There is family history involved. Lee's father suffered financial problems as a result of political concerns. He was a Virginia Federalist who suffered under the Jefferson administration. Part of Lee's concern was having his property confiscated over the political issue.
WI: What if Robert E. Lee Stays Entirely Neutral in the Civil War?
- Thread starter frustrated progressive
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Deleted member 9338
I am not sure who would of taken Lee’s place in the ANV but if it would of been Jackson I can see the war ending sooner as TJ was very offensively minded. Longstreet may be good.
Now Lee in China, that has promise.
Now Lee in China, that has promise.
Hard to see Lee's sense of duty not leading him to choose a side. But if he uncharacteristically did this, he'd be a footnote in the war against Mexico and we'd probably clicky a link to his page on wiki from time to time because of who his father was.
I have a suspicion that his impact is being slightly overestimated. Not to say he wasn't important, but Lee's abilities as a general significantly matured as the war went on. It's possible that other generals may have been able to play that learning curve without getting broken by it. Virginia had the prestige army in the prestige theater of the Confederacy with the best supplies and the best units available, it's not as if they were that bad off before Lee took command in OTL.
I have a suspicion that his impact is being slightly overestimated. Not to say he wasn't important, but Lee's abilities as a general significantly matured as the war went on. It's possible that other generals may have been able to play that learning curve without getting broken by it. Virginia had the prestige army in the prestige theater of the Confederacy with the best supplies and the best units available, it's not as if they were that bad off before Lee took command in OTL.
I somehow want him to join the Taipings, although it'd probably be too late for him to save them, imagine it, Zeng Guofan, "The Chinese Grant", versus Robert E. Lee.
StephenColbert27
Banned
The problem is that it pretty obviously is treason as defined by the Constitution:
"levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
If he sits out the war it's unlikely he's remembered at all outside of a sentence or two in history books.
At the time, this would not have been interpreted this way. The notion that the United States was an entity unto itself and not a collection of those "united" "states" is concept that follows from result of the civil war.
StephenColbert27
Banned
That notion was put to bed with the ratification of the Constitution. The idea of secession was conceived by John C. Calhoun (may he rot in hell) as a way to protect the interests of the Southern states, namely slavery.
It would be well for people to remember that Lee, Davis, and others were the recipients of pardons/amnesty after the war. The fact that they were not prosecuted further were based on charity, not a lack of guilt.
The only mention in the history books he'd receive is an example of how some Southerners went South (most), some stayed with the Union (Thomas), and some tried to stay out of it altogether (Lee, in this case).
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Well yes, the winners decided what the crimes of the losers were. I'm not attempting to be edgy here but one suspects that a portion of the nation that large leaving didn't do so thinking it was illegal or unjustifiable to and that their reasoning for so doing wasn't cartoonishly evil.
StephenColbert27
Banned
Lee and his fellows, by any definition, waged war upon the United States. That is the definition of treason according the Constitution, and had been since 1787. This is not a matter of opinion. The ways in which they justified their acts are irrelevant.
Article III said:
I don't know if he'd go to China. I do think however he'd be much more inclined too do something closer too home. Like the Mexican Civil war.\
Although, if you can alter his early life to be fascinated with East Asia, you could get him to work for the Qing, or to serve somewhere in East Asia.
Oh, wait....holy shit. What if Robert E Lee goes down to Paraguay, and fights in the Paraguayan war?
Now that's something I want to see.
William Rawle's A View of the Constitution of the United States was still being widely read at the time and it wasn't a settled debate even among northerners as to whether secession was illegal or not. That's certainly the consensus view now and one I happen to agree with but to pretend it was as cut and dry at the time is revisionism.
StephenColbert27
Banned
That's not the argument. The argument is whether or not Lee and Co. committed Treason. They clearly did, according to the Constitution. You can argue about whether they thought they were committing it or not (some certainly did), but that does not change the facts.
This constitutional business is honestly irrelevant to the main point of the thread.
Skallagrim
Banned
You are right, but nevertheless, it always comes up. And always because someone can't resist (incorrectly) claiming that secession is treason. I'm sorry for any disturbance it may cause, but when someone perpetrates blatant falsehoods, I will not refrain from pointing that out. When I say something evidently incorrect, based on some stupid preconceived notion of mine, I expect people to point that out as well.
