Was Robert E. Lee guilty of treason?

@Benson-In-A-Box,

No, as i've said for more than 40 years now, i'm a student of history. Thank you for your kind remark. Unfortunately, we have reached the stage in this thread in which there will be a lot of sound and fury, but little of value to read. I hope that you will enjoy the book, and i think you will get some good insights into the character of the man.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Hence, the need of Confederate veterans fighting a guerrilla defensive operation as the KKK.

I'm not sure how to react to this. Huh.

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@Thomas,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

I guess u don t see an issue with inherent judicial corruption
with the USSC being indirectly de facto a judge in its own cause??

Thomas wrote:

No, because the cause was not the Supreme Court's,
and the Court's reasoning in Texas v. White was perfectly solid:

I ask u to consider the fact that the UNITED STATES Supreme Court
is an organic element of the UNITED STATES Government (like an arm or a leg or a liver)
which had just finished fighting tooth and nail to desperately hang on
to some very large chunks of territory.

Thomas wrote:

(1) In their Articles of Confederation, The United States of America
explicitly established themselves as a perpetual union.

(2) In the Constitution, the United States explicitly established themselves
as "a more perfect union" --- more perfect, that is, than the one established
in the Articles of Confederation, which was already perpetual.

(3) Because the Constitution explicitly specifies the union between the states
to be "more perfect" than the "perpetual" one established in the Articles of Confederation,
secession is prohibited by it against the states, so the 10th Amendment does not apply

Known history refutes that notion.
The plan contemplated in Article 7
was that the Constitution woud go into effect IF
9 of the States ratified the Constitution, in those States that ratified,
and NOT in those States which did not. Thay 'd be free and Independent.
There remained much un-certainty and a lot of very close ratification votes
in regard to what was going to happen. Do u agree that refutes
and debunks the eternal perpetuity of the union, Tom ?

Thomas wrote:

No, I don't see any corruption there.

Then, in your opinion, the USSC was FREE
to rule any way that it chose, in its professional opinion,
even if it repudiated Lincoln and his war? ????
No pressure, no tacit intimidation ?

What was that Cold War joke about the burglar
who broke into the Kremlin and he stole the results of the next year 's elections ??

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Just a thought-
The southern plantation owners could have defused the slavery issue before the war by granting their slaves freedom and paying them a regular wage so that they'd no longer be classed as slaves.
Sure it'd have made a dent in the owners profits but that'd be better from their point of view than having the abolition of slavery imposed on them by military force.
Incidentally like I said earlier I keep meaning to find a good book that deals with questions like-
What did the slaves do after the war?
Did they pack their bags and leave the plantations, and if so where did they go?
Did any choose to stay on the plantations working for a wage?
Did any go back to Africa?

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You're far to ignorant to talk to,
and now that you've latched on to this thread like a remora, it's totally screwed.

Who did u denounce as being "ignorant"??
I believe that the correct word for that is: too.
It means something different.

Is Mr. Setanta hi-lar-i-ous??????

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and the correct word is not "u", but "you". so what's your point, david?

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

and the correct word is not "u", but "you". so what's your point, david?

No; not so. "You" is an anti-logical, inefficient waste.
The correct form is u not the inefficient way, but we shud avoid confusion
in using words; e.g., I will not (for the sake of being fonetic)
change right to rite, because that means something else, to wit: a ceremony.

Too means also.

That 's my point.

David

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phonetically "u" is not pronounced "you", but "oo". It is ONLY pronounced like "you" when we are talking about the NAME OF THE LETTER. So your claim that it is phonetic is complete nonsense. I suggest you ask your Spanish-speaking friends, to whose phoneticity you refer so often, how they pronounce "u", because they, speaking phonetically, will NOT say it's pronounced like "you". Your system is stupid and inconsistent, david. Get a new cause.

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Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution says Congress shall have the power

Quote:

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions

(emphasis added)

"insurrection" is defined as

Quote:

an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government

(Merriam Welbster Collegiate Dictionary)

Doesn't matter how many states were involved. The Confederacy was still an insurrection, and the Union was perfectly justified in putting it down. And Texas v. White was correctly decided.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

You're far to ignorant to talk to, and now that you've latched on to this thread like a remora, it's totally screwed.

LOL facts are a hard thing to deal with is it not with special note as when the facts does not support your simple view of history.

The south hold a lot of the blame for the civil war and even most of the blame for the civil war but not one hundred percents of the blame and Lincoln seems to had gone for the force solution to the problem faster then he might had done so.

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@Romeo Fabulini,

Quote:

The southern plantation owners could have defused the slavery issue before the war by granting their slaves freedom and paying them a regular wage so that they'd no longer be classed as slaves

Slaves was the major source of wealth/capital in not just the south but in the whole nation with this southern human capital being worth more on the books then all the factories of the north all together at the time.

Slavery was the keystone of the southern economic with banks for example writing very large loans with slaves being the collateral for those loans.

For that amount of capital to had just disappear would have ruin the south as completely as did the civil war even if the cost in blood might had been far less.

