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.
Is it your opinion that cadets later than the 1825-26 term were still instructed with Rawle's book?
Not necessarily. The jury is out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cedarstripper
According to the above, we can't even be sure how regularly cadets were instructed in constitutional law from term to term, let alone whose texts were relied on or the prevailing opinion.
That is why I have doubts.
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
Personally, I have to wonder how he knew about the cadet's informal gatherings and what they discussed including what they used for references.
Exactly! His research on when and what was examined might be accepted literally, but the quoted statement is pure speculation.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I ran across this interesting tidbit and wish to pass it along:
(SOURCE: Compiled Confederate Veterans magazines, published by Broadfoot Publishing for the National Historical Society. 1896, Volume IV.
Beginning on page 222, General Clement A. Evans, of Georgia, begins writing a long essay called OUR CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY. Page 227 is where this comes from.)
"But let us pass over the whole of that melancholy controversy of a half century and take up that record which we made in our choice at last of the mode and measure of redress. That mode was separate secession by the ordinance of each State, passed in regular convention of delegates elected by the people after full and fair discussion, and upon the advice of jurists who were among the profoundest lawyers of America. Was the act lawful? Did the Southern States rashly act on this momentous question in passionate defiance of known law? The answer is supremely important, because Southern patriots cannot afford to let a biased history praise them for their courage, while it denounces them as outlaws. The answer will not affect our present loyalty to the Union, because the States are now in the fraternal bonds of a compact which makes secession no longer legal; but, considering the Union as it was in 1860, the question is put: Was the State ordinance of secession plainly unlawful then? Had the Southern States no color or right to secede? Was armed coercion unquestionably legal? Replying as a student of my country's glorious history, I can say that, without the understanding that States could withdraw in peace, it is not probable that the Union, under our wise constitution, would have been formed at all. Viewing the question as a patriot, I can see how our forefathers regarded this privilege as a conservative, beneficial provision adapted to restrain the general government from acts of sectional injustice, and why it was so long expressly avowed by States and statesmen not of the South alone, but also of the East and North, as a just defense of the States against the accumulation of Federal power. Answering as a lawyer, I present the first records of the States that formed the Union; and, reading the debates of that period, to interpret the various terms by which one State after another had entered into the great confederation, I must say that if this privilege was not strongly implied, then the States were betrayed into ratifying a constitution which they did not understand. But we see further that some States expressly provided for the exercise of this privilege as a condition of their accession to the Union, and by a just principle it is made clear that a right reserved by one State became at once the right of all States. President Buchanan and other statesmen who were embarrassed by the political situation in 1860 tried to argue that secession and coercion were both equally illegal; but if the constitution conferred no power to use the army and navy of the Union and the militia of the States to coerce a seceded State coercion was illegal, being unconferred and without sanction of a penalty or the power to enforce it. Doubtless our government always had the constitutional power to command a State to obey the law or go out of the Union; but if the armed coercion of a seceded State was unlawful, then secession must have been the lawful procedure which the original States contemplated as their rightful resort. So clear to the minds of many jurists in 1865, so doubtful in others was this doctrine of secession, that our government was compelled, in view of the great interests at stake, to concede to the States the color or right to secede in every measure adopted by Congress, State convention, and constitutional amendment, adopted to re-establish the relations of the seceded States with the other States after the Confederate armies were destroyed ; and, in fact, the whole question was yielded by the final decision not to try Jefferson Davis on the charge of treason.
"The South did not attempt nullification or rebellion or any form of unlawful resistance to our government. It did not dissolve the Union, nor even attempt its dissolution; for how may our Union have been lawfully dissolved? By one method alone, and that is by agreement of all the States. Our Union could not have been dissolved by one State or by a majority of States, but only by all States; but the South made no call for such a measure, preferring to leave each State to act for itself according to its pleasure, and accordingly each seceding State dissolved only its own connection with the Union, and left the government of the Union undissolved. The President, the Congress, the courts, the army and navy, the constitution and the flag, together with every function of government, were left in power and place. Suppose the State had resolved to remain in the Union, and had marched its army toward Washington to resist the inauguration of President Lincoln. That would have been rebellion; the overt act would have been treasonable; the failure of the act would have made it a felonous crime, and its success would have imperiled free government on this continent; but no State rebelled, no statesman plotted a conspiracy, no soldier committed treason. In lawful and dignified measures the South sought an honorable separation, and, with equally honorable acquiescence in its failure, reentered the Union to defend its honor and maintain its glory forever."