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The problem with your reasoning is this: secession was legal [1], the CSA had seceded, and thus Lee was a foreign enemy of the USA-- not a traitor. The Constitution only applies to the USA, so it stopped applying to Lee, a Virginian, when Virginia seceded from the USA. Rather in the same way that whatever decrees Philip II cared to impose stopped applying to the Dutch Republic with the Act of Abjuration, and British regulations of any sort stopped applying to the USA with its Declaration of Independence. Fighting for those causes of independence made William or Orange and George Washington secessionists and patriots-- not traitors. They had a right to secede, which goes all the way back to medieval concepts of natural law. late classical concepts, in fact, since it goes all the way back to Saint Augustine. The idea that secession was conceived by John C. Calhoun is pure nonsense, because my own people (the Dutch) did the same thing back in 1581, using the same natural law arguments, and the USA itself did it in 1776, again using those arguments. Cal;houn invented nothing. He merely appropriated natural law traditions and arguments to support his own cause. That doesn't invalidate the arguments themselves.
A lot of the Founding Fathers of the USA, unlike some people on (alternate) history forums these days, were well aware of all this background. That whole bit about "the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [the existing government], 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" wasn't put in the Declaration for no reason, you know. And note that that particular passage explicitlt says that government is based on "the consent of the governed". Lacking that consent, the replacement of the government by a new system becomes permissable. An interesting premise, indeed! One that every single opponent of secession should really take some note of.
All this means that Lee was as much a traitor as George Washington and William of Orange were traitors. That is to say: he wasn't one at all. As far as secession is concerned, the argument that secessionists are traitors is nothing but a lie perpetrated by tyrants and their willing lackies. Secession is nothing but an expression of the right to self-determination, which every people on Earth possesses-- and ought rightfully to possess. Anyone who honestly denies this disgusts me to the core of my being, because such a person is essentially saying that self-determination shouldn't exist. This is one of the most objectively evil beliefs I can imagine.
The thing is, of course, that Lee may well be called a bad person, because he supported a slavocrat regime. That regime also denied self-determination, by holding persons in slavery. I'm immensely glad that the cause of slavery was defeated, and I think the CSA was an evil regime because it was so based on slavery. But I do note that very few people call George Washington and William or Orange traitors, but they do call Lee et al. traitors. This is an interesting thing, because it seems to me that a lot of people just can't accept that slavery itself is a good enough reason to despise the CSA. Somehow, they have to be traitors, too. But no. They were not traitors. They were right to secede (by which I mean 'they had the right', not 'it was smart') and they were wrong to perpetuate slavery. If the CSA had miraculously freed all the slaves upon seceding (which I know would never happen) they would have been 100% in the moral right, and anyone attempting to stop them would have been 100% wrong. It's that simple. And that is why I object to secession being called treason. Because secession in itself is not treason, but self-determination. It's what makes William or Orange and George Washington heroes and patriots. It would have made everyone fighting for the CSA a hero, too, if they hadn't forever tainted everything they did by embracing the pure evil that is slavery. For that reason, you'll never hear me call Lee a hero, no matter how bravely he may have fought. He fought for an evil regime. But to call him a traitor is a lie, and nothing short of historical revisionism. He wasn't wrong for supporting secession. He was wrong for supporting slavery. That's bad enough. You don't have to add false charges of treason, and in fact you shouldn't, because that's vile slander against the countless heroic secessionists throughout history who didn't tie their noble and rightful cause to an evil like slavery.
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[1] I have argued this in some detail in a recent thread. Besides being a moral right persuant to self-determination, secession was (and is) also a legal right in the USA because of the Tenth Amendment. My arguments there, regarding this point, were quite simple:
There are those who call the CSA criminal for seceding in the first place, but the Tenth Amendment implicitly allows for secession (or rather: its wording makes Federal regulation or prohibition of secession impossible): it's not explicitly a matter granted to Congress by the Constitution, and therefore it is by definition a matter reserved to the states themselves. End of story. (The fact that this was handily re-interpreted after the war is a simple case of "the winner decides what was right", which is not a principle I applaud.)
