Posted on 07/27/2003 5:08:19 PM PDT by thatdewd
Edited on 05/07/2004 6:46:56 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The writer is a circuit judge who lives in Kuttawa, Ky.
KUTTAWA, Ky. - The Courier Journal, at the behest of its columnist John David Dyche, has called for the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol. Such a supposedly politically correct viewpoint reflects a shallow, selective and even hypocritical understanding of history.
(Excerpt) Read more at courier-journal.com ...
As you said, it was a diplomatic proposal.
Any treaty negotiated with a foreign government is merely a diplomatic proposal until ratified. You run your idea up the flag pole and see if the other nation salutes it. If it does, you bring it back to your Congress and say, "The Brits are willing to do A if we do B. Should we go for it." The Treaty is then either ratified or, as was the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, rejected.
If the response from the Europeans had beeen favorable, the ball would then have been in the Confederate Congress' court to carry out emancipation if Davis did not have the Consitutional authority to bring about emancipation unilaterally.
But what about Jefferson Davis? Was he a racist by any standard at all? Yes or no?
At least eight times, he said publicly that he was opposed to equal rights for Blacks.
He said it at Ottawa:
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the fotting of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. (CW 3:16)
He said it at Galesburg:
I have all the while maintained that inasmuch as there is a physical inequality between the white and black, that the blacks must remain inferior .... (Holzer 1993, 254)
He said it in Ohio. He said it in Wisconsin. He said it in Indiana. He said it everywhere:
We can not, then, make them equals. (CW 2:256)
Why couldn't "we" make "them" equals?
There was, Lincoln said, a strong feeling in White America against Black equality, and "MY OWN FEELINGS," he said, capitalizing the words, "WILL NOT ADMIT OF THIS..." (CW 3:79)
See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 211-212
When, in 1855, Lincoln's best friend, Joshua Speed, asked him to clarify his position on slavery, he said frankly, "I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery, (CW 2:233, Lincoln's italics). Lincoln said this so often and so loud that it is astounding that some people, even some historians, claim to misunderstand him.
He said it in CAPITALS at Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854:
I wish to MAKE and to KEEP the distinction between the EXISTING institution, and the EXTENSION of it, so broad, and so clear, that no honest man can misunderstand me, and no dishonest one, successfully misrepresent me. (CW 2:248)
That didn't deter honest and dishonest men -- then or now -- and he said it again at Bloomington, Illinois, on September 4, 1858:
We have no right to interfere with slavery in the States. We only want to restrict it to where it is." (CW 3:87)
He said it at Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, at the first Lincoln-Douglas debate:
I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it ixists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. (CW 3:16, italics added)
He said it at the second Lincoln-Douglas debate and the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth debate:
I expressly declared in my opening speech, that I had neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence of the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in doing as they pleased with slavery or any other existing institution. (CW 3:277)
Challenged again at the seventh and final debate, he said it again:
Now I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge [Stephen] Douglas against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of slavery. (CW 3:300)
He said it in Illinois.
He said it in Michigan.
He said it in Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan, Caonnecticut, Ohio, and New York.
He said it everywhere.
We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the constitution, and the pease of the country, both forbid us. (CW 3:435)
One has to feel sorry for Lincoln retrospectively and prospectively. For he declared it and, to use his work, "re-declared" it. He quoted himself and "re-quoted" himself. Yet honest and dishonest men -- then and now -- continued to misrepresent him, despite the fact that he said it a hundred times:
I have said a hundred times and I have no no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always. (CW 2:492, italics added).
If he said it a hundred times, he said it a thousand times:
I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion, neither the General government, no any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.. (CW 2:471)
Not only did he say it but he cited evidence to prove it.
He asserted positively, and proved conclusively by his former acts and speeches that he was not in favor of interfering with slavery in the States where it exists, nor ever had been. (CW 3:96)
See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 248-250.
This is a pivotal point, one that has been masked by rhetoric and imperfect analysis. For to say, as Lincoln said a thousand times, that one is only opposed to the extension of slavery is to say a thousand times that one is not opposed to slavery where it existed. Based on this record and the words of his own mouth, we can say that the "great emancipator" was one of the major supporters of slavery in the United States for at least fifty-four of his fifty six years. See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 251.
