Ever wonder why bears steal picnic baskets? Because no one will serve them.
We are still at Shrine Mont this morning and enjoying the retreat with the various families. The salamander harvest has been robust and the s’mores have been ideally prepared (and eaten). While it rained hard yesterday, spirits are high and we are returning today.
Thanks Vince for doing my work for me. I had refuted some of Tootie’s nonsense but it was lost somewhere in the blog-o-sphere.
Like Steely Dan says:
You been tellin’ me you’re a genius
Since you were seventeen
In all the time I’ve known you
I still don’t know what you mean
The weekend at the college
Didn’t turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge
I can’t understand
I surely can’t understand Dilorenzo or Tootie, indeed.
And while we are reading the Constitution, let us note that there is only one crime that is actually defined in its text. Article III, section 3, provides that treason against the United States “shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. Conviction requires testimony of two witness or confession in open court.
So. The so-called confederate leaders waged war against the United States. There were more than two witnesses. They therefore committed treason as defined by the Constitution.
There was a strong reason for Lincoln and the supporters of the United States to call them traitors.
As a caveat, I want to note that many rank and file southern soldiers had been drafted. They did not fight voluntarily. Many others were stop-lossed, that is, bound to service for the length of the war even though they had volunteered.
After the war, President Andrew Johnson pardoned all who had fought in an effort to bind up the wounds of war.
It is high time for the neo-confederates to recognize this.
There is a big argument here whether they taught that secession was legal at West Point before the Civil War.
I know in fact that at least one very distinguished West Point graduate of that era did not believed that secession was constitutional.
In 1861, he wrote:
“But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for “perpetual union,” so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution.”
That was written on January 23, 1861.
The author was Robert E. Lee.
The author who admitted that secession was unconstitutional and that the Constitution was perpetual soon thereafter joined and led a military rebellion against it.
Tootie says that DiLorenzo writes “In his first inaugural address Lincoln shockingly threw down the gauntlet of war over the tariff issue, literally threatening the invasions of any state that failed to collect the newly doubled tariff.”
Well, here is the text of the first inaugural.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/LincolnFirstInaugural.html
I did not find any words threatening invasion over the tariff. Perhaps they could be pointed out.
Lincoln did note that he was sworn to uphold the laws of the United States, as he was under the Constitution.
He said:
“I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.
“In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices.”
As Lincoln wisely said, there needed to be no violence or bloodshed, unless forced upon the national government.
The rebellious southern states forced that violence when they bombarded Fort Sumter without provocation.
They started the war, not the United States.
There is a very good, comprehensive law review article about the suspension of habeas corpus by Professor Vladeck at the law school at American University, QUOTE:
The Field Theory: Martial Law, the Suspension Power, and the Insurrection Act
Stephen I. Vladeck
American University – Washington College of Law
Temple Law Review, Vol. 80, 2007
American University, WCL Research Paper No. 08-01
Abstract:
In Ex parte Merryman, Chief Justice Taney famously rejected President Lincoln’s power to unilaterally suspend the writ of habeas corpus in and around Baltimore at the outset of the U.S. Civil War. According to Taney, only Congress can provide for suspension of the writ, and Congress had not so provided. Just one year later, though, the Vermont federal circuit court held, in Ex parte Field, that the suspension of habeas corpus is necessarily coincident to the imposition of martial law. Because President Lincoln had the statutory authority to impose martial law by virtue of the so-called Militia Acts, Field concluded, Congress had effectively, if not explicitly, given sanction to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas in those areas where martial law was validly in force.
This Article attempts a thorough reconstruction of the Field theory, beginning with the facts of Merryman itself before moving to the pre-Civil War precedents on which the decision in Field relied. As it concludes, the President’s authority to impose martial law in crisis situations does in fact derive from the Militia Acts, and there is at least a colorable argument that Baltimore was under martial law at the time Merryman was decided. More importantly for present purposes, though, the Article analyzes the deep and profound questions as to the substantive preconditions for the imposition of martial law through the lens of the modern-day Insurrection Act, concluding that the statutory framework, in current form, does not adequately demarcate the point past which martial law is appropriate. Because Congress has the power to provide for the calling forth of the military to respond to domestic crises, Congress can provide for greater accountability – especially at the end of the next emergency – and, the Article concludes, Congress should do so. UNQUOTE
The abstract of Vladeck’s paper is at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=963994
There is a button for a one-click download of the full article.
