The War Is Over - So Why The Bitterness?

"The fact that it is acceptable to put a Confederate flag on a car *bumper and to portray Confederates as brave and gallant defenders of states’ rights rather than as traitors and defenders of slavery is a testament to 150 years of history written by the losers." - Ohio State Professer Steven Conn in a recent piece at History News Network (No, I'll not difnigy his bitterness by providing a link)

Okay, in #64 you link to Durand's site, except you don't actually cite anything from him. In #68 you again link to Durand's site. In #292, you cite a PBS website the proves that a Rhode Island family was involved in the slave trade. In #325 you cite a 1927 apologia for secession, and in #481 you cite a blog post. I am humbled before your scholarship and your wealth of original sources.

Exactly right.

In familiar fashion, the blog post Philly cites in 481 makes the assertion...

His [Davis] release came after a finding by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, that there was nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibited the secession of states. If secession was not illegal, neither Davis nor any other Confederate leaders could be guilty of treason.

....and adds a hyperlinked footnote [2].

But clicking on the footnote takes you...nowhere...right back to the same blog.

Typical neo-secessionist "scholarship".

LOL! Bravo, mac! Where to start?

the blog post Philly cites in 481 makes the assertion...

First, you fail at reading. The blog starts with:

So I was surfing the ‘Net recently...when I came across a...page that made some interesting assertions:

then follows some cited text including your out-of-context quote, proceeded by:

Despite my dim knowledge of Civil War history, I found the bolded passage rather odd, since even I knew that Chief Justice Chase was not a Confederate sympathizer...It turns out my initial suspicion was correct: about the only things the aforementioned account gets right are...

at which point he proceeds to dismantle the quote you posted as if the blogger himself "asserted" it.

But clicking on the footnote takes you...nowhere...right back to the same blog.

Now not only do you fail at reading and comprehension, but also scrolling! You see, footnotes are at the bottom of a page. That's why they're called fooooootnotes. So had you read all those big words, or simply scrolled down a little, you'd find:
[2] A variant on this assertion, to the effect that, “the majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court at that time acknowledged the right of secession”, can be found here.

That then links to another blog.

Of course to validate any of the research on the blog, you'd have to read some of these mystical things called books, court rulings and memoirs he included for reference (though i've heard footnotes are pretty cryptic for some people). Then you may have to read the sources of some of THOSE books to validate or refute their conclusions.

Or you can stay ignorant and flame the message boards. Either way, your ignorance or scholarship doesn't change a single piece of history, so just do whatever's easier.

First and foremost garbage_truck, federal courts cannot decide the issue of secession. That decision rest equally on the shoulders of ultimate sovereigns, the people themselves.

If my State decided (and I hope they do) that you pinkos are more interested in wearing evening gowns than following a strict interpretation of the constitution, leaving you wallowing in socialist manure. That decision is ours and ours alone. Your courts can rule it unconstitutional all they wish, I don't care. Why should I care when they are to blame, just as you are, for the growth of Fedzilla.

Sure. I guess you could take us to International court, since we would be an Independent Country. That would work against you, wouldn't it? The fact is the United States has been at the forefront of helping other Countries win their Independence. And the most recent ruling regarding Kosovo by an International court would leave you one huge dog emblem short on your Mac_truck.

Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve, 1814 ending all hostilities.

You might want to read Article 11 of the treaty.By its own terms, it didn't come into force until ratified by both sides. That happened in February. It's fun, though, that your position has gone from arguing that the Convention issued its report years after the war ended, to months after, and now to less than two weeks after it was signed, when no one in the United States knew about it.

Slave prices - again, a critical constitutional issue pivotal to this discussion.

Just another exposition of your ignorance.

Don't prices usually rise per the economics of supply and demand? Were they not low when slave trade (supply) was booming internationally in the early 19th century, only to rise steeply when international trade was banned, only to drop again in the 1840s and rise sharply again in the 1850s per trends in cotton and the explosion of Southern railroads (demand)?

