Posted on 06/09/2020 7:14:31 PM PDT by robowombat
David Petraeus: Remove Names of Confederate ‘Traitors’ from Army Bases
Retired U.S. Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus on Tuesday wrote in an op-ed for The Atlantic that “It is time to remove the names of traitors like Benning and Bragg from our country’s most important military installation,” a reference to bases named after Gen. Henry Benning in Columbus, Georgia, and Gen. Braxton Bragg in Cumberland County, North Carolina.
It gives me considerable pause, for example, to note that my alma mater, West Point, honors Robert E. Lee with a gate, a road, an entire housing area, and a barracks, the last of which was built during the 1960s. A portrait of Lee with an enslaved person adorns a wall of the cadet library, the counterpoint to a portrait of Grant, his Civil War nemesis, on a nearby wall.
[…] We do not live in a country to which Braxton Bragg, Henry L. Benning, or Robert E. Lee can serve as an inspiration. Acknowledging this fact is imperative. Should it fail to do so, the Army, which prides itself on leading the way in perilous times, will be left to fight a rearguard action against a more inclusive American future, one that fulfills the nation’s founding promise.
Last Thursday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) announced a statue of Robert E. Lee will be removed “as soon as possible” from Richmond’s Monument Avenue.
The statue, which sits on state property, will move to storage while Northam’s administration works “with the community to determine its future,” the governor said at a news conference where the announcement was met with extended applause.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Well, it's a good thing he didn't get away with it, or else you'd have to not threaten him some more.
Did those men start a war o overthrow the constitution as “the supreme law of the land”? Did they believe slavery was a moral good and blacks wete ordained by God to be slaves?
Lets look at what those founding fathers thought of slavery;
“I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.”
George Washington letter to Robert Morris 12 April 1786
“The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Our opinions agree as to the evil; moral, political, and economical, of slavery.”
James Madison
“What was the origin of our slave population? The evil commenced when we were in our Colonial state, but acts were passed by our Colonial Legislature, prohibiting the importation, of more slaves, into the Colony. These were rejected by the Crown.”
James Monroe
Now let’s look at what the southern rebel leaders thought of slavery;
“African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.”
~Davis
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
Alexander Stephens Vice President of the CSA
I think any reasonable person can see the difference in the viewpoints on slavery by the founding fathers of America compares to the founding fathers of the confederacy.
“Of course the Constitution is the true target of the cultural cleansing campaign.”
You got that right. Since that is a big one, it will take at least another ten years, unless they can stage another knee on the neck event.
So he told me he would cut off my head and s**t down my neck’’. I didn't complain to the mods about it. I'm not thin skinned by any means. The mods saw it themselves and gave him the ‘’zot’’. I won't tolerate anyone calling me a “Taliban’’ or an “Antifa’’ or any such garbage and point of fact I have never threatened any Freeper with psychical harm. Now if you're of the mind I'd be disposed to converse in a civil and respectful manner with you in future or not at all if you so desire. The choice is yours.
Nor I. Using Petraeus' "logic", Rome should demonstrate their "wokeness" by demolishing the Colosseum, the Forum, and all other antiquities that were constructed during Rome's heyday.
It's no different than what the Taliban has done in recent memory.
The difference is that the founders all wrote and advocated for freeing slaves. Democrats political platform was keeping slavery.
Jefferson Davis was held prisons for many years demanding a trial. The USA never tied him because the AG thought they would lose as secession was not and is not unconstitutional.
It will start out like you said then it will be a hybrid of separate states/regions and local insurgencies. Then, after the various insurgencies are dealt with, defined battle lines will form and its back to region vs. region. Very organized and very conventional.
Where? In the minds of lunatics.
That is where a great deal of modern thought rests.
Wrong. The reason he wasn’t brought to trial is because the civilian courts had been re-instated in Virginia and since his crime had been committed in Virginia the jury would have come from there. The US prosecutor was rightfully concerned that a jury of ex-confederates might be biased against the US and acquit Davis.
Here’s the letter he wrote to the US Attorney general explaining this;
“Sir,
While preparing with yourself, before you assumed your present post, to perform the honorable duty the President had assigned to us, of conducting the trial of Jefferson Davis, you know how much my mind was moved, from the first, by doubts of the expediency of trying him at all. The reasons which prevented my presenting those doubts no longer exist, and they have so ripened into conviction that I feel it my duty to lay them before you in form, as you now hold a post of official responsibly for the proceeding.
After the most serious reflection, I cannot see any good reason why the Government should make a question whether the late civil war was treason, and whether Jefferson Davis took any part in it, and submit those questions to the decision of a petit jury of the vicinage of Richmond at “nisi prius” [”court of original jurisdiction”].
