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 ...
Agreed.
Evils more alarming may readily be perceived. The destruction of the common band would be unavoidably attended with more serious consequences than the mere disunion of the parts.Separation would produce jealousies and discord, which in time would ripen into mutual hostilities, and while our country would be weakened by internal war, foreign enemies would be encouraged to invade with the flattering prospect of subduing in detail, those whom, collectively, they would dread to encounter.
(...)
In every aspect therefore which this great subject presents, we feel the deepest impression of a sacred obligation to preserve the union of our country; we feel our glory, our safety, and our happiness, involved in it; we unite the interests of those who coldly calculate advantages with those who glow with what is little short of filial affection; and we must resist the attempt of its own citizens to destroy it, with the same feelings that we should avert the dagger of the parricide.
Yes, I am thinking of Rawle's book, but it was written in 1825 - Davis graduated West Point in 1828, so actually it WAS written (literally) when Davis was at West Point.
Buy the time of Chancellorsville the South had been cut in half at Vicskburg, had lost their largest city at New Orleans as well as most of Tennessee and large parts of Mississippi and Arkansas. Their armies had been beat consistently all over the West, any chance of European recognition was dead, their economy was in ruins and the blockade was growing stronger every day. A very strong case could be made that any chance for confederate sovereignty died on April 12, 1861 and it just took 4 years for the body to hit the floor.
The southern states which formed their sub-government violated the Constitution:
“Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;—And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.”
Your comments represent the epitome of the level of teaching most in government schools.
He, and many many others believed the South had a right to ‘succeed’ from the Union, based on their interpretation of the Constitution.
And TQC responded:
An interpretation which he learned at West Point while studying the Constitution from Joseph Story's gold-standard textbook (at the time).
To which Badeye said:
Yep
I quote from Joseph Story's Commentary, Chapter XV, paragraph 1096, footnote 91 in which he approvingly quotes President Jackson:
"The constitution of the United States, then, forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact between the states or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a government, in which all the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the states; they retained all the power they did not grant. But each state having expressly parted with so many powers, as to constitute jointly with the other states a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation; and any injury to that unity is not only a breach, which would result from the contravention of a compact; but it is an offence against the whole Union To say, that any state may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say, that the United States were not a nation; because it would be a solecism to contend, that any part or a nation might dissolve its connexion with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offence. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms; and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those, who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before 'they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent on a failure.
"Because the Union was formed by compact, it is said the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact, that they cannot. A compact is an agreement, or binding obligation. It may, by its terms, have a sanction or penalty for its breach, or it may not. If it contains no sanction, it may be broken with no other consequence, than moral guilt: if it have a sanction, then the breach incurs the designated or implied penalty. A league between independent nations, generally, has no sanction, other than a moral one; or, if it should contain a penalty, as there is no common superior, it cannot be enforced. A government, on the contrary, always has a sanction, express or implied; and in our case, it is both necessarily implied, and expressly given. An attempt by force of arms to destroy a government, is an offence, by whatever means the constitutional compact may have been formed; and such. government has the right, by the law of self-defence, to pass acts for punishing the offender, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed by the constitutional act. In our system, although it is modified in the case of treason, yet authority is expressly given to pass all laws necessary to carry its powers into effect, and under this grant provision has been made for punishing acts, which obstruct the due administration or the laws."
“What a petty, dumb and hateful little man he was.
Sounds like you’re describing yourself, Boy.
You recall incorrectly. I've read up on Davis and I'm not familiar with a single quote from him advocating, or even suggesting any end to slavery. On the contrary, slavery made Davis a very wealthy man for the times and he would have been a fool to suggest killing the goose who was laying his golden eggs. In fact, I am not aware of a single Southern leader of the time who was calling for an early end to slavery on any terms whatsoever. All expected slavery to continue and that it would be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren.
Regardless, even if the South HAD won, slavery would have ended by 1880, dying of natural causes.
