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Death of Jefferson Davis Remembered - The Christmas of 1889 Was a Sad Time in the South
Accessnga.com ^ | 11/19/07 | Calvin Johnson, Jr.

Posted on 11/19/2007 10:09:26 AM PST by BnBlFlag

Death of Jefferson Davis Remembered - The Christmas of 1889 was a sad time in the South. By Calvin Johnson Jr. Staff Email Contact Editor Print

Jefferson Davis - AuthenticHistory.com December 6th, is the 118th anniversary of the death of a great American Hero---Jefferson Davis.

The "Politically Correct" would have you forget the past...But do not forget the history of the men and women who made the USA great.

Caution, this is a family friendly story to be shared.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans have declared 2008, the "Year of Jefferson Davis." Remembrance events will include the re-opening of "Beauvoir" on Jefferson Davis' 200th birthday---June 3, 2008. This was Davis' last home that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Jefferson Davis Presidential Library and Museum will be rebuilt and re-open about two years after the house. Beauvoir is located on the beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast. See more at: www.beauvoir.org

The New York Times reported the death of Jefferson Davis;

New Orleans, December 8, 1889---Quote "A careful tally of the visitors shows that about 40,000 persons, mostly women and children, viewed the remains today. This crowd included, in solemn and respectful attendance, all conditions of Whites, Blacks, ex-Confederates, ex-Federals, and even Indians and Chinamen." ---Unquote

Davis' Death was also the page 1 story in Dixie;

Excerpt: http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=204067&c=11

(Excerpt) Read more at accessnorthga.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: confederacy; dixie; jeffersondavis; southernheritage
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To: investigateworld
Again the Union treatment of Confederate Pow’s where no better Ft Delaware, comes to mind in any case the fact is neither can brag about how they ran the prison camps.
161 posted on 11/19/2007 1:06:54 PM PST by StoneWall Brigade (Duncan Hunter 08!)
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To: investigateworld

recommend it. Once you get to the Monument, you can see how that ridge hid the bulk of the Indian encampment.

But the size of the horse herd, which could be seen, should have been a clue to Custer to rethink his plans

So I’ve been told. I’d like to trailer my motorcyle out to Sturgis, then make the ride from there to Custer’s battlefied memorial.

Saw a ‘battlefield detectives’ episode last year where they tracked the movements of a couple of the Indian warriors via the slugs they found all over the battlefield. Facinating, and completely changes the oft repeated ‘history’ of that battle.


162 posted on 11/19/2007 1:08:15 PM PST by Badeye (That Karma thing keeps coming around, eh Sally? (chuckle))
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus

Lincoln made this early on, and judging by his refusal to negotiate before his inauguration, he probably believed this, basing his judgement on his knowledge of opinion in Kentucky, where the public was deeply divided. Stephen Douglas knew better, having campaigned in the South. But Douglas was removed from the scene just when he might have had influence on the Lincoln government. Besides, you are expecting Lincoln to stand on ceremony when his very capital was under siege? This kind of thing is like treating terrorists as prisoners of war.


163 posted on 11/19/2007 1:13:36 PM PST by RobbyS ( CHIRHO)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Like Cuba?

Like Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona.

States which, if they made the voluntary choice (and there's nothing to suggest the choice would have been anything but) to join the Confederacy, would then oblige the Confederate government to protect them, as members of the new union.

No, border states like Kentucky and Missouri where the Confederacy was already recruiting military forces to intimidate Union voters.

As for seizing installations, what else would you do to hostile, foreign military bases that (like it or not) are suddenly within the territory of a foreign country.

Federal land is federal land. You don't get to keep it.

The South attacked Ft. Sumner pre-emptively specifically because it perceived an imminent Northern military threat - the same grounds Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq (correctly, I might add).

It was known to both parties that Fort Sumter would have been starved out without firing a shot. There was no incentive for the defenders of the fort to initiate hostilities and Confederate officials at the time and in retrospect admitted that the decision to fire on the fort was hotheaded and an unwarranted strategic blunder that gained the Confederacy nothing and handed the Union a moral victory.

Southern politicians and papers had threatened war if Lincoln was elected. I am not aware of any Northern movement to go to war if Breckenridge had won the Presidency.

One of the things that shocked foreign visitors to DC in the last days of the Buchanan administration was that the President had taken no steps at all to erect defenses or summon troops to the capital. The first significant flow of federal troops did not even enter DC for defensive (let alone offensive) purposes until after Lincoln was inaugurated - the Confederate forces at First Bull Run were almost numerically identical to the Union forces - had the Union been on as serious a war footing as the Confederacy, they could easily have had three times as many.

In other words, better to maintain a slave economy and go to war than to attempt to diversify one's economic activity.

That's why slavery is the ONLY thing 99% of people think about when they think of the Civil War.

