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Some prefer to label it as the "War of Northern Aggression.

Just fer giggles n grins.......


Why Jefferson Davis Was Never Tried
Posted on July 13, 2015 by Yvonne Mason Sewell

Have you ever wondered why President Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason? He was imprisoned for 2 years without a trial.

The post-war Jefferson Davis: The famous trial that never was

By Bill Ward

When the War Between the States ended, the victorious Northerners viewed Jefferson Davis, as the former President of the Confederate States of America, much differently than others who had served the Confederacy.

For example, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, the meeting between the two generals was amicable. Lee was received and treated with courtesy as a senior officer. The terms were so apparently lenient, with Grant conceding to Lee’s requests on behalf of his soldiers, the surrender was referred to as “a gentleman’s agreement.”

However, even after signing a loyalty oath, Lee and other former Confederate Army officers and members of the CSA government were later disenfranchised and treated as second-class citizens. But in the eyes of the northern public, Jefferson Davis was set apart for still a different kind of treatment.

On May 10, 1865, about a mile from the town of Irwinville, Georgia, Federal troops captured Davis. With his arrest on that spring morning, his government ceased to exist. His wife, Varina, and their children were sent to Savannah, where she was kept under virtual house arrest and forbidden to leave the city. Because the soldiers, carpetbaggers and Union supporters treated the Davis children so badly, Varina arranged for them to go to Canada along with her mother.

Davis had been taken back to Virginia and imprisoned in Fort Monroe, where he would stay for the next two years. At first, he was bound in leg irons. Guards watched him around the clock but were not permitted to speak to him. He was allowed no visitors; a light burned in his cell day and night; and his only reading material was a Bible. His treatment was a clear violation of the Bill of Rights.

Many Northern Congressmen and newspapers were nothing short of vicious in their public attacks of Davis. They wanted to see him tried for treason and hanged. In one article, and in one very long sentence, the New York Times referred to Davis by every insulting comment and offensive name that was fit to print. Rhetoric far outran legal reasoning.

But if Davis was in an unusual legal predicament, so was the United States government. The dilemma faced by Washington was how to handle the Davis case. The government under Lincoln had created its own major obstacles by spending four years proclaiming that secessionists were “traitors and conspirators.” The U.S. military had silenced opposition to the administration by closing down newspapers that dared challenge the party line or to make the slightest suggestion that secession might be legal. Thousands of Northerners had been jailed for exercising their First Amendment rights, and those thousands had friends with long memories in the Northern bar.

Northern lawyers were angry for having their clients locked in prison with no civil rights as guaranteed by the Constitution; having civilians tried by military courts for non-existent crimes; having a government that ignored the Supreme Court, setting itself above the constitutional plan of checks and balances. They didn’t like having to beg the president for justice for clients convicted by phony courts-martial or locked up for long periods without any trial. Under Lincoln, the U.S. government had become tyrannical, and certainly anything but a free and constitutional society.

The best lawyers of the day were willing to volunteer to defend Jefferson Davis, because they were angry at the way Lincoln’s government had trampled the Bill of Rights and the Constitution for four years. Even those who didn’t believe in secession were repulsed by the conduct of the Republican administration and the U.S. military.

Charles O’Connor of New York, one of the most famous trial lawyers of the era and a man of great stature in the legal profession, volunteered to be Davis’s counsel. Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, would be the trial judge.

But interesting things began to happen, and the government’s dilemma became even worse. University of Virginia Law Professor, Albert Bledsoe, published a book, “Is Davis a Traitor?” Bledsoe methodically took apart the case against secession, delivering a solid blow to the prosecutors and dampening their zeal to try Davis. Prosecutors actually began to look for a way to avoid trying him without vindicating the South.

Then another method was decided on for prosecution. The attorney general would bring in outside, independent counsel, as we have seen in modern times, such as in Watergate or the Clinton scandals. The government needed someone of great standing in the legal community to be the lead prosecutor. It chose John J. Clifford. But after reviewing the case, Clifford withdrew citing “grave doubts” about the validity of the case. The government could “end up having fought a successful war, only to have it declared unlawful by a Virginia jury,” where Davis’s “crime” was alleged to have been committed.

President Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, thought the easiest way out would be to pardon Davis, as he had pardoned many other Confederates. But Davis refused, saying, “To ask for a pardon would be a confession of guilt.” He wanted a trial to have the issue of secession decided by a court of law — where it should have been decided to begin with — instead of on battlefields. Most Southerners wanted the same.

Northerners either forgot or were unaware of a great secessionist tradition in America. Southerners were not alone in their view that each state had the right to determine its own destiny in the Union. The procedure for joining the Union also applied to withdrawing from the Union.

That thought harkens back to an editorial by the Cincinnati (Ohio) Daily Inquirer, in the summer of 1861, after the “traitor” label was let loose by the North: “The Republican papers are great on treason. . . . It is treason to circulate petitions for a compromise or peaceful readjustment of our national troubles . . . to question the constitutional powers of the President to increase the standing army without authority of law . . . to object to squads of military visiting private houses, and to make search and seizures. . . to question the infallibility of the President, and treason not to concur with him. . . It is treason to talk of hard times; to say that the war might have been avoided. It is treason to be truthful and faithful to the Constitution.”

A year after John Clifford withdrew, the government appointed another special counsel, Richard Dana of Boston, who had written the novel, “Two Years Before the Mast.” But after reviewing the evidence, he agreed with Clifford; the case was a loser. Dana argued that “a conviction will settle nothing in law or national practice not now settled…as a rule of law by war.” Dana observed that the right to secede from the Union had not been settled by civilized means but by military power and the destruction of much life and property in the South. The North should accept its uncivilized victory, however dirty its hands might be, and not expose the fruits of its carnage to scrutiny by a peaceful court of law.

Now, over two years after Davis’s imprisonment and grand jury indictments for treason, the stage was set for the great public trial of the century. Davis had been released from prison on a $100,000 bond, supported by none other than Horace Greeley, the leading abolitionist writer in the North and a former Lincoln supporter. Greeley and a host of others were outraged at the treatment Davis had received, being locked up in a dungeon for more than two years with no speedy trial.

Since two famous special counsels had told the government its case was a loser, finally, none other than the Chief Justice, in a quirk of Constitutional manipulation, devised an idea to avoid a trial without vindicating the South. His amazing solution was little short of genius.

The Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted, which provided that anyone who had engaged in insurrection against the United States and had at one time taken an oath of allegiance (which Davis had done as a U.S. Senator) could not hold public office. The Bill of Rights prevents double jeopardy, so Davis, who had already been punished once by the Fourteenth Amendment in not being permitted to hold public office, couldn’t be tried and punished again for treason.

Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase secretly passed along his clever argument to Davis’s counsel, Charles O’Connor, who then made the motion to dismiss. The Court took the motion under consideration, passing the matter on to the Supreme Court for determination.

In late December 1867 while the motion was pending, President Johnson granted amnesty to everyone in the South, including Davis. But the Davis case was still on the docket. In February 1868, at a dinner party attended by the Chief Justice and a government attorney, they agreed that on the following day a motion for non-prosecution would be made that would dismiss the case. A guest overheard the conversation and reported what was on the minds of most Southerners: “I did not consider that he [Davis] was any more guilty of treason than I was, and that a trial should be insisted upon, which could properly only result in a complete vindication of our cause, and of the action of the many thousands who had fought and of the many thousands who had died for what they felt to be right.”
And so, the case of United States versus Jefferson Davis came to its end — a case that was to be the trial of the century, a great state trial, perhaps the most significant trial in the history of the nation — that never was.


https://mysouthernheritage.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/why-jefferson-davis-was-never-tried/

ya!

GWB

PS: also, in some other tome I read that the chief Justice also inquired of JD's council if JD was a "Citizen of the United States"? His council said no, he was a citizen of Virginia. Consequently he could not be tried for treason against the US.

Why do you think all the big pet stores facilitate "rescue animals"?

You gotta feed 'em, right?

Yep, states were joining the union with the Express written requirements that they would be allowed to secede if they didnt like the way things were going.

We never had the Cowboys and Afreakins War.

GM

Freaking Yankee couldnt get anything done right.

The American Civil War wasn't even a civil war.

A Civil War is when two factions fight over the control of a country.

The South didn't want to control the country. It just wanted to be left alone.

,...and for the most part, it still does.

The CORRECT term for the war is either War Between the States, or the War of Northern Aggression.