“You mean when the south refusing to pay retaliatory tariffs that would rob them of their wealth?”
Nah, the Civil War had absolutely nothing to do with slavery …
LOL – I love when Toots attempts to rewrite history – while never accurate, its always entertaining!
Tootie has perpetuated more myths.
Tootie is quoting professor Williams to the effect that “Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was little more than a political gimmick, and he admitted so in a letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase.”
First all, the professor is quoting a letter by Seward, not by Lincoln, so there is no admission by Lincoln at all. The professor needs to check his sources.
Moreover, Seward was wrong. The Proclamation was justified by military necessity. It freed nearly two million slaves before the end of the war. The Proclamation authorized the enlistment of black troops, and more that 180,000 fought bravely to help win the war and their own freedom.
We know that the German and Japanese forces made massive use of slave labor during World War II as an integral part of their war effort. The so-called confederacy also used massive amounts of slave labor in support of its military effort. Lincoln saw the military necessity to deny this source of military support to the enemy, and he did so by freeing all slaves used in support of the rebellion. The Proclamation was read to slaves in Union custody on January 1, 1863. Tens of thousands fled to Union lines during the rest of the war.
Lincoln recognized that military necessity could not support freeing slaves in areas under Union control, since they were not part of the rebel’s war effort. Lincoln supported the 13th Amendment.
There is a lot of historical ignorance on display here. I recommend Allen C. Guelzo’s Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation as a balanced, scholarly treatment of the question of Lincoln’s authority.
Vince:
As you know from Ex Parte Milligan, Lincoln issued the proclamation suspending the writ of habeas corpus on authority from Congress by its Habeas Corpus Act of March 3, 1863. Lincoln signed the proclamation on September 15, 1863. What is forgotten is that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus two other times, first, on April 27, 1861, again on September 24, 1862, a few days after signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Neither with Congressional approval.
Ex Parte Merryman presumed to decide the issue of Presidential prerogative versus Congressional power. Taney decried Lincoln’s position that, since the Constitution was silent on who may exercise the power, the President had the authority since an emergency military situation demanded prompt Executive action. Lincoln ignored the Ex Parte Merryman ruling and Congress’ action to pass the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863 ended the stalemate.
Tootoe said to Mespo: “Lincoln had no authority to suspend habeas corpus, only congress can do that. If you knew what the Constitution said you would know this.”
There is nothing in the Constitution that says that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus.
If there is any language that says so, please post it here.
As Lincoln told Congress on July 4, 1861, the Constitution is silent on the issue.
Now Taney, Scalia, and other jurists have SAID that only Congress may suspend the writ, but this is not based on the language of the Constitution. It is only an inference which they have drawn from the placement of the Suspension Clause in Article I, which deals with Congress.
But that inference is very weak. There are many other constitutional limitations in Article I that do not apply to the Congress. Section 10 has limitations on the States. Section 9, clause 6, has a limit on money to be drawn from the Treasury that applies ONLY to the Executive. When the Framers wanted to apply a limitation only to the Congress, they wrote in Sec. 9, clause 1, that an action “shall not be prohibited by the Congress.” An earlier draft of the Suspension Clause had said that the legislature shall not suspend the writ, but the Framers dropped out the reference to the legislative branch.
Neither Taney nor Scalia were ever able to cite any Supreme Court cases on the issue.
So the best that can be said is that there is an ongoing argument that the Court has not settled.
Mespo
Your weak and trivial “refutations” about minor points against DiLorenzo are laughable and inadequate for proving DiLorenzo is wrong about Lincoln being a tyrant and despot. You quote the date of the Geneva Conventions off by a year, easily a typo, or easily a mistake since the work on the document began in 1863. You quote statements which are merely interpretations. It mocks history, truth, and understanding.
If the West Pointers hadn’t learned about the rules of war such that they hadn’t broken from some tradition DiLorenzo refers to then why did General Sherman say of HIMSELF that he would be guilty of war crimes?
Thomas Woods says of this matter:
“Sherman himself put it best when he admitted that according to what he had been taught at West Point, he deserved to be executed for war crimes.” The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History page 73.
You should be slightly embarrassed for having used the point about William Rawle’s textbook (A View On The Constitution) to prove DiLorenzo is wrong about Lincoln. Though the book on constitutional law had been used for a short time at West Point, its author, Rawle was an abolitionist!
So it’s not as if he was advocating secession because he supported slavery, he was advocating secession because he knew it was advocated by the founding fathers, who I presume West Pointers already knew about in some detail. Unless they were as stupid as defenders of Lincoln would have us believe when it is convenient for perpetuating myths.
