Were Confederate Generals Traitors?

[CMWinkler]

Were Confederate Generals Traitors?

By Walter E. Williams | June 27, 2017 | 8:37 AM EDT



Expired Image Removed
At the 150th anniversary of the Civil War's Battle of Chancellorsville, a Confederate re-enactor issues orders to troops to get them into position during the re-enactment of Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson's flank attack against the Union XI Corps. (DOD Photo/Sgt. 1st Class Raymond J. Piper, Soldiers Live)
My "Rewriting American History" column of a fortnight ago, about the dismantling of Confederate monuments, generated considerable mail.

Some argued there should not be statues honoring traitors such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, who fought against the Union. Victors of wars get to write the history, and the history they write often does not reflect the facts. Let's look at some of the facts and ask: Did the South have a right to secede from the Union? If it did, we can't label Confederate generals as traitors.

More: http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/were-confederate-generals-traitors#disqus_thread

 

[Andersonh1]

You are right about the rebellion but as far as secession there are no laws against it.

Sure there is. All you have to do is read between the lines in the Constitution and make the Supremacy Clause mean something it doesn't actually mean, and the prohibition on secession is as plain as day!

Remember, the people and the states could only exercise their sovereignty once when they adopted the Constitution, and never again.

 

[jgoodguy]

Walter E. Williams is "a mythmaker" and doesn't use sources correctly according to who other than you?

Instead of complaining about the charge of prevarication about a source that seems to be deceitful, fast and loss with the truth, a fibber, a purveyor of falsehoods and distorted deceitfulness how about defending the gentleman.

 

[Jimklag]

But just because a state proclaims its secession doesn't mean the Union has to honor it. The nation has the right to put down rebellions... when is a secession a secession and when is it a rebellion? And who decides?

Attempted secession is always rebellion and whoever is in office at the time of attempted secession is constitutionally obliged to stop it.

 

[DaveGberg]

You are right about the rebellion but as far as secession there are no laws against it.

And there are no laws permitting it, which makes the Constitution ambiguous on the point. So that leaves it to congress and/or the Supreme Court to determine, which was accomplished under Texas v. White.

IMO whether a state may secede or not, the confederacy picked the wrong way to go about it and they paid a heavy price for that.

 

[jgoodguy]

Sure there is. All you have to do is read between the lines in the Constitution and make the Supremacy Clause mean something it doesn't actually mean, and the prohibition on secession is as plain as day!

Remember, the people and the states could only exercise their sovereignty once when they adopted the Constitution, and never again.

Care to flesh this out or just spinning.

 

[jgoodguy]

You are right about the rebellion but as far as secession there are no laws against it.

And there are no laws permitting it, which makes the Constitution ambiguous on the point. So that leaves it to congress and/or the Supreme Court to determine, which was accomplished under Texas v. White.

IMO whether a state may secede or not, the confederacy picked the wrong way to go about it and they paid a heavy price for that.

It is my position that secession is an alleged power. Powers are defined in the Constitution, the sovereignty of the various parties of the Constitution, therefore legal and illegal are not correct terms. They are not used in in Constitutional Law books I have referenced and I have challenged other members find one without a response. Without an expressed power to secede, the power does not exist and runs into other powers of the Federal Government when exercised.

AKA the Flying fists of the Constitution.

In short Rebforever posts nonsense about the legality of secession in the hope that the site will shut down immediately after such a post so he gets the last word.

 

[wausaubob]

The question of treason was settled at Appomattox. In 2017 a discussion of that issue has a limited commercial purpose of creating attention for a divisive issue on which people might have strong opinions.

 

[Rebforever]

Sure there is. All you have to do is read between the lines in the Constitution and make the Supremacy Clause mean something it doesn't actually mean, and the prohibition on secession is as plain as day!

Remember, the people and the states could only exercise their sovereignty once when they adopted the Constitution, and never again.

 

[Rebforever]

It is my position that secession is an alleged power. Powers are defined in the Constitution, the sovereignty of the various parties of the Constitution, therefore legal and illegal are not correct terms. They are not used in in Constitutional Law books I have referenced and I have challenged other members find one without a response. Without an expressed power to secede, the power does not exist and runs into other powers of the Federal Government when exercised.

AKA the Flying fists of the Constitution.

View attachment 145649 View attachment 145650View attachment 145651

In short Rebforever posts nonsense about the legality of secession in the hope that the site will shut down immediately after such a post so he gets the last word.

Who gets the last word is your duty, not mine, don't you think?

 

[Rebforever]

And there are no laws permitting it, which makes the Constitution ambiguous on the point. So that leaves it to congress and/or the Supreme Court to determine, which was accomplished under Texas v. White.

IMO whether a state may secede or not, the confederacy picked the wrong way to go about it and they paid a heavy price for that.