CW = The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, 11 vols. Rutgers, 1955
You're a hypocrite. A one trick pony without the integrity to apply the same standards to everyone equally. You want to spew out against Lincoln for line after line after line...after line after line of partial quotes, misquotes, and made-up quotes then have at it. But don't try and paint yourself as an unbiased observer, an objective judge of history. You don't come close.
Address at Cooper Institute, New York City
February 27, 1860
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, ``It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.''
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 3, page 541.
Annual Message to Congress
December 1, 1862
Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them?
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 5, page 535-6.
December 1, 1862
I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.
Lincoln said he was in favor of the new territories "being in such a condition that white men may find a home."
Lincoln, Alton, Illinois, 10/15/1862
"His democracy was a White mans democracy. It did not contain Negroes." Oscar Sherwin
Lincoln's dream did not contain Indians or even Mexicans who he referred to as "mongrels."
Lincoln, CW 3:234-5
"Resolved, That the elective franchise should be kept pure from contamination by the admission of colored votes."
That got Lincoln's vote, January 5, 1836.
"in our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beware, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of freedom"
Lincoln, CW 2:276
Translation for the intellectually challenged:
The White Man's Charter of Freedom = The Declaration of Independence
Lincoln wanted the territories to be "the happy home of teeming millions of free, white prosperous people, and no slave among them"
Lincoln, 1854, CW 2:249
The territories "should be kept open for the homes of free white people"
Lincoln, 1856, CW 2:363
"We want them [the territories] for the homes of free white people."
Lincoln, CW 3:311
If slavery was allowed to spread to the territories, he said "Negro equality will be abundant, as every White laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n-----s"
Lincoln, CW 3:78 [Lincoln uses the N-word without elision]
"Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?"
Lincoln, CW 3:79
Davis wasn't suggesting a mere 'treaty' with a foreign government. He was offering a quid pro quo in the form of an end to slavery in exchange for diplomatic recognition. So he could have brought this treaty back to the confederate congress or signed it himself, it made no difference at all. But as you would know had you bothered to read the confederate constitution, neither Davis or the confederate congress had the power to grant the single item that the south had to offer - an end to slavery. But would Davis have let this get in his way? What do you think?
But what about Jefferson Davis? Was he a racist by any standard at all? Yes or no?....Non-Sequitur
Both Lincoln and Davis were men of their time just as the World War II veterans who saw nothing wrong with a segregated U.S. Army were men of their time.
One hundred years from now, when social norms change as they invariably do, all of us now alive in 2003 will be considered less than enlightened by those willing to judge us by 2103 standards.
In his History of the United States, Vol. IV., page 520, Rhodes makes the sweeping assertion that --
"Lincoln's contemporaries failed to perceive his greatness."
Other Republican writers make the same statement. Yet none attempted to explain why those who best knew Mr. Lincoln failed to esteem or respect him. Chase, while in his Cabinet, had every opportuity to know Lincoln well. Tarbell says:
"Mr. Chase was never able to realize Mr. Lincoln's greatness."
McClure says:
"Chase was the most irritating fly in the Lincoln ointment."
In their voluminous life of Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay have this:
"Even to complete strangers Chase could not write without speaking slightingly of President Lincoln. He kept up this habit till the end of Lincoln's life. Chase's attitude toward the President varied between the limits of active brutality and benevolent contempt."
Of a bill to create offices in 1864, Chase wrote in his diary:
"If this bill becomes a law, Lincoln will most certainly put men in office from political considerations."
On this, page 448, Rhodes comments thus:
"A President who selected unfit generals for the reason that they represented phases of public opinion, would hardly hesitate to name postmasters and collectors who could be relied upon as a personal following."
Rhodes further says:
"In conversation, in private correspondence, in the confidence of his diary, Chase dealt censure unrestrained on Lincoln's conduct of the war."
Morse says:
"Many distinguished men of his own party distrusted Mr. Lincoln's character."
