Posted on 02/17/2003 10:41:15 AM PST by stainlessbanner
Actually there was
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Resolutions of the Geneva International Conference, Geneva, 26-29 October 1863.
The International Conference, desirous of coming to the aid of the wounded should the Military Medical Services prove inadequate, adopts the following Resolutions:
Article 1. Each country shall have a Committee whose duty it shall be, in time of war and if the need arises, to assist the Army Medical Services by every means in its power.
The Committee shall organize itself in the manner which seems to it most useful and appropriate.
Art. 2. An unlimited number of Sections may be formed to assist the Committee, which shall be the central directing body.
Art. 3. Each Committee shall get in touch with the Government of its country, so that its services may be accepted should the occasion arise.
Art. 4. In peacetime, the Committees and Sections shall take steps to ensure their real usefulness in time of war, especially by preparing material relief of all sorts and by seeking to train and instruct voluntary medical personnel.
Art. 5. In time of war, the Committees of belligerent nations shall supply relief to their respective armies as far as their means permit: in particular, they shall organize voluntary personnel and place them on an active footing and, in agreement with the military authorities, shall have premises made available for the care of the wounded.
They may call for assistance upon the Committees of neutral countries.
Art. 6. On the request or with the consent of the military authorities, Committees may send voluntary medical personnel to the battlefield where they shall be placed under military command.
Art. 7. Voluntary medical personnel attached to armies shall be supplied by the respective Committees with everything necessary for their upkeep.
Art. 8. They shall wear in all countries, as a uniform distinctive sign, a white armlet with a red cross.
Art. 9. The Committees and Sections of different countries may meet in international assemblies to communicate the results of their experience and to agree on measures to be taken in the interests of the work.
Art. 10. The exchange of communications between the Committees of the various countries shall be made for the time being through the intermediary of the Geneva Committee.
Independently of the above Resolutions, the Conference makes the following Recommendations:
(a) that Governments should extend their patronage to Relief Committees which may be formed, and facilitate as far as possible the accomplishment of their task.
(b) that in time of war the belligerent nations should proclaim the neutrality of ambulances and military hospitals, and that neutrality should likewise be recognized, fully and absolutely, in respect of official medical personnel, voluntary medical personnel, inhabitants of the country who go to the relief of the wounded, and the wounded themselves;
(c) that a uniform distinctive sign be recognized for the Medical Corps of all armies, or at least for all persons of the same army belonging to this Service; and, that a uniform flag also be adopted in all countries for ambulances and hospitals.
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CONVENTION FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE CONDITION OF THE WOUNDED IN ARMIES IN THE FIELD
ARTICLE 1--Ambulances and military hospitals shall be acknowledged to be neuter, and, as such, shall be protected and respected by belligerents so long as any sick or wounded may be therein. Such neutrality shall cease if the ambulances or hospitals should be held by a military force.
ARTICLE 2--Persons employed in hospitals and ambulances, comprising the staff for superintendence, medical service, administration, transport of wounded, as well as chaplains, shall participate in the benefit of neutrality, whilst so employed, and so long as there remain any wounded to bring in or to succor.
ARTICLE 3--The persons designated in the preceding article may, even after occupation by the enemy, continue to fulfil their duties in the hospital or ambulance which they serve, or may withdraw in order to rejoin the corps to which they belong. Under such circumstances, when these persons shall cease from their functions, they shall be delivered by the occupying army to the outposts of the enemy.
ARTICLE 4--As the equipment of military hospitals remains subject to the laws of war, persons attached to such hospitals cannot, in withdrawing, carry away any articles but such as are their private property. Under the same circumstances an ambulance shall, on the contrary, retain its equipment.
ARTICLE 5--Inhabitants of the country who may bring help to the wounded shall be respected, and shall remain free. The generals of the belligerent Powers shall make it their care to inform the inhabitants of the appeal addressed to their humanity, and of the neutrality which will be the consequence of it. Any wounded man entertained and taken care of in a house shall be considered as a protection thereto. Any inhabitant who shall have entertained wounded men in his house shall be exempted from the quartering of troops, as well as from a part of the contributions of war which may be imposed.
