Perspective: Die-hard Confederates should be reconstructed

St. Augustine Record ^ | 09/27/2003 | Peter Guinta

[sheltonmac]

Lincoln viewed secession as impossible.

And as we all know, Lincoln's beliefs trump the Constitution.

[republicanwizard]

The Constitution doesn't recognize the right to secede whenever a state feels its right to enslave its citizens is being abridged.

The President is the sworn enforcer of the laws and Constitution of the United States. The President was Abraham Lincoln.

[cyborg]

Do you need to be reconstructed?

[Texas_Dawg]

insanity ping

[warchild9]

"Citizenship" doesn't have to be enforced at gunpoint. The state of being a "subject" does.

[republicanwizard]

Well, Southerners evidently felt that a person's lack of citizenship, I mean being a slave, could be defended at gunpoint. So why not the acquisition or maintenance of citizenship?

[UncleJeff]

Gen'l Lee felt called on to surrender, given the circumstances facing him and his command, and I will not fault him for his decision.

I have never felt that way.

Forget, hell.

[stainlessbanner]

Lincoln viewed secession as impossible.

'Any people whatsoever have the right to abolish the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right.'

-Lincoln 1848

[republicanwizard]

Thank God he did. How many men had to die before the South would realize that a man is not born to be a slave?

[republicanwizard]

As usual twisting out of context. Lincoln was referring to the Constitutional provision for revising the Government.

[Paul C. Jesup]

What is so noble about turning one's sword on the government and country that gave him the sword?

That question could be applied to the Founding Fathers also.

Do you think that this nation did not have a right to secede from England?

[Cobra Scott]

Taken one step farther, your views do not support the interpretation of the 2nd amendment as a check against domestic tyranny.

Yes, they should have shot everyone. Especially the slaves who fought beside and in place of their owners. Men, women children, all of them. After all, they were criminals, right? Why, I'm sure you can point out numerous cases where these instigators were convicted of treason....

Surely you can. Can't you?

[republicanwizard]

"That question could be applied to the Founding Fathers also."

You are forgetting the justification for both men turning on their native countries.

If you would compare Washington, who fought to keep us from being enslaved, to Lee, who fought to keep men slaves, then that says more about you than the comparable justification.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Why do people like you keep posting articles like this? You're like the foolish darwin award winner that decided to start a fire in a nitro factory.

[Held_to_Ransom]

Therefore, though they might claim a new allegiance, the Confederates were still legally citizens of the United States.

And therefore traitors. They really shouldn't be buried under the US flag. Better an unmarked grave.

The state governments ceased to have legitimacy when they seceded, but the citizens of the states who didn't take arms against the United States government (close to half if not more than half) were always US citizens, and not necessarily traitors. Since all southern soldiers and sailers were drafted, they all have an excuse to claim they weren't willing traitors, but they also had plenty of opportunity to enlist in the Union Army as the war went on, and indeed, a very great number did so. Certainly southerners who served in the Union Army should be buried under a US flag whether they were forced to fight under the traitor flag before that or not, but to my knowledge, none of the Hunley crew fell into that category.

[Paul C. Jesup]

You're avoiding the question.

[Question_Assumptions]

"Citizenship" doesn't have to be enforced at gunpoint. The state of being a "subject" does.

Unlike "subjects", Americans are free to leave whenever they want. What's stopping you?

[Cobra Scott]

I ask you then, where are the verdicts from the trials which convicted these traitors?

Consider that some where active abolutionists who felt a duty to fight for the political entity they supported (at that time a state).

[republicanwizard]

You mean the male slaves whom the South denied of their manhood for their entire lives. You mean the enslaved women whom the masters and their evil deputies whipped and abused and treated like animals. You mean the children of slaves whom you denied an education.

I suppose, being that you whipped them when they refused to work, that they were afraid that you would whip them when they failed to fight for your unconstitutional, unamerican, unpatriotic rebellion against all that makes this country a model to the world.

[warchild9]

Arguing about slavery is a red herring, as irrelevant as arguments about Lincoln's sexual preferences.
An appropriate contemporary argument would concern the meaning of citizenship, and whether politicians, for whatever reason, have a right to maintain their power over others using force, and whether the Constitution as a contract concedes adherence to the Union under threat of death.