On an official trip to Washington, February 23, 1863, Richard H. Dana wrote Thomas Lathrop as follows:
"I see no hope but in the army; the lack of respect for the President in all parties is unconcealed. The most striking thing is the absence of personal loyalty to the President. It does not exist. He has no admirers. If a convention were held tomorrow he would not get the vote of a single State. He does not act or talk or feel like the ruler of an empire. He seems to be fonder of details than of principles, fonder of personal questions than of weightier matters of empire. He likes rather to talk and tell stories with all sorts of people who come to him for all sorts of purposes, than to give his mind to the many duties of his great post. This is the feeling of his Cabinet. He has a kind of shrewd common sense, slip-shod, low-leveled honesty that made him a good Western lawyer, but he is an unutterable calamity to us where he is. Only the army can save us."
According to Lamon:
"The Rev. Mr. Collier, sharing the prevailing sentiment in regard to the incapacity and inefficiency of Lincoln's government, chanced to pass through the White House grounds. ... "
Charles Francis Adams wrote:
"When Lincoln first entered upon his functions as President, he filled with dismay all those brought in contact with him."
"When Lincoln entered upon his duties as President he displayed moral, intellectual and executive incompetency."
On August 1, 1862, Wendell Phillips said to his audience:
"As long as you keep the present turtle (Lincoln) at the head of affairs you make a pit with one hand and fill it with the other. I know Mr. Lincoln. I have been to Washington and taken his measure. He is a first-rate second-rate man; that is all of him. He is a mere convenience and is waiting, like any other broomstick, to be used."
In a speech made at Music Hall, New Haven, 1863, Phillips said:
"Lincoln was badgered into emancipation. After he issued it he said it was the greatest folly of his life. It was like the Pope's bull against the comet."
In Tremont Temple, Boston, Phillips said:
"With a man for President we should have put down the rebellion in ninety days."
At a Republican meeting in Boston, Phillips said:
"President Lincoln, with senile, lick-spittle haste, runs before his is bidden, to revoke the Hunter proclamation. The President and the Cabinet are treasonable. The President and the Secretary of War should be impeached."
In 1864, at Cooper Institute, Phillips said:
"I judge Mr. Lincoln by his acts, his violation of the law, his overthrow of liberty in the Northern States. I judge Mr. Lincoln by his words and deeds, and so judging, I am unwilling to trust Abraham Lincoln with the future of this country. Mr. Lincoln is a politician; politicians are like the bones of a horse's fore shoulder; not a straight one in it. I am a citizen watchful of constitutional liberty. Are you willing to sacrifice the constitutional rights of seventy years? A man in the field (the army) said: 'The re-election of Lincoln will be a national disaster.' Another said: 'The re-election of Lincoln will be naitonal destruction.' I want free speech. Let abraham Lincoln know that we are stronger than Abraham Lincoln; the he is the servant to obey us."
August 5, 1864, Henry Winter Davis and Senator Wade of Ohio issued this:
"A more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the people than was ever before perpetrated."
When Lincoln was asked if he had seen a speech of Phillips and the Winter Davis-Wade manifesto against him, he replied:
"I have seen enough to satisfy me that I am a failure, not only in the opinion of the people in the rebellion, but of many distinguished politicans of my own party." -- Lamon's Recollections, page 187.
In McClellan's Life, a number of letters to his wife are published, in which McClellan speaks of Stanton's visits.
McClellans writes:
"The most disagreeable thing about Stanton is the extreme virulence of his abuse of President Lincoln, his whole administration, as well of all the Republican party. I am often shocked."
McClellan writes:
"Stanton never speaks of the President in any way other than as "that original gorilla." he often says: "Du Chaillie was a fool to wander all the way to Africa in search of what he could have found in Springfield, Illinois."
McClellan writes:
Nothing can be more bitter than Stanton's words and manner when speaking of the President and his administration. He gives them no credit or honesty of purpose or patriotism, and very seldom for ability. He often advised the propriety of my seizing the government and taking power in my own hands."
McClellan writes:
"Stanton often speaks of the painful imbecility of the President."
In McClure's Life of Lincoln, page 150, is this:
"Before Stanton was appointed Secretary of War he was an open and malignant opponent of the Lincoln administration. He often spoke to public men, military and civil, with withering sneers of Lincoln. I have hard him speak thus of Lincoln, and several times to him in the same way."