Wait, are you now admitting that the cotton trade drove a boom in slave prices? What happened to "the cotton gin was also rapidly DECREASING the value of slaves to slave-owners" like you said earlier?

Ok, so if I rephrase that around 200,000 Northern soldiers deserted (many because of the Proclamation as confirmed by Hooker, Burnside, Grant and other officers), or didn't re-enlist when their terms were up, and enlistments similarly dropped sharply after the Proclamation, despite more financial incentives to join - at which point Lincoln turned to conscription to continue forcing his war on South - does that work for you?

Yes, that is a fair statement. It's also a far cry from where you started.

So again, which judicial proceedings or marshal efforts proved futile to warrant invoking this? I'm sure you know the act was to allow the raisin

Are you actually going to say that a judicial proceeding would have had any effect? That South Carolina, after seceding before Lincoln even took office, would have listened to a court ruling? Read the law. There's no requirement that a certain level of judicial proceedings fail before the president can invoke his powers under the act. And Lincoln's use of the 1795 act was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Prize Cases. From that decision:

Whether the President in fulfilling his duties, as Commander- in-chief, in suppressing an insurrection, has met with such armed hostile resistance, and a civil war of such alarming proportions as will compel him to accord to them the character of belligerents, is a question to be decided by him, and this Court must be governed by the decisions and acts of the political department of the Government to which this power was entrusted

You can't even admit to yourself the possibility "your" version of history is as open-and-shut as you think it is.

I'd say the exact same of you. Except I'd use the word "isn't" instead of "is."

Pure arrogance, which again makes me think you must be a teacher.

Wrong again.

Bubba, Bubba, you're only fooling yourself.

Here's common knowledge (aka wiki):

Massachusetts actually sent three commissioners to Washington, D.C. to negotiate these terms. When they arrived in February, 1815, news of Andrew Jackson's stunning victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, preceded them and, consequently, their presence in the capital seemed both ludicrous and subversive. They quickly returned. Thereafter, both Hartford Convention and Federalist Party became synonymous with disunion, secession, and treason, especially in the South. The party was ruined, and survived only in a few localities for several more years before vanishing entirely.

I guess wiki is a Lost Causer too?

It's a beautiful thing when you keep going back to the Militia Act. Try as you will, its legality was only against combinations (of individuals) in a state obstructing the law, and was intended to help the States, not attack them. Lincoln referred to the Act verbiage himself in his April 15th proclamation:

Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South Carolina, George, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law:

So the laws are being obstructed by "combinations" in SC, MS, et al...So the representative, republican governments of the States THEMSELVES are now actually "combinations" of rebellious individuals within the states obstructing their laws? That's the foundation of your case, that "combinations in a state" actually means the GOVERNMENT in that state????

Note that Buchanan had already looked at the Act when SC seceded, and determined as "it applied to insurrections within and against the government of a State in the Union, it was utterly inapplicable to a State that had withdrawn from the Union — even if that withdrawal could be proven to be unconstitutional."

So there's your precedent. What transpired over the next couple months that gave Lincoln his power to trump that? Was a government of a State attacked?

Funny enough, the Act also raised militia by (drumroll...) conscription of 6 months (3 per the 1795 act, extended to 6 several years later), so there goes that argument too. (You thought I was going to go back on that, didn't you?)

Another inconvenient fact:

it shall be lawful for the President, if the legislature of the United States be not in session, to call forth and employ such numbers of the militia of any other state or states most convenient thereto, as may be necessary, and the use of militia, so to be called forth, may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the ensuing session.

Of course, while exhausting all options, he called Congress into session immediately on April 15, thus limiting his powers to 30 days...oh wait, no he didn't. Oh well, who's needs restraints anyway?

And you continue to justify illegal actions with packed-court decisions passed AFTER they occurred, as if somehow they somehow traverse space and time. Prize Cases, Texas v White, quite a few acts of Congress, etc. may have all "justified" his behavior after the fact, but they sure didn't legally warrant it at the time he acted.