Then enters the 10th Amendment which the "Treasury of Virtue" always seems to forget.

 

[jgoodguy]

Who gets the last word is your duty, not mine, don't you think?

By all that is holy, in the name of the creator of the universe and swearing upon my mother's grave, in the witness of my wife and cats and swearing never to touch a sewing machine again so long as I live. In that dismal day, provided I am alive at the time, old Unionists seem to be dropping like flies around here. If I am able to life my pain ridden fingers to the keyboard, you will be permitted the last post before the end of this honorable blog.

 

[NedBaldwin]

All you have to do is read between the lines in the Constitution and make the Supremacy Clause mean something it doesn't actually mean, and the prohibition on secession is as plain as day!

That approach may be the way you prefer to work but
I find that reading the plain language and relying on what the clause actually does mean works just fine.

 

[NedBaldwin]

No one get to become an economist without knowing how to use sources correctly.

I think you assume too much.

 

[DaveGberg]

Attempted secession is always rebellion and whoever is in office at the time of attempted secession is constitutionally obliged to stop it.

That assumes the secessions must take the form of an armed revolt. Look at the peaceful secession that took place in Czechoslovakia as a bloodless and legal example.

Which, IMO is going somewhat off road from the thread. Williams' makes a weak argument by linking the General's remedy against the treason question to the legality of secession. If secession was illegal then the Generals would have committed treason, right?

 

[wausaubob]

In the original Constitutional era, secession would have been unnecessary. A state that was unwilling to adopt the new Constitution, and persisted in that position, would have been permitted to set up as an independent country.
The means to suppress independence were limited, and no section of the people had been part of the U.S. and taken the advantages of that participation.
In the beginning, the United States was just an arbitrary arrangement of political entities that might work, might need further modification, as in a Bill of Rights, or might prove unworkable and dissolve into an assortment of competing mini-nations.
But by 1808 this arbitrary arrangement was capable of negotiating with foreign governments, joining in restrictions on the international slave trade, and had admitted four more states, without anyone seriously suggesting that the right to withdraw had been reserved.
While the founding Fathers lived and were active, no one put the theory of withdrawal to the test.
The United States, won a war. Then Texas was annexed, without ever expressly bargaining for the right to be unannexed, if the Texans did not like the bargain.
Then the United States won another war, which extended its boundaries to the Pacific Ocean.
There were then 34 states, not the original 13. The conditions that existed at the time of adoption of the Constitution no longer existed.
The issue that was addressed by the Civil War era people was whether the democratic power of the United States could protect itself from forces of disunion. In 1860 the issue was the particular sectional interests of the slave states, but the issue could have been commercial issues, issues of participation in foreign allegiances, or divisions along class lines.
The consequences of secession, not the theory of secession, were settled by the war.
The Unionists foresaw, for many reasons, that if the South seceded, the United States would be a weak country, like Mexico, and would be subject to allegiances with European countries, at that time, Britain and France.
The Unionists did not want the country to divide up into competing sections, and they were Americans, and Irish and German immigrants, who wanted to continue to build a very strong country that would dominate Europe, not be dominated by Europe.

 

[Jimklag]

That assumes the secessions must take the form of an armed revolt. Look at the peaceful secession that took place in Czechoslovakia as a bloodless and legal example.

Which, IMO is going somewhat off road from the thread. Williams' makes a weak argument by linking the General's remedy against the treason question to the legality of secession. If secession was illegal then the Generals would have committed treason, right?

Ah. Ok. Secession in the USA is always rebellion.

 

[DaveGberg]

Then enters the 10th Amendment which the "Treasury of Virtue" always seems to forget.

The 10th amendment is not the "anything goes" amendment. It affirms that powers not delegated to federal government are reserved to the states and the people. AND the people.

Under what power does the state have to unilaterally rescind the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of American citizenship?
Under what power does a state have to unilaterally nullify a federal act, say one that admits a state into the union?
Under what power does a state have to confiscate property and treasure that was paid for by the people?

These are just some of the things that have to be deconflicted from the Supremacy Clause before a state can claim that right under the 10th Amendment.

It just ain't that simple.

 

[wausaubob]

The secessionists waited until all the principal politicians who experienced the Revolution and the Articles of Confederation had passed away. The three most important politicians being Ben Franklin, George Washington and James Madison.
They also waited until the United States annexed Texas.
They also waited until the application of popular sovereignty made it reasonably clear that there were unlikely to be additional slave states.

 

[highplainsdrifter59]

My answer is, no they were not traitors.

 

[wausaubob]

Do the people of 11 states get to determine for the people of the other 23 states the interpretation of the Constitution?
Do the the people of the 11 secessionists states get to determine that because the right to secede is not expressly forbidden, that it is simply understood, as is the fact that the United States is a white man's country, and that participation in politics will be determined by racial purity criteria to be defined by undetermined means?