Miscellaneous Questions

[L Verge]

Danny - I'm skipping over #1 because I can't give a good answer yet -- Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction are two of my least favorite (and weakest) topics of the 19th century.

As for #2, I can only suggest that each of us evaluate the following based on our own beliefs and taking into consideration social and political changes over a period of four score and seven years ago. Did these words hold true in 1860? Would they hold true today? P.S. A word of caution; try to remove any thought of slavery while reading these words (and I know we instinctively do it now because of our times). Hopefully, all of us will recognize these words immediately:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness..."

So, were the men who wrote this insurrectionists, traitors, glory-seekers, or what? How were their beliefs different from those who signed bills of secession in the hard winter of 1860-61? Would you have put your signature to the complete document cited above? What about to bills of secession if in a Southern state? Would you have been Fernando Wood, Mayor of New York, who called for his state to secede from the Union before the late unpleasantness? I think there is a fine line between patriot and traitor, and once again, we must take into account the times in which such decisions are made.

More fuel for the fire: https://www.law.virginia.edu/news/201710...sion-legal