How would you have treated confederate leaders?

[12th Doctor]

The same as they were treated in real life.

[12th Doctor]

I would have granted amnesty to all that pledged loyalty to the Union.

Robert E Lee would have been in charge of Reconstruction.

[12th Doctor]

Had the senior government leadership shot, hand out prison terms to some of the officers, and require the rest to swear an oath of loyalty to the Union (or leave).

Congrats, you just started a guerrilla war!

Guerillas only work in an environment where friendly outside powers/neighobrs back them up. The british and French would be more than happy to back up the union in the purge of the white confederates.

What basis do you draw that from.  Che was right about one thing... all it takes is the support of 10% of the population.  I think the guerrillas would have had more than that.  As Dan points out, as things went, there almost was such an war, but Lee decided otherwise.  He made that choice because he believed Lincoln woudl treat the South fairly.  After Lincoln was assassinated, the Northern leadership wanted all the Southern leaders arrested and hung.  It was Grant who told them that he would not carry out the order, and if they found someone else to go through with it, he would resign, because Grant and Lincoln gave Lee their word.

Your version of history is clearly influenced by PC revisionism.

[12th Doctor]

I'd have dropped the issue of back taxes and instituted a speedy land reform in which all slaves received land and/or money while all plantation owners would have been reduced to working class standards. I'm not sure whether or not I would have bothered with criminal proceedings against the main traitors - since it was technically impossible to try all the traitors, it would have been difficult to reasonably draw the line anywhere, so dropping the issue makes sense.

The only traitors were those in the US Federal Government.

At least we agree that noone lost his citizenship.

There were no "traitors".  There is nothing in the Constitution which says states can't secceed.  In the Articles of Confederation, the Union was perminant, but the framers of the Constitution abandoned such language, because many of them, though not all, believed that states reserved the right to leave if they had legit grievences.  At the same time, precedent in the courts lead inthe direction of a perminant union, so there was certainly reason to see things that way as well.  PEople should stop trying to point figures and recongnize, as Lincoln did, that the causes for the war were an American problem, not just a Southern or Northern one.

[12th Doctor]

Now, was Lincoln a god, or a perfect angel from on high?  No.  But he wasn't a villian either and his understanding of the war went far beyond that of anyone else alive at the time... or who has written about it since.

[12th Doctor]

1. Hang all political and military confederate leaders.
2. Break up plantations and give land to both poor whites and blacks.
3. Permanent federal troops.
4. Anyone under the age of 12 gets sent to northern boarding schools until they come of age.

BTW... totally off topic, but In at the Death has been amazingly good.  Unlike the last six entries in the saga, it has been utterly unpredictable.


Also, unless I miss my guess, you are confusing the real Confederate States with those run by Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party.

[12th Doctor]

Actually, no. There is nothing in the Constitution that says states can't secede because there is nothing in ANY constitution that says states can't secede because unless there is something that says they CAN, the fact that they CAN'T (by a legal process) is self-evident.

That is flat out wrong, and the events of the Convention bare that out.  The perminance of the new Union was intentionally sacraficed in the event that this new Federal Government used its powers to run one part of the country or another into the ground.  Pointing to other Constitutions is irrelevant, as it ignores one obvious historical curiosity which seperates the USA for other countries, and that is, the United States were Thirteen Independent entities which formed a single nation.  They granted powers to the Federal government.  Unlike almost every other nation where the powers of the states were handed down to them by the Federal Government.

Now, we can argue about cause, but I right that succession started out as an imply right to a string of injustices.

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Well, that pretty much does it for me.  If I call God an "omnipotent being"... I think it is pretty well implied, before I go further, that God is omnipotent.

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You are thinking backwards, and anachronistically.  You have to look at what was really going on and hwo they thought.  The reason the Constitution took the form that is did was because, had it not, states would have secceded in acctuality even if they didn't have the right to do so de jure.  And there were loud calls for seccession after the Articles were passed, particularly by Patrick Henry.  And you speak of Nullification as though it didn't have a cause.  People who backed nullification did so because they assumed it was an implied right and the elimination fo that right were just cause for seccession.  That's why the cries for seccession picked up after nullification.

Also, you are ignoring one obvious fact, which is the south wasn't the first place to call a council for seccession... New England was.  They called one in 1814 in response to what they felt was an unjust war that wasn't in the interests of their states.

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No, not just slavery.  No offense, but I love how you can look down your European nose at Americans and claim that slavery was an "American" problem, when the practice was very prevelance for old world countries right up until WWII.  Sure, "real" slavery had died in Europe 17th and 18th century (in most countries, largely thanks to the Pope, another thing the Papacy gets no credit for) but "colonialism" was nothing but slavery of entire lands with a more pleasant name.  No one in their right mind back then would have thought slavery was just an "American" condition, because they all woudl have know it was a human condition.  The only thing that made slavery in America different is that we had been founded on principles that opposed such treatment of men and women and that is what Lincoln found truely reprehensable.