ARTICLE 6--Wounded or sick soldiers shall be entertained and taken care of, to whatever nation they may belong. Commanders-in-chief shall have the power to deliver immediately to the outposts of the enemy soldiers who have been wounded in an engagement, when circumstances permit this to be done, and with the consent of both parties. Those who are recognized, after their wounds are healed, as incapable of serving, shall be sent back to their country. The others may also be sent back, on condition of not again bearing arms during the continuance of the war. Evacuations, together with the persons under whose directions they take place, shall be protected by an absolute neutrality.
ARTICLE 7--A distinctive and uniform flag shall be adopted for hospitals, ambulances and evacuations. It must, on every occasion, be accompanied by the national flag. An arm-badge (brassard) shall also be allowed for individuals neutralized, but the delivery thereof shall be left to military authority. The flag and the arm-badge shall bear a red cross on a white ground.
ARTICLE 8--The details of execution of the present convention shall be regulated by the commanders-in-chief of belligerent armies, according to the instructions of their respective governments, and in conformity with the general principles laid down in this convention.
ARTICLE 9--The high contracting Powers have agreed to communicate the present convention to those Governments which have not found it convenient to send plenipotentiaries to the International Conference at Geneva, with an invitation to accede thereto; the protocol is for that purpose left open.
ARTICLE 10--The present convention shall be ratified, and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Berne, in four months, or sooner, if possible. In faith whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed it and have affixed their seals thereto.
Done at Geneva, the twenty-second day of the month of August of the year one thousand eight hundred and Sixty-four.
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If you'll notice the intent of the '64 convention was laid out in the '63 conference. So no, DiLorenzo did not make a mistake. I imagine by '64 Grant was either too drunk or too ignorant to understand so they had to spell it out for him again a little clearer. Unfortunately as the burned buildings and numerous deaths to civilians attested, no union general cared for the rule of law
I see a convention for the treatment of wounded on the battlefield, billbears. So where are the parts outlining the imprisonment or death part, billbears? Where is the part about plunder or taking from civilian populations or attaching defenseless citizens. So if your claim is still that DiLusional actually ready the Geneva Convention of 1864 then the only other explanation was that he was willfully and deliberately lying about what they contained. Not an unreasonable conclusion given Tommy's track record. I suppose it would be useless to point out that the United States was not a signatory in 1863. The confederacy, of course, was not a signatory because they were not a soverign state.
Walt
Hey everbody! Check out this latest gem of wisdom by Waltrot! - GOPcapitalist.
Well Walt is right, to the Clinton/Gore voters like him, it is an 'investment'.
You're attacking all kinds of good folk on this thread. Everyone has a bad day every now and then. Shake it off and move on to the next thread.
That, of course, is only your opinion. What defines a sovereign state? Could it possibly be that state's determination to be so? You seem to have found a higher power dwelling somewhere, perhaps in your imagination. You are implicit in advocating tyranny here NS. The definition of freedom is the ability to "throw off the shackles of government" - remember?
To the contrary, Walt, and as I have previously proven, Nevins' argument is a load of historically fraudulent bullsh*t. Let us examine it yet again:
The theory was sharply rejected at the time by so astute an observer as Alexander H. Stephens.