Again, you would not have found a single Southern leader in 1861 who would have agreed with that.
I'll play along. Let's pretend that secession was legal. What was the Southern justifications for secession? The constitutional election of a president?
Thanks.
Davis deserves his own ‘thread’ in my opinion. These attempts at making things ‘equal’ when they clearly were not is ridiculous.
It avoids, for example, the fact officers were treated better by both sides than the average private, for just one example. It also fails to note it was the Union that stopped ‘prisoner exchanges’.
Some don’t want to recall those things, for the obvious reasons.
A statement not supported by the evidence. Davis was indicted for treason and preparations for his trial continued right up until Chief Justice Chase made it clear that he wouldn't convict on his Constitutional grounds. It was the fact that the two judges would have split that prevented a trial, not lack of evidence.
The Southern States felt that they, likewise, had sufficient cause. The issues involved - slavery, tarriffs vs. free trade, sectional antagonisms, interference in internal State affairs - had been going on for decades. The Southern States didn't make their decisions on the spur of the moment, they were responding to decades of feelings (right or wrong) that they were getting the shaft from the other sections of the country. Some of it was the issue of the extension of slavery - though even then, slavery itself was not so much the issue as was the balance of political power at the federal level through the addition of new States carved our of slave and free territories. Some of it was tariffs vs. free trade. The North wanted tariffs to protect its manufactures, and the South wanted free trade so as to sell its agricultural products to Britain and France. The North wanted tariffs for two reasons - to make money off of abundant Southern exports through federal taxation, and to "encourage" the redirection of Southern cotton away from industry in Europe and towards the Northern States. And, people being people, a lot of it was just hurt pride, on both sides. The North and South were involved in a giant urination match with each other for decades, and the South felt that the balance of power was going against them, and that nothing they said or did would ameliorate the situation, which they thought was going to go increasingly against them and overwhelm then with "Yankee interference". In short, the South DID feel they had legitimate cause, a long train of offences (real or imagined), to justify dissolving their bonds to the union.
“What was the Southern justifications for Seccession”?
What difference would it make. Maybe Southerners got out of the wrong side of the bed that day. So what. It was still legal.
Was it sad in the south because he died young? Did he have a long life? I guess I don’t know what you mean by sad day. Was it worse then when Ronald Reagan Died? That was a pretty sad day. I am sure that the day John Kennedy died was a sad day. I was not born in 1889 or 1963 so I don’t have that experience but purhaps you could give some insight. Thanks.
‘Actually, I’d say they had numerous chances to win the war, but failed to capitalize on them, the last time being Chancellorsville.
Buy the time of Chancellorsville the South had been cut in half at Vicskburg,’
Chancellorsville was fought on May 1st and 2nd, 1863.
The Seige of Vickburg didn’t being til June 18th, 1863.
And didn’t end til July 4th, 1863.
Even if one were to imagine that secession were constitutional - which it emphatically is not - it is the Confederacy which inaugurated hostilities.
The Confederacy made war on the Union.
Slavery, while being one of many issues, was NOT as much of a driving force as our pabulum-fed school kids are taught today to believe.
Secession was initiated as a response to the election of Abraham Lincoln and the concomitant fear that a Lincoln administration would see the admission of enough non-slave states to permanently overrule the slave state minority in the House and Senate. While a host of issues stoked the fires of rebellion, slavery was the central question.
It's a little hard to protect States you believe to still be in the union when you are actively invading them
The federal government has a responsibility to protect the people of the United States from rebellion, whether they constitute a minority of a state's population or not.
And, of course, 40% of the South's population was not even allowed a voice at the polls during the wave of secessions.
“What difference would it make. Maybe Southerners got out of the wrong side of the bed that day. So what. It was still legal.”
************
Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that a sub-federal juristiction has any right to ignore federal law or the federal Constitution.
Are you now, or have you ever been a slave?
You say potato.....(chuckle)
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