Posted on 08/17/2005 11:45:31 AM PDT by Between the Lines
Police powers of the State.
You are aware that Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution allows the suspension of Habeas Corpus "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it," right? What Lincold did was specifically allowed in the US Constitution.
You are correct. I was refering to the imprisonment of certain newspaper editors (from Baltimore, I believe) and how this is used as an example by certain Lincoln haters who choose to ignore the Constitution...
Quite the opposite. The southern states were very much considered part of the United States, the claim contested was that they had [or had no] right to secede. Here is the first paragraph of the Emancipation Proclamation, which makes clear that it was some of the people of certain States--but not the States themselves--which were in rebellion.
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free;
To suggest that the States were in rebellion against the Union is to concede the southern claim that the Civil War was a "War Between the States." People still in rebellion--sadly, some of them posting in this forum--continue to make this claim.
I agree, but I think the historical legal record is cloudier than that.
On the one hand, the Southern States were still considered states, and ratified the 13th Amendment in 1865.
On the other hand, they were forced to go through a readmission process, to redraft their constitutions in order to be readmitted, etc.
So at least legally it's both ways: the States were in, and still undertaking legal acts. But they were out and had to be readmitted after going through hoops.
If one seeks some sort of rational, unifying legal theory, one will not find one.
The juxtaposition of readmission and ongoing official acts is an artifact of the times. The Civil War and its aftermath were as much about the raw exercise of power on all sides as they were about niceties of law. Legally, the two things happening simultaneously really doesn't hold together coherently. But in reality, it doesn't matter. The States had no right to secede, so for some purposes they never left. The States seceded anyway, so they had to be readmitted.
The two treatments were to achieve different political objectives, which were achieved. But the North did not succeed in making Reconstruction stick. It is interesting to reflect on what would have happened had Lincoln lived.
It does not refer to any states being in rebellion. The text was worded very carefully. See #104.
Perhaps more interesting to reflect on what might have happened if Grant had lived, and had not been advised against running for a third term by the Republican Establishment. Grant did enforce the postwar Amendments. The deal ending the Hayes-Tilden standoff and the subsequent withdrawal of Federal troops had as much to do with the failure of Reconstruction as Lincoln's murder.
To suggest that the States were in rebellion against the Union is to concede the southern claim that the Civil War was a "War Between the States." People still in rebellion--sadly, some of them posting in this forum--continue to make this claim.
That the State governments and people of those states were in rebellion against the Union makes it difficult for me not to concede their point. Was the American Revolution a rebellion against England or was it simply the people living in some English colonies that were rebelling against the English crown? What's the difference?
But I don't think that conceding that point makes it impossible to agree with Lincoln's response. Yeah, they were in rebellion. Yeah, the Union decided not to let them go without a fight for a variety of reason. It's not as if we didn't take or keep other parts of the country by force both before and after the Civil War.
Actually, that's a very fair statement.
I have always thought that Grant has been overly vilifed, given his good performance in that most crucial aspect of the post-war period: Reconstruction.
I've come to the conclusion that the Southern faction, of course, HATED Grant in memory because of Reconstruction, and that no Southern historian would write anything good about him. And then when the early movie era glamourized and glorified the old South, most spectacularly in Gone With The Wind, that the shift in popular sentiment (and the desire to reunify the country, and more than a little bit of Northern racism provoked by the Great Migration) muted the voices that might have once defended Grant, while allowing the voices that were always going to tear him to shreds full sway.
I read over and over about how terribly, awfully, rottenly corrupt the country was under Grant.
I have to say I doubt it.
I seriously doubt that the country has ever been much more or much less corrupt than its usual norm, which hovers in the "somewhat corrupt" meter, better than Mexico, worse than Holland. Probably corruption worsened during Prohibition.
Most likely, that which was CALLED corruption - Northern carpetbagging, the gulling of naive newly freed slaves for political votes, etc., was not really corruption per se, just sharp practice in a political environment so full of hatred that Americans had just killed a million of their own kind, give or take.