Stephens was a unionist and fought to the bitter end for that point of view when others, such as Toombs who was actually in the senate and saw the morrill tariff progressing, said the exact opposite. Here is Robert Toombs' take on the thing:
"ven the fishermen of Massachusetts and New England demand and receive from the public treasury about half a million of dollars per annum as a pure bounty on their business of catching codfish. The North, at the very first Congress, demanded and received bounties under the name of protection, for every trade, craft, and calling which they pursue, and there is not an artisan in brass, or iron, or wood, or weaver, or spinner in wool or cotton, or a calicomaker, or iron-master, or a coal-owner, in all of the Northern or Middle States, who has not received what he calls the protection of his government on his industry to the extent of from fifteen to two hundred per cent from the year 1791 to this day. They will not strike a blow, or stretch a muscle, without bounties from the government. No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union; they have the same reason for praising it, that craftsmen of Ephesus had for shouting, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," whom all Asia and the world worshipped. By it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor. It is true that this policy has been largely sustained by the South; it is true that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction - a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure; and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate. It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. There were thousands of protectionists in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New-York, and in New-England, who were not abolitionists. There were thousands of abolitionists who were free traders. The mongers brought them together upon a mutual surrender of their principles. The free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists. The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill - the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South." - Sen Robert Toombs, Nov. 13, 1860
South Carolina, he wrote his brother on New Year's Day, 1861 was seceding from a tariff 'which is just what her own Senators and members of Congress made it.'
Either the quote is out of context, or Stephens was reporting the facts in error. The Morrill bill passed the House in May 1860 with only ONE southern congressman supporting it, and he was not from south carolina. The rest all voted no. Therefore South Carolina could not have "made" the Morrill bill. Further, the fact that Stephens apparently wrote this argument, flawed as it may be, to discredit the tariff as a reason for secession, that he even addressed the issue indicates indisputably that it was relevent at the time.
As for the charges of consolidation and depsotism made by some Carolinians, he thought they arose from peevishness, rather than a calm analysis of facts. 'The truth is, the South, almost in mass, has voted, I think, for every measure of general legislation that has passed both houses and become law for the last ten years.'
Again, Stephens was either ignorant of the situation or in error about it. The Morrill tariff passed the House with virtually unanimous opposition from the south.
The South, far from groaning under tyranny, had controlled the government almost from its beginning, and Stephens believed that its only real grievance lay in the Northern refusal to return fugitive slaves and to stop the antislavery agitation.
Then why did he take the time to address, albeit erroniously, the tariff issue?
'All other complaints are founded on threatened dangers which may never come, and which I feel very sure would be averted if the South would pursue a judicious and wise course.' Stephens was right. It was true that the whole tendency of federal legislation 1842 to 1860 was toward free trade;
Nevins has constructed a blatant straw man here as it was NEVER ASSERTED that the pre-1860 tariff was a grievance to begin with. The south favored that tariff because it was pro-free trade. The one that had them angry was the Morrill Act that passed in 1860 and 1861, which first doubled the existing rate then added it on again over the course of the war.
true that the tariff in force when secession began was largely Southern -made
...but not the one it was about to be replaced with. The Morrill act was yankee made and sponsored exclusively by northerners.
true that it was the lowest tariff the country had known since 1816
Nevins is continuing his straw man by intentionally addressing the wrong tariff. The Morrill Act, which pushed rates to an eventual 47% on average, was one of the highest tariffs the country had ever seen.
true that it cost a nation of thirty million people but sixty million dollars in indirect revenue
Aside from continuing the straw man, that is an economically ignorant statement. The cost of tariffs - especially protective ones - is not measured in its revenue collection abilities. Rather that cost results, as a matter of economic law, from the redistribution of the consumer surplus to elsewhere in the economy and into deadweight losses as a result of a tariff induced hike in prices. ; true that without secession no new tariff law, obnoxious to the Democratic Party, could have been passed before 1863--if then.
