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Confederate History Month Honors Deadliest Traitors in U.S. History
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04...s-in-u-s-hist/
Let us use the waning days of Confederate History Month to settle an important question about America's past. I raised the issue parenthetically in my last post when I wondered "why a patriotic current citizen of the United States of America would want to celebrate what were unarguably the deadliest traitors in our nation's history."
While I figured the remark would provoke some folks, I really didn't think there could be much debate about the correct answer to the question: Were the Confederate leaders and soldiers traitors to anybody loyal to the United States?
And yet, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue starts his proclamation of Confederate History Month this way:
"April is the month in which the Confederate States of America began a four-year conflict in the Civil War. Confederate Memorial Day on April 26 is a time when Georgians honor the more than 90,000 brave men and women who served the Confederate States of America. Georgia joined the Confederacy in January 1861 when a convention ratified the ordinance of secession, and Georgia has long cherished her Confederate history and the great leaders who made sacrifices on her behalf . . ."
He goes on: "WHEREAS: It is important that Georgians reflect upon our state's past and honor and respect the devotion of her Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens . . . "
Yes, it is important that Georgians (and other Americans) reflect on the history of the Civil War. So let me give away my ending right up front: Of course the Confederates were traitors. By definition.
I realize these were once fighting words. Certainly they were in the early 1860s south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And even in the halls of the U.S. Congress in 1920, if the New York Times is to be believed. The headline from May 19 suggests something just short of a brawl: "Madden Again Calls Confederates Traitors; Barely Escapes Attack in House Uproar."
Here are some details:
"A reiterated statement by Representative Madden, Republican, of Illinois, in the House today that Confederates of civil war days were traitors evoked a storm of protests from Southern members...The Confederates were traitors because they attempted to destroy the Union, Mr. Madden said, and asked: 'Does anybody deny it?'
"...Mr. Stedman [a North Carolina Democrat] drew cheers from the Democrats when he said that no one questioned the bravery or integrity of Robert E. Lee and that Mr. Madden was 'alone in a wilderness of his own creation.'"
Let us join Mr. Madden so that he is no longer alone. And examine some of the comments and e-mails I got in response to my earlier post:
"If we use your reasoning, then we must be a nation of traitors because of the Revolutionary War and the immigration of millions of people from other countries who abandoned their homelands to become citizens of the USA. That makes you one too."
Yes and no. From the position of the British, of course the Americans were traitors. But no, immigration does not constitute treason. See more below.
"There are a lot of things people in this world can learn from Southern values - like honor and integrity (to name just a couple)."
To paraphrase Shakespeare, I am sure that the South included many such honorable men.
"The issue was not just slavery – that was but a small part of it – the overriding issue was states rights, and this is the part, that those who feel the South was wrong, would have people forget about."
Horsepucky. My Politics Daily colleague Carl Cannon has already written a thorough piece that explodes the lie that the Confederacy was not essentially about slavery. I will only add that those who claim the Confederacy was defending "states rights" or a "way of life"-- and not slavery -- make as much sense as someone who says, "I'm obese because I eat too much candy. Sugar has nothing to do with it."
What this is not about, by the way, is the bravery or lack of it among the Confederates. In most wars, America's enemies have had soldiers whose fighting was so brave that it produced grudging admiration in our troops and leaders. No question that some of the Confederate generals and troops fought bravely. But that was true of some of the Germans and Japanese in World War II, the enemy flying aces of WW I, and so on.
What is treason, anyway? The U.S. Constitution offers the specific American definition in Article III, Section 3:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
(Which means, of course, that simply emigrating from another nation to this one does not make you a traitor to the Old Country, at least not by American standards.) Is there any question that the Confederate leaders and soldiers levied war against the United States? You will read elsewhere that this is not the case, because "secession was legal." And only Lincoln's decision to invade triggered the war.
Here is a point you will read offered as evidence on any number of pro-Dixie Web sites: No member of the Confederacy was ever convicted of treason. Not even Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president. As one site purports to explain:
"The trial was never held, because the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. Salmon Portland Chase, informed President Andrew Johnson that if Davis were placed on trial for treason the United States would lose the case because nothing in the Constitution forbids secession."
Which would no doubt have been a surprise to Mr. Chase, who eventually wrote the definitive Supreme Court decision declaring secession illegal. As he put it in Texas v White (1869):
"When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into a indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The Act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final."
Secession was legal? Not from the American perspective. Could Lincoln have preserved the Union except through war? That argument ended at Fort Sumter.
The reason that Davis was not tried was that U.S. President Andrew Johnson issued a series of pardons, each one broader than the next, in an attempt to speed the reconciliation of the former Rebels to the nation. In Davis' specific case, his lawyers claimed that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had already punished Davis and that a second trial would constitute an unconstitutional double jeopardy. Davis may well have won that argument, but not because he was innocent of treason.
I imagine that many people who cheer the current Confederate History Month proclamations – even the governors of those states – have solemnly intoned the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag at any number of official functions, right hands over their hearts. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy. His original version read:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Over the years, editors have niggled with a few of the words. And a Cold War Congress inserted a bit of religion. But the ideal of "one nation, indivisible" remains. So what exactly is the devotion that Gov. Perdue is choosing to honor? Georgians who rebelled against the United States in an attempt to maintain a way of life that depended upon the ownership of other human beings. And who joined in a war against American troops that eventually took more than 600,000 lives.
I jest when I suggest that my analysis will settle this question here. I went searching for a historian or two whose judgment would be better informed than mine. Let's start with Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, and author of several books about the years leading up to, during, and after the Civil War.
"I guess it all depends on what wording you wish to use. No one in the Confederacy was tried and convicted for treason after the war. However, many leaders lost their civil and political rights for a time. The 14th Amendment speaks of people who took an oath of allegiance to the US and then fought against it, which seems like treason although the word is not used. Confederates certainly were disloyal to the US. That was the whole point of their struggle."
Which seems clear to me. Let's try one more. George Henry Hoemann is assistant dean, Distance Education and Independent Study at the University of Tennessee, and is co-author and maintainer of the detailed and impressive American Civil War Homepage.
"The reality is, of course, that the entire war was about the issue of whether or not states could legally secede. If the South had won, the answer would have been 'yes.' The South didn't win, and the answer is 'no.'"
And that may be the simplest explanation for why the American answer to the question "Was it treason?" is: Yes.
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Originally Posted by leibowitz
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