Ole, you doubt Dudley's investigation? He said: “It is undoubtedly true that the question of the right of a State to secede was under discussion by cadets and that Rawle's work was often referred to in these discussions and its views quoted in support of the right of secession.
He went on to say that is why he believed the former cadets memory was flawed in thinking it was a textbook. Personally, I have to wonder how he knew about the cadet's informal gatherings and what they discussed including what they used for references.
At any rate, it was a popular work and it seems the cadets did use the book either formally or informally.
There were not very many cadets in those days and most people who research what they read outside of assigned textbooks usually check the library records. While I don't recall anything in particular about cadets who were there in this period, I have seen references to people like Grant, Beauregard, and Sheridan on various topics. Grant liked romantic novels.
Thanks, Will, for posting this article. It reflects many of my own beliefs that I could never have articulated as well as General Evans did.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
Thanks, Will, for posting this article. It reflects many of my own beliefs that I could never have articulated as well as General Evans did.
Clement A. Evans was an interesting man, very bright, a lawyer and judge before the war who became a Methodist minister after the war. He was a very influential Atlanta-area preacher in the "holiness movement" revival of the late 19th century (starting about 1858) which seems to have been a major part of the splitting of that denomination.
He was a very active member of veterans organizations, was the 1st president of the Confederate Survivors Association (1878) and a founder of the first national group, the United Confederate Veterans, in 1889. He retired as an active minister in 1892, and the article written here is about 3-4 years after that. His audience is primarily ex-Confederates and their families, who would little wish to be told that they were in the wrong.
While he was obviously intelligent and articulate, his slant on all this is simply what you would expect: the South was right. Like all other secession-supporting documents, this statement ignores the actions the seceding states took: armed seizures of property that did not belong to them, illegal even under their own state laws, and all long before the North did anything similar to them.
Many Southerners had disagreed with his position here in the days before the Civil War, just as articulately and intelligently. Many Northerners felt -- heck, some leading Abolitionists proclaimed -- that the seceding states (though wrong) should be allowed to depart in peace. But the Confederacy refused to follow a path that would lead in that direction. They chose violence and war, which the rest of the country accepted and pursued to the end. The problem is that, having lost through their choice of methods, the South wanted some way to avoid admitting even a smidgen of fault for their abusive tactics. And so we see decades of "Lost Cause" myth being created to make the sacrifice of their people seem worthwhile.
So clear to the minds of many jurists in 1865, so doubtful in others was this doctrine of secession, that our government was compelled, in view of the great interests at stake, to concede to the States the color or right to secede in every measure adopted by Congress, State convention, and constitutional amendment, adopted to re-establish the relations of the seceded States with the other States after the Confederate armies were destroyed ; and, in fact, the whole question was yielded by the final decision not to try Jefferson Davis on the charge of treason.
I'm no contitutional lawyer but it seems reasonable to me to understand the U.S. government's actions to re-admit the seceded states to the Union meant that the powers-that-were believed those states to have separated from the Union (secession) and hence existed the need to formally re-admit them.
Or it might be supposed that the states had not seceded nor did the federal government recognize that theory of separation, but they instead required those states that had been in rebellion meet the standards they imposed against those who had rebelled against in the first place.
Unionblue
__________________ "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
I suppose one could suppose anything. Supposing does not make it so, but believing a particular supposition to be a logical interpretation of a past event is the prerogative of a reasonable man.
You have your interpretation; I have mine. Neither is going to change, but each has the right to hold his particular view.
While he was obviously intelligent and articulate, his slant on all this is simply what you would expect: the South was right.
The South was right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
Many Southerners had disagreed with his position here in the days before the Civil War, just as articulately and intelligently.
Not all that many. Even those that disagreed with secesion generally disagreed for reasons other than those you mention. Untimately, most opposers sided with their states in the end. Relatively few didn't.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