Hapgood's Lincoln, page 164 tells of Stanton saying:
"I met Lincoln at the bar and found him a low, cunning clown."
A.K. McClure says (Lincoln and Men of the War Time, p. 51) of Lincoln:
"If he could only have commanded the hearty co-operation of the leaders of his own party, his task would have been greatly lessened, but it is due to the truth of history to say that few, very few, of the Republicans of national fame had faith in Lincoln's ability for the trust assigned to him. I could name a dozen men, now [1892] idols of the nation, whose open distrust of Lincoln not only seriously embarrassed, but grievously pained and humiliated him."
Ida Tarbell in McClures Magazine, July 1899, calls Senator Sumner, Ben Wade, Henry Winter Davis, and Secretary Chase "Malicious foes of Lincoln," and makes the remarkable and comprehensive concession that "about all the most prominent leaders . . . were actively opposed to Lincoln," and mentions Greeley as their chief."
"Fremont, who eight years before had received every Republican vote for President, charged Lincoln (Holland's Abraham Lincoln, p. 259, p. 469, and p 471) with "incapacity and selfishness," with "disregard of personal rights," with "violation of personal liberty and liberty of the press," with "feebleness and want of principle"; and says, "The ordinary rights under the Constitution and laws of the country have been violated," and he further accuses Lincoln of "managing the war for personal ends."
Dr. Holland shows (Abraham Lincoln, p. 469, et seq.) that Fremont, Wendell Phillips, Fred Douglass, and Greeley were leaders in a very nearly successful effort to defeat Lincoln's second nomination, and quotes as follows, action of the convention for that purpose held in Cleveland, May 21, 1864, that "the public liberty was in danger"; that its object was to arouse the people, "and bring them to realize that, while we are saturating Southern soil with the best blood of the country in the name of liberty, we have really parted with it at home."
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech at Grand Rapids, September 8, 1900, said that in 1864, "on every hand Lincoln was denounced as a tyrant, a shedder of blood, a foe to liberty, a would-be dictator, a founder of an empire...."
Ida Tarbell, McClure's Magazine, March 1899, recorded the opinion of Secretary of State Seward:
"[Seward] believed, as many Republicans did, that Lincoln was unfit for the presidency, and that some one of his associates would be obliged to assume leadership...."
A.K. McClure writes:
"After Stanton's retirement from the Buchanan cabinet, when Lincoln was inaugurated, he maintained the closest confidential relations with Buchanan, and wrote him many letters expressing the utmost contempt for Lincoln ... These letters, ... given to the public in Curtis's Life of Buchanan, speak freely of the painful imbecility of Lincoln, the venality and corruption which ran riot in the government," and McClure goes on: "It is an open secret that Stanton advised the revolutionary overthorw of the Lincoln government, to be replaced by General McClellan as Military Dictator."
Schouler says of Stanton (History of the United States, Vol VI, p. 159)
"He denounced Lincoln in confidential speeches and letters as a coward and a fool."
The Lincoln monument was unveiled on April 14, 1876. Frederick Douglass said:
Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continent of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men (FD 4:312, italics added)
General Donald Piatt travelled with Lincoln when he was making his campaign speeches and knew him intimately.
General Donald Piatt said:
"When a leader dies all good men go to lying about him. From the moment that covers his remains to the last echo of the rural press, in speeces, in sermons, eulogies, reminiscences, we hear nothing but pious lies."
General Piatt continues:
"Abraham Lincoln has almost disappears from human knowledge. I hear of him, I read of him in eulogies and biographies but I fail to recognize the man I knew in life."
"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.