Then you have the problem/fear of allowing slaves any freedoms for fear of slave rebellions resulting in the mass murder of whites as happen in Haiti and on a must smaller scale already had happen in the south with such happening as the Nat Turner rebellion that resulted in many deaths in the order of 60 or so with a large percent of those deaths being women and children.

To sum up the south had a tiger by the tail and to had just let go would had been as dangerous as fighting the civil war in the opinion of the southerns of the time.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Lincoln's second Inaugural Address included the conciliatory terms of reuniting the nation. It wasn't seen as "Putting down" a rebellion by him.

You're deluded if you seriously believe that Lincoln didn't view the south as being in rebellion or its leaders as being traitors.

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@joefromchicago,

The Civil War was 4 years long. The "issues" that defined it in April 1861 were not all retained as the same in April 1865. Lincoln defined the terms gifted to Lee and, unfortunately, several incidents interfered with a smooth handing out of similar terms to Johnston, Kirby, and Stand Waitte
No delusion, its fact.

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I saw a slavery-based semi-fictional film or TV drama some years ago (I forget the title) and couldn't help chuckling at the end when the plantation owner said to his slaves something like-
"Well the wars over and I'm not allowed to have slaves any more, so you'd better all pack your bags and go"
The ex-slaves stand looking at each other puzzled and one of them says-
"Scuse me massa, but go where exactly?"
The boss points to the road and says "Down that there road, goodbye", and turns round and walks away.
So they shuffle off down the road looking unhappy.

I wonder if anything like that happened in real life? I mean, some ex-slaves might have thought "We wuz happy workin fer massa, he fed us good and built nice shacks for us, we don't want to go nowhere!"

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

The Civil War was 4 years long. The "issues" that defined it in April 1861 were not all retained as the same in April 1865. Lincoln defined the terms gifted to Lee and, unfortunately, several incidents interfered with a smooth handing out of similar terms to Johnston, Kirby, and Stand Waitte
No delusion, its fact.

You don't know what you're talking about. As Thomas pointed out, Lincoln wouldn't have granted an amnesty to people he didn't think had violated the law. As it was, the decision to be lenient to the southern rebels was purely a matter of political expediency. It bore no relation to the actual guilt or innocence of the rebels themselves.

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@joefromchicago,

Quote:

It bore no relation to the actual guilt or innocence of the rebels themselves

True an so what as Lincoln opinions of guilt or innocent carry no more weight then anyone else alive at the time as only a jury could made such a ruling and his decision to short circuit any such process after a civil war seems a wise thing to do but once more it does not directly impact anyone guilt or innocent.

In fact the legal issue of whether the south was in fact a legal government/nation in being that the north conquest or not had never face a court ruling as far as I know.

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@BillRM,

Below it seems that the SC was saying the right to secede depend on the outcomes on the battlefield.

So you are a traitor if you lose and a founding father if you win and no way ahead of time to know how it will turn out.

Quote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States#Supreme_Court_rulings

In 1877, the Williams v. Bruffy[60] decision was rendered, pertaining to civil war debts. The Court wrote regarding acts establishing an independent government that "The validity of its acts, both against the parent state and the citizens or subjects thereof, depends entirely upon its ultimate success; if it fail to establish itself permanently, all such acts perish with it; if it succeed and become recognized, its acts from the commencement of its existence are upheld as those of an independent nation."[58][61]

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@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Do u agree that refutes
and debunks the eternal perpetuity of the union, Tom ?

No I don't. If any of the 13 states had not ratified the US constitution, the Articles of Confederation would still have applied to them; those states would still have belonged to the perpetual Union established by the Articles.

OmSigDavid wrote:

Thomas wrote:
No, I don't see any corruption there.

Then, in your opinion, the USSC was FREE
to rule any way that it chose, in its professional opinion,
even if it repudiated Lincoln and his war? ????
No pressure, no tacit intimidation ?

In Texas v. White? Sure, why not? It was a 5:3 decision. Do you have any evidence that the three dissenters suffered any adverse consequences at the hands of the executive branch? Or that the fourth and fifth votes were swung by way of coercion?

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

The correct form is u not the inefficient way,

Did u no that we bawt a nu u or tu?

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@joefromchicago,

I repeat;

Quote:

The Civil War was 4 years long. The "issues" that defined it in April 1861 were not all retained as the same in April 1865

In fact the Reconstruction Act of 1863 was modified several times ultimately to offer "pardons" (pardons before judgement), to High Confederate politicians and militaryOfficers.Issues of treason never arose in Lincolns later words and in his 2nd inaugural, AND I don't think you, I or anyone, really know what was on his mind except getting the wounds healed and "THE" United States , moving forward. (Paraphrasing from Shelby Foote)

Winnick in "April 1865" makes the same comments as I , regarding this silly issue of "treason".The term " Treasonous acts", I believe, was included in the 1863 Reconstruction Act but not in Lincolns inaugural, which was, quite conciliatory in its tone.

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Was Robert E. Lee guilty of treason?

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