Grant was probably a heroic President to whom history has become unkind because of the necessity of reunifying the country.
Andrew Johnson, by contrast, seems to have been a pretty lousy President, who paradoxically had his moment of heroism when he defied the Tenure of Office Act, thereby protecting the independence of the Presidency and preventing the slide of the US into Parliamentary democracy. Of course he got impeached for it...and probably wouldn't have had the confrontation in the first place if he had otherwise been heroic on Reconstruction.
Tough bit of history for the US.
I think I agree with your general statement.
The South was in rebellion, including the governmental apparatus of all of the Southern States. The CSA was a democratic republic that had real juridical existence, and although not recognized as such by the USA de jure, it was certainly recognized de facto by the hard fight against it, as well as the honors of war paid to captured officers (in some cases), etc.
The South had no RIGHT to be in rebellion, or to become a separate government, according to the United States, and so the USA conquered the CSA.
The issue wasn't resolved by logic, or argument, but by war, and for that very reason the lines of legal argumentation break down, and you have anomalies like official acts undertaken by states that had not yet been readmitted to the Union.
You also had other anomalies, like an income tax without apportionment during the Civil War years. One can't find a nice, neat legal conclusion, because the war cuts through it all like a jagged edge. War itself was against the rules, so the fact of it, which is the central fact of the whole era, means that any search for a nice, round and complete legal explanation for either the war itself or the aftermath fails.
The 13th Amendment was adopted by states that had not yet been readmitted to the Union yet. It was the law and the Constitution anyway, because that was ultimately what the war distilled down to, and the victors imposed the rule which stuck.
Semantics. Are the 'people' the state, or is 'geography' the state?
But yes, for the purposes of not making the case for the states being in rebellion, and therefore providing a tacit admission that they are part of a recognized 'other' union, in this case 'The Confederacy', Lincoln worded the Proclamation correctly.
I think South Carolina is saying that they're South Carolina state property, and since South Carolina still exists, it can make good on the claim, apparently.
Not quite. The Proclamation is many things, including a legal instrument. In law, there is no such thing as [mere] semantics: the wording of a statement is everything. Lincoln could not deprive the states of their rights; only the Constitution (and its Amendments) could do that.
Are the 'people' the state, or is 'geography' the state?
Neither. Under the US Constitution, the states, people, and Federal government are distinct legal entities. The states have some rights, the people have others, and the Federal government has those rights specifically enumerated therein.
Concerning Andrew Johnson, I believe many of those same people who vilified Grant elevated Johnson in his "victimhood." He was an unreconstructed racist who would have brought the whole Civil War to nothing had it been in his power. In the eight months before congress reconvened, he did his worst.
The truth is, Johnson wasn't really all that much of a victim either. The Tenure of Office Act was not as clearly unconstitutional as some have claimed. While I think it certainly went too far, in an era when it's an accepted tradition that just two Senators (from the same state) can block a lifetime Presidential appointment, it's pretty hard to talk about what the Framer's intended by Advice and Consent with a straight face. In any event, the Act stood until 1887, and was never subject to judicial review. A similar law was held unconstitutional in 1926. Hard to say if it would be the same today--especially if liberals held the courts and congress against a conservative President.
Johnson's challenge to the Tenure of Office Act was a direct confrontation precipitated by his repudiation in the mid-term congressional elections. Does that make him a victim? Certainly not as sympathetic a one as the millions of emancipated slaves who had to live under the "black codes" his misleadership made possible.
It's amazing how long these threads last...
My favorite book on Reconstruction is 'The Angry Scar', by Hodding Carter. The similarity of the Radical Republicans with today's Liberal Democrats is amazing.
They were letters addressed to General Law. Insted of throwing them away after reading them, he kept them. They belonged to him - period!
No, we became another country. We seceeded from the Union and formed out own country. The CONFEDERATE States. We were no longer a part of the Union.
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