.

And Walt, before you label me a Neo-Reb (which I'm not), I have a new adage for you to mock...

"You're repeating yourself."

No, I'm just trying to get you to be more specific.

"But that still doesn't answer what would have happened to them after their service was over and if the confederates had been victorious."

You're right. Every thing is pure speculation. You are no more right than am I. But unless you only place small numbers of armed 'negroes' in with the main fighting units, it is unlikely that they would stay and fight only to go back into bondage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't there all black units commanded by white officers? Would one (or a few men) man be able to keep the armed blacks from turning their guns on him (or them)? Would they not 'surrender' to the Union troops to secure their freedom? My speculation is that they would UNLESS they were convinced that they were defending their country and would be free men after the war.

"As for your questions: Is a man bearing arms still a slave? He certainly is if his owner considers him to be one."

I don't know about you, but if was armed, I would be a free man (dead or alive), but I would not still be a slave.

"Can he be easily returned to slavery after said service? I have no idea, but no doubt some owners would have tried."

No doubt some would. I'm equally sure that others wouldn't.

"Why would he fight to win if he was not to be free after his service? He would have fought because he was told to fight, same as any conscript."

I'm not buying that. Why fight for your oppressor? Is life so dear?

Without pulling down books, I believe this letter's message pertains to the 13 states' political leadership who each thought of themselves as at the head of the AoC parade, squabbling as neighborhood kids in a tree house.

I don't believe that these guys or peers ever proclaimed the United States as being a one-way subjugation of the several states, prior to 1789's ratification. If so, the Constitution would have so stated, given the 1780's Zeitgeist.

Yes, the ratified Constitution clearified the federal government's organization, BUT that Constitution also specified the limited powers of the federal government. Neither I nor the leaders and voters of the Union or Confederate States read the Constitution's article of permanent assimilation under penalty of utter destruction through total war against civilians and military alike.

The small yankee states absolutely needed each other for Union cash flow and their common defense; the southern states much less so, as far as they perceived themselves.

An orderly sesession from the Union was not forbidden in the ratified Constitution, so it was available to the very democratically elected representative state jurisdictions which created said central government, or Borg or Black Hole in modern terminology.

(Post-communist fascist China is also proclaiming and arming over this Black Hole Doctrine. So are municipal expansions into unincorporated lands, whether citizens want assimilation or not.) It is alway about money and power for the power structure.

The unwritten/unsigned and therefore unconsented doctrine of forever surrendering one's state's rights by joining a centralized government under penalty of destructive invasion and police state rule flies in the face of 1780's-1860 liberty, especially that of our post-Lincoln election great and great-great grandfathers.

I had them fight on both sides: one for freeing slaves with preservation of the Union; the other against Yankee invasion because of repeated laying waste to innocent, free peoples' lives.

The southern states were destroyed because of a theory of all powerful central government. The Confederates believed in this ultimate check and balance over central government running out of control.

Start businesses and you'll really understand central government out of control.

This matter is about liberty vs unwritten doctrines of government, hence war powers against free peoples to be ruled by an all powerful central government.

Time for coffee and sooch.

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