Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Dear Beowulf,
Thank you for replying to my post with #496. Southern whites were not monolithic on secession(is it realistic to think any society would be?). Often the resistance to secession and the CSA was among those with the least interest in slavery. The areas of Southern states such as western Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, Maryland, the German communities in Texas and Missouri, either resisted the Confederate war effort or served it reluctantly, or joined the Union. These were all regions and communities the least tainted with slavery.
The labels "collective" or "liberal" or "socialist" applied to the mountain farm people of west Virginia, or a German born storeowner in St. Louis don't seem very useful, in actually describing these people.
Secession equals slavery is a statement more true than white Southerner equals secession.
These were political poolings of these people. The Southern slave owner was divided into these two camps, as I see it, and Davis and Stephens were two of the best examples of them... As Andrew Johnson said of Davis, before the war, (according to Ishbel Ross, THE FIRST LADY OF THE CONFEDERACY, 1958), Davis was a member of the "swaggering, bastard-scrub aristocracy". He was a Jeffersonian Anti-federalist Confederated States Rights
Conservative. Stephens, on the other hand, was a slaveowner who held the Federalist-Whig-Liberal ideologies. He was for consolidated centralized government, internal improvements at the Federal level, and high protectionist tariffs. Much of the slave talk we hear coming from the South, as well as several racist speeches which embarrassed Davis no end, came from this collection of self-interested persons. These people held what is now more of a collectivist ideology, and
the Union gave them the best chance at forever keeping slaves. These people were the most racist facet of the "slavocracy", and the most difficult to get along with, being totalitarian in their ideologies. These comprised the FIRE-EATER CLASS of Southerner. It is this group that
the Northern abolitionists despised, and the pro-Unionists of today also deplore the worse... (And I really can't blame them for that!)
I have simply shown you that they are part of the same political party! The Northern Liberals, or the totalitarians, (Radical Republican Liberals - in two parties, the Northern Capitalists and the other side, the Abolitionists) who enforce everything from unchecked and unconstitutional abolition of slaves ...
... and the Southern Whigs, (the Conscience as well as the Cotton Slavocrats), and their
pro-Unionist desires to see the Federal government continue to constitutionally uphold slavery for their racist views (on the primarily Cotton side), and Conscience crowd, who would many of them join the Radical Republicans at the North.
... on down to the collectivists who forced political correctness, to this day!
I have a question, here. Why is it no one wants to see that
the political parties, and all the nation's internal divisions, are the same since Adams and Jefferson? The one side wants the several states to control all domestic agendas, and leave the Federal branch to represent us abroad (Jefferson), and the other side wants a Federal control of anything left 'not nailed down' by the states, to the point of national supremacy... I submit to you that this is the true Unionist agenda, and it still is...
That we are always connected to this, and that 'American history' cannot be biopsied and segregated into a separate thought and people?
Beowulf, the information above looks like you may have paraphrased it from your source.(Strode? Who is this?) Or is that taken verbatim from your source? Would you mind posting the source please, and the link to the source? Thank you. I have sources which I will post verbatim, with their links, which contradict your post above, but since you were the first to bring up and disparage Lincoln's service in the Blackhawk war I feel you should divulge your source (s) first. I will be happy to follow with a different account of the same time period and my source(s). After that I will address the remaining points of criticism of Lincoln's service you have posted,(by Strode??) point by point, and will, of course furnish my sources, and links to them.
Thank you.
Terry
Terry;
Harcourt, Brace, and Company (New York)
JEFFERSON DAVIS - AMERICAN PATRIOT - (1955)
426 pages with two chapters of Sources and acknowledgments.
(He had a great access to the family descendants and letters never published, previously. Too numerous for me to mention herein).
JEFFERSON DAVIS - CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT - (1959)
516 pages with sources and acknowledgments in addition
JEFFERSON DAVIS - TRAGIC HERO - (1964)
538 pages with ibid
In here, gentlemen, you will find all the sources and actual
facts to last you some considerable time.
If you can do anything with Strode's account of Lincoln, from Volume One page 67 to page 70, good luck!
Direct quotes: "He knew how to josh (his men) and kept them amused with salty anecdotes".
"Absorbing as much about drilling tactics as he could
in five days, Lincoln had set off at the head of his motley company".
