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Assuming Confederate CONSTITUTIONAL provisions banning income tax and selective impressment of citizens into the military, Jeff davis was defending against a foreign invasion of the CSA. Lincoln's unquestionable depredations were perpetrated to invade the CSA with no legal justification whatsoever.

And I'll ask once again, have you never even read the confederate constitution? It is, with the exception of a few clauses like those limiting the president to one term or protecting slave import, virtually identical to the real constitution. And if the income tax was unconstitutional as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled or conscription was unconstitutional as you claim then how could they not be unconstitutional under the confederate constitution? Logically they cannot be, though absent a confederate supreme court we would never know. And yet in spite of that, and in spite of the other infractions of the constitution that Davis committed, the best you can come up with is 'Well, it was a war." I'm not aware of any clause saying that the confederate constitution was optional during war. I'm not aware of any core belief of the Republican party saying that the Constitution can be ignored when convenient. But then again I don't have your rather unique view of things.

No supreme court????? Now right there is proof positive that the CSA had a major advantage over the "union." Without a supreme court, how could the CSA have had abortion and a wide variety of other perversions shoved down its throat. Did the founders of the CSA merely assume that Davis would appoint a bunch of judicial busybodies who might degenerate into new judicial dictators like Marshall????

But again had you ever bothered to actually read the confederate constitution you would have come across article 3 section 1 which said, "The judicial power of the Confederate States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish." Right there is black and white, no interpretation necessary, plain as day. So how can anyone claim to respect and uphold a constitution when they turn around and violate it so blatantly?

BTW, you are the source of the notion that I somehow "deify" Jeff Davis. I have already posted that he was not as effective as one might have wished. I note that you have nothing coherent to say about CSA generals like Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Stuart and that is understandable.

But he is your idea of what a true Republican should be, or so you said in reply 141. A big government, business socializing, constitution trashing boob like Davis is your idea of a conservative. As for Lee, Jackson, and Stuart well, they weren't politicians. And I suspect that they were damned glad they weren't. They followed orders, they didn't ignore them. They didn't violate their constitution on a whim.

I can speak for myself. I despise the Federalists and Hamilton and Jay and Marshall, most Whigs, and Lincoln for the same reasons that they were all believers in centralized gummint power to keep ordinary folks in line for the benefit of the moneyed interests. Also on the despise list are William Howard Taft (FedReserve and Income Tax), Woodrow Wilson (demented racist "idealist"), Herbert Hoover (tax junkie extraordinaire). I admire Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, the Whig John Tyler (for expending most of his fortune on a unity convention designed to stave off Lincoln's lust to invade the Southland), TR in spite of his expansion of gummint power, Harding, Coolidge, and Republican presidents since 1980 with reservations as to Poppy.

And Jefferson Davis, don't forget him. You condemn Lincoln for what you claim were constitutional infractions but celebrate Davis for them. You condemn Wilson for being a racist but forgive the same in Davis and Lee. You hate Taft for the income tax but pant over Davis for the same thing. You respect Tyler for the peace conference and ignore the fact that the Davis regime refused to send representatives there. You condemn TR for expansion of government power but laud Davis, who expanded government far beyond the worst fears of any president, including Lincoln. You are nothing if not consistent.

Seizing private property???? Did Bobby Lee confiscate some Southern Illinois home of Lincoln or did Lincoln's lawless regime seize Lee's estate which is now Arlington Cemetery????

Again ignoring the private property that was seized on Davis' orders from SOUTHERN citizens. His own people, not the enemy. But hey, that's OK with you because you think Davis is a died in the wool Republican.

Lay the record of the Arkansas Antichrist...

Another in a long line of good Southern Democrats. Clinton...Carter...Johnson...Davis...BlackElk?

In Catholicism, we have a term for your most prominent quality: invincible ignorance.

We have a similar term for people like you. Except it's only half as long.

Attempt in vain to confuse the issues as you (and other liberals) always will, the fact remains that Lincoln was an evil and a liberal. Davis did what was reasonably deemed necessary to preserve the sovereignty of the Confederate States. The invasion of the CSA was NEVER necessary nor could it be. Its defense WAS necessary. If you don't like Davis, that's your problem. If, unlike conservatives, you do not admire Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, J.E.B. Stuart, that's your problem and that of other liberals. If you think there is some sort of "moral equivalency" between invading your neighbor and defending your home, you are wrong.

You will also note that your arguments have, with conceded lack of knowledge of me depended on lying about me, denying the credentials which I have provided you (as to which I have given you the name of a FReeper who knows) and engaged in a variety of name-calling, all the while defending left-wing Lincoln who is indefensible. Other than calling you liberal for defending Lincoln, I don't think I have engaged in gratuitous insults towards you as a form of argument. BTW, Lincoln's views on race are no more parallel to those normal to our time than were those of Davis. Davis, like Lincoln's wife and Grant's wife (which in those days before emancipation of married women meant Lincoln and Grant themselves) held slaves.

It has ever been the broad ideological lie of the Lincoln contingent that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. Beginning with Lincoln's letter to the New York Tribune explaining that his goal was union with or without emancipation of slaves and other evidence to vast to have escaped your notice, emancipation was not the reason. Conquering 11 Southern state exercising their constitutional right to secede was always the purpose. Emancipation was added to put lipstick on the pig of invasion of the South.

I have not a single ancestor who ever resided in any one of the eleven states of the CSA, even briefly. I am a native of Connecticut and a resident of rural Illinois. My father's birth state was Massachusetts and my mother's birth state Kentucky to ancestors from Indiana.

Southern Democrat???? Like you, I have been a Republican official. Unlike you, I have been a Reagan campaign state chairman when he bucked a "Republican" like you: Gerald Ford, stumblebum of establishmentarian "moderation."

Lincoln, unlike Lee, Jackson, Stuart, massacred the US Constitution as basic policy, starting with the attempt to continue occupying Fort Sumter.

I "pant over Davis" for an income tax????? Show me my words that do that as opposed to tolerating what Davis needed to do to defend against the invasion of his nation.

That a Supreme Court may have been provided for in the CSA Constitution does not mean that it was illegal to allow vacancies (all of the seats). Personally, I would have preferred that such presidents as FDR, HST, Dwight Eisenhower, LBJ, Gerald Ford and Slick Willie had left a lot of vacancies rather than appoint persistent babykillers to the SCOTUS. We could also easily have done without Souter, Powell, Blackmun, O'Connor, Kennedy and others. Not appointing Supreme Court Justices means not having to put up with judicial micromanagement of government at war (the recent Hamdan case and the wiretapping case designer decision acquired by ACLU judicial shopping). No one died and left these black-robed SOBs in charge of creating or amending a constitution. If they cannot simply apply the constitution, their power should be gelded. Andrew Jackson thought so. Even Lincoln thought so. Also, with stated reservations as to his peacetime administration, I stated that I ADMIRE TR. That is not a negative for those of you from Rio Linda or Greenwich or wherever.

As to your last sentence: The distinction is that I am right and you are wrong.