How would you have treated confederate leaders? (user search)
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  How would you have treated confederate leaders? (search mode)
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Author Topic: How would you have treated confederate leaders?  (Read 29835 times)
ATFFL
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,754
« on: January 14, 2005, 03:11:03 PM »

The reason why Jefferson Davis never was put on trial for treason was that he would have argued, successfully, that the Constitution and the Declaration gave the states the implicit right to secede if the federal government overstepped its authority. 

Having Lincoln win an election was overstepping authority?

Most of the leaders of the Confederacy should have been allowed to take a loyalty oath and most of them should have been barred from ever holding a government office ever again.  This woudl have kept them out of power and also put their brainpower into the private sector of the south.

Freedmen should ahve been given homesteads in the west if htey wanted it or a cash equivalent.  This should have been paid for from the siezure of property from Confederates who would not take a loyalty oath and by the sale of all plantations to individuals.    This money woudl have also paid the missing back taxes.
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ATFFL
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,754
« Reply #1 on: January 14, 2005, 07:07:40 PM »

The reason why Jefferson Davis never was put on trial for treason was that he would have argued, successfully, that the Constitution and the Declaration gave the states the implicit right to secede if the federal government overstepped its authority. 

Having Lincoln win an election was overstepping authority?


No. The 1860 GOP campaign plank to halt the spread of slavery into the territories was, however, very clearly unconstitutional. That Lincoln was elected president made that unconstitutional campaign promise essentially a fait-accompli.

I would have encouraged the rapid industrialization of the South. Not only would that have alleviated the massive poverty resulting from the immediate release of the slaves (by 1860 the capital of southern plantations lay in the slaves themselves, and not the land or the crop), it would have weakend the social structures that made whites think of blacks as only bonded field labor in the first place.

As for the Confederate leaders, most (but not all, e.g. Nathan B Forrest) were reasonable and should have been given their citizenship after taking the loyalty oath and a probationary period. Even Jeff Davis's ex-slaves had no problem with a monument being built in his honour after his death in 1889.


Ok, so someone saying they want to do something is cause for secession.

Wow.  Just . . . wow.
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