Before I keep going, I want it fully expressed on my part that I know completely you aren't supporting slavery at all. I know that it's a major part of the discussion and will inevitably crop up. That's perfectly fine. Every time period has its own context which can be difficult for contemporary citizens to comprehend with things as we know them today. So you don't have to feel on the defensive about it, I fully get it.
Okay, to begin with, neither Jefferson Davis nor Robert E Lee, both educated at West Point, were in any way traitors. Lee, when asked to command the Union army by President Lincoln replied, "Regrettably, sir, I am a Virginian first, and an American second. These were men who believed themselves to hold their first loyalty to their home state, not the United States as a whole.
The difference between Davis and Lee for me is that Davis served in high public office for the United States. He was President Pierce's Secretary of War, he was a U.S. Senator and what galls me most, he spoke out against secession in the Senate. He may very well have believed that the states had a right to leave the Union, but I find it more than a little murky that a man who served with unquestioned distinction in the Mexican War, who was a member of the President's cabinet, who went on record against secession, would assume the mantle of the Confederate Presidency. That leads me to believe (and I freely admit that I'm not near as well educated on Davis as I am on Grant, Lincoln or Lee), that even though he knew what he was doing was wrong, he did it anyway because it gave him the chance to be President. There's also the incredible amount of self-interest involved beyond that when you consider Davis was a huge plantation owner dependent upon slavery.
Lee meanwhile, oddly enough, I don't consider a traitor. I don't agree with much of anything he did, but he wasn't a cabinet minister. He didn't leave the Union out of self-interest (as you said, he declined command of Union forces). I believe he was wrong, but he clearly believed that what he did was right. He saw himself as a Virginian first, and while I personally can't see that perspective (I can't ever see myself being loyal to British Columbia over Canada, or Arizona/California over the U.S.), I know that HE saw it that way.
Something that a lot of people tend to forget, and the history books totally ignore, is that up until the time of the Secession, the United States were exactly that. A group of united, but sovereign, states. It was by their free will that they joined together to form a common nation, and it was understood that it was the common right of each state to withdraw from that union whenever their citizens decided to do so, exactly the same as partners in a business can break up their partnership at will. The Southern states were perfectly within their rights, they believed, in leaving the United States and forming the Confederacy an an independent nation.
I think this is the heart of the issue, and which will be the primary point of contention.
President Johnson was a very bad man, but he made one point I agreed with. He took the position that the South had never left the Union, and that view wasn't without merit, based on an upcoming Supreme Court precedent. In
Texas vs. White (1869), Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase ruled secession was illegal, deeming that the Constitution created an "indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states" (
Grant, Smith, P. 422). The Court also ruled that Texas during the Civil War was not lawfully governed, and that under Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution Congress had legal power to establish a lawful state government. Of course, Johnson didn't give a damn about that, he wanted the Southern states immediately readmitted to Congress to shore up votes for his failing Presidency. He twisted a Supreme Court verdict to allow widespread adoption of the Black Codes in the South to accentuate that (Johnson was a notorious racist aside from being a political scumbag). It's a tragedy, really, because the goals of Reconstruction were set back almost a century due to Johnson's actions.
Of course, this is all meaningless if the Confederacy wins the war. Legal or not, force wins wars, not papers. However, the Supreme Court deemed the Confederacy illegal, with no right to leave the Union, and while the case I'm sure would have been made that the Confederate states didn't recognize the authority of an American court, it is what it is.
I also wanted to add, I thought Grant and Lincoln were absolutely correct in how they wanted to handle the readmission of the South into the Union. Punishment and vindictiveness were not the way to go, even in the shadow of the horror of war. Peace and forgiveness were the right avenues to follow, and (in my humble opinion), Grant's finest hour was when he stood eye-to-eye with President Johnson when Johnson made clear his intentions to ignore Grant and Lee's treaty at Appomattox, and to have Lee tried for treason. Without Grant, Lee would have been executed, and that would have ignited already simmering Southern rage and resentment to catastrophic levels.
And as for the issue of slavery (here's one of those things that I warned you about. I am NOT defending slavery, simply explaining the events of the time) yes, slavery was the rallying point for the Union Army and its validation for invading the Confederate States Of America. However, the issue of slavery as it existed at that time was never properly, or even legally or in an unbiased fashion, addressed by Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation. To begin with, the E P was written AFTER the Southern states had left the Union, therefore it had no legal validity. Secondly, it DID NOT abolish the institute of slavery in general. It applied only to the states comprising the Confederacy. That would be the same thing as Obama today signing a law that applied only to Canada or Mexico. The law would be invalid because he has no authority there. Lincoln had no authority over the CSA.
Well, it wouldn't be quite the same, as the Union viewed the Confederacy not as an independent nation they were invading, but as a group of rebels. Canada and Mexico are clearly separate from the United States. I can try to form my own country from within the U.S. if I want to, but I have no legal right to do so.
And I'm not so naive to think that the issue of slavery was cut-and-dried. I know it wasn't. There was the obvious benefit of emancipation in that suddenly the Union was flooded with much-needed new recruits to resew the war effort. However, the Reconstruction actions of many defeated Southern states, the raw terrorism towards the freedmen, particularly in Louisiana and Tennessee, reinforced the importance of the North winning the war from a standpoint beyond "Union".
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I hope I haven't rambled on too much. I love discussing history and it's always great to debate with someone new, especially when they possess a completely different perspective than mine. I hope others wade in as well, on either side of the issue. These things are always more fun with more people!