The abolition of slavery was one of the most radical social and political developments in American history.

You argument is not based upon a sound knowledge of the Constitution, but upon a rehashing of "popular knowledge" which you probably picked up in school.

You be quite red-faced if you understood how deeply flawed your assumption is.

I repeat: the state governments which disobeyed the supreme law of the land and engaged in an illegal secession were illegitimate non-governments - rebellious entities which it was the federal government's responsibility to suppress so that the constitutional government of the state could be reasserted.

So do you believe that ANY decision made by an elected State government in the South, prior to 1860, would be illegitimate because blacks had no role in electing the governments?

No, because that was the law under the Cosntitution. When you throw the Constitution out the window, however, all bets are off.

164 posted on 11/19/2007 1:16:13 PM PST by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: StoneWall Brigade
Again the Union treatment of Confederate Pow’s where no better Ft Delaware, comes to mind in any case the fact is neither can brag about how they ran the prison camps.

No argument here.

But even before the prisoner swaps were ended, the North was 'trading healthy men for skeletons', or so a number of witnesses testimonies have stated.

But then the idea of Americans fighting their fellow Americans never made a lick of sense.

165 posted on 11/19/2007 1:16:13 PM PST by investigateworld ( Those BP guys will do more prison time than nearly all Japanese war criminals ...thanks Bush!)
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To: Non-Sequitur
Not overstated in the slightest. By 1861 because of the 3/5ths clause the South had it's population inflated by around 1.8 million for the purpose of determining House seats. That was worth about 20 extra congressional seats to them.

Nonsense. The Free States still have roughly twice the number of Representatives as the Slave States (including those that didn't secede). Your claim is abjectly ridiculous. The South didn't fear being overwhelmed in the House, where they already were greatly outnumbered. They feared that the Senate would eventually go against them, since by 1860 (and for a great while before that) the numbers were more evenly divided. They believed (rightly or wrongly) that Northern preponderance in both Houses, in additional to the obvious electoral advantage in Presidential elections, would eventually be used against them to meddle in their internal affairs (extending beyond slavery) and to enforced economically disadvantageous trade policies upon them.

166 posted on 11/19/2007 1:18:38 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Conservatives - Freedom WITH responsibility; Libertarians - Freedom FROM responsibility)
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To: wideawake
No American who knows his history can give unqualified praise to the Confederacy.

Nor to the "defense" of the Union ...

167 posted on 11/19/2007 1:20:58 PM PST by IronJack (=)
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To: Non-Sequitur

Well, that would be one factor. That’s because they needed the black troopers ro serve as occupation troops. The blacks proved 180,000 bodies to the cause. But the Southerners nver availed themselves of that resource, even though men like Pat Clebourne saw the light. But then he was a foreigner.


168 posted on 11/19/2007 1:22:08 PM PST by RobbyS ( CHIRHO)
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To: BnBlFlag

Wonder how today’s traitors will be remembered in 40 years?


169 posted on 11/19/2007 1:22:35 PM PST by purpleraine
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To: Badeye
The Little Bighorn battlefield site is just off of Interstate 90, so it isn't quite in the middle of nowhere.

If you want the middle of nowhere, visit Bears Paw battlefield in northern Montana (south of Chinook), where Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians were forced to surrender in 1877...very isolated and evocative place.

170 posted on 11/19/2007 1:24:06 PM PST by Verginius Rufus
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
The South believed themselves to have a long train of abuses, so they felt themselves legitimate in seceding.

Completely and utterly irrelevant. The slave states constituted 20% of the free population and had 37% of Congressional representation.

They had a more than full voice in their government - their situation was completely different from that of the colonies.

I'm mistaken for not picking up on your original mistake? So, you don't like Joseph Story anymore, then?

And as I said before, Jackson was simply incorrect in his understanding of the Constitution.

LOL! Of course, of course. Joseph Story is all wet, so is President Jackson.

Again, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. If a state wants to secede, it has to ask the federal government for permission. Otherwise, it is out of luck.

171 posted on 11/19/2007 1:26:17 PM PST by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: IronJack
Nor to the "defense" of the Union ...

What is there to dispraise in the defense of the Union?

172 posted on 11/19/2007 1:27:00 PM PST by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Ironically, the only justification the federal government might have had for sending troops into the seceded States was if the non-secessionary parts of the population had revolted, and that to put down the NON-secessionists (ignoring the sovereignty issues involved with now-separate governments).

Ah, the old "have your cake and secede from it, too" position. If, by your argument, southern states did, in fact, secede and were no longer part of the USA, those state governments and their citizens enjoyed no more constitutional protection than the citizens of Mexico do. In that case, they were a hostile nation on the border of the United States, building a large army and opening fire on US forces occupying land to which the United States held title.

You can't declare yourself a foreign country, start shooting, then complain when you get treated like one.

