Was Robert E. Lee guilty of treason?

@joefromchicago,

This is the correct link to Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln7/1:79?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Robt E Lee never recited the oath of allegiance and was still not indicted.
The only Confederate that was so indicted was Jefferson Davis .

as far as being a "hall monitor" maybe that's what every opinion thread should contain. It prevents the "rush to judgement" that has no basis in history.

1 Reply

Quote:

http://www.nndb.com/people/966/000023897/

After the assassination of President Lincoln a disposition was shown by his successor, Andrew Johnson, to deal severely with the Confederate leaders, and it was understood that indictments for treason were to be brought against General Lee and others. Grant, however, insisted that the United States government was bound by the terms accorded to Lee and his army at Appomattox. He went so far as to threaten to resign his commission if the president disregarded his protest. This energetic action on Grant's part saved the United States from a foul stain upon its escutcheon.

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Jeeze, everyone seems to ignore that Lee had to apply for a pardon, for treason. It has been pointed out again and again, i guess people need to be hit over the head with ti.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Robt E Lee never recited the oath of allegiance and was still not indicted.
The only Confederate that was so indicted was Jefferson Davis .

I guess this means you're no longer relying on Andrew Johnson's amnesty declaration, which you mistakenly believed did not mention the word "treason." Now the reason that Lee wasn't a traitor is because he wasn't formally accused of treason, unlike Davis. But that's a distinction without a difference, since even Davis wasn't tried or convicted.

Let's face it: Lincoln considered southern leaders to be traitors, Johnson considered them to be traitors, and pretty much everybody else in the north considered them to be traitors. It's only unreconstructed southerners and modern apologists such as yourself who don't. As I said before, you really don't know what you're talking about.

farmerman wrote:

as far as being a "hall monitor" maybe that's what every opinion thread should contain. It prevents the "rush to judgement" that has no basis in history.

I agree. Before jumping into these kinds of threads, you should learn some history.

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@joefromchicago,

Lee and his officers/men was in the clear under the agree upon terms of surrender between Lee and the commander of the Northern army Grant.

In other word there was layers of reasons why Lee could not be charge with treason beginning with the surrender terms of the Army of Northern Virginia.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Letter signed by Robert E. Lee, written from Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant to Lee:
Appomattox Court House.
Head Quarters Armies of the United States
Appomattox C. H. Va. Apl. 9th 1865
Gen R. E. Lee
Comd'g C.S.A.
General,
In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on the following terms to wit:
Roles of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged and each company of regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands.
The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side arms of the officers, nor their private horses, or baggage. This done each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority as long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside.
Very respectfully,
U.S. Grant
True copy in my possession (signed) R. E. Lee

Letter signed by Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant:
Hd. Q. A. N. Va.
9th April 1865

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Sure I do. The notion of "treason" was well-understood at the time, and it was generally accepted that the actions that Lee took in taking arms against his country was "treasonous" under that definition.

Indeed. Looking up the word "treason" in the first edition of Webster's Dictionary (1828), we find this gem:

Webster wrote:

In the United States, treason is confined to the actual levying of war against the United States, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

Source

The match between Webster's definition and Lee's actions could not be more obvious.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

The match between Webster's definition and Lee's actions could not be more obvious.

You need to be a citizen of the US at the time of waging war not a citizen of the Confederate states of America........LOL

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

You need to be a citizen of the US at the time of waging war not a citizen of the Confederate states of America........LOL

No, he was not. The Confederate States of America were a non-entity under the law of nations. No foreign nation, and certainly not the United States, ever recognized them. The CSA were never a country that Lee could have been a citizen of. Under the law of nations, the US always had jurisdiction over the states in rebellion, and Lee was always a United-States citizen.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

The Confederate States of America were a non-entity under the law of nations. No foreign nation, and certainly not the United States, ever recognized them.

England for one deal with them and even threaten war over the removing of Confederate citizens/envoys from one of their flag vessel forcing the US to return them as a matter of fact.

Formal recognized of the south by the major European powers balance on the outcomes of a few battles.

An the US/colonies acted as a nation before France or any other nation formally recognized them as a nation.

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@Thomas,

BillRM wrote:

You need to be a citizen of the US at the time of waging war not a citizen of the Confederate states of America........LOL

Thomas wrote:

No, he was not. The Confederate States of America were a non-entity under the law of nations. No foreign nation, and certainly not the United States, ever recognized them. The CSA were never a country that Lee could have been a citizen of. Under the law of nations, the US always had jurisdiction over the states in rebellion, and Lee was always a United-States citizen.

Will u quote the operative part of that law
for our examination please, Tom ?

I 'd like to read what u have in mind.

David

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

The Confederate States of America were a non-entity under the law of nations.

