Reply #60: Loser history month [View All]

sounds good.

I don't think Traitor month is either fair or accurate.

Using my state of Texas as the example, from 1836 to 1861, Texas was a state of Mexico, a Republic, a US state, and a Confederate state. That's four different governments in 25 years.

The voters of Texas left the USA the same way they joined it, with a vote. They voted 80 % - 20 % to leave the USA even with the Governor campaigning vigorously against leaving. They really didn't expect to get ground to dust by their vote. Changing governments they thought was their right.

Anyway, once they voted to leave the union, you could hardly reasonably call them traitors to the country they voted to leave. How can you be a traitor to a country you don't belong to.

An interesting sidebar is that Jefferson Davis was indicted for treason.

He hired a high power group of northern lawyers to defend him financed curiously by northern industrialists who were anti-slavery.

Anyway, his defense was that secession was Constitutional, therefore he could not be a traitor, and would the northern armies kindly leave the Confederacy, apologize for all the destruction and allow President Davis to resume his office and start the long task of rebuilding his nation.

Davis demanded his Constitutional right to a public and speedy trial.

The government kept postponing his trial though while he remained in prison.

The problem was the issue was by no means a settled Constitutional issue. The diocument was silent on the topic. The original ratification debates assumed states could leave if they didn't like the new government they were signing on to.

It would be a true disaster if the Supreme Court ruled states had the right to secession. What then?

So the federal government never put Davis on trial. They just left hiom indicted year after year while he demanded his trial. Eventually he was bailed out and never tried though left indicted.