Frederick Douglass said:
Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful conviction that though elected as an anti-slavery man by Republican and Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border States, than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and humanity"
The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass,
edited by Philip S. Foner, 4 Vols, New York, 1955, vol 3, page 268
Frederick Douglass said:
With the single exception of the question of slavery extension, Mr. Lincoln proposes no measure which can bring him into antagonistic collision with the traffickers in human flesh, either in the States or in the District of Columbia .... Slavery will be as safe, and safer, in the Union under such a President, than it can be under any President of a Southern Confederacy"
The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass, edited by Philip S. Foner,
4 Vols, New York, 1955, vol 2, page 527
Frederick Douglass charged Clay, and by implication, Lincoln with "the most revolting blasphemy," saying "You would charge upon God the repsonsibility of your own crimes, and would seek a solace from the pangs of a guilty conscience by sacrilegiously assuming that in robbing Africa of her children, you acted in obedience of the great purposed, and were but fulfilling the decress of the most high God" (FD 1:289)
Lincoln never met a Black law he didn't like. Referring to the Illinois Exclusion law, Douglass expressed his outrage for an act which "cooly" proposed to "sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites [and] to rob every black stranger who ventures among them to increase their literary fund."
Douglass's indictment of Lincoln: "The treatment of our poor black soldiers -- the refusal to pay them anything like equal compensation, though it was promised them when they enlisted; the refusal to insist upon the exchange of colored prisoners when colored prisoners have been slaughtered in cold blood, although the President has repeatedly promised thus to protect the lives of his colored soldiers -- have worn my patience threadbare. The President has virtually laid down this as the rule of his statesmen: Do evil by choice, right from necessity" (FD 3:404, 406-7)
Frederick Douglass attacked Lincoln's logic and his racism, saying that "a horse thief pleading that the existence of the horse is the apology for his theft or a highway man contending that the money in the traveler's pocket is the sole first cause of his robbery are about as much entitled to respect as is the President's reasoning at this point."
"Mr. Lincoln takes care in urging his colonization scheme to furnish a weapon to all the ignorant and base, who need only the countenance of men in authority to commit all kinds of violence and outrage upon the colored people of the country." (FD 3:267)
Frederick Douglass told Charles Sumner: "If slavery is really dead in the District of Columbia ... to you, more than to any other American statesman, belongs the honor of this great triumph of Justice, Liberty, and Sound Policy" (FD 3:233-4)
On July 4, 1862, Douglass said: "our weak, faltering and incompetent rulers in the Cabinet ... and our rebel worshipping Generals in the field" were "incomparably more dangerous to the country than dead traitors like former President James Buchanan..." (FD 3:250)
August 1862, "...ABRAHAM LINCOLN is no more fit for the place he holds than was JAMES BUCHANAN, and that the latter was no more the miserable tool of traitors and rebels than the former is allowing himself to be."
Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white people of this country."
Lincoln was "scrupulous to the very letter of the law in favor of slavery, and a perfect latitudinarian as to the discharge of his duties under a law favoring freedom."
In a January 25, 1865 speech, Douglass said that the system of forced labor inaugurated in Louisiana by General Banks, with Lincoln's approval, "practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion."
Any treaty has it's origins as a diplomatic "feeler". You send your ambassador to propose it. If the foreign nation rejects it, that the end of it. If they accept the feeler, you take it from there.
The abolishion of slavery in the Confederate States would have required passage of a Constitutional Amendment just as a Constitutional Amendment was required in the United States.
To say that slavery could never be abolished in the Confederate States is to say that the people and the elected representatives of the Confederate States of America had to power to amend their own Constitution.
A reading of the confederate constitution shows that the elected representatives had no power at all to amend the constitution. Unlike the U.S. constitution, they could not propose amendments and they had no vote on amendments proposed. Those could only come from the states. They were required to call a convention if three states requested it. So I'm at a loss to understand how Davis could make this proposal in the first place. Or how he could have sent any such treaty to the confederate senate. The only possible explanation is that he didn't believe that the constitution limited his actions. If he truly believed that then he obviously had no respect for the document at all.
You would have fit right in with the Radical Republicans (which will probably gladden your heart). After the war, the RR passed a House resolution touting the "most kind, tender, and humane treatment" the North had given Confederate prisoners and refused to look into charges that it was not so.
As I said, you send out "feelers" to a foreign nation. If they agree, the ball is back on your court. You present the matter to the people and their elected representatives and they take it from there.
"The Brits and the French will side with us if slavery is abolished. What say ye?"
"We'll have to have a Consitutional Convention, it will take work with the State Legislatures but it's the only way we will ever have a chance to win this war. Let's do it. We have no other practical options."
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