No. That is not true by any reasonable standard, meaning that Nevins is telling yet another fib. The Northern Democrats had no problem whatsoever with the Morrill Act and in fact they voted for it in near unanimity in the House back in 1860. It was also signed by a Northern Democrat president. As for the Senate, a simple calculation of votes indicates without dispute that under the very best case scenario with every single southern senator voting against it, the Morrill Act would have STILL passed the Senate. Here is that calculation as it was outlined on December 12, 1860 before any state had seceded by Sen. Louis Wigfall:
"Tell me not that we have got the legislative department of this Government, for I say we have not. As to this body, where do we stand? Why, sir, there are now eighteen non-slaveholding States. In a few weeks we shall have the nineteenth, for Kansas will be brought in. Then arithmetic which settles our position is simple and easy. Thirty-eight northern Senators you will have upon this floor. We shall have thirty to your thirty-eight. After the 4th of March, the Senator from California, the Senator from Indiana, the Senator from New Jersey, and the Senator from Minnesota will be here. That reduces the northern phalanx to thirty-four...There are four of the northern Senators upon whom we can rely, whom we know to be friends, whom we have trusted in our days of trial heretofore, and in whom, as Constitution-loving men, we will trust. Then we stand thirty-four to thirty-four, and your Black Republican Vice President to give the casting vote. Mr. Lincoln can make his own nominations with perfect security that they will be confirmed by this body, even if every slaveholding State should remain in the Union, which, thank God, they will not do."
"In the official explanations which one Southern State after another published for its secession, economic grievances are either omitted entirely or given minor posiitions.
Nevins is fibbing again. The Georgia declaration of causes devotes several paragraphs to the tariff issue.
There were few such supposed grievances which the agricultural states of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota did not share with the South
Another fib by Nevins. The congressmen from every one of those states unanimously backed the Morrill Tariff in the House vote.
Charles A. Beard finds the tap-root of the war in the resistance of the planter interest to Northern demands enlarging the old Hamilton-Webster policy. The South was adamant in standing for 'no high protective tariffs, no ship subsidies, no national banking and currency system; in short, none of the measures which business enteprise deemed essential to its progress.' But the Republican platform in 1856 was silent on the tariff; in 1860, it carried a milk-and-water statement on the subject which Western Republicans took, mild as it was, with a wry face;
Nevins is fibbing yet again. The 1860 tariff plank had nothing mild about it and enjoyed a central and prominent place in the party's platform. Delegates at the convention cheered at length for its openly protectionist message when the plank was adopted. Throughout the campaign Republicans carried banners making it known that a vote for them was a vote for protection. Lincoln himself openly admitted his core protectionist beliefs and in February 1861 even pledged to make the tariff his top legislative priority. As for the supposed lack of audience that Nevins alleges the Morrill bill to have in the west, it need only be noted that all the congressmen from those same western states voted for it.
the incoming President was little interested in the tariff
Nevins is fibbing again. Lincoln was very interested in it, pledged his support for it, and on February 15, 1861 had this to say to a public audience:
"[I]f the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff."
and any harsh legislation was impossible.
Not so. See Wigfall's analysis of the votes above.
Ship subsidies were not an issue in the campaign of 1860. Neither were a national banking system and a national currency system.
Nevins in fibbing again. Toombs' speech indicates otherwise.
The Pacific Railroad was advocated both by the Douglas Democrats and the Republicans; and it is noteworthy that Seward and Douglas were for buiulding both a Northern and a Southern line.
That two northern political parties and two northerners advocated a publicly funded railroad says nothing of the southern position on that issue.
In other words, Walt, Mr. Nevins, much like you, is a chronic liar.
Link to the thread, Walt, and all will see that what I say is true. You asked specifically for a confederate, not a civilian. You even dared me to post the name of one and "prove you wrong."
I well knew that Sherman had POW's executed at random to deter the rebels from murdering Union POW's.
That was not true at the time, Walt. You were claiming that he had never executed anybody in "retaliation" for the shooting of his arsonists and robbers in their tracks - only that he threatened to.
I even knew the name of this James Miller.
You're fibbing again, Walt. You knew nothing of him and even admitted to searching for his name after I proved you were fibbing then by posting it.
To the contrary, Walt. A few months ago a posted a list of over 60 known yankee rapists, many of whom were in Sherman's army. I flagged you to it, you saw it, and you chose not to respond to it. Now you are lying about it just as you lie about practically everything.
It doesn't? Can you read the English language? From your #441: 'But you apparently made it up, just as you made up the statement that Yankee slave traders were active up into the Lincoln administration.'
