Posted on 01/15/2011 2:24:43 PM PST by BigReb555
My mom’s (born 1925) —father fought for the state of Alabama, and later moved to NE Texas (Tyler). She has a
picture of her(age 5) & him in front of the local cotton gin
hanging in her kitchen. He died when she was 10.
"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no, sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand."
-- Robt. E. Lee to LT. Gov of Texas
Where's the "guilt"? The "treason"?
The Andrew Johnson, Amnesty Proclamation, 29 May 1865 required persons seeking the benefits of restored rights and who committed certain specified acts of treasonous rebellion to apply for amnesty and a pardon for those acts specified in the proclamation. Robert E. Lee acknowledged his inclusion in the classes of persons engaged in such rebellion and applied for amnesty and pardon for his commission of such acts when he wrote:
Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th Ulto; I hereby apply for the benefits, & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms. I graduated at the Mil. Academy at West Point in June 1829. Resigned from the U.S. Army April ‘61. Was a General in the Confederate Army, & included in the surrender of the Army of N. Va. 9 April ‘65.
Articles of Confederation....
Article XIII. Every State shall abide by the determination of the united States in congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of the united States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.
The proposition that the Confederate States of America lawfully seceded from the United States of America was repeatedly defeated in the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, and on the battlefields in the conflict between armed forces. Robert E. Lee wrote: “We have fought this fight as long as, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us, as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.”
Robert E. Lee explicitly affirmed the authority of the U.S. Government with his application for amnesty and pardon and signing of the Amnesty Oath.
Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th Ulto; I hereby apply for the benefits, & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms. I graduated at the Mil. Academy at West Point in June 1829. Resigned from the U.S. Army April ‘61. Was a General in the Confederate Army, & included in the surrender of the Army of N. Va. 9 April ‘65.
Grave found of man who bankrolled Confederates in American civil war
Thursday, September 03, 2009 11:43:34 AM · 107 of 117
stand watie to rockrr
that figures. crude garbage (like you, for example) generally has no sense of SHAME.
be GONE, as DECENT people (especially ladies & children) don't want to be exposed to your STUPIDITY & arrogant VULGARITY. (i also note that when you showed up on this thread, most people LEFT. that should tell you something about how other FReepers see your moronic antics.)
free dixie,sw
I do miss his commentary on the War of Northern Aggression. He knew his facts and pointed out a lot of subtle details that most people miss.
By the way, my friends and I are going to Shiloh tomorrow, even if the weather is going to be iffy. We have put this off since September, but will go tomorrow come heck or high water. I'll post the pictures either late tomorrow night (probably won't get back until after 11) or early Tuesday.
I am not a Confederacy hater. I believe the Confederacy had many noble aspects however I also am not an Confederacy apologist.
:-) I don’t consider you a Confederacy “hater.” I just disagree with you as to the relative importance slavery had — or could maintain — had the Confederacy survived beyond the War. Economically, the institution itself was destined to fail. If nothing else, the agricultural South was “market-driven,” and keeping slaves was becoming an ever more expensive proposition.
We’ll never know how that scenario would have played out, but I would have been willing to bet that the transition, while it would have been slower, would have been far more peaceful and cost far less than 600,000 military (and hundreds of thousand more mostly Southern - black and white) lives.
I, too, view many of the aspects of the Confederacy as noble. That does not mean I believe it to have been perfect. I do not dismiss slavery as an amoral fact of life in that era. I (like both Lee and Jackson) recognize chattel Slavery as evil, I thus would consider myself a “realist” about the Confederacy.
Conservatives must STOP ignoring the positive principles set forth by the Confederacy as though they were ALL somehow tied to the practice of slavery. That is just not true, and doing so has only served to take us further away from our Constitution and the vision of our Founders for many long decades.
The proposition that the United States -- that is to say, the Union created by those States -- or the government created by the United States Constitution, or any branch of it -- has anything to say about sovereign decisions taken by the People, is itself treason and revolution.
The People are the top-line Sovereign of the country. Moreover, the People are not a consolidated mass (that matter was settled at the Philadelphia convention), but rather reside in their States' geographical boundaries, and are identical with their States. The People won their freedom from George III on the battlefield and got the title and recognition from George personally by the Treaty of Paris. The People and their States -- the People considered as political top-line, sovereign entities -- became the equals and peers of George III and every other true Sovereign on the planet by their Revolution, their acts of war, and the Treaty of Paris. That is the top line or, if you're business-oriented, the bottom line. Their sovereign decisions -- and here the ratification of an amendment to the Constitution and the admission of a new State to the Union are examples -- are not reviewed nor reviewable by the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the President. These decisions, and all sovereign decisions, are ultra vires the U.S. Government, the Union, and the Constitution because they are taken at the top level by the People themselves. Look at the Constitution and you will find no contradiction of what I am telling you in its words. The two examples cited are sufficient to prove my point, and disprove your contention.