The reason the Democrats, as you put it, but it was the Southern people in reality, formed the KKK was to protect them and their families against the Republican led ex slaves who were trying to "get even" with White Southerners.

Old south, elite master class plantation owners live high, peasants fight and die to preserve their way of life.

How is it the only folks you bring this with boring regularity are from the South? Still butt hurt down there? Lost Cause crap!

Man...you dum.

Great post, gw.

Like most wars, that one was fought over money.

1 Timothy 6:10 reads "For the love of money, is the root of all evil".

Lots of wisdom there.

And you are both ignorant and stupid. Plantation owners were a ruling class only interested in maintaining their way of life. Average Joe was made less because of it. Contrary to the current damning of capitalism due to slavery, voluntary exchange and wage labor is an essential part.

In jr high school they taught us about France, and Germany fighting over Alsace, and Lorraine.

Coal, and iron ore. Money.

Yankee fairy tale, told to try and justify their war against the South.

Yep a southern piece of schitt!

Once again, for grins n' giggles........

bearing in mind.......... Opinions vary!

an excerpt.........

ya!

GWB



What we see happening in the United States today is an apt illustration of why the Confederate flag was raised in the first place. What we see materializing before our very eyes is tyranny: tyranny over the freedom of expression, tyranny over the freedom of association, tyranny over the freedom of speech, and tyranny over the freedom of conscience. A reason to be alarmed.

A Confederate General, Patrick Cleburne, warned of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for Independence. General Cleburne said if the South lost, “it means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. That our youth will be trained by Northern school teaches, they will learn from Northern school books their version of this war. They will be impressed by all of the influences of history and education to regard our gallant debt as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects of derision. No truer words were ever spoken by a Southern General, or any General.

History revisionists flooded America’s public schools with the Northern propaganda about the people who attempted to secede from the United States. Characterizing those as racists, extremists, radicals, hate mongers, and traitors. You know this technique, it’s used today by the current administration in Washington D.C. It’s the same way that people today in our federal government and news media attempt to characterize Christians, Patriots, War Veterans, Constitutionalists and Conservative points of view.

Please to understand that the only people in 1861 who believed that states did NOT have the right to secede were Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans. To say that the southern states did not have the right to secede from the United States is to say that the thirteen colonies did not have the right to secede from England. On this issue, one cannot be right on one and the other wrong. If one is right, both are right. How could this nation celebrate our Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then turn around and condemn the Declaration of Independence of the Confederacy in 1861? Is this not hypocrisy of the highest order?

In fact, the southern states were not the only states that talked about secession. After the southern states seceded, the State of Maryland fully intended to join them. In September 1861 Lincoln sent federal troops to the Maryland State Capital and seized the legislature by force in order to prevent them from voting. Federal provost marshals stood guard and arrested Democrats and anyone else who believed that Maryland should secede. A special furlough was granted to Maryland Troops so they could go home and vote against secession. Judges who tried to inquire into the phony elections were arrested and thrown into military prisons. All that activity in Maryland was carried out from the direct orders of the Northern Great “Emancipator”.

Now before the South seceded, several northern states had also threatened secession. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had all threatened secession as far back as James Madison’s administration. In addition, the state of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were threaten secession during the first half of the nineteenth century, long before the southern states even considered doing such a thing.

It is commonly said that Lincoln “saved” the Union. Lincoln did not save the Union; Lincoln subjugated the Union. There is a huge difference. A union that is not voluntary is not a union. Does a man have a right to force a woman to marry him or force a woman to stay married with him? In this eyes of God, a union of husband and wife is far superior to a union of states. Now if God recognized the right of husbands and wives to separate,( and He does) to try and suggest that states do not have the right to lawfully (under natural and divine right) to separate is the most preposterous proposition imaginable.

People say that Lincoln freed the slaves. Lincoln did NOT free a single slave. His so-called Emancipation Proclamation had no authority in the southern states, as they had already separated into another county. Imagine the President today signing a proclamation to free folks in say, China or Saudi Arabia, or even North Korea. He would be laughed out of Washington. Lincoln had no authority over the Confederate States of America. No one knew this more than Lincoln.