"The militia were an independent lot, their ranks well seasoned with roughneck no-goods who had little respect for authority. But in his droll, down to earth way, Lincoln could manage his gang".
It gets worse, I'll spare you.
Hudson Strode is the great grandson of Colonel James M. Strode, whom his gr-grandson admits didn't handle the
mustering of troops all that well, and Davis had to be called in to set matters aright.
At this collection of notables at Dixon's Ferry, we find Lt. Col. Zachary Taylor, General Winfield Scott, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, Lieutenant Albert Sidney Johnston (later a Confederate general who was killed at Shiloh) and captain of a small militia band, Abraham Lincoln, whom either Davis or Lieutenant Robert Anderson thus issued his first oath of allegiance to him and his motley crew. Davis may have done it once, and Anderson the second time, but it was all for naught. Lincoln and his men could not be used...
Reference source that Strode uses: (1832 - Frank Stevens - THE BLACK HAWK WAR).
Simple. Secession was illegal and therefore all the confederate states were still part of the United States. They therefore owed their allegiance to the United States and they levied war against the United States. Levying war against the United States by those owing it allegiance is treason.
There's a long and detailed account in Roy F. Nichols, "United States v. Jefferson Davis," _American Historical Review,_ Vol XXXI, No. 2, January, 1926. If you're interested, that's the place to look.
At the end of the article, one finds the following:
[begin quote]
The case came before the Circuit Court November 30-December 3; Chase and Underwood were both on the bench. On an appointed day O'Conor and Ould argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, because it had inflicted punishment, barred further prosecution. Dana, assisted by Beach and Wells, denied the validity of the defendant's contention. The Constitution, Dana said, was not criminal law, but established an organic political system; consequently, the clause referred to could not be a penalty, but only one of several phrases defining the qualifications necessary for holding certain offices in this organic system. On December 5, Chase announced that he and Underwood could not agree; a certificate of division therefore was entered in the minutes and sent to the Supreme Court. The district attorney then asked that a day be set for trial after the coming session of the Supreme Court, a desire shared by O'Conor. Chase said that the matter could be left open until it was definitely known when the Supreme Court would finish its winter term. [47]
But no further date was ever to be set. Evarts had surmised that O'Conor's move was made to get the case referred to the Supreme Court during the coming term. WE may also suspect that he feared that Chase's reasoning [that the 14th Amendment already punished Davis for treason and trying him would be a violation of the prohibition on double jeopardy] would influence a majority of the court to quash the indictment. This would be a defeat for the government, and so, possibly in order to avoid this contingency, he offered to enter a nolle prosequi if the defendant's counsel would agree to drop proceedings and not call up the case in the Supreme Court; O'Conor assented. [48] On Christmas Day Johnson issued Evarts's proclamation granting complete amnesty to all participants in the late rebellion. On this ground a nolle prosequi was entered in the Circuit Court in February, and a few days later Evarts moved that the certificate of division be dismissed by the Supreme Court. [49] On February 26, 1869, the Attorney General wrote the defendant's legal advisers that instructions had been given to nolle presequi all indictments for treason alleged to have been committed during the late war and that his office had "no information of any such prosecutions" pending anywhere against Jefferson Davis. [50][end quote]
[47] Davis's Works, VII. 196-227, VIII,. 361; Chase to Nettie Chase, Dec. 3, 1868, Chase MSS. (L. of C.); Beach to Evarts, Dana to Evarts, Nov. 30, 1868 (telegrams), Attorney General MSS.; Evarts to Beach, Nov. 30, 1868, Attorney General's Instruction Book A I, p. 154; Evarts to Dana, Nov. 30, 1868, Attorney General's Letter-Book G, p. 320. Underwood refused to join Chase in agreement to quash the indictment.
[48] Evarts to Beach, Nov. 29, 1868, Attorney General's Instruction Book A I, p. 153; Southern Historical Society Papers, XXXVIII. 347-349.
[49] Proclamation of Dec. 25, 1868; Richmond Enquirer and Examiner, Feb. 12, 1869; National Intelligencer (Washington), Feb. 20, 1869.