Woods writes about abuse by the northern army:
“The women of New Orleans did not respond well to his [General Benjamin Butler] crude and coarse manner, and to the sexual advances by the soldiers. Enraged, Butler issued Order Number 28:
As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women calling themselves ‘ladies’ of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is order that hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”
Continuing:
“In other words, Southern women were to be thought of as prostitutes. This ‘right to rape’ order horrified the civilized states of Europe [perhaps even the people of Geneva!], and immediate protests were issued from Britain and France. The British prime minister declared, ‘I will venture to say that no example can be found in the history of civilized nations till the publication of this order of a general guilty in cold blood of so infamous as act as deliberately to hand over the female inhabitants of a conquered city to the unbridled license of an unrestrained soldiery.'” Woods, page 72.
West Pointers were already steeped in the European tradition of classical warfare between standing armies. They new exactly what was required of such an army and of themselves. Geneva Conventions or not, there was no excuse whatsoever for “total war” against civilians including destroying the homes and crops where women and children lived. The majority of southern whites never owned a slave. Some of whom nursed their wounded family members when there was no other choice and should surely have been covered by the 1864 conventions.
I hope you are not saying that the southern women should have been punished for tending to their wounded by having their homes and crops razed, or should have let them die untreated.
It is ludicrous to pretend that Union officers did not understand this break from tradition. It implies that these men were at once brilliant generals who finally defeated evil, while also being imbeciles who didn’t know it was wrong to rape women or starve children to death.
It appears only lawyers like Abe Lincoln would think this passes for some form of justice.
Walter E. Williams (George Mason University) points out
“Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was little more than a political gimmick, and he admitted so in a letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase: ‘The original proclamation has no…legal justification, except as a military measure.’ Secretary of State William Seward said, ‘We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.’ Seward was acknowledging the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to slaves in states in rebellion against the United States and not to slaves in states not in rebellion.”
Slaves weren’t “legally” free until the 13th Amendment.
rode* coat tails. Not road.
Mespo:
Lincoln had no authority to suspend habeas corpus, only congress can do that. If you knew what the Constitution said you would know this.
Our darkest hour?
What dark hour? You mean when the south refusing to pay retaliatory tariffs that would rob them of their wealth? Wasn’t one of the main purposes of the union to avoid such retaliatory attacks between the states? But there the feds were launching one such an attack? What’s so dark about bucking against that? As dark as a tax on tea and a rebellion from King George? How’s that for secession?
DiLorenzo writes
“In his first inaugural address Lincoln shockingly threw down the gauntlet of war over the tariff issue, literally threatening the invasions of any state that failed to collect the newly doubled tariff. On the issue of slavery he was 100 percent accommodating, going so far as to pledge his support for a constitutional amendment that would forever band the federal government from interfering with southern slavery.
You perpetuate the myths I refer to. Lincoln’s fascist attack, which you support, was about money, not slavery. You are right to feel moral superiority by opposing slavery, but you won’t be able to do it by condoning the US Civil War. It wasn’t begun to end it and destroying the Constitution along the way is too a high a price if it meant that all would be plunged into slavery to the state. That high price is enslavement of all to the state.
Jefferson reiterates the Declaration of Independence in his first inaugural address:
“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
Even Tocqueville noted
“The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disapprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.”
Darn straight.
That dark hour, if anything, was caused by the corporatist money grubbing Abe Lincoln and his power grab. A power grab I’m sure talented lawyers in America relish as they have been rewarded handsomely from it ever since. Big Law is as bad as big oil or any other despised entity the left loves to hate.
Of your pet despot Arthur Schlesinger writes:
“…Lincoln’s expansive interpretation of presidential powers made him the most imperial president in American history, thereby setting a dangerous precedent for predisposed successors. The incarceration of approximately twenty thousand political prisoners, the closing of over three hundred newspapers, the interruptions of state legislatures, the blockade of the South, the unilateral suspension of habeas corpus, explicit and implicit defiance of the Supreme Court, the sanctioning of the creation of West Virginia, private property seizures, and electioneering/voting irregularities have all been rationalized as necessary war measures.”
Now there’s a fascist if ever there was one. And apparently one you can adore.
