Friends,
Ordered a new book from Amazon.com and it finally came today. The book is Southern Rights; Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism, by Mark E. Neely Jr., the same author who wrote the book The Fate of Liberty; Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1992.
The book pretty much calls the question that the evil North under Lincoln was violating individual rights at will along with the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the South was squeaky clean in this regard.
In fact, the South looks like it violated and intruded on its citizens far more than Lincoln and company ever did. A passport system was established without a single vote or debate from the Confederate Congress, so severe that it hindered the war effort, trampled on the right to travel and actually interfered with Catholic priests trying to give Last Rights to the dying. The system was exactly the one used before the war to control the comings and goings of slaves and free blacks.
Further, martial law was declared by almost any military figure and provost marshall who felt the urge to do it, no matter if it was required by military reasons or not. Records unearthed by the author attest to the fact that at least 4,000 Southern citizens were held without trial or benefit of the writ.
I give you part of a speech from Zebulon Vance from the book.
In a remarkable oration before a G.A.R. post in Boston in 1886, Vance reflected on reasons for internal discontent in the old Confederacy:
"It had been supposed that the war would be fought through without any disturbances of the ordinary functions of civil government, or any strain upon the muniments of their civil rights. But so soon as the fortunes of the Confederacy began to ebb; so soon as the superior numbers and resources of the North began to be seriously felt, the managers of the South came to feel the necessity of resorting to extraordinary means, and this feeling of serenity was rudely disturbed. Political discontent and distrust began to prevail. Perhaps in this respect we made the initial mistake of the whole secession movement: a mistake, the fatality of which increased day by day to the end. We started out without revolution of any kind, with all the machinery of society, State and Federal, in complete operation. There was simply a transfer of the central authority from the United States to the Confederate States of America...In thus avoiding the alarms of revolution and giving assurance to the timid of the security of society at the outset, a great point was undoubtedly gained. But this was dearly paid for. These smoothly flowing conditions could not of course be maintained. No consideration was given to the dangers of that coming period when hard necessity should compel the setting aside of civil rights and peaceful forms, and the substitution of the harsh features of revolution--at a moment, too, when the government most needed the warm support of public opinion. Looked at simply with a view to success, in my opinion the seceding States should have faced the most ultra measure of revolution at the very start; they should have formed no National government and should have bound themselves by the shackles of no constitution."
It really does explode the myth that the South was pure as the driven snow when it came to it citizens rights and that it too had no problem suspending civil liberties in order to meet its war aims.
Sincerely,
Unionbloue
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"The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana | 
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