Where did I say anything about nature?
You just seem to have taken for granted that transfers of property to descendants is something that occurs in a vacuum, without state action.
I think state action is relevant because the state is still very much alive (the efforts of certain gray-coated traitors notwithstanding). Whether it makes sense to hold present day property owners liable for the sins of their predecessors is almost beside the point: it is the state itself that has facilitated the transfer of ill-gotten land and wealth, and so the state itself may be expected to provide a remedy. Just because the state has allowed people to transfer land from parent to child does not mean it must continue to do so, particularly if continuing to do so only serves to further entrench fundamentally unjust and inequitable distributions of property.
Where do you see this assumption in my posts?
Okay, I think I see where you are coming from now; I am and have been in complete agreement with you that treason was committed and that a prescribed punishment for treason is death.
Whenever someone insists upon calling the Civil War the ‘War of Northern Aggression’ I start referring to it as either the War of Southern Treason or the War of Southern Treachery.
You know, I’ll be honest, it’s possible that somewhere along @Kent_Clark’s attempt at a reductio absurdum of… something… I’ve lost the plot.
Treason has nothing at all to do with “believing the wrong politics.” That’s like saying murder is “hating the wrong person.” Treason is engaging in an armed conflict against the government. Or aiding and abetting group that is already in armed conflict against the government.
The January 6 insurrection was not as bad. Yet it’s not like any of those who went to jail did so because of their political beliefs. There are millions of Americans who have the same beliefs they did, but did not participate in the insurrection.
Now, I get being against execution as a punishment in general. I know a lot of you are opposed to the death penalty, and for valid reasons. So I don’t have a problem with people saying no executions. But to reduce their crimes to mere political beliefs makes no sense.
Surely it’s not controversial to say that going to war and killing so many is worse than attacking the Capitol.
(Apologies, as I hit submit before checking to see if this had already been covered. But that claim is just so absurd, I think maybe it’s worth repeating.)
No worries! Done the same more often than I like to admit.
I feel it’s reasonable to interpret a vote against forming a convention to consider secession as a vote against secession.
It’s possible that the reason the writers of the Constitution didn’t mention secession was because they thought it was a closed issue. Prior the enactment of our current constitution in 1789, the United States was governed by the Articles of Confederation (enacted in 1777). And that document explicitly referred to the United States as a perpetual union; once a state joined the United States, it remained in the United States.
So having settled that issue in 1777, the people gathered at the Constitution Convention saw no need to discuss it again. It would be akin to the way that the Constitution they produced does not declare our independence from England. That was an issue that had been settled by the Declaration of Independence so they saw no need to mention it.
But I’ve already asked the question; was it treason when British soldiers or German soldiers or Japanese soldiers engaged in armed conflict against the American government? Most people would say no. It’s recognized that foreign governments can declare war against a country and the soldiers who fight that war are not committing criminal acts by killing soldiers in the opposing army.
And the Confederates would have said “Yes, that’s us. We’re a foreign country. We’re not part of the United States any more. We’re Confederates. You’re Americans. And our country declared war on your country.”
Now you can say you don’t agree with the Confederates claims and you don’t recognize them as a foreign country. But you can’t pretend the claim wasn’t being made. And the question of whether the Confederate claim was right or the American claim was right was a political one.
I don’t think it’s so much a political question as a matter of perspective.
The US - when it prevailed - did not recognize the secession as legitimate.
And the confederation, if it prevailed, would obviously reach a different decision.
That’s not really a political question as an issue of self interest. The US could have recognized the CSA as a sovereign nation, but it plainly chose not to when it went to war to “preserve the union.” It’d be odd to win the war and then declare, “you were right. You were allowed to secede.”
And the CSA, if it could make an ongoing war untenable, would have of course asserted their sovereignty. I mean, I suppose they could have agreed to re-enter the US following a win, but then you’d have to expect that the US would have had to change to protect their slaveholding interests. At that point, any punishment for their actions is clearly off the table.
So I don’t think you can say that treason is a political issue; from the US’ perspective, Americans who wage war on the U.S. are committing treason, regardless of their rhetoric, or else how could you ever enforce the charge? It’s already been noted that simply being able to declare yourself independent- when the United States was not privy to your decision making - would create a huge, and unworkable, loophole.
If you (generic you) want to take a portion of the US, make it your own, and then wage war on the US, and get the US to acknowledge you as a foreign power, you first need the US to recognize your independence. Otherwise, your war making is just plain ole’ treason.
Which was why the 15th and 19th Amendments had to be passed, to enfranchise people who by precedent had had no right to vote. At one point in some states you couldn’t vote unless you actually owned land. Universal suffrage was by no means an automatic thing.