Most do not know that Lincoln’s proclamation did not free a single slave in the United States, the only country in which he did have authority. Yep, you read that right, the Emancipation Proclamation deliberately ignored slavery in the North. Very few realize that when Lincoln signed his proclamation there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union Army. Now if you think I’m making this stuff up, check it out for yourself. Then you’ll find I’m right.

One such northern slaveholder was General, and later to be US President, Ulysses S. Grant. In fact Grant maintained possession of his slaves even after the War Between the States concluded. Here is should be noted that the Confederate General Robert E Lee, freed his slaves before hostilities between the north and south broke out. When asked why he refused to free his slaves, Grant replied “Good help is hard to find these days”

Slavery in this nation did not end until the 13th Amendment to t he Constitution was ratified on December 6, 1865

Speaking of the 13th Amendment, did you know that Lincoln authored his own 13th Amendment? It’s the only amendment to the Constitution ever proposed by a sitting U.S. President. Here is the Lincoln proposed 13th amendment: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that a person’s held to labor or service by laws or said State.”

You heard that right, Abraham Lincoln himself proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution preserving the institution of slavery. This proposed amendment was written in March 1861, a month before shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

Now the State of South Carolina was particularly incensed at the tariffs enacted in 1828 and again in 1832. The Tafiff of 1828 was disdainfully called “The Tariff of Abominations” by the State of South Carolina. And so the South Carolina legislature declared that tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were “unauthorized the constitution of the United States”.

Think about this for a minute here. Why would the southern states secede from the Union over slavery when President Abraham Lincoln had offered an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the preservation of slavery? That makes no sense. If the issue was predominantly slavery, all the South needed to do was go along with Lincoln, and his proposed 13th amendment would have permanently preserved slavery among the southern, and also northern, states. Does that sound like a body of people who were willing to lose hundreds of thousands of men on the battlefield over saving slavery? It’s true nonsense to even think the War Between The States was fought over slavery.

It was money. Only money. The problem was Lincoln wanted the southern states to pay the Union a 40% tariff on their exports. The South considered that outrageous and refused to pay. By the time hostilities broke out in 1861, the south was paying up to and perhaps exceeding 70% of the nation’s taxes. Prior to the war, the South was very prosperous and productive. Much more prosperous and productive than the North. So Washington, D.C. kept raising the taxes and tariffs on the south. I’m sure you know that game, the same way that the government keeps raising the taxes on prosperous Americans to this day.

This was much the same story of the way the colonies refused to pat the demanded tariff of the British Crown, albeit the tariffs of the Crown were much lower than those demanded by Lincoln. Lincoln’s proposed 13th Amendment was an attempt to entice the South into paying the tariffs by being willing to permanently ensconce the institution of slavery into the Constitution. AND THE SOUTH SAID NO.

The Congressional Record of the United States forever obliterates the notion that the North fought the War Between the State over slavery. Read for yourself. This resolution was passed unanimously in the U.S. Congress on July 23, 1861: “The War is waged by the government of the United States no in the spirit of conquest of subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the right or institutions of the states, but to defend and protect the Union.”

The preserved record could not be more clearer. The U.S. Congress declared that the war against the South was not an attempt to overthrow on interfere with the “institutions” of the states, bu to keep the Union intact (by force). The institutions referred to most certainly included the institution of slavery. Hear it loud and clear, Lincoln’s war against the South had NOTHING to do with ending slavery. So said the U.S. Congress by unanimous resolution in 1861.

Abraham Lincoln, himself, said it was never his intention to end the institution of slavery. In a letter to Alexander Stevens, who later became the Vice President of the Confederacy, Lincoln wrote this: “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican Administration would directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, ant an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in on more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington.

Again, what could be more clearer? Lincoln, himself, said the southern states had nothing to fear from him in regard to abolishing slavery.

On another occasion Lincoln said: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.” He also said “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do s and I have no inclination to do so.

Like I said at the front, some will not believe, some will be enlightened and some will say I know that all the time. Then some will become enraged that I would even dare say such things about President Lincoln. Keep in mind Lincoln, himself, spoke the words and made the record. Should you choose not to believe, maybe, just maybe, you’ve succumbed to the spin doctors of 1865.

From The EastWing, The Real Reason For The War Between The States

I Wish You Well,

BobbyRay

https://wkvi.com/columnists/the-real-reason-for-the-war-between-the-states/

This country would be far better off had the south won.