AHC/WI: Confederate soldiers and those who voted for secession declared traitors

As the title says, the challenge is to have, after the conclusion of the ACW, everyone who fought for or voted for the Confederacy declared traitors to the United States, and have their lives declared forfeit as a result. What would happen in this case?
 
As the title says, the challenge is to have, after the conclusion of the ACW, everyone who fought for or voted for the Confederacy declared traitors to the United States, and have their lives declared forfeit as a result. What would happen in this case?

A coup. Really. The war would continue and there'd be a coup.
 
As the title says, the challenge is to have, after the conclusion of the ACW, everyone who fought for or voted for the Confederacy declared traitors to the United States, and have their lives declared forfeit as a result. What would happen in this case?

The most you could hope for would be severe actions taken against the Southern Elite. Seizing of Plantations, limiting political influences, a few executions, stuff like that. You know what normally happens to the losing side of a civil war. In comparison, the south got off pretty light.
 
I'd have to imagine guerrilla warfare and the Vietnamization of the South. Not good, not good at all. :(

Dude, this happened in many, many ways. We just gloss over it because it was a reign of terror designed to strip newly freed blacks of their rights.
 
The number of people included in that definition runs into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. No US government is going to kill that many people, even as traitors.

As others have stated, realistically the most that could happen would be to identify a certain elite - probably in the magnitude of thousands, not even tens of thousands - and strip of them holding office or voting with perhaps executions of a few dozen recalcitrant leaders who absolutely refused to accept peace with the Union.

The only way I see the Union going for such a strong response is if the Confederates commit more atrocities during the war and/or if the Booth conspiracy was more successful.

Effectively wiping out the old plantation aristocratic elite of the South will open up positions for new leaders - Southern Unionists, blacks, and ordinary middle class white Democrats - that may see a more successful Reconstruction as reforms are implemented more deeply, and the Federal government is more committed to supporting those reforms.
 
As a matter of law huge numbers made war against the United States, the deliberately narrow definition of treason in the US Constitution.

Any significant number of executions would have been illegal. However conditionaing pardon for the class that started the war and benefited from human property on large scale confiscation and a significant period of exile would have been both lawful and morally right.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
It's not that hard really. Have the South do better in the war, but still be on trajectory towards loss when Lincoln is assassinated. I suspect, had Lincoln been assassinated in early 1864 this might have been a result, McClellan or not...


Old Abe was a good leader, but it's not like the Union was hanging on by a thread. It's quite possible a lesser leader could have still won the war, and if the Confederacy (as a whole) was blamed for the assassination rather than die-hards, then even old McClellan might have seen fight to enact a bloody southern purge. (And the Confederacy as a whole being blamed for the assassination would be more likely, had it occurred before Lee's surrender. Most Northerners would probably believe Lee was behind it, and support his handing, along with his staff.)
 
As a matter of law huge numbers made war against the United States, the deliberately narrow definition of treason in the US Constitution.
(I'm not an American.)
Doesn't that definition also require them to have done so on behalf of a foreign power rather than [just] as rebels? If so, then that condition would only have been met if the USA had recognised the CSA as a separate nation, but in that case they'd [mostly] have been legally foreigners rather than US citizens at the time of the fighting and therefore enemy combatants rather than [native] traitors anyway... Catch-22.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
(I'm not an American.)
Doesn't that definition also require them to have done so on behalf of a foreign power rather than [just] as rebels? If so, then that condition would only have been met if the USA had recognised the CSA as a separate nation, but in that case they'd [mostly] have been legally foreigners rather than US citizens at the time of the fighting and therefore enemy combatants rather than [native] traitors anyway... Catch-22.

Nope, not correct at all. Section 3, Article 3 of the Constitution defines treason, in part, as levying war against the united States. Now, while the definition of war might be debatable, no reasonable definition could consider the Confederacy and those involved in it as doing anything but levying war against the United States. For persons citizens of the U.S., or otherwise committed, that's treason.
 
Forfeit is strong, but I could see officers, for instance, stripped of the right to vote.


I heard (but can't remember where and so have no idea where to start researching it) that after the ACW some states passed laws forbidding former Confederate officers from holding political office or even practicing certain professions. Can anyone confirm this?
 
Well given that the pretty much every white military aged man in confederacy, excepting areas like eastern Tennessee that were actively fighting the CSA, were in military service at some point during the war, we are talking about mass slaughter of another Western people on a scale that just ouldn't have been acceptable to the US public.
 
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