I mean, that was - and remains - the law of the land. If the Constitution doesn't delegate it to the federal government or prohibit it to the states, it remains within the scope of the states' sovereign authority (and if a state doesn't legislate on the matter, then it's for every person to decide what's right). This is the principle of subsidiarity, clear and simple. A more clear-cut case of it has rarely existed. As I always charge anyone who claims secession wasn't (or isn't) legal under the Constitution: please, do point out exactly where it delegates the power to regulate that matter to the Federal government. Spoiler: it doesn't.
This is an impressive piece of erudition, but utterly missed the point of my post.
Quicker Union victory.
Ironically, that might also mean the continuation of slavery.
Ironically, that might also mean the continuation of slavery.
StephenColbert27
Banned
The problem with this is that the Declaration of Independence was not a legal document. The Constitution was. In addition, in the U.S., Calhoun certainly was the one who originated the idea of secession as a way to protect Southern interests.
Again, the Declaration was not a legal document.
Correct. They all were. The difference is Washington and William won. Lee lost.
Who said treason is necessarily an evil act? Not I. Sometimes the ends justify the means.
Disagree. The South was in the moral wrong regardless of slavery. They were trying to take the ball and go home because they no longer had their finger on the pulse of (what was then considered) democratic government. This is a dangerous precedent to set, and the North was fully justified in stamping it out.
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I would point you to the Supremacy Clause, which clearly places the states under the authority of the Federal government, and makes it clear that they are no longer sovereign, as well as Section 10 of Article I, which forbids states from making alliances, waging war, et cetera, all of which was done by the Rebellion. Furthermore, the ideological foundation for secession, compact theory, was itself invalid according to the U.S. Supreme Court, which further emphasized the non-sovereign nature of the states under the Constitution, as well as noting that the Constitution was a product of the people, not the states. Considering that this was the legal underpinnings for what the South did, and that the South never made an attempt to appeal to the Constitution or go through a legal process by which they could leave the Union, it renders much of what you have said moot. If the South thought that they were legally justified in what they did, why not go through a legal process to achieve it? Answer: the South had no interest in being legally justified. They just wanted to own black people, and to continue that ownership in their minds it was best for them to leave the Union.
All in all, the difference between treason and secession is semantics.
Skallagrim
Banned
Trying to leave a construction you deem unfit to represent your interests is exactly what secession is. It's how the USA came to exist. But then, you already deemed William of Orange and the Founding Fathers traitors as well, so, yeah... regardless of whether you call treason 'not always evil', the fact that you see self-determination as 'treason' and consider "taking your ball and going home" a bad thing demonstrates your world-view. Let's just say it fundamentally clashes with everything I hold sacred.
You may be right to say the Constitution is legally binding while the Declaration is not, but as I will demonstrate below, the Constitution doesn't actually back your claims. So the whole question of whether secession is treason ultimately comes back around to being a moral question. Do people, regardless of other issues, fundamentally have the right to form their own countries if they so wish, and in so doing, split off from whatever government previously held sway over them? My answer is yes. My answer is furthermore that anyone who says no is morally defective.
You are in error in a very crucial way. The Supremacy Clause places Federal authority above state authority, but then, so does the tenth Amendment. Subsidiarity. It does not somehow make it so that the federal government can do anything it wants, and the states have to just obey. In fact, that's what the Tenth Amendment makes clear. The scope of the Federal power is limited (and explicitly so!) to the powers granted by the Constitution. So Congress can regulate interstate commerce, per the Constitution. And the Supremacy Clause ensures that while the states can make their own laws, none of them may conflict with, for instance, Federal law regulating interstate commerce. The reading that this makes the states powerless and "no longer sovereign" is something you add to it. That's not in the Constitution. So that, too, becomes a matter understanding the concept of "sovereignty". Well. Let's make no mistake about it: opponents of the Constititution were quite fearful to lose their sovereignty back in the day! But they were assured, by such promonent Federalists as Hamilton, Adams and Madison (who was at that time still in their faction) that the Constitution was a compact, into which the sovereign states would enter voluntarily, for their mutual betterment. Now, you may well say that this wasn't legally binding, either-- but since the Constitution itself neither confirms nor denies the exact sovereignty of the states, our best guide to the truth is the understanding of those who adopted the Constitution. They clearly felt that they were forming a "more perfect Union"... of sovereign states.
