Oops, big lump of your posts....

[19thGeorgia]

Looking forward to your postings concerning the Union League.
Leftyhunter

Report on a Union League convention.
Wheeling Daily Register, Sept. 10, 1866-

 

[Copperhead-mi]

It's interesting, but I think the fact that the US accepted the idea that Lee waived his citizenship means it doesn't apply.

But it does put to rest I believe, those who claim Lee was a citizen of Virginia and not the United States before or after April 17, 1861.

 

[19thGeorgia]

"Lost Schmauser"

 

[Bruce Vail]

It's possible to defend Lee, even to admire Lee, while admitting that he committed treason according to the Constitutional definition of the crime. Acting in defiance of the law on a deeply held principle is often considered admirable in modern culture. Don't we admire the patriots of 1776 who took up arms against the legally constituted government of the time? Even in 1861, there were admirers of John Brown who applauded his act of treason.

 

[demiurge]

That the Seceshers were liars has already been demonstrably proven. See other threads.

Do you have a neologism to correctly capture the essence of those who hype "Lost Causer" every time someone advances an argument other than slavery?

No, because coming up with a new insult specifically to attack people who view the Lost Cause as mythology, which is the current consensus of historians, is explicitly against the forum rules.

If I were you, I'd reconsider, before it gets reported.

As to secessionists being liars, certainly. It is incredibly rare to see any politician that won't stretch the truth.

You have to prove that they were lying about their reasons for secession, to each other, behind close doors.

Good luck with that.

 

[Lost Cause]

Uh... No, West Virginia was not still part of VA. What are you doing? (besides inviting mod oversight).

IMO, we were discussing the Virginian voters who wished to form a new state (prior to the formation of WV) since your post 222. Do you not see the voters in the remainder of Virginia or those who did not want to form a state as relevant? Not sure why you assume this would need moderates oversight since it appears to fall in line with the title of the thread.

 

[Andersonh1]

Phil Leigh likes to use the term "Righteous Cause Mythology" as a counter to Lost Cause Mythology.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/righteous-cause-mythology/

Since the cause declarations of some of the seven Cotton States in the first secession wave cite the protection of slavery as a prime reason for leaving the Union, Righteous Cause historians conclude slavery was the only cause of the Civil War. The paragon example is Battle Cry of Freedom author James McPherson who said, “Probably…95 percent of serious historians of the Civil War would agree on…what the war was about . . . which was the increasing polarization of the country between the free states and the slave states over issues of slavery….” McPherson and his acolytes dismiss all other issues even when such factors are evident by comparing the US and Confederate constitutions. For example, the Southern central government was prohibited from (1) imposing protective tariffs, (2) spending taxpayer money on public works, and (3) subsidizing private industries. Although Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy and doubled its White population only after the Federal government required they provide soldiers to invade the Cotton States, Righteous Cause historians insist that the four upper-south states also fought only for slavery.​

​

The Righteous Cause also dismisses the fact that two-thirds of Southern families did not own slaves. Acolytes spill oceans of ink arguing that non-slaveholding Southerners willingly left their homes and risked their lives chiefly – if not exclusively – to promote the “slavocracy.” Although tens-of-thousands of Union volunteers rose up spontaneously to defend their homes in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania when Rebel armies approached those states, Righteous Cause historians don’t credit Southerners with the same instinct, evidently because of endemic Yankee moral superiority. Of course it’s illogical and a lie. As the venerable William C. Davis writes:​

​

The widespread northern myth that the Confederates went to the battlefield to perpetuate slavery is just that, a myth. Their letters and diaries, in the tens-of-thousands, reveal again and again, that they fought and died because their Southern homeland was invaded and their natural instinct was to protect their home and hearth.​

​

Righteous Cause Mythology falsely equates the reasons for secession with the reasons Southerners chose to fight. But they are not the same. Southerners fought to defend their homes. The more pertinent question is to ask why Northerners fought. After all, the Northern states could have let the Southern states leave in peace, without any War at all. It was precisely what prominent abolitionists frequently advocated prior to the War. Examples include William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Beecher, Samuel Howe, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Clark, Gerrit Smith, Joshua Giddings, and even Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner who would become a leading war hawk. For years Garrison described the constitutional Union as “a covenant with death and agreement with hell.”​

​

The Righteous Cause Myth is a natural consequence of the false insistence that the South fought for nothing but slavery. Thus, if the South waged war only to preserve slavery, then it logically follows the Yankees waged war for the sole purpose of freeing the slaves. It is a morally comfortable viewpoint for historians who came of age during and after the twentieth century civil rights movement. But it’s as phony and useless as a football bat.​

​

​

 

[demiurge]

It's possible to defend Lee, even to admire Lee, while admitting that he committed treason according to the Constitutional definition of the crime. Acting in defiance of the law on a deeply held principle is often considered admirable in modern culture. Don't we admire the patriots of 1776 who took up arms against the legally constituted government of the time? Even in 1861, there were admirers of John Brown who applauded his act of treason.

Agreed, even going a step further, the common parlance form of the word, which can be simply constituted to mean the act of attempting to overthrow your government.

