# Resolved; America would be less divisive today if we had executed Confederate leaders for treason **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 8, 2023, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789 "2023-07-08T21:44:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/81 "2023-07-09T20:35:46Z")
Sure, but none of that was setting _policy_ and > [@Moriarty](#): > > Not even incrementally? Do you think it would be a hot button issue that we are renaming bases to remove the names of Confederate leaders _in 2023_ if they had been branded traitors in the late 1860s? What makes you think they _weren’t_ branded as traitors? They most certainly were, and they were restricted from holding public office, etc… This was the case until there were a series of amnesties culminating in Johnson’s 1868 blanket amnesty - “unconditionally, and without reservation, … a full pardon and amnesty for the offence of treason against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war, with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws …”[[9]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardons_for_ex-Confederates#cite_note-9) It’s not like they weren’t judged to be traitors and punished; it’s that a few years later, they were let off the hook. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/82 "2023-07-09T21:01:15Z")
> [@bump](#): > > This was the case until there were a series of amnesties culminating in Johnson’s 1868 blanket amnesty - “unconditionally, and without reservation, … a full pardon and amnesty for the offence of treason against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war, with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws …”[[9]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardons_for_ex-Confederates#cite_note-9) > > It’s not like they weren’t judged to be traitors and punished; it’s that a few years later, they were let off the hook. I wonder whether Lincoln would’ve done the same, or whether getting let off said hook came down to a bullet from Booth. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/83 "2023-07-09T21:53:33Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Heinlein was a good sci-fi writer and told some fun stories, but virtually everything he has had to say about history, psychology, or politics were poorly reasoned analysis of outdated pop-culture. When people take care to use a modifier like “virtually” I hate responses that cite one of the few exceptions as if they’ve the refuted the entire point. You’re absolutely right about Heinlein. That said, Lumpy’s quote is one of those few exceptions. For the entire existence of the United States of America, blacks, whether slave or free, were reviled. The racist writings from colonial days through the war is a constant stream of invective, a necessity that allowed them to justify chattel slavery. Blacks were not merely inferior; they were subhuman, nonhuman, vile, collections of monstrous lusts, incapable of wisdom, education, uplifting, change of any sort, and also insensitive to pain, because they never learn from it. (Horrific medical experiments proved this. Screaming didn’t count.) The white race did them a favor by removing them from Africa to allow them the pleasures of America, but if you lift your thumb off them for a second they will revolt and rape, loot, and murder the innocents around them. Honor? Whites lose all honor if they treat blacks as any form of equal. One can be in the physical presence of slaves at all times, but no white place of business, or service, or entertainment, or transportation can allow a black equal entrance. Of course a white man can use the bodies of a female of this subspecies with impunity but a white woman who does the same is dishonored forever, for generations to come. Reconstruction changed nothing. These attitudes persisted throughout. No argument can be made that the poor whites who couldn’t afford slaves had any higher regard for them. Most Northerners had virtually the same attitudes toward blacks. Poor Southern whites were steeped in an even more virulent culture of hatred from the day they were born. Moreover, free blacks were direct competitors, just as the Irish were in the North, people who were to be despised and trampled upon whenever possible. If anything the losses in the war exacerbated those feelings, because now free blacks were being raised into positions of power over the poor whites. The war was about slavery. The breakup had been coming for two generations, rolling over all the barriers placed in its way. (All those Compromises and Acts that are in history textbooks.) Slavery was the one and only issue that couldn’t be overcome. The North didn’t want a war. Blacks were treated as subhuman there as well. Why go to war for them? The South decided there could be no more compromises and broke away. The white man’s place in the world. That was the Civil War. That was Reconstruction. That was Jim Crow. What about that would hanging a few traitors changed? Remember that the confederate monuments mostly didn’t appear for a couple of generations, with the vast majority erected between [1900 and 1920](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/), the period after [Plessy v Ferguson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson) that led to the revival of the KKK, most conspicuously not in the South but in Indiana, where the governor in 1924 was a head Klansman. The problem was not just a Southern one but an American one. There are many ways of changing minds, but mass hangings has never been one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/84 "2023-07-09T22:05:53Z")