[50] Everts to C. E. Hooker et al., Feb. 26, 1869, Attorney General's Letter-Book G, p. 402. The expense of this case to the government was not inconsiderable and makes an interesting item: counsel fees alone amounted to $21,950; Evarts received $10,540, Dana, $5500, Wells, $3500, Clifford, $2500; Rousseau died before the payments to the early counsel were made. Evarts to Stanbery, May 24, Otto to Stanbery, June 10, Nov. 14, 1867, Browning to Hoar, Mar. 6, 1869, Attorney General MSS.; Wells to Evarts, July 14, 1868, Attorney General's Record of Letters Received, Book 2, under date, Browingin to Evarts, Aug. 22, 1868, ibid., Book 3, under date; Stanbery to Otto, June 8, 1867, Attorney General's Letter-Book F, p. 405, to Browning, Nov. 14, 1867, ibid., p. 555, Evarts to Browning, Dec. 2, 1868, Jan. 28, 1869, ibid., G, pp. 321, 349, Evarts to Clifford, Feb. 11, 1869, ibid., p. 362, to Browning, Mar. 2, 1869, ibid., p. 407, Hoar to Evarts, to Dana, Sept. 22, 1869, ibid., H, p. 55; Evarts to Dana, Feb. 12, July 22, 1869, Dana MSS.; Dana to Evarts, June 16, 1869, Evarts MSS.
Read the article for the story of how we got there.
See also:
"On the last day of November, Davis's counsel petitioned to quash the indictment and then proposed to the court that Davis had already been punished for his supposed crimes before the trial, thanks to the constitutional amendment that excluded him and others from certain rights of citizenship. On December 5 Chief Justice Chase dismissed the indictment, agreeing that since punishment had already been inflicted by the Fourteenth Amendment, the case could not be tried ex post facto." [William C. Davis, _Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour,_ p. 663]
Ignorant AND lazy is not the way someone whose professed "paramount object in this strife is to learn the truth" should strive for.
What's the matter? Afraid of what you might learn?
Regards,
Cash
Not really. You just gave me what I knew you would.
Thank you. Now, please look back at it, and see what has happened to this man...
He was captured, tortured, punished, did not die of exposure at the fortess Monroe from the hypomycetus fungii and the other diseases growing in his damp cell, and was supported by everyone after a period of this inhumane treatment at the hands of his own countrymen.
Worst of all for Davis, he 'wished for a trial to prove that Secession was not treason'. He never got it. That hurt him worse than anything else...
Davis never had a chance. He may as well have been picked up by Northern vigilantes, and held without reason
for two years. If any of you ever wanted to defend your cases against the South, here was the chance to convict him. But every yankee lawyer was saying the same thing; Davis is right! The US will lose, in the above-styled cause.
Again, sir, I have you, here. Or rather, Davis has you, and your 'side'.
But I suppose, since none of your people has ever actually 'seen' the South, nor its Confederacy, the Institution of Slavery must, then, crowd your every thought upon the subject of Secession.
The subject of slavery crowds the pages of South Carolina's Causes of Secession (and others), and please let me apologize on behalf of the North for compelling the ratification of the 14th Amendment at the point of the bayonet, sorry about that.
Those pesky Resolutions of Secession, you just can't get around them.
The subject of slavery crowds the pages of South Carolina's Causes of Secession (and others), and please let me apologize on behalf of the North for compelling the ratification of the 14th Amendment at the point of the bayonet, sorry about that.
Those pesky Resolutions of Secession, you just can't get around them.
That, gentlemen, is an American hero. No sir, that is a Colonel doing his job. If you don't understand that... you've never met a Colonel or a hero. I've both met and served with both. Davis was a Colonel; calling him a hero lessens real MEN of the past and the present. Then again our society is pretty fast and loose w/ the term.
This would be your Commander-in-Chief, I believe! History has no doubt which commander and chief not only won but prevailed. History has long ago judged your messiah Davis. He has been weighed, measured and found wanting.
I shall leave you with this one thought, in return.
When you attack the Southern leader, you attack all Confederate soldiers whom you claim to honor. They don't want your unearned sympathetic affections nor your admiration.
Save yourselves the trouble. It is pointless. They were defending Davis, and the South.
