Was Secession Treason?

Daveblack ^ | June 30, 2003 | DaveBlack

[capitan_refugio]

I believe the figures I provided for you did show a couple of things. They address how different parts of the country dealt with the issue of slavery.

In 1790, every existing state, save for Masachusetts and Maine (which had been part of Massachusetts) permitted slavery. Even then, slavery was a predominately southern institution. For instance, in 1790, black slaves made up over 60% of South Carolina's total population, and 40% of Virginia's population. However, in the next 60 years, up to the 1850 Census, the North was extremely successful in ridding itself of this evil practice. In 1850's, several political events hastened the eventual conflict between the States. And by 1860, in the North, the practice of slavery was nearly extinct.

In 1790 there were 694,000 slaves.
In 1820 there were 1,500,000 slaves.
In 1830 there were 2,000,000 slaves.
In 1840 there were 2,500,000 slaves.
In 1850 there were 3,200,000 slaves.
In 1860 there were 3,800,000 slaves.

Even after the prohibition of slave imports around 1800, the slave population was growing exponentially.

Your analogy is absurd. Let me pose another. Is a reformed drug addict morally superior to a practicing drug addict? Most people in the south did not participate in the slave trade; however, the powerful landed Southern elite were slave addicts in the worst way. They brought the South down because they were morally decrepit and were unable to muster the moral courage to do the right thing.

[capitan_refugio]

"Consult any diplomatic history or text published anywhere in the world, and there appears a remarkable unanimity on what constitutes nationhood. The accepted definition in the 1860's, as now, requires that a people sets up and maintains a working civil government, is able to protect territorial integrity, and is recognized as a nation by the other leading nations of the world. Of these three key elements, the Confederacy achieved only the first, the operation of a working, if rickety civil government. Territorially the Confederacy lost ground in huge chunks almost daily and from the outset. As for recognition, not one single nation, large or small, granted formal diplomatic relations or exchanged ambassadors. In the absense of two of the three requisite standards of nationhood, and especially the vital recognition, the Confederacy can not be regarded as anything more than a very organized insurrection or sepratist movement."
- William C. Davis
"The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy"
Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table's Laney Prize

William Davis is the recipient of three Jefferson Davis Awards.

[capitan_refugio]

"Incredibly, there is a notion among some that the South really was not beaten by the Union. A few years ago a quiz at the Sons of Confederate Veterans meeting contained a question referring to April and May 1865 as the period at which "the Confederacy withdrew from the war." Withdrew? ... When a contestant's industry is destroyed. When the will of its people to continue the fight is crushed. When its armies are surrounded or on the run and are dissolving rapidly through desertion. When its ports are closed and its territory carved up into uncoordinated bits. When its economy is shattered, and it cannot feed its people in uniform, or keep them from simply going home. When its armies have no where to go, no one to turn to, and cannot muster enough men at arms to meet a foe at odds even as bad as one-to-two. And when the men leading those armies have long since concluded that they cannot win. When all that happens, a combatant does not "withdraw" from a war ... The Confederacy was utterly, crushingly, devastatingly defeated, and to suggest anything else, is not just myth, but pure fantasy."
- William C. Davis

If they don't have their mythology, they don't have anything.

[capitan_refugio]

I don't see the Constitution being shredded, but I do believe we have seen over the past 40 or more years an assault on the Constitution through the judiciary. In part because of the necessity of having Supreme Court nominees approved by the Senate, only a handful of truly conservative justices have been appointed to the Court since the days of John Kennedy and the rise of Federally-sponsored socialism. (I am aware that the trend goes back even further, but under Kennedy and Johnson, Federal social programming, with the accedence of the courts, accelerated.)

Today, there are arguably only three philsophical conservative justices on the USSC: Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. There are four unabashed liberal justices: Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Beyer. Note that both Stevens and Souter were nominees by Republican presidents (Ford and GHW Bush, respectively). Souter, in particular, has turned out to be a stealth liberal. The other two, O'Conner and Kennedy have often been moderate, or swing votes on the Court; they too, are both nominees of a Republican president, Reagan.

Seven of nine justices on the bench of the USSC have been Republican nominees, and yet there exists only a "moderate" court. The true test of our current President will be in his Court appointments, if he has any. There are four likely candidates for retirement (or death) in the next few years. One is a conservative - Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is in his 31st year on the bench and is 79 years old. Two are liberals - John Paul Stevens, who is four years older than Rehnquist, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is 70 years old and has been in frail health due to colon cancer and other ailments. The fourth likely retirement is moderate Arizonan Sandra Day O'Conner.

If President Bush can choose more people like Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist, the socailist excesses of the past 40 years will be peeled away, and the world will be a better place.

[mac_truck]

P.S. all you stupik Yankees share a common trait with the gwhore lovers, a willingness to believe anything.

[ContraryMary]

Of course it was treason -- just as it was treasonous for the southern states to secede a century later. The fact that the American colonists won their war of secession while the South did not, makes the colonists no less treasonous.

[stand watie]

NOT a problem.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

you are also a "native American"!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

YEP! most commonly with a .36 caliber or .44 caliber bullet in the back of the head.

the damnyankees were REALLY good at coldblooded murder of un-armed civilians & NON-white POWs in gray uniforms.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

according to Dr. Walter Williams, NO state would have ratified the Constitution if they had believed that secession would be punished at the point of a bayonet.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

TWBTS was started by the HATEFILLED damnyankees in KS. the year was 1855.

BTW, the American Bible Society paid for rifles to attack the civilian farmers in MO. the rifles were called "bibles for kansas".

HUNDREDS of poor farmers were slaughtered by those "oh, so wonderful & marvelous" folks from KS;they were called REDLEGS.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

YOU get the PINK POPCICLE AWARD for today's dumbest post.

if the damnyankees had had a lick of common sense, they would have traded with the CSA;we southrons would have needed things from damnyankeeland for decades, if not forever.

BUT since the WHOLE reason for the WBTS was to subjugate the south, the north chose war.

that is TRUTH!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

our southland was willing FINALLY to go to war to protect our NATURAL rights.

slavery had little or nothing to do with the war, period. end of story.

free dixie,sw

[azhenfud]

"...slavery had little or nothing to do with the war, period. end of story..."

In retrospect, maybe slavery did. Only the faces of the masters/slaves changed. The government now owns the shackles.
Regards,
Az

[Non-Sequitur]

YOU get the PINK POPCICLE AWARD for today's dumbest post.

That was posted three days ago and you're just getting around to awarding your daily award? By rights it should have won your PINK POPCICLE (sic) AWARD on July 3rd. Who's the dumb one?

[Non-Sequitur]

slavery had little or nothing to do with the war, period. end of story.

Bullsh...I mean, bull manure.

[Non-Sequitur]

according to Dr. Walter Williams, NO state would have ratified the Constitution if they had believed that secession would be punished at the point of a bayonet.

Oh well hey, if Dr. Williams said it then it must be so. End of discussion right there.

[Ditto]

He also co-wrote the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions that bemoaned the attempt to concentrate power "into one sovereignty" and made reference to the Constitution as a "compact to which the States are parties" and that the States are "not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government" and that "as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

Madison is stating that the Constitution is a compact that each State can judge for itself whether it has been violated and what measure of redress is required of them.

Both said that states are not bound to enforce acts of Congress which violate the Consititution, but where do either say that there is a right to unilateral secession, and exactly what features of the "compact" were being violated by the Federal government in 1860?

[capitan_refugio]

N-S

I suppose, since under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union these states were bound together permanently as a country, they ratified the Constitution so they could get out! ;^)