173 posted on 11/19/2007 1:28:13 PM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Nonsense. The Free States still have roughly twice the number of Representatives as the Slave States (including those that didn't secede).

So? The Constitution does award representation based on population, and even with the 3/5ths rule the free states still had more people. The South can hardly complain about that.

Your claim is abjectly ridiculous.

No it is not. The South had over 3 million slaves. Because of the 3/5th rule, the Southern population was 1.8 million higher for purposes of determining representation that without it. And in the South, the slaves had no need for congressional representation because in the eyes of the Southerners they were property and not people. It'd be like the North pressing for each horse or dog be counted as 3/5th of a person for Congressional representation.

They feared that the Senate would eventually go against them, since by 1860 (and for a great while before that) the numbers were more evenly divided. They believed (rightly or wrongly) that Northern preponderance in both Houses, in additional to the obvious electoral advantage in Presidential elections, would eventually be used against them to meddle in their internal affairs (extending beyond slavery) and to enforced economically disadvantageous trade policies upon them.

Really? And what affairs, other than slavery, did they think the North would meddle in?

174 posted on 11/19/2007 1:30:41 PM PST by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus

I happen to have read Justice Joseph Story’s textbook on the Constitution just several months ago. Fascinating! But I don’t recall anything in there encouraging or contemplating secession of states from the Union. Story was a federalist from Massachusetts, a Harvard Law professor and long-term US Supreme Court justice who died in 1845.


175 posted on 11/19/2007 1:32:46 PM PST by justiceseeker93
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To: wideawake
No, border states like Kentucky and Missouri where the Confederacy was already recruiting military forces to intimidate Union voters.

You mean border States where the federal forces had already unseated lawfully elected Governours and State legislatures, on the fear that they might go secessionist? Or like in Maryland, where Lincoln had the legislature deposed?

Federal land is federal land. You don't get to keep it.

I don't argue with you there, but I do think it's mystifying why you think the South should have left bases all across its underbelly for the North to attack from, as the North had already given every indication of having the intention of doing.

It was known to both parties that Fort Sumter would have been starved out without firing a shot. There was no incentive for the defenders of the fort to initiate hostilities and Confederate officials at the time and in retrospect admitted that the decision to fire on the fort was hotheaded and an unwarranted strategic blunder that gained the Confederacy nothing and handed the Union a moral victory.

Except that, contrary to previous agreement, the North surruptitiously tried to resupply the soldiers at Ft. Sumter. Given the tensions at the time, it seems pretty logical to think that if a hostile power is attempting to reply their fort, after they had already officially agreed not to, that they're doing it for some sort of militarily aggressive purpose.

Southern politicians and papers had threatened war if Lincoln was elected. I am not aware of any Northern movement to go to war if Breckenridge had won the Presidency.

I never said they didn't. I said that the South actually mobilised when the federal government began to mobilise troops and armaments - and this federal mobilisation was what drove some of the less hard-core secessionist States into the Confederacy.

One of the things that shocked foreign visitors to DC in the last days of the Buchanan administration was that the President had taken no steps at all to erect defenses or summon troops to the capital. The first significant flow of federal troops did not even enter DC for defensive (let alone offensive) purposes until after Lincoln was inaugurated - the Confederate forces at First Bull Run were almost numerically identical to the Union forces - had the Union been on as serious a war footing as the Confederacy, they could easily have had three times as many.

Not really, the North had been calling up troops since shortly after the election, and preparing them. Now, this mobilisation may have been pre-emptive, per the previously printed threats of secession if Lincoln should win (and thus, WOULD have been a logical act), but the fear of these mobilisations incited the South to likewise prepare itself. The South was numerically in par at Bull Run because Bull Run was in Virginia - the South's most populous State, and hence the largest source of recruits was right at hand - and because the North was so inept at organising and conducting its mobilisation efforts.

In other words, better to maintain a slave economy and go to war than to attempt to diversify one's economic activity.

What ired the South was the Northern attempts to impose their own economic views (far beyond the slavery issue) upon the South. Whether on slavery or any other issue of the day, the Southerners themselves saw it as an issue of interference into the internal affairs of the States contrary to the Constitution. What YOU think about it is irrelevant - you're coming at it ~140 years later and from a position you learned from a child, and probably have had reinforced all through college and further.

You be quite red-faced if you understood how deeply flawed your assumption is.

Well, I don't need to assume that your Constitutional knowledge is lacking, at least in this area, since I've seen it openly displayed in your discussion about the relevant parts of that document.

I repeat: the state governments which disobeyed the supreme law of the land and engaged in an illegal secession were illegitimate non-governments - rebellious entities which it was the federal government's responsibility to suppress so that the constitutional government of the state could be reasserted.