Now, "sovereign" doesn't mean they could do whatever they wanted. The Constitution limits the states, because within a Union, you can't have all members acting in whatever way they like. That's crystal clear. But it's equally clear that the Union is voluntary. The idea that states lose all sovereignty is patently false (or there would be no Tenth Amendment), and the idea that they can't leave the Union is equally false. If that were the case, it would be one of the things prohibited to the states by the Constitution.
Another severe error, and derived from the first one. The Constitution only applies to states within the Union. By leaving the Union, you automatically ensure that the Constitution stops applying to your state. Since the CSA was formed by already seceded states, and no state was even allowed to join unless it had first exited the USA, Section 10 of Article I simply did not apply to them.
To argue that Section 10 of Article I did apply, you must first prove that secession was illegal and thus invalid. This particular argument does not prove that, and in fact hinges on it already being proven-- which you have not done.
Yeah, Texas v. White. Which was a 5-3 decision, just four years after the war, and three of the majority were justices appointed by Lincoln. A simple case of "the winner writes the history books" (or in this case, the legal decisions). There was literally no way that any court, at that point, was going to say "oh, yeah, secession was actually legal and our government basically committed a bunch of war crimes by forcibly suppressing it". Understandable, but still a blatantly political verdict. More on that below.
Except that unless you can actually prove that secession was prohibited by the Constitution (which you have not done), secession was a legal process. Also, after the war, Jefferson Davis did want his day in court, to argue his position. He wanted to refuse any possible pardon, even. They ultimately dropped the whole case against him, just to prevent the possibility that he might get absolved on precisely the basis that secession wasn't illegal. Nowadays, there are people who like to argue that the procesution was dropped "so he wouldn't get a platform to spout his ideas"-- but that's evidently nonsense, since no other such platforms were ever denied to former Confederate leaders. The fact is, they knew damn well he had a point (this was before Texas v. White), and were scared he'd be vindicated. He certainly believed it, as he was furious that he didn't get a chance to argue his case. (Indeed, a high-profile trial of Jefferson Davis would have made it much, much harder to just brush off secession as 'null', since he'd be very vocally arguing his exact position-- which was strong.)
Now you conflate the legality of an act with the intention behind it. That's just poppycock. Nobody says their motives were good (at least, nobody here, to my knowledge). That doesn't make the instrument illegal. Basically, you denouncing secession in general as illegal because it was done in this specific case to preserve slavery is like me calling all e-mail evil because some idiot sends me a virus one time. It makes no sense. The slavery aspect is specific to this one case, so it cannot be used as an argument against secession in general. It can't even be used as an argument against this secession, since it's the slavery aspect and not the secession aspect that is faulty. (In other words: if the North had seceded from the South, their motives would have been untainted-- but by your logic, they'd still be traitors. In reality, they'd just be implementing their right to self-determination, albeit with far more noble motives than the South in OTL.)
No. It's really not. You haven't proven that it is, you have only claimed it. My view is that regardless of the case-specific particulars of any specific instance, secession itself is simply an expression of self-determination and completely in line with the long Western tradition regarding both both ethics and law, going - as I pointed out - all the way back to Saint Augustine. My backing for that claim is that entire tradition. Your claim is that secession is treason. Your backing for that has thus far been... the fact that you say so.
Do observe that there are at least two main arguments going on here, which you seemingly conflate.
-- First, there is the matter of whether secession itself is an act of treason (I contend it isn't, and I can back that up by a wide array of precedents going back centuries). This is a general point, and thus does not refer to laws. It is an ethical question. This is actually the most interesting one, at least for me, and the most fundamental one. It's also the one where you have not even attempted to back up your claims with any kind of support.
-- Second, there is the question whether the secession of the Southern states was legally treason. Your arguments in favour of that claim have thus far been lacking.
Note that even if you did prove the second one (which I don't think you can), I'll still just refer to the first one. That is: if any law outlaws secession, I hold that it's an unethical law. The very existence of such a law is a sound ethical reason to secede at once from the regime that has implemented it. In itself, a law forbidding secession justifies secession.