Massachusetts actually sent three commissioners to Washington, D.C. to negotiate these terms.

Which was done weeks after the Conference published its report, and even then, the treaty had just been ratified.

Of course, if this is the position that you're taking, I suppose you should also criticize Andrew Jackson for fighting the Battle of New Orleans after the treaty he didn't know about had been signed.

I do appreciate that you cut and pasted the part about the Hartford Conference's flirtation with the idea of secession being considered treason, "especially in the south."

So the representative, republican governments of the States THEMSELVES are now actually "combinations" of rebellious individuals within the states obstructing their laws?

In a word, yes.

Note that Buchanan had already looked at the Act...

Buchanan would have found some reason to do nothing, to pass it on to the next guy.

Funny enough, the Act also raised militia by (drumroll...) conscription of 6 months (3 per the 1795 act, extended to 6 several years later), so there goes that argument too.

Calling forth the militia for 90 days (which is what Lincoln did in his April 15 decree) is not the same as conscription.

Oh well, who's needs restraints anyway?

I'm sorry. Did I miss the part of the MIlitia Act that calls for the president to convene congress immediately?

And you continue to justify illegal actions with packed-court decisions passed AFTER they occurred, as if somehow they somehow traverse space and time.

And you continue to somehow expect the court to speak to the legality of actions that haven't occurred yet, as if they somehow traverse time and space. And Lincoln didn't pack the court. That refers to adding members to the court in order to dilute an opposing bloc, as FDR threatened. Lincoln did not add members to the court that decided the case--he replaced three justices who died and one who resigned.

By your logic, despite months of declared cease fire and a signed treaty, the fact that the British violated those agreements several times meant that Americans weren't aware of them? Following that logic, was anyone in America aware that the "war was over" while they continued to fight the British ally Sauks right through 1818? I guess it takes months to get word across the Atlantic, and several years to hit the mid-west. See, you do a fine job educating us here, because I bet you no one knew that!

I happy you appreciate that the mere "flirtations" (as you dismiss them) became synonymous with disunion, secession, and treason, especially in the South. However I'm disappointed that you think especially somehow equates to exclusively. Since the stigma of the convention was significant enough to all but immediately destroy the party of Washington - which was almost exclusively Northern - it's one more curious step in your mountain of infallible logic.

The rest of your post, well, speaks for itself. Thanks for clearing up your position for us, and please let us know if you'd like an extra Lincoln, FDR or Stalin poster for your bedroom walls.

By your logic, despite months of declared cease fire and a signed treaty, the fact that the British violated those agreements several times meant that Americans weren't aware of them?

And by your logic, the delegates of the Hartford Convention should have been telepathically aware of the Treaty of Ghent before word of it actually reached the United States. The Treaty was concluded in Ghent on December 24. On January 2, Henry Carroll, Henry Clay's personal secretary, boarded a ship in London carrying a copy of the treaty. It was bound for Chesapeake Bay, but bad weather forced it land in New York. It arrived there on February 11. Five more days brought it to Washington and ratification.

Now, exactly at what point do you think that the Hartford delegates should have learned of it?

By your logic, despite months of declared cease fire and a signed treaty, the fact that the British violated those agreements several times meant that Americans weren't aware of them?

As for your claim that there had been "months of ceasefire," all I can say is that this appears to be yet another case of you having a different definition than anyone else. When exactly was this ceasefire agreed upon? The British burned Washington in August 1814. They bombarded Ft. McHenry in September. They invaded Louisiana in December. So again I ask, "What ceasefire?"

However I'm disappointed that you think especially somehow equates to exclusively.

Again you seem to think I said things I never said. But I do find it ironic that secession was considered akin to treason when northern states considered it, but that it was the highest form of political expression when the south wanted to do it.

The ignorance is beautiful in its brevity.

