Legal and political issues aside, is the OP claiming it was morally wrong of the North to let the South off the hook for treason? That pardon and amnesty amounted to complicity?
People are usually objecting not to secession, but UNILATERAL secession.
A negotiated secession is a very different thing entirely. If the USA and CSA had mutually agreed to separate into two states over a Constitutional convention, that’s a completely different and far more legitimate process. I don’t remember anyone shrieking very loudly when Czechoslovakia broke up.
At the risk of repeating things other, smarter people have said, a nation-state where subportions can just pack up and leave whenever they don’t get their way is totally ungovernable. Literally every state or province of such a nation could perpetually hold the rest hostage by constantly threatening to bolt if they don’t get what they want. Shit, we have that in Canada as it is DESPITE the fact the law states that the bar to departure is somewhere between extremely and impossibly high.
It is clear from the wording of the Constitution of the USA that it was the intent of the framers that the federal government be limited in scope but supreme in power.
I agree with this. Which is why my favorite Supreme Court decision is Texas v. White (1869).
It’s voluntary to enter into the agreement. But once you’re in the agreement, you can’t . . . leave it.
(Libertarian Hat on, at a rakeish angle.)
Both parties in the agreement have to say yes in order to change the agreement once it exists between them.
Both parties are dead. I wasn’t a signatory to this agreement. Why am I bound to a contract that I had nothing to do with? Plus, they broke all the terms of the agreement anyhow, right?
Saying “you are in this agreement against your will and can’t leave without our permission” sounds fairly coercive.
So… you’re against the concept of citizenship then?
No, but it highlights interesting thought exercises. There aren’t many advantages to citizenship these days, nor many responsibilities for that matter.
I think the Union Army was drafting people right off the boat at one point. How’s that for “Welcome to America!”? That’s how the movie trope of the Irish sergeant in the Cavalry got started.
Ehh, not so much.
Out of 2.1 to 2.6 million soldiers enlisted (sources differ), only about 46,000 were draftees. The remainder were volunteers to some degree or another - early war enlistees largely for ideological or patriotic reasons, those closer to the end of the war for bounties or substitution payments. (Lincoln was drafted at one point - a largely symbolic gesture - and paid for a substitute to take his place.)
Many Union soldiers were immigrants, some joining (again) for ideological reasons and some for financial reasons, but the Lost Cause-based view of hordes of mercenary immigrants (e.g. “Hessians”) overcoming the Confederate Army through sheer force of numbers really has little basis in fact.
Yeah, but if you dig deeper, thousands “volunteered” because they were going to be drafted. They resorted to ever larger bounties or bonuses to get people to join or re-up. It was the threat of drafting that encouraged the volunteers.
My Great Grandfather was met “off the boat” by recruiters who paid a nice enlistment bonus. He was lucky, he had a skill- woodcutting- so he spent the war cutting railroad ties. AFAIK, he never saw combat.
I didn’t say they had the legal right to secede. I said it wasn’t criminal. Which is to say that I wouldn’t believe that execution was a proper punishment for secession.
That’s not to say that the US should have just let it happen.
Exactly. And that was what leads me to believe that treason was appropriate.
I don’t.
No, not morally wrong. My argument was simply that it would have solidified the perception that these people were losers, who lost, and that this would have lessened the attempts at reviving their mantras and creed, as has been done in the times since. And that it would have set a precedent for the later enforcement of civil rights legislation, which the government failed to protect for far too long.
Here in the Midwest there are farms that have been passed down in the same family for more than 100 years. Up in New England I understand there are some properties that have been in the same family for 200 years.
The original parties who bought and sold that land are dead. Why do people who weren’t part of the original agreement get to keep the land, and everyone else is expected to honor that ownership?
Hell, let’s go a step further. Why did I become a citizen of the US just because I happened to be born here? I didn’t have any say in that.
There you go. This is my point. “Because we said so”, that’s why.
The current owners don’t have it because of the deal from 200 years ago. They have it from a deal made probably within the last 50 years or so, with the previous owner, to transfer the ownership of the property to the new owners. And the previous owners got the land because of a deal made by the people who owned it before them, and so on back to the original owners. But each change of ownership represents a new “deal” being made. None of them are being bound by the original deal that was made long before they were born - they’re bound by new deals made specifically with them in mind as the beneficiaries.
And your alternative is. . .?
No one has any inherent right to anything unless it is offered (by whom?) and accepted? Then I have no “right” to a fair trial by jury unless the government asks me if I want one. I have no right to a free public education unless my state specifically offers it to me. I have no obligation to support my children unless I decide to.
And going down one step more, I have no right to vote unless it’s specifically granted to me by the government, and it follows that government may qualify the offer by assessing a poll tax, or mandating a literacy test, or simply deciding not to offer the right to vote to women or people of color.
Go ahead, I can reductio this down to absurdum faster and deeper than you.
Okay, Miller, why should that contract that transferred ownership not be voided by the death of the people who signed it.?
Well in fact, there is no right to vote per se, there are all sorts of restrictions. And the “right” to vote can be revoked. Dishonorable discharge from the military, certain felony convictions, age restrictions, severe mental illness, etc. Pretty sure one can’t even be drunk and vote.
Huh? The position taken by the US government at the time and subsequently was that the secession was not legal and was not recognized as having officially and actually occurred. The reason that the Confederacy could be seen as treason was precisely that the secession was not recognized. How could an act not legally recognized as having even occurred be considered as criminal?
I’m not seeing how you are reaching this:
Without tacitly conceding that the secession had legally occurred, or at the very least was a matter of legal debate. Why bring up the criminality or lack thereof of an action the law does not recognize as having occurred, and follow it up by stating your belief that there is nothing in the constitution that prohibits secession?
Right.
I’m using the constitutional definition.
Under that definition, seceding isn’t the crime of treason. It might not be legal, but it’s not the same thing as saying that it was an express violation of the US Constitution.
Now, of course, once somebody says “I’m done. I’m no longer a part of the U.S.” the issue is what to do about it. If they otherwise live in, and respect the laws of, this country, they haven’t really committed a crime.
But once they raise arms and go to war with the US over their decision, I think the statutory definition applies.
I bring up the criminality because some people seem to think I was being barbaric in suggesting that the rebels committed treason, or that I was suggesting that they be hanged for being slavers, or disrespecting the union.
No. They were not supposed to secede, and when they did there were going to be consequences.
But the consequence of being accused of, and convicted of, treason should rightfully arise from actually committing the act, as defined in the US Constitution. It’s not a thought crime, or just a 21st century moralizing of their “ways”. They, in accordance with the law that was expressly written, committed that particular crime, and punishment was proper. I think we’d be better off if it had been done (others clearly disagree).
Because half of them are still alive? I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking.
I gather you are referring to wills. But that ignores state laws that provide for intestate transfers of property (from deceased without wills to their descendants). You might also consider that property law, far from being something that arose from the natural world independent of human meddling, is in fact a human creation, serving human ends (for some humans, that is).
There is nothing in nature which requires the state to recognize the transfer of property, either by will or by intestacy, to beneficiaries or heirs. It is entirely possible, at least as a theoretical matter, to devise a system of laws whereby real property (land) passes to the state upon death and may not be transferred within one’s lifetime (so as to bypass such limitations) without state approval.
Nothing about our society is natural, least of all property law.