When you attack Davis, you attack each and every one of those Rebels, including my forebears in the 58th Va. Co. K. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and frankly your claim is offensive to me. I rank politicians right up there w/ the mud on the bottom of my boot. Do you really believe every, or even all that many,a CS soldier thought Davis the cat's meow? Are you really so ignorant and poorly read? Davis was so well loved that desertion rates were what? Davis was so competant that the commutation sys had to be adopted and conscription resorted to when? Davis was anything but loved by either the army or the people. The buck always stops at the top. The CS under Davis failed to adequately supply the CS Army or to feed its own people. The average soldier looked at Bragg and later Hood and knew ****ed well who had appointed them as their commander. Davis was just another politico stay behinder. he was a competant Colonel, a superb politician and a poor president. Was he a good man? I leave that to others I don't really care to know any more about the man that I already do. I honor and respect the MEN who spent their time on the sharp end, the men who shared the same blood, mud and misery you apparently know absolutely nothing about. There is a connection between soldiers; regardless of which side of the firing line they were on. The men who were on the line got along quite well after the war, it was the stay behinders and enthusiastic members of the wannabe tribe who got the Lost Cause, in all of it's sick finery, going. The real men were busy getting on w/ their lives making do the best they could.
The violent reactions to Davis and the South, today, are welcomed as a form of jealousy. What violent reaction to the South? I look at the Confedracy as a failure of the slaveocracy to make a succesful coup de tat. The Confederacy is not and never was the South. Less than half of the population were willing supporters of it.
Hostis Honorii Invidiae
"An enemies' envy is an honor" You can judge a man by the quality of his enemies is perhaps more apt.
Beowulf
So no I do not besmirch the average soldier in gray, I think highly of his courage and fortitude under the most trying of situations. I think his politicians were a batch of blithering fools who lacked the courage of their convictions and I don't lump the man in gray w/ the gutless wonders who flew them. And anyone who claims otherwise is a bald faced liar.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
Thank you. Now, please look back at it, and see what has happened to this man...
He was captured, tortured,
Lie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
punished, did not die of exposure at the fortess Monroe from the hypomycetus fungii and the other diseases growing in his damp cell, and was supported by everyone after a period of this inhumane treatment at the hands of his own countrymen.
There was no inhumane treatment of Davis. Another lie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
But every yankee lawyer was saying the same thing; Davis is right! The US will lose, in the above-styled cause.
Wrong as usual. No lawyer said he was right. That is a lie that you have been told.
There was no inhumane treatment of Davis. Another lie.
Wrong as usual. No lawyer said he was right. That is a lie that you have been told.
Read what actual historians have written.
Regards,
Cash
Very well. Would you care to detail what REAL HISTORIANS
say was the actual two year events which take Davis from
Georgia, to Fortress Monroe Casemate #2, to Carroll Hall, and to his release?
(See, I don't know any approved historians! I have never heard of any, other than those to whom I refer, and who give a drastically different account of the situation, all the way around!)...
We'd all be very glad to hear the actual, and TRUE, accounts of the events, since Varina Davis and Captain Jerome B. Titlow, Company K, Third Pennsylvania Artillery are not worthy enough to give the account from her pen!
And since we are so wrong in our assessments of the situations which befell him!
So no I do not besmirch the average soldier in gray, I think highly of his courage and fortitude under the most trying of situations. I think his politicians were a batch of blithering fools who lacked the courage of their convictions and I don't lump the man in gray w/ the gutless wonders who flew them. And anyone who claims otherwise is a bald faced liar.
As I understand chains of command, every soldier is the rank and file field-level equivalent of his leader? They serve at his pleasure and they are his subordinates, which means they represent him in the field?
Thus, these men were giving their last full measures for...
their leader; who represented their country.
And I am glad to hear there is no violent reaction to the Southern Confederacy. This soothes me, sir, immeasurably.
Very well. Would you care to detail what REAL HISTORIANS
say was the actual two year events which take Davis from
Georgia, to Fortress Monroe Casemate #2, to Carroll Hall, and to his release?
He was taken by boat to Fort Monroe and held in the casemate there. I've seen the casemate. It's basically a jail cell. He was placed in chains for a time, but then released from them. He was eventually freed on bail and then pardoned by Andrew Johnson. What else would you like to know?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
(See, I don't know any approved historians! I have never heard of any, other than those to whom I refer, and who give a drastically different account of the situation, all the way around!)...
I don't know what you mean by "approved" historians, but the charlatans you cited are not historians in any sense of the word.
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