I made the case the Northern states pushed for secession just as hard as the South as an example of it's legitimacy and its precedent. That they didn't go through with it was because their biggest grievance all but disappeared by the time the presented their case (the war), and their public humiliation dissolved their party.

The South had no such good fortune to alleviate their concerns, as the antithesis to their grievances made itself known during an inauguration speech. Their concern was validated upon Lincoln's attack at which point their cause grew in support by 4 more states (technically 4, but theoretically 6).

Going for the "treason" angle might be a case where you you seem to think I said things I never said.

You really don't see a difference between discussing secession and then dropping the idea and issuing a declaration announcing yourself seceded

Legally? No. Both clearly legal.
If you disagree and feel secession is treason or rebellion, then merely "discussing" or "flirting" with the idea on the record would warrant conspiracy charges, no? I dare you, no, I triple dog dare you to show me a ruling confirming that.

Practically? Yes. In one case, the grievance ceased to exist; in the other, it escalated to the point of suffocating any hope of diplomatic resolution. And as it's legal, there should no action taken than diplomatic, which at least Buchanen was level-headed enough to see.

Keep holding your breath (please!) on Hartford. I'm sure there's no limit to how far off topic you can take us while hoping to find a coherent, legal case for your central argument (whatever that is). Perhaps the oxygen deficiency could spice things up a bit?

If you disagree and feel secession is treason or rebellion, then merely "discussing" or "flirting" with the idea on the record would warrant conspiracy charges, no? I dare you, no, I triple dog dare you to show me a ruling confirming that.

You seem to have trouble comprehending the meaning of the First Amendment's free speech clause, too. Conspiracy requires an overt act.

Keep holding your breath (please!) on Hartford. I'm sure there's no limit to how far off topic you can take us while hoping to find a coherent, legal case for your central argument (whatever that is).

You're the one who started off claiming that they issued their report years after the war and still clings to the idea that they should have psychically known what was going on in Europe even though word of the treaty didn't reach the US until February 11. And then there's that whole ceasefire thing you claim to have been in place at that time. I'm certainly not holding my breath waiting for you to show any evidence of a lot of things that you claim to be facts.

For the record, though, I don't think that secession in and of itself legally constitutes treason, under the definition in the Constitution, even if that was the popular sentiment that led to the destruction of the Federalist party. It probably falls more under "insurrection" or "rebellion" as defined in the Insurrection Act of 1807:

Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.

Of course, when the rebellion becomes actually goes to war it becomes treasonous under the "levying war" definition of treason in the Constitution.

It probably falls more under "insurrection" or "rebellion" as defined in the Insurrection Act of 1807

You should've left well enough alone when we decided to ignore your Militia Act nonsense.

The Insurrection Act simply amended the Militia Act in response to to Burr's attempt to unilaterally secede The Louisiana territories and possibly Mexico for his own personal profit. The change gave the president power to call the army and navy in addition to militia. Lincoln's proclamation called for the raising of militia, but he was also secretly moving the navy, so who knows which he thought applied, if either (he had a way with his actions not matching his words or the laws.)

Before you fudge an analogy with the CSA, Burr did not represent the government of any sovereignty (State) and make open declarations of secession on behalf of the people...he, and "combinations" of co-conspirators were trying to secretly pry territories away from the U.S.

The change:
"[I]n all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the pre-requisites of the law in that respect."
The specific U.S. codes are here.

The point was (and still is) clear in the text to limit federal/presidential power only to "where lawful" and needed - depending on local/state authorities for the initial response to any insurrections/rebellions, and only deferring to fed help when the respective state response failed.

If this is the new basis on your argument, you again have to ask at what point did SC, MS, TX, et al. fail to suppress a resurrection and defer to federal assistance? To that matter, when did PA, MA, or NJ?

Do you lose a bet or something if you admit Lincoln acted unlawfully? It's a shame if a few bucks are all that stands in the way of you learning something here.

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