As the Constitution in terms settles the fact that our republic is a state against which treason may be committed, the only constitutional question attending the late war was whether a levying of war against the United States which would otherwise be treason, is relieved of that character by the fact that it took the form of secession from the Union by state authority. In other words the legal issue was, whether secession by a State is a right, making an act legal and obligatory upon the nation which would otherwise have been treason.
This issue I suppose to have been settled by the action of every department of the Government, by the action of the people itself, and by those events which are definitive in the affairs of men.
The Supreme Court in the Prize Cases held, by happily a unanimous opinion, that acts of the States, whether secession ordinances, or in whatever form cast, could not be brought into the cases, as justifications for the war, and had no legal effect on the character of the war, or on the political status of territory or persons or property, and that the line of enemy’s territory was a question of fact, depending upon the line of bayonets of an actual war. The rule in the Prize Cases has been steadily followed in the Supreme Court since, and in the Circuit Courts, without an intimation of a doubt. That the law making and executive departments have treated this secession and war as treason, is a matter of history, as well as is the action of the people in the highest sanction of war.”
“It cannot be doubted that the Circuit Court at the trial will instruct the jury, in conformity with these decisions, that the late attempt to establish and sustain by war an independent empire within the United States was treason. The only question of fact submitted to the Jury will be whether Jefferson Davis took any part in the war. As it is one of the great facts of history that he was its head, civil and military, why should we desire to make a question of it and refer its decision to a jury, with power to find in the negative or affirmative, or to disagree? It is not an appropriate question for the decision of a jury; certainly it is not a fact which a Government should, without great cause, give a jury a chance to ignore.
We know that these indictments are to be tried in what was for five years enemy’s territory, which is not yet restored to the exercise of all its political functions, and where the fires are not extinct. We know that it only requires one dissentient juror to defeat the Government and give Jefferson Davis and his favorers a triumph. Now, is not such a result one which we must include in our calculation of possibilities? Whatever modes may be legally adopted to draw a jury, or to purge it, and whatever the influence of the court or of counsel, we know that a vavorer of treason may get upon the jury. But that is not necessary. A fear of personal violence or social ostracism may be enough to induce one man to withhold his assent from the verdict, especially as be need not come forward personally, nor give a reason, even in the jury-room.
This possible result would be most humiliating to the Government and people of this country, and none the less so from the fact that it would be absurd. The Government would be stopped in its judicial course because it could neither assume nor judicially determine that Jefferson Davis took part in the late civil war. Such a result would also bring into doubt the adequacy of our penal system to deal with such cases as this.
If it were important to secure a verdict as a means of punishing the defendant, the question would present itself differently. But it would be beneath the dignity of the Government and of the issue, to inflict upon him a minor punishment; and, as to a sentence of death, I am sure that, after this lapse of time and after all that has occurred in the interval, the people of the United States would not desire to see it enforced.
In fine, after the fullest consideration, it seems to me that, by pursuing the trial, the Government can get only a re-affirmation by a Circuit Court at “nisi prius” of a rule of public law settled for this country in every way in which such a matter can be settled, only giving to a jury drawn from the region of the rebellion a chance to disregard the law when announced. It gives that jury a like opportunity to ignore the fact that Jefferson Davis took any part in the late civil war. And one man upon the jury can secure these results. The risks of such absurd and discreditable issues of a great state trial are assumed for the sake of a verdict which, if obtained, will settle nothing in law or national practice not now settled, and nothing in fact not now history, while no judgment rendered thereon do we think will be ever executed.
Besides these reasons, and perhaps because of them, I think that the public interest in the trial has ceased among the most earnest and loyal citizens.
If your views and those of the President should be in favor of proceeding with the trial, I am confident that I can do my duty as counsel, to the utmost of my ability and with all zeal. For my doubts are not what the verdict ought to be. On the contrary, I should feel all the more strongly, if the trial is begun, the importance of a victory to the Government, and the necessity of putting forth all powers and using all lawful means to secure it. Still, I feel it my duty to say that if the President should judge otherwise, my position in the cause is at his disposal.”
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. letter to Attorney General W.M. Evarts
Davis wasn’t always famous for disunion. As a U.S. senator and secretary of war in the 1850s, he was the champion of expanding the Capitol into the majestic meeting place Congress has today. At the same time, he was a resolute advocate for states’ rights. In 1867, he was prepared to argue that he did not betray the country because once Mississippi left it, he was no longer a U.S. citizen. “Everybody thought it was going to be the test case on the legality of secession,” says Cynthia Nicoletti, a University of Virginia legal scholar whose book Secession on Trial is due out in August. Serious people believed he had a chance of winning.
Another has been retired general seeking to get his name back in lights
No, they'll move on to the pre Civil War slaveowners, then to slaveowning Founders, then slaveowners like Col. Parris and his island.
The President said he won’t do it!
End of story!
Patton’s Grandfather served in the Confederate Army.
Dozen’s of things named after him.
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