There are things which are beyond the power of any court or Congress to reverse, revise, approve, or disapprove. Secession is one of them, and the States never gave up that right, or power, ever. Not at ratification of the Constitution, and not later. They still possess it, Salmon P. Chase and every other upmarket political hack-judge who ever lived be damned.
Amen,,Always like stand watie ,learned a lot of the smaller details of the war from him.
Now you are dealing with appeals to force. If we decide everything with the edge of a sword, what need have we of constitutional law, or any law?
Appeals to force, by the way (See the episode of the Gordian Knot), are made in lieu of any real argument, just like appeals to motive (argumentum ad hominem, ad populum ["bandwagon appeal'], et cetera) are often just a means of defeating the better argument.
Example: "We must follow the Constitution." "No, because you're stupid, and anyway I'm holding a gun on you."
Robert E. Lee's acknowledgement of his prisoner status is not a statement of law or principle, but simply reflects the dark victory of his enemies and the spoils they had won: the right to rule a formerly-free nation for their own gratification and profit howsoever they wished. We still have not justiced the manifold and vast evils that were done during and by the Civil War.
Oops, looks like I just reasserted it! ;)
I retrieved the whole passage from Googlebooks and saved it to memory.
Lee, in that passage, refers to his own continuing impairment and the fact that he was being watched constantly by the federal authorities and politicians in Washington (Stanton, Thad Stevens, and that crowd), who would seize on any "rebellious" (there was no "rebellion") statement to justify further exactions and impositions on the defeated Peoples.
The occasion was a meeting discussing politics in the South, asked for by former Gen. Rosecrans (as the Radicals' inspector-general of the defeated generals) and acceded to by Gen. Lee, and attended by most of the general staff of the CSA. I wish there'd been a fly, or perhaps a small court recorder, on the wall.
“The fact his family home was turned into America’s national memorial cemetery, says it all and punctuates his treason for all to see.”
One of the most ironic events in US history was the Union’s desire to desecrate Lee’s estate to the point of making it uninhabitable by turning it in to a cemetery. In doing so it has become the country’s most hallowed ground.
Got the cite, could you provide a link or a quotation in extenso to show that "treason" language was in the original Act?
And how would you argue that applying for the amnesty was wrapped around a confession of, or stipulation to, treason? Duress, remember. The Confederates were denied their rights by force -- and therefore were all subject to duress. Thirteen States were under duress.
Exactly. And everyone knew that all powers not specifically granted to the Union under the Constitution, were reserved to the States respectively, or to the People -- thus John Marshall at the Virginia ratification convention, and thus the Tenth Amendment in affirmation of the reservation of powers.
Here is Alexander Hamilton making the same point in other words, in Federalist No. 84, as he argues against the idea of a Bill of Rights:
It has been several times truly remarked that bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgements of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was MAGNA CHARTA, obtained by the barons, sword in hand, from King John. Such were the subsequent confirmations of that charter by succeeding princes. Such was the Petition of Right assented to by Charles I., in the beginning of his reign. Such, also, was the Declaration of Right presented by the Lords and Commons to the Prince of Orange in 1688, and afterwards thrown into the form of an act of parliament called the Bill of Rights. It is evident, therefore, that, according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations. [Emphasis added.]
And that makes my statement not an opinion, but a "Fact, Jack."
The slavery issue as applied by the Marxist adherents of Clinton-ism and Obama-ism is a straw man, a bloody shirt wherewith to rally the black faithful, who don't yet realize how they're being used. Thomas Sowell, Alan Keyes, Ward Conerly, and others have been trying to warn black voters about people like Farrakhan and the old civil-rights leadership who just cry "cracker, cracker, cracker" at election-time, just the way the Klan used to do in the South; but so far, less-educated black voters haven't reached the sophistication shown by Sowell and the rest, although upscale black voters are beginning to: Hence the drive for DREAM Act, and the importation of fresh masses of the ignorant and tractable.
Most of the modern arguments about slavery don't rise above the level of a smear on Southern conservatives, and it is a mistake to engage them as anything other than that. They are not conscientious objections from principle or practical concern.
And he didn't sign anything like that, so he didn't compromise his principles or his character. Q.E.D.
As for the slavery issue, that was a political issue between the States and the Republican machine; his issue was, service to Virginia or service to the federal Army? He decided for Virginia, and when he received clarification of his prospective Army duties from Gen. Winfield Scott, he resigned within 24 hours. Agonizing, perhaps, but quick -- as was needful under the circumstances.
I'm glad we agree that Lee was an honorable man; it seems to be the settled opinion of the leading men in American life ever since, and most of the people in the South.
*snicker*
Put down the crackpipe and pick up a history book. “Mr. Lincoln” wasn’t President when the first treasonous states seceeded.
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