> [@bump](#): > > It’s unfair and absurd to think that the people of the time (a harsher and more violent time at that) didn’t know what they were doing when they called for reconciliation instead of some kind of reckoning. They clearly didn’t know what they were doing, as evidenced by the fact that it didn’t work. We can debate what they should have done instead, because for all of the alternatives we propose, we lack the empirical evidence. But the one thing we do know is that what the people of that time actually did was one of the wrong answers. As for just letting the South go, I agree that it’s tempting… but while the South wouldn’t have been any great loss, the same probably couldn’t be said of the next group, or the group after that. A country that permits secession quickly ceases to be a country. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/85 "2023-07-09T22:14:42Z")
I would also note that there were many loyal Americans in the south (black and white, slave and free) who deserved to have their rights as Americans protected. So count me as well in the “Fuck no, don’t let the south secede” crowd. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/86 "2023-07-09T22:17:23Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > There are many ways of changing minds, but mass hangings has never been one of them. If only because there isn’t enough rope. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/87 "2023-07-09T22:17:59Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > > [@bump](#): > > > > This was the case until there were a series of amnesties culminating in Johnson’s 1868 blanket amnesty - “unconditionally, and without reservation, … a full pardon and amnesty for the offence of treason against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war, with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws …”[[9]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardons_for_ex-Confederates#cite_note-9) > > > > It’s not like they weren’t judged to be traitors and punished; it’s that a few years later, they were let off the hook. > > I wonder whether Lincoln would’ve done the same, or whether getting let off said hook came down to a bullet from Booth. There’s no reason to think he wouldn’t have done the same. Lincoln was very lenient in his plans for reconstruction, and Johnson largely carried out his plans over the objections of the Republican congress which wanted much harsher terms imposed. From @bump’s cite: > On December 8, 1863, in his annual message to [Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress), President Lincoln outlined his plans for [reconstruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era) of the [South](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States), which included terms for amnesty to former Confederates. A pardon would require an oath of allegiance, but it would not restore ownership to former slaves, or restore confiscated property which involved a third party. The pardon excluded office holders of the [Confederate government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_the_Confederate_States) or persons who had mistreated prisoners.[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardons_for_ex-Confederates#cite_note-1) Congress, however, objected to Lincoln’s plans as being too lenient and refused to recognize delegates from the reconstructed governments of [Louisiana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana) and [Arkansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas). Congress instead passed the [Wade–Davis Bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade%E2%80%93Davis_Bill), which required half of any former Confederate state’s voters to swear allegiance to the United States and also swear that they had not supported the Confederacy. The bill also ended slavery, but did not allow former slaves to vote. President Lincoln vetoed the bill. During his presidency Lincoln issued 64 pardons for war-related offences; 22 for conspiracy, 17 for treason, 12 for rebellion, 9 for holding an office under the Confederacy, and 4 for serving with the rebels. Lincoln only wanted 10 percent of adult males to take loyalty oaths and for the states to recognize emancipation to be readmitted to the Union. The [Wade-Davis Bill](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/wade-davis-bill) wanted 50% and required them to swear that they had never assisted the Confederacy, and Lincoln vetoed it: > In late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress began to consider the question of how the Union would be reunited if the North won the Civil War. In December, President Lincoln proposed a reconstruction program that would allow Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their male population took loyalty oaths and the states recognized the permanent freedom of formerly enslaved people. > > Several congressional Republicans thought Lincoln’s 10 percent plan was too lenient. Senator Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, and Representative Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, proposed a more stringent plan in February 1864. > > The Wade-Davis Reconstruction Bill would also have abolished slavery, but it required that 50 percent of a state’s White males take a loyalty oath to the United States (and swear they had never assisted the Confederacy) to be readmitted to the Union. Only after taking this “Ironclad Oath” would they be able to participate in conventions to write new state constitutions. > > Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, but President Lincoln chose not to sign it, killing the bill with a pocket veto. Lincoln continued to advocate tolerance and speed in plans for the reconstruction of the Union in opposition to Congress. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/88 "2023-07-09T22:27:01Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > If only because there isn’t enough rope. Rope is reusable. Just kidding. You (any you) can’t kill your way into unanimity. Although gosh knows lots of factions have tried (and are still trying) all over this planet. > [@Chronos](#): > > They clearly didn’t know what they were doing, as evidenced by the fact that it didn’t work. We can debate what they should have done instead, because for all of the alternatives we propose, we lack the empirical evidence. But the one thing we do know is that what the people of that time actually did was one of the wrong answers. Your statement suggests that a “right” answer did actually exist then. Heck, it’s not clear a right answer exists now in this supposedly more enlightened, and certainly more educated and worldy time. I _want_ to believe humanity in general and the USA in particular can outgrow racism in all its forms. But I’m at a bit of a loss on what concretely to do to advance that agenda beyond me personally being an example above reproach. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2023, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/89 "2023-07-09T23:02:38Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Pre-1933 most Germans were not believers in Nazi ideology. In 1945 most were willing to return to their pre-existing non-Nazi ideology, and especially so when rewarded by the Allies via the Marshall Plan for doing so. What happened at Nuremberg and the resulting executions was a largely irrelevant sideshow to how the rest of the defeat, occupation, and subsequent rebuilding affected each and every individual German. The Nazis exploited many long- and deeply held beliefs of the German people—e.g., that the Allies had unfairly punished them into humiliation after WWI, that their borders had been unjustly restricted, that Germany deserved to be a mighty military power, that ethnic Germans deserved protection beyond Germany’s borders, etc. Nazism wasn’t created out of whole cloth. Not to mention the rampant antisemitism that helped the cause. While it was not as broad and deep as the Nazis insisted, it was a strong enough element to benefit the Nazis’ ascension. And not to mention the popular belief that their leadership betrayed them in surrendering in WWI, that their cause was just and that they should have and could have won, if only the iron will needed had existed. Any suggestion that the Nazis rise to power in 1933 was some isolated movement that somehow circumvented the true German political sentiment is flat-out wrong. The beliefs I mentioned pre-existed the Nazis. Hitler’s restoration of Germany’s deserved glory, as it was initially perceived, was tremendously popular. As was Hitler. And to @Lumpy, I’d only add that the Nazis were absolutely true believers in their right to do exactly what they did. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/90 "2023-07-10T00:47:14Z")
They didn’t raze Arlington Manor because it was built by George Washington, and inherited (along with the plantation and quite a few enslaved men and women) by his niece, Mary Custis Lee. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/91 "2023-07-10T00:48:28Z")
ETA: @Stratocaster two above. I agree completely that Naziism was not some utterly alien brain infection that fell from the sky and subverted a harmless people. I did not mean to suggest such, and I’m sorry if you somehow got that impression. Pre-1933 German sentiment was full of WW-I-based resentment, nationalism, and anti-Semitism as you say. But they also had ordinary small-town decency, widespread Lutheranism, a decent educational system by the standards of the day, a solid intelligentsia class, and a history of bolstering same. So when the shock therapy of WW-II and the cataclysmic total downfall of the Nazis was administered, there was at least some decent civilized culture to fall back to. A primitive and racist one by the standards of, e.g. 2005, but perfectly serviceable by the standards of 1946 or 1950. The US South in 1868 had nothing of the kind. Which tying a couple of threads together, is what’s wrong in Russia in 2023; they don’t really have a non-Tsarist, non-gangsterish, non-cynical culture to fall back to once Putin has left their stage. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/92 "2023-07-10T00:54:06Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > widespread Lutheranism And with that, we can stop wondering where the anti-Semitism comes from. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/93 "2023-07-10T01:05:43Z")
We should also recall that the Gettysburg Address did not raise all Americans above the status of chattel. Every female in the country was still the property of her nearest male relative - usually a husband or a father. She was his to order, to subjugate, and even to whip at will (though seldom as brutally as enslaved Africans had been whipped) . It was nonetheless quite common. Any property she owned at marriage became her husband’s to do with as he wished, and in the rare case of a divorce, she had no rights whatever to her children. So i put it to you all that the evil remained because the evil was never ended. And if you examine carefully the modern “Christian Nationalists” “White Supremacists” and “Neo-Nazis” you will find the subjugation of women as a basic plank in each of their platforms. ---