No they didn't because there WAS NO supreme law of the land forbidding secession. Again, there is nothing in the Constitution that forbids secession - nothing at all. The previous sections quoted did not deal with secession, but nullification (which ARE, in fact, two different issues - the former I believe is legitimate, the latter is NOT legitimate constitutionally).

No, because that was the law under the Cosntitution. When you throw the Constitution out the window, however, all bets are off.

That's essentially what your arguing for, however. There's nothing in the Constitution stating or implying that secession - as a specific political act - is unconstitutional or illegal. Your "assuming in" popular knowledge about what people "think" the Constitution says, but are not going by what the actual TEXT says. Your argument is somewhat akin to those made by Ron Paul people who assume that the Constitution says that the government must "declare war", using that term, for a war to be "legal", when in fact, the document says no such thing.

176 posted on 11/19/2007 1:37:47 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Conservatives - Freedom WITH responsibility; Libertarians - Freedom FROM responsibility)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
No, slavery was the emotional question. One of many in the totality of issues. It was there, but it was the public face for larger economic issues which loomed for the past few decades.

Actually, no, those smaller economic issues could have been settled by compromise as they always were if it weren't for slavery, which, at least for the slave states was the largest of economic issues.

Which is an irrelevant argument for an age when, even in the most progressive Northern States, only a small minority of the population (white males at or above a certain economic status) would have been able to exercise the franchise anywise.

I believe most of those property restrictions were repealed in the Jacksonian era, twenty or thirty years before the Civil War.

177 posted on 11/19/2007 1:38:39 PM PST by x
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To: wideawake
Completely and utterly irrelevant. The slave states constituted 20% of the free population and had 37% of Congressional representation.

They had a more than full voice in their government - their situation was completely different from that of the colonies.

Nope, not irrelevant. Their decision had to be made upon what THEY perceived their situation to be - not what YOU think about it. And ultimately, whether you think the Southern States were right or wrong in seceding in their particular circumstance and time, you still haven't made the Constitutional case that States, as a general rule, don't have the right of secession from the union.

And as I said before, FWIW, while I acknowledge the right to secession, I don't think it would have been in the best interests of the our nation, or history as a whole, for the South to have successfully seceded. I support secession as a principle, but agree with most of the Founders and their generation who spoke on the subject that, while it is a right of the States, it's not a good idea most of the time.

I'm mistaken for not picking up on your original mistake? So, you don't like Joseph Story anymore, then?

No, but you ARE mistaken for noting cluing into the fact that I wasn't arguing from Story or with, but corrected my mis-statement as I had meant to type "Rawle". You then proceeded to continue trying to argue with me about Story, while ignoring what I meant, and SAID that I meant.

LOL! Of course, of course. Joseph Story is all wet, so is President Jackson.

Not all wet, but wrong nevertheless.

Again, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. If a state wants to secede, it has to ask the federal government for permission. Otherwise, it is out of luck.

Oh yeah? Where's it actually SAY that, however? More of those penumbras, I guess?

178 posted on 11/19/2007 1:47:55 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Conservatives - Freedom WITH responsibility; Libertarians - Freedom FROM responsibility)
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To: justiceseeker93
I happen to have read Justice Joseph Story’s textbook on the Constitution just several months ago. Fascinating! But I don’t recall anything in there encouraging or contemplating secession of states from the Union. Story was a federalist from Massachusetts, a Harvard Law professor and long-term US Supreme Court justice who died in 1845.

That's because I had meant to cite William Rawle's commentary, but had Story on the brain. Rawle's the Pennsylvania Yankee who took roughly the same position on secession as I do - it's a right of the States, but one to be used only with the greatest discretion, not flippantly.

179 posted on 11/19/2007 1:49:44 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Conservatives - Freedom WITH responsibility; Libertarians - Freedom FROM responsibility)
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To: Non-Sequitur
So? The Constitution does award representation based on population, and even with the 3/5ths rule the free states still had more people. The South can hardly complain about that.

In the House, but not in the Senate. Wideawake's original argument was bogus because he was trying to argue that the South feared losing its position of prominence in the House, a prominence which I pointed out that it never had to begin with. WA's argument was a straw-man.

No it is not. The South had over 3 million slaves. Because of the 3/5th rule, the Southern population was 1.8 million higher for purposes of determining representation that without it. And in the South, the slaves had no need for congressional representation because in the eyes of the Southerners they were property and not people. It'd be like the North pressing for each horse or dog be counted as 3/5th of a person for Congressional representation.

Yes, his claim WAS abjectly ridiculous. He argued that the South feared losing political prominence in the House of Representatives - a prominence which was impossible for it to have, even counting 60% of the slave population.

Really? And what affairs, other than slavery, did they think the North would meddle in?

Free trade, for one.

180 posted on 11/19/2007 1:53:02 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Conservatives - Freedom WITH responsibility; Libertarians - Freedom FROM responsibility)
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