 

[Lost Cause]

Probably not, I may have missed something but I don't remember seeing any objection to claims that the Confederates didn't exist because they were still part of the US.

Other than Lincoln’s use as justification for forming the new state.

 

[WJC]

What's wrong with post 1861 legal scholarship? Suspension of habeus corpus was not an issue prior to the ACW.
Leftyhunter

Our constitution was intended, among other things, to anticipate issues and provide means to resolve them equitably when they arise. The Founders anticipated that Habeas Corpus might come under attack and intentionally restricted the power to suspend it to Congress.
The Founders based this decision on long-standing British precedent that suspension was solely the prerogative of Parliament.
Further, the issue did come up before 1861. John Marshall clearly stated in Ex Parte Bollman and Ex Parte Swartwout, 8 U. S. 75 (1807):

If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so.​

"Post 1861 legal scholarship" which denies that under our Constitution, Habeas Corpus can only be suspended by Congress is historically wrong.
Lincoln knew he was wrong. Congress certainly knew he was wrong and passed laws retroactively authorizing his actions. As I stated before, the issue we ought to be dealing with- whether we are historians, legal scholars or civil War 'buffs', is whether saving our Union justified the actions he took.

​

 

[Saphroneth]

Or, as is in line with the US stated legal position on the issue, it was understood that Lee engaged in treason, as did all Confederate soldiers, and they were stripped of their citizenship once they waged war on the US.

If that had been universally enforced I imagine post-1865 elections would have looked rather different. I also imagine they could then have tried Jefferson Davis.

Don't we admire the patriots of 1776 who took up arms against the legally constituted government of the time?

Which was exactly the model the Confederacy was going for, right down to seeking foreign intervention.

 

[byron ed]

I've always been shocked that, so many won't acknowledge the shady shenanigans that put WV into the Union.

To be shocked would require something more substantial than a jelly sound bite like "shady shenanigans." That's nowhere close to being a legal, let alone precise, definition in any way.

We'd need, in detail, how the people of western Virginia had no "right" to defend themselves against the Confederacy in the most effective way available to them. We'd accept nothing less than the advisement of a practicing constitutional lawyer for the naming of the specific laws of the United States that were broken in accepting West Virginia into the Union. Not the mere preferences or precedents, but the actual laws.

The caveat is that unless you're going to prove that murder, treason, or wife-beating were involved we're just not going to buy it.

Even if we did, we'd have to follow up with a discussion on how Texas came into the Confederacy, how that was "completely different."

 

[jackt62]

The boosters of the CSA obviously believed they were a nation; but legally speaking, the CSA was never recognized as an independent nation by any other country.

 

[CSA Today]

Other than Lincoln’s use as justification for forming the new state.

There were southerners who justified forming a new country.

 

[67th Tigers]

Not necessarily. There's several ways to lose your citizenship.

One of them is to commit treason.

That however involves trying them for treason first and securing a conviction. They couldn't do this, because they accepted his renounciation.

You see the problem - once they treated Lee as having renounced his citizenship, they had accepted that he renounced it. If he'd renounced it then he isn't a citizen and can't be tried for treason against a country he isn't a citizen of...

 

[leftyhunter]

Our constitution was intended, among other things, to anticipate issues ond provide means to resolve them equitably when they arise. The Founders anticipated that Habeas Corpus might come under attack and intentionally restricted the power to suspend it to Congress.
The Founders based this decision on long-standing British precedent that suspension was the prerogative of Parliament.
Further, John Marshall clearly stated in Ex Parte Bollman and Ex Parte Swartwout, 8 u. S. 75 (1807):

If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so.​

Yet Congress did allow President Lincoln to suspend habeus corpus even after they passed a law in 1863 concerning habeus corpus as outlined in the article that was posted by the Abraham Lincoln Association. To this day the President under certain circumstances can suspend habeus corpus.
Leftyhunter

 

[Stone in the wall]

Post # 340 clearly shows West Virginia state hood was not with the blessings of most West Virginia, as only Preston and Monongalia counties cast over 50% in its favor.

 

[Bruce Vail]

Without engaging any specific comment here, I would note that it is commonplace for cruel war to be justified, rationalized or idealized after the fact by both by the losers and the winners. It's an unfortunate defect of the human character.

The tragedy of this defect is that it always encourages the beginning of new wars.

 

[byron ed]

IMO, we were discussing the Virginian voters who wished to form a new state (prior to the formation of WV) since your post 222. Do you not see the voters in the remainder of Virginia or those who did not want to form a state as relevant?...

This is not that complicated. Western Virginians democratically decided to defend themselves from the Confederacy by electing to form a new state with the Federal Union. There's no question at all that's what happened.

 

[WJC]

Yet Congress did allow President Lincoln to suspend habeus corpus even after they passed a law in 1863 concerning habeus corpus as outlined in the article that was posted by the Abraham Lincoln Association. To this day the President under certain circumstances can suspend habeus corpus.
Leftyhunter

Thanks for your response.
The key words are "Congress did allow President Lincoln to suspend habeas corpus". With the new laws, Congress authorized his actions.