Lincoln was the threat. He was a darkest hour. He was a white supremacist who promoted the free soil movement which was dedicated to making the new territories free of BLACK people. He was the white supremacist who allowed slavery in the north as long as they remained in the union. He was the white supremacist who felt blacks were inferior and used them as whipping boys to trample the Constitution. He was the white supremacist you admire.
Lincoln, like George Bush, provoked a war then wanted to call everyone who opposed it a traitor. Only Lincoln murdered his own.
Walter E Williams asks for what:
“Why was a costly war fought to end it? African slavery existed in many parts of the Western world, but it did not take warfare to end it. Dozens of countries, including the territorial possessions of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”
It wasn’t for good. It was for evil. The war was for profit and power. It was for the northern manufacturers, for Lincoln’s political power. The slavery issue road its coat tails.
If ever there was a darkest hour it is now. And this dark hour is the direct result of the centralized power Lincoln created and has now grown into a totalitarian police-state you cannot stop unless there is secession or a role-back of abuses.
But that roll-back will not come from people who handle the “law” since they are the ones corrupting it.
THAT is your enemy, not me. And you and men like Lincoln are the dark hour those of us who despise fascism regret to see.
“Prove DiLorenzo is wrong. Prove it smarty pants.”
****************
Most educated people know Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and was single minded when it came to protecting his Commander-in-Chief prerogatives. That’s half the story, the other half – which you and DiLorenzo for ideological reasons will not accept — is that Lincoln held together the Republic in its darkest hour.
But to the issue at hand about proving the incompetence of your hero, let’s start with just a few of the historical inaccuracies or over-statements:
Page 3: (First edition) “Lincoln thought of himself as the heir to the Hamiltonian political tradition”
There is no historical support in the research for this proposition.
Page 4: (First edition) “It is very likely that most Americans, if they had been given the opportunity, would have gladly supported compensated emancipation as a means of ending slavery. ”
This exact proposal was made to the Border States and summarily rejected by them in 1862. It is beyond foolish to think that the South following a declaration of war when Lincoln was elected and after the commencement of hostilities would have accepted either.
Page 5: (First edition) “This doctrine [secession] was even taught to the cadets at West Point, including almost all of the top military commanders on both sides of the conflict”
This is almost surely a reference to William Rawle’s treatise on the Constitution (A View of the Constitution of the United States, 1825), which was used as a text at West Point for one or two years in the mid-1820′s, and then replaced by a different book which did not, in fact, advocate the legality of secession.
Page 6: (First edition) “Chapter 7 details how Lincoln abandoned the generally accepted rules of war, which had just been codified by the Geneva Convention of 1863.”
There was no Geneva Convention in 1863. It was 1864. The more important inaccuracy is that the 1864 accord wasn’t about “accepted rules of war,” but about treatment of wounded soldiers.
Page 35: (First edition) “At the same time, it is important to note that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave.” (The second edition uses the same language.)
This is patently absurd on its face, but lest you need proof, see “After the Emancipation Proclamation,” by William C. Harris, North & South, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 42-53.
There are scores more of course but this should get you started. These errors are eloquently listed at the Hidden History website which I quoted at length. It is located at:
http://hidhist.wordpress.com/lincoln/thomas-j-dilorenzos-the-real-lincoln-a-rebuttal/
Mespo:
It is those who support Lincoln and continue to protect his despotism with myths and lies who are the neo-fascists among us. Look to yourself for that.
Since Lincoln illegally arrested people he opposed or outright had them murdered, it would be those who support such conduct who would have to be labeled the fascists, because those of us who oppose that kind of brutality and criminality cannot, by definition, BE the fascists.
It hardly seems rational to claim one is fighting the Civil War again because one is trying to get facts out which the state has not spoon fed to the public.
So why are you getting hysterical about getting the facts out?
Before Reagan convinced the Soviets to tear down the Berlin wall our diplomats provided them with books that showed them the truth about Stalin–that he was a monster.
These Soviets didn’t know who Stalin was because their government lied and perpetuated the lies because it had many people like you who cling hysterically to the myths government creates.
I was born and raised an Yankee, and I had lived for decades in the south. So I don’t have any bias about this issue, I’ve seen both sides of the story. I was lied to by my northern teachers and I don’t like that. You are more comfortable with lies. That’s your choice.
Prove DiLorenzo is wrong. Prove it smarty pants.
You are just being peevish and childish by reducing the discussion to a my dad is stronger than your dad, or a my god is better than your god argument. Your scholars are the ones you prefer and mine are the ones I prefer.
Of course, you think yours are superior. But I can prove yours are liars.