To make sure that you would not try to weasel out of the allegations charged (just as you are attempting to do), in my reply #456, I documented slaves ships built by Yankees, slavers owned by Yankees, slavers registered to Yankees, slavers outfitted by Yankees, slavers departing from Yankee ports, slavers captained by Yankees, Yankee slavers caught after the commencement of hostilities, and the death of a Yankee slaver caught in the act, and hung for his crimes. The latter incidents were after Lincoln was inaugurated.
Those are historical facts. I even made sure they were readily available on the internet, just in case you couldn't find them in your historical "record".
Good day.
ROTFL!
I responded with factual, readily available information. Some people just can't handle the truth.
Nonsense. To borrow from a famed 19th century abolitionist lawyer...
"The Constitution says: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
This is the only definition of treason given by the Constitution, and it is to be interpreted, like all other criminal laws, in the sense most favorable to liberty and justice. Consequently the treason here spoken of, must be held to be treason in fact, and not merely something that may have been falsely called by that name.
To determine, then, what is treason in fact, we are not to look to the codes of Kings, and Czars, and Kaisers, who maintain their power by force and fraud; who contemptuously call mankind their "subjects;" who claim to have a special license from heaven to rule on earth; who teach that it is a religious duty of mankind to obey them; who bribe a servile and corrupt priest-hood to impress these ideas upon the ignorant and superstitious; who spurn the idea that their authority is derived from, or dependent at all upon, the consent of their people; and who attempt to defame, by the false epithet of traitors, all who assert their own rights, and the rights of their fellow men, against such usurpations.
Instead of regarding this false and calumnious meaning of the word treason, we are to look at its true and legitimate meaning in our mother tongue; at its use in common life; and at what would necessarily be its true meaning in any other contracts, or articles of association, which men might voluntarily enter into with each other.
The true and legitimate meaning of the word treason, then, necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith. Without these, there can be no treason. A traitor is a betrayer --- one who practices injury, while professing friendship. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, solely because, while professing friendship for the American cause, he attempted to injure it. An open enemy, however criminal in other respects, is no traitor.
Neither does a man, who has once been my friend, become a traitor by becoming an enemy, if before doing me an injury, he gives me fair warning that he has become an enemy; and if he makes no unfair use of any advantage which my confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in his power.
For example, our fathers --- even if we were to admit them to have been wrong in other respects --- certainly were not traitors in fact, after the fourth of July, 1776; since on that day they gave notice to the King of Great Britain that they repudiated his authority, and should wage war against him. And they made no unfair use of any advantages which his confidence had previously placed in their power.
It cannot be denied that, in the late war, the Southern people proved themselves to be open and avowed enemies, and not treacherous friends. It cannot be denied that they gave us fair warning that they would no longer be our political associates, but would, if need were, fight for a separation. It cannot be alleged that they made any unfair use of advantages which our confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in their power. Therefore they were not traitors in fact: and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution.
Furthermore, men are not traitors in fact, who take up arms against the government, without having disavowed allegiance to it, provided they do it, either to resist the usurpations of the government, or to resist what they sincerely believe to be such usurpations.
It is a maxim of law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent. And this maxim is as applicable to treason as to any other crime. For example, our fathers were not traitors in fact, for resisting the British Crown, before the fourth of July, 1776 --- that is, before they had thrown off allegiance to him --- provided they honestly believed that they were simply defending their rights against his usurpations. Even if they were mistaken in their law, that mistake, if an innocent one, could not make them traitors in fact.
For the same reason, the Southern people, if they sincerely believed --- as it has been extensively, if not generally, conceded, at the North, that they did --- in the so-called constitutional theory of "State Rights," did not become traitors in fact, by acting upon it; and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution."
I suppose that a good indication of independence is whether or not other people agree with you. And in the case of the confederacy not a single country in the entire world considered them independent. So the state can claim it's a soverign nation, there is nothing to stop it. You can proclaim yourself Grand High Emperor of the Universe, there is nothing to stop you from doing that either. But until people start bowing and calling you 'Your Majesty' then you're nothing but just another nutcase.
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