Posted on 03/28/2008 12:15:10 PM PDT by cowboyway
My point was that, Lieber and Southron myth sites to the contrary notwithstanding, a trial of Davis would not have determined secession to be unconstitutional. Especially since one of the two judges who would have heard the trial later ruled the confederate acts of secession unconstitutional in Texas v. White.
Oh, and Andrew Johnson's Attorney General was Henry Stanberry, not Henry Stanburg. What else did Conner get wrong?
Yeah, really.
No, not so much.
Where exactly in the Constitution of the Confederate States of America does it prohibit secession?
Jeff Davis was a poor choice to lead the confederacy.
Which is exactly the reason why they didn't pursue the trial.
But that's not what you were implying. By your quotes you were trying to imply that the trial of Davis didn't proceed because he couldn't have been convicted because secession wasn't illegal. Any such acquittal would have done no such thing. The question of the constitutionality of the southern acts of unilateral secession was settled separately in Texas v. White. And the justice that wrote the majority opinion in that case was the same Chief Justice Chase who would have sat in judgement at a Davis trial.
Depends on your point of view. From the Union's standpoint they could hardly have hoped for a better opponent.
Making up history again, eh.
His was charged unjustly with crimes for which he demanded trial in vain, and after two years of imprisonment which disgraced his enemies was released on bond. A nolle prosequi was entered in his case in 1869, and thus he was never brought to the trial which he earnestly demanded.
After he was released, he traveled to Europe on a couple of occasions and other Southern states. He also wrote a couple of books.
If you don't like him or what he stood for, that's one thing. But making up lies simply reinforces the Southern opinion of yankees.
It's not an implication. The yankee lawyers wanted no part of this case because secession would have been found to be legal and Davis would have been acquitted.
A nolle prosequi was entered in his case and his disgraced enemies set him free.
If only we could have had the good fortune of a Honest Abe leading the Confederacy.................
/sarc
Or so your Southron myth site say. You might want to look at some reputable sources. There were a lot of reasons why he wasn't tried, but fear that secession would be found legal wasn't one of them.
A nolle prosequi was entered in his case and his disgraced enemies set him free.
Because one of the two judges in the case, Chief Justice Chase, made it clear that he would throw out a conviction on 5th Amendment grounds. The 14th Amendment having been ratified, Chase believed that the clause in that amendment prohibiting the rebel leadership from ever again holding a position of trust in any government represented punishment for their treason. A further trial and conviction would violate Davis's protections against double jeopardy.
You might have won.
Buell's orders to Anderson, dated Dec. 11, 1860, gave him the authority to move his forces to whatever of the forts he deemed most proper.
The "Rhoda Shannon." I think it's usually attributed to trigger happy South Carolinians and a ship's captain who didn't know the situation he was sailing into and made the mistake, after the first shots across his bow, of raising the Stars and Stripes.
One of these factors may have been protective and other tariffs. I'm sure you will also agree that it is human nature to blame your problems on factors caused by others rather than on your own failures as an individual or society. So when southerners thought of their problems they certainly had an incentive to blame it on the North.
Nevertheless, if a federal (or confederate) government were to be maintained, funds would have to be raised. Most of the apologists for the South seem to assume that tariffs could be dumped and the government run on air. Tariffs on imports are easily collected and require minimal intrusion on the lives of those who eventually pay the tax.
Since southerners objected to the tariff, I assume they had other proposed mechanisms for raising money. Perhaps a direct tax imposed on each slave, the single largest category of property in the South? LOL
It is quite obvious that the South had dominated the copuntry up through 1850 by allying itself with the agrarian northwest against the industrializing northeast.
They they went too far. The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision caused the considerable majority of folks in the northwest to ally themselves with the northeast against the south. The northwest viewed freedom as even more important. IMO the south viewed maintaining the absence of freedom as equally important.
Sectional aggrandizement and partial legislation favoring the North were listed as causes for secession in at least the Texas and Georgia cause documents.
Agreed. However, I believe all or almost all of the state documents listed threats to the institution of slavery as their primary reason.
Using your numbers above, the South apparently viewed paying $20M/year in "tribute" to the North as a greater problem than even a potential threat to accumulated capital worth well over $2,000M.
I just finished Foote’s book. LONG.
If I remember correctly, he says that when the Davis camp was attacked by Union cavalry he grabbed a rain cape and attempted to escape into the woods. In the confusion, it appears he grabbed his wife’s cape rather than his own. The northern papers had great fun with this and exaggerated it greatly, as they did in the early days of Lincoln’s presidency with stories that he had sneaked into DC in disguise.
I suspect Clemenza was referencing Davis’ betrayal of the USA, not the CSA.
Yes, he did travel to Europe and even received visitors form the continent in Biloxi (including Oscar Wilde). Nevertheless, his writings did much to rehabilitate his reputation.
Okay, I partially misspoke, to use a recently popular expression.
On reviewing information about the Convention, it appears that provisions both specifically allowing and specifically prohibiting secession were discussed and rejected.
In the preamble, they then tried to have it both ways.
“We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
They cited the people of the states, acting as sovereign and independent bodies, as establishing the constitution, rather than the People of the United States as a body, as in the US Constitution. This is obviously an attempt to make states more important and central than in the original.
They they tried to take it back by saying that they were establishing a “permanent federal government,” which had not been spelled out in the original. Surely if the government is to be permanent then states cannot secede whenever they feel like it. Otherwise the government is an alliance, not a federal union.
The issues embedded in this contradiction continued throughuot the war and played some considerable part in its loss.
We did win.
See, that's what I mean when I say you've got to stop getting all your information off Southron fairy tale sites.
I wonder when they were going to get around to that, since their fight seemed to be based upon a blatant and oppressive lack of justice?
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