Possibly. But since the federal government was supposedly one of limited enumerated powers, a legitimate question at the convention could have been “Is the Federal Government empowered to treat secession as rebellion?”. Until the firing upon Fort Sumter it was far from clear that the Federal government had a mandate to forcibly move against the seceding states. Buchanan flatly declared that he didn’t have the authority. Lincoln refused to recognize secession but had almost no practical power to do anything about it before then.
That’s why I reject the notion that secession was a crime. It’s what you do in furtherance of secession that gets you in trouble.
If South Carolina had not declared that US federal land within their territory was their property, and had not fired on the Americans trying to supply it, then they can declare whatever they want. I’m not sure it becomes actionable until they take American property or threaten American lives.
The people of the South hardly needed any reminders that they had lost. They saw the cream of their young men dead in the war, homes and farms looted and burned, the equity that slave owners had had in their slaves vanish at the stroke of a pen without compensation, and a military occupation. Not to mention having the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments forced upon them as a condition of ever regaining representation in the federal Congress.
The thesis of your OP seems to be that the Southerners could have been made to regret that they had tried to secede; that they would have concluded “We were fools, what were we thinking?”. But I don’t think one southerner in a hundred would have adopted Rhett Butler’s viewpoint under any amount of degradation. The only thing they regretted was losing. The only thing they learned from defeat was “the Yankees are evil”.
Fair enough.
But their progeny did.
And, in the hindsight of the 21st century, I’d prefer something that would have helped squelch the lost cause myth and enhanced enforcement of civil rights. I can accept that my suggestion wouldn’t have done it, but that’s the thinking - it would have moved the needle.
Once again I’ll ask, do you consider all wars to be crimes?
Because if secession isn’t a crime and war isn’t a crime, then why are you saying that the combination of secession and war is a crime?
I’m not sure what would have put a stopped the lost cause myth. It’s hard to kill an idea; especially when it’s an idea that a lot of people want to believe.
Enforcement of civil rights was possible. It would have required the national government to be willing to step in and enforce the law. It’s what would eventually happen a century later and I feel that it was possible to have done it at the time. Efforts were made in that direction for a few years immediately after the war but most white people in the northern states just didn’t feel it was an urgent enough issue. The common attitude was that they had done enough for black people by fighting a massive war and ending slavery.
It’s not a question of what I would consider. It’s a question of what the parties involved (and the watching world) consider.
If a party prevails, they aren’t going to consider the act of waging war to have been a perfectly legal act. They are likely to view it as a grievous error (the issue of crime is sort of a red herring - it’s not whether they broke the law, it’s whether they were in the wrong), and as a result the victors are entitled to the spoils of war.
Meaning, they have a right to exact some form of retribution (even if it is just the plundering of resources, or making some legal concessions).
I’m saying that there is one crime defined in the constitution, and that is treason, and that the United States should be expected to interpret war done following secession to fit that definition.
I realize that I’m drawing a fine line. The US could have decided, having obtained surrender, to treat the South as conquered territory, and obtained some significant price for their rebellion. They did not do so, and I’m not faulting them for that. While war is not legal, I think that there is no particular need for the US to respond as if these were newly acquired foreign lands. That, I agree, would have only prolonged tensions with those who were willing to accept surrender.
But, treason is a clearly written crime listed within the constitution. From the perspective of the US, secesssionists had no agreement to leave the Union, and therefore committed treason when they waged war. From the perspective of the US, this isn’t seriously in doubt - if the confederacy’s war wasn’t an act of treason, it’s hard to imagine what would qualify. It’d be odd to say that they avoided the charge merely because they organized themselves sufficiently to claim nationhood.
And, therefore, the pardons that let the leaders of the confederacy avoid treason let them off the hook. Unlike treating the entire south as conquered territory, I think there could have been specific, pointed charges brought against individual leaders that would have been clearly documented in courts of law.
And, it’s my opinion that this would have done some good for the legacy of the war and the resultant peace. The US was just too lenient, in my opinion.
Several states passed legislation stipulating their sovereign right to secede, if necessary. In 1798 Jefferson and Madison promoted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions supporting a state right of secession. Lincoln the congressman said:
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right.”
From 1803 to 1845, the New England states threatened to secede from the Union five times, objecting first to Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase; then to the Embargo Act; then to admitting slave-holding Louisiana into the Union; objecting to the War of 1812 against Britain; and to the admission of Texas into the Union. They faced no threats when they threatened to secede for each of these reasons.
“Lincoln invited the Union-disposed northwestern counties of Virginia to secede from the state and become the new “State of West Virginia” and made it part of the Union. South Carolina took a different approach. When the federal government tripled the sales tax on imports, known as the “Tariff of Abomination,” South Carolina refused to comply and nullified it.”
Lincoln was generally disposed to do nothing about secession so long as the Tariffs kept rolling in. In those days there were no general income taxes or state sales taxes, and the national government got most of the operating capital from Tariffs. The war was stupid and unnecessary, and could have been avoided like it was in every other country where slavery was outlawed.