Secession And Southern Symbols

From Free North Carolina and Secession and Nullification--News and Information:

Thursday, November 25, 2010Treason?


The Confederate Battle Flag



From: vaproto@optonline.net

To: ralphlesliesmith@gmail.com



Dear Sir:



You are incorrect if you believe that the Confederate States of America

and/or any of her symbols is/was treasonous. Secession was permitted

under the Constitution. Indeed, during the War of 1812 (political

uprisings during wars tend to be viewed much more harshly than during

times of peace), the New England states met in convention to declare

their succession from the Union; this was known as the Hartford

Convention. In the end, they failed to secede for the most part owing to

the end of the war which was interrupting their trade. However, though

the states involved voted against secession, the fact is they voted and

they did so without armed federal troops making their appearance to stop

the “treason” involved. Why? Because there was no treason involved; it’s

as simple as that. Years after the War of Secession (it wasn’t a “civil

war”) Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Gen. Robert E. Lee asked why the

Constitution did not make secession openly unlawful if, as the Union

maintained, it was in fact unlawful under that document. The answer that

he received from those familiar with the history of the time was this:

had the Founding Fathers made secession unlawful in the Constitution,

the Constitution never would have been ratified! So your point that

secession was treason is refuted by history and therefore nonsense.



Furthermore, if secession actually was treason, two questions then

arise: first, why was it necessary for Congress to act after the War to

make secession unlawful? If it was already illegal, why the need to make

further legislation on the matter? And secondly, where were the treason

trials? One can claim that the terms granted by Grant and Sherman to the

Confederate military required that Southern soldiers – even at the

highest levels - be spared prosecution for this crime, but no such

excuse can be made for the Confederacy’s civilian government. Indeed,

Jefferson Davis was kept in close confinement under horrible

circumstances for two years while several groups of federal attorneys

attempted to devise a treason trial only to discover that to proceed

with same would lose the war in court that had been won on the

battlefield; Davis was released and no charge of treason was ever

brought against him or any other Southerner. Secession was not

unconstitutional or treasonous.



You may not agree with the actions taken by South Carolina and those

Southern states that followed her out of the Union (however, that is

probably because you are ignorant of the situation extant), but those

states had every right to make that choice, a choice denied them by

unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and wicked war waged against them not

by “the Union”, but by the federal government. Now that was “treasonous”

and we have been paying the price of that treason ever since. According

to Maine Professor Jay Hoar, “The worst fears of those Boys in Gray are

now a fact of American life – a Federal government completely out of

control.”



I really would suggest, sir, that you foreswear the “history” being

bruited about today. It is totally Marxist-revisionist and has no more

to do with American history than Burton’s “Tales of the Arabian Nights”

has to do with the history of the Middle East. The facts are available

to you should you care to abandon the ignorant regurgitation of

mendacity and discover why the States of the South determined that their

only hope of freedom from tyranny lay in abandoning the old Union.

Interestingly enough, you will find that not every state seceded for the

same reason. Indeed, Virginia and North Carolina only seceded after

Lincoln demanded that they furnish troops to make unlawful war on their

Southern brethren. It was then and only then that these two “founding

states” determined that they could no longer remain in what had become a

criminal and tyrannous nation.



Valerie Protopapas

Long Island, New York

Posted by Brock Townsend at 10:35 AM