**Author:** ![Digger11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@Digger11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digger11)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/94 "2023-07-10T01:10:56Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Yes, George Washington would have been likely brought to London, put on trial, and executed for his crimes, but he didn’t lose. Robert E Lee did. Are you saying America should revere him as the father of his country? I think that for a lot of people, it’s difficult to criticize Lee while praising Washington, because of the remarkable similarities between the two men. From one point of view, possibly the biggest difference is that (as you said) Washington won his war, while Lee lost his. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/95 "2023-07-10T01:13:04Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Trials would be simple. A lot would depends on whether you had civilian jurors or military tribunals. If the former, there might have been a lot of acquittals. Of course it would depend on who was on the jury, but even juries with a few former slaves, knowing the penalty was death, might have been unpredictable. > [@Moriarty](#): > > Are there two men who can testify that he saw this defendant astride a horse, leading soldiers to war? Maybe a witness will be a former rebel soldier who will say “that’s the man who gave me orders to attack”, or it’s a union man who will say “that’s the man who led the charge”, but we should have an historical record of dozens of these trials, so that at least all the generals got their comeuppance. Wikipedia says there were 425 confederate generals. But there must have been tens of thousands at other ranks who at some point were up on a horse leading soldiers to war. We are talking about an enormous number of executions. > [@Moriarty](#): > > And anybody elected to the Confederate government (I exclude state level office holders; I presume that during the rebellion states still had things like governors), who voted on the appropriation of supplies to these soldiers, is levying war as well. Hundreds more to be killed by victor’s justice. And I’m afraid that members of state legislatures voted supplies for state units. Killing such a large number would be looked back on, and not just by lost causers, as a shameful episode in American history. Those who advocated it would be discredited. > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Does anyone honestly believe that the reason the alt-right is on the rise today, in Germany or anywhere, is because a bunch of Nazi war criminals were hanged? No. The ten hangings, as a result of Nuremberg sentences, didn’t make any discernible difference (which itself is a reason against the death penalties). Context here is that some large number — estimates vary from hundreds of thousands to several million — of German civilians were killed shortly after the war ended. From a German nationalist POV, Nuremberg was a trivial part of the punishment Germany received. ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/96 "2023-07-10T01:24:05Z")
> [@Digger11](#): > > I think that for a lot of people, it’s difficult to criticize Lee while praising Washington, because of the remarkable similarities between the two men. From one point of view, possibly the biggest difference is that (as you said) Washington won his war, while Lee lost his. Perhaps for some. Lee was vicious, cruel slave owner. Among the worst of any in Virginia. Washington - no. I see very little similarities even as generals. Lee was aggressive, even rash. Washington was not (situational differences accepted). ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/97 "2023-07-10T01:53:25Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > We should also recall that the Gettysburg Address did not raise all Americans above the status of chattel. I assume you mean the [Emancipation Proclamation](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation); they commonly get confused. Just as a reminder, and I’m sure I must sound like a bit of a broken record at this point with regards to Lincoln’s stance on slavery and the preservation of the Union, it didn’t even raise all chattel slaves above their status as chattel slaves. There was still slavery in border states that remained loyal to the Union, and the Emancipation Proclamation said nothing about them, nor about slaves still held by states in rebellion in territory that the Union had retaken control of. It thus literally freed no one when announced, it applied only to slaves being held by states in rebellion that the Union had no control over, and therefore no way to enforce the Proclamation. > President Abraham Lincoln issued the [Emancipation Proclamation](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299998?q=Emancipation%20Proclamation#.Vflu0VtrT7w.link) on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” > > Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/98 "2023-07-10T01:57:47Z")
I’d be interested to read some speculative historical fiction where the Union actually won the war and acted like it. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/99 "2023-07-10T01:57:51Z")
Nor do I understand. I live in the Southern United States, and am insulted by this drivel. Lincoln’s desire was to reunite the United States, not divide it further. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789/100 "2023-07-10T02:03:42Z")
I assume you mean the [Emancipation Proclamation](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation); they commonly get confused. Thank you. I knew that felt wrong as i typed it, but the right words wouldn’t come, and i didn’t want to lose the thought. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-would-be-less-divisive-today-if-we-had-executed-confederate-leaders-for-treason/986789.md?page=6)