Quote:

http://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/confederacy

When the Union did declare a blockade upon the rebel states in April 1861, however, it did not prompt the response expected from the Europeans. The blockade’s legal and political implications took on greater significance than its economic effects because it undermined Lincoln’s insistence that the war was merely an internal insurrection. A blockade was a weapon of war between sovereign states. In May, Britain responded to the blockade with a proclamation of neutrality, which the other European powers followed. This tacitly granted the Confederacy belligerent status, the right to contract loans and purchase supplies in neutral nations and to exercise belligerent rights on the high seas. The Union was greatly angered by European recognition of Southern belligerency, fearing that is was a first step toward diplomatic recognition, but as British Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell said, “The question of belligerent rights is one, not of principle, but of fact.”

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Quote:

you should learn some history

Boy Im glad you set me strait. All these years I was operating under the incorrect assumption that history was the chronicling of the facts and occurrences .

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Will u quote the operative part of that law
for our examination please, Tom ?

It's not a law, it's a fact. No country ever recognized the Confederacy as a country in its own right. (Source: State Department) The confederacy never was a country except in its leaders' own mind. The clandestine dealings that some countries undertook do not constitute recognition of any kind.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

http://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/confederacy

Read the very first paragraph in your own source:

Quote:

One of the most important victories won by the United States during the Civil War was not ever fought on a battlefield. Rather, it was a series of diplomatic victories that ensured that the Confederacy would fail to achieve diplomatic recognition by even a single foreign government. [emphasis mine --- T.]

The part you highlight talks about the recognition that there was a war going on, not recognition of the Confederate States as a country.

Quote:

This tacitly granted the Confederacy belligerent status, the right to contract loans and purchase supplies in neutral nations and to exercise belligerent rights on the high seas. The Union was greatly angered by European recognition of Southern belligerency,

Notice: It's the belligrency that's recognized here, not the CSA as a country.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Will u quote the operative part of that law
for our examination please, Tom ?

Thomas wrote:

It's not a law, it's a fact. No country ever recognized the Confederacy as a country in its own right. (Source: State Department) The confederacy never was a country except in its leaders' own mind. The clandestine dealings that some countries undertook do not constitute recognition of any kind.

O, I c. Maybe I mis-understood u.
I thought that u said it was The Law of Nations. (Perhaps I recall inaccurately.)

Point of Information, if I may?
If the other countries withdraw recognition from the USA,
will we lose the country ?

Is that the definition of national existence ?
the opinions of aliens ?

1 Reply

re david
Thomas said law of nations, not Law of Nations. The capitals make a difference. One is a proper noun, a specific law. Small letters make it the general body of laws, which includes customary practices which are considered to produce legitimacy. Diplomatic recognition is one of those practices that confer legitimacy on a country in the eyes of the other countries of the world. Which is why the South was desperately trying to get diplomatic recognition, and England was probably the country they were most likely to get it, since American cotton was the main source for the raw material for textile manufacture and Britain was the textile manufacturer for the world, and textile industrialists were very powerful in the British economy and politics.

The NYT is doing a series of articles by leading historians on the centenary ("sen-TEEN-uhree" as the Brits pronounce it)of the Civil War, and there was recently one on the British reaction to it. Apparently there was a fair amount of pressure coming to the government to back the South because cotton was so important to their economy, until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. That electrified Britain. What seemed like just another was amongst people far away, who'd rejected them pretty firmly once before, all of a sudden took on a moral dimension which hadn't been so apparent to them before. Britain had ended slavery a generation before, and now the US was finally following suit. The Emancipation Proclamation swung the British strongly behind the Union, and made sure the Confederacy would never gain any legitimacy from the UK, or be recognized as a country in its own right.

It's kind of nice to see moral revulsion trumping political expediency, which is often rare in dealings between nations.

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@Thomas,

It was a near run thing and the Brits was even willing to build ships and even started building warships for the South along with selling all the other materials of war.

All it would had taken is one or two more major victories on the battlefield to swing the issue of recognition to the south.

So to me it does not made any kind of sense to claimed that due to some random events on the battlefields we can consider Lee a traitor but if for example Gen Stuart had not gone off on his own before Gettysburg blinding Lee and Lee ended up taking a major Northern population center or two he would not be a traitor due to European nations then recognizing the south.

So to sum up Lee openly renounce this loyally to the Federal government and his citizenship to that government and declare his new alliance to the CSA before taking part in any fighting.

Just as if I would renounced my US citizenship and would become a Canadian citizen and then found myself fighting in a conflict with the US on the side of Canada.

The south was in fact at the time a nation in being at as must as Canada is a nation in being now independent of who recognize either nations.

Neither I or Lee would then be a traitor to the US under those conditions.

If on the other hand Lee had taken the offer up to be the military leader of the North and then engineer the defect of the Northern armies from that position of trust then he would had been a traitor.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

The Confederacy was recognized as a "Belligerent power' in that its warships and commerce vessels were granted the same rights as a sovereign nation.
Since this is primarily a "whatif" thread, had the confederacy won, or even sued for peace as a separate nation in a move more acceptable to several of the Democrat groups the Confederacy would have been recognized as a sovereign nation in a heartbeat.

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Was Robert E. Lee guilty of treason?

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