Posted on 05/10/2018 7:24:57 AM PDT by fugazi
That is an interesting comment.
I thought most of them, with the possible exception of General Lee, had their citizenship and rights restored.
Didn't some of the Confederates go on to serve President Grant, and be elected to Congress, serve as governors, and be appointed to federal judgeships, and to serve as Generals in the U.S. army?
Yes, as an example General Longstreet served in appointed position From General Grants Presidency to Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidency. Some of the posts held, Deputy Collector of Revenue, U.S. Commissioner of Railroads, and Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. General Gordon served as Governor of the State of Georgia and as a Senator from the state of Georgia.
Read the last sentence of section 3 of the XIV Amendment.
“But Congress may, by a vote of two thirds
of each House, remove such disability.”
Congress voted in 1876 to restore the right to hold office to P.G.T. Beauregard. The bill was signed by U.S. Grant.
They are not exactly household names today, but Lucius Lamar served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after the war, as did Horace Lurton and Howell Jackson. All were former Confederates.
Former Confederate Edward White served as the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Confederate General Joseph Wheeler later served as a Major General of the U.S Army.
Little known today, in the late 1870’s the leadership of both the North and the South made a discreet agreement that the North would go on record as winning the War Between the States, and the South would go on record as winning Reconstruction.
The North was to keep all the monetary profits of the war. The South accepted it because there was little else they could do. And because it would be another five or six generations before materialism became the only thing the average southerner wanted.
I did.
That’s nonsense. You would have known better if you’d ever learned of President Andrew Johnson’s December 25, 1868 “Proclamation 179—Granting Full Pardon and Amnesty for the Offense of Treason Against the United States During the Late Civil War”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72360
I did
Wheeler was appointed a Major General of Volunteers by President McKinley. He became a Brigadier General in the United States Army in June of 1900 and retired from the Army Sept 1900
President Andrew Johnson issued a general pardon on Christmas Day 1868
“Proclamation 179—Granting Full Pardon and Amnesty for the Offense of Treason Against the United States During the Late Civil War”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72360
It believe it was under this General Pardon that Lee applied for and received a pardon.
There is in fact statements by a Supreme Court Justice of the period informing Federal lawyers that if they tried Davis in a Courtroom they would lose everything they won on the field of battle, because secession is not treason, and in fact secession is legal.
I probably still have that quote somewhere but I'm not sure I can find it very quickly.
I think I found it.
"If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one." Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)
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