Lincoln's "American Problems" were a vast array of issues, including how all poor people were treated back then, how state governments were so divided that they often times tried to strong arm one another, how the country had been factionalized, etc.  The idea that slavery was the overbearing cause of the Civil War is revisionist to the core.  And the notion that America was somehow backwards in its treatment of the "browner peoples" is complete European, let-make-ourselves-feel-good rubish.

[12th Doctor]

Pointing to other Constitutions is irrelevant, as it ignores one obvious historical curiosity which seperates the USA for other countries, and that is, the United States were Thirteen Independent entities which formed a single nation.  They granted powers to the Federal government.  Unlike almost every other nation where the powers of the states were handed down to them by the Federal Government.

False... many federal states have that legal fiction. And in many of them - Germany for instance - it's not really a fiction, unlike in most of the US. Although in others the "states" are really subdivisions created by the central government, just as in the US outside the western seaboard. India would be a good example of such a fake federation.

--- EDIT: Eastern. The Eastern seaboard. ---

There *is* a good argument for ignoring other constitutions though -  all the modern ones postdate the US'.

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No, not just slavery.  No offense, but I love how you can look down your European nose at Americans and claim that slavery was an "American" problem, when the practice was very prevelance for old world countries right up until WWII.  Sure, "real" slavery had died in Europe 17th and 18th century

Uh, "real" slavery died all over Western Europe during the Dark Ages. Although lesser, but still abominable, forms of bondage did indeed survive into the 19th century.

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Where?

Of course slavery was introduced in the Americas by Europeans. That wasn't my point at all though - rather, I was trying to draw attention to the parallel debates in the British and French colonies, in Cuba and Brazil.

As to the other points... they aren't ones. Henry advocated *not joining the union in the first place*, not "secession". He did so in part *because it was understood that it would be impossible to secede from it*.
And alas, all the sectionally charged political issues of the antebellum period - "States Rights", homesteading, tariffs, wars of annexation, Right of Petition - are largely variants on the overriding issue of slavery. That is, none would have been sectionally charged without it. None could have led to civil warfare. (And yes, Northerners could invoke "States' Rights" and Nullification too. Quite apart from the Hartford Convention, think of the Fugitive Slave Acts.)

--- EDIT: Quite apart from the fact that all the Hartford Convention eventually ended up doing is discuss a joint strategy to push for some constitutional amendments: An end to the three-fifth rule, a term limit, and rules making it harder to admit new states being chief among them.
[/quote]

1) Indentured servitude is still "real" slavery and it was a very common practice throughout Europe in the 19th century.

2) Indentured servitude was as almost as common in the north as slavery was in the south.  It was how many of the Irish paid their way over to the US.  Terms of service could be as long as 20 years... not that there was a legal limit, but it was not unheard of for them to be that long.  One could argue that the difference between indentured servitude is the, at the end, you get your freedom.  Well, freedom to do what?  Most people had no money at the end of their term.  Nothing saved up, and the best years of their life were behind them, so they went to the poorhouses, which was worse than slavery.

3) The difference between this "constitutional fiction" in America as opposed to other places is that, here in the United States the fiction was a reality.  I was acctually thinking fo Germany when I inserted "almost" in there, but one can hardly argue the German and US constitutions are stamped from the same mold, and the only reason Germany has this "fiction" is, IIRC, you guys had a very nasty expirience with too much centralized power at one time.

4) Many of the 17th and 18th century Popes were loud in their opposition to slavery and indentured servitude.  I'm not gonna dig out names, but one of the Gregory's comes to mind in particular.  Granted, there were things going on in the new world that escaped their notice, but one could hardly blame them for not knowing what was really going on over there.

5) It doesn't matter what the Hartford Convention ened up doing, that is irrelevant to the arguement.  The reason they assembled was because they were going to secceed.  The reason they didn't was because, by the time they acctually assembled, peace had already been declared.

[12th Doctor]

... and after awhile people would stop doing it since people would rather live.

Tell that to the Japanese on Okinawa.  If the options are between what is preceived as a horrible life and death on your knees and a "glorious" death otherwise, a lot of people would choose the latter.

[12th Doctor]

Actually Jedi, nothing against you, but your comments show exactly the pathetic state our education system is in. Federal troops WERE in the South for years after the war and instead of sending southern kids north the yankee govt sent Northern teachers into the south to brainwash the children into believing that what their fathers & mothers fought for was "wrong".

You forgot to mention the five military governors of the South.

* First Military District:  under General John Schofield
* Second Military District: under General Daniel Sickles
* Third Military District: under General John Pope
* Fourth Military District: under General Edward Ord
* Fifth Military District: under Generals Philip Sheridan and Winfield Scott Hancock

Wow... amazing, four of the six governors were completely worthless as battlefield commanders.