Submitted by MikiLove t3_10p5y5a in todayilearned
Reply to comment by NoBSforGma in TIL of Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and congressman during the Civil War. The Union deported him for supporting the Confederacy. After the war, he died by accidentally shooting himself during a murder trial while trying to show the murder weapon could have misfired. His client got off as a result by MikiLove
Oh I wasn't trying to imply anything against you. Just giving my opinion
There was nothing illegal about supporting the right of the Confederacy to secede. But yes, he did do some pretty awful things.
I just think that reading it will give people an interesting window into the way things were happening during that time.
As I said, it's about a LOT more than "he shot himself in the courtroom."
I mean... supporting the succession of part of your country is pretty treasonous, right?
Is it? Keep in mind...... this was around 1850's and the country was only 70 years old, more or less. There were only 30 states. They were still trying to find their way between Federal and State powers.
There were members in Congress who felt that the Southern states should just be allowed to go their own way. (Mostly this was to avoid a civil war.)
So a young country, not fully formed and with strong differences between the states.
If, say, Texas wanted to secede from today's United States and you said..."I think that's a good idea!" - would that be treasonous?
Yes, that would be. The Confederacy in particular was a great combination of white supremacy and treason that is easy to point out. And before you make the argument of self determination, the slaves in the Confederacy, who made up a large part of the population, had no say and were being forced to go along with a treasonous government trying to separate themselves from a Union trying to free them.
No need to get your knickers in a twist. We are just having a discussion here.
No, it wouldn't be. Because this was before the Confederacy was formed. This was just during the time that the southern states were pissed off and TALKING about seceding. And some people felt.... "Well, just go ahead and good riddance."
We are not having any kind of discussion about the Confederacy or slavery or any of that. Yes slavery is abhorrent but there were many people who supported it. Mainly because they didn't know any better.
It was lucrative for many people, not just the southern slave owners but the New England boat captains who brought the slaves from Africa or from the Caribbean. And you have to remember that at that time in history, people did consider Africans to be sub-human and felt that teaching them about Christianity would be good for them. Yes, it was fucked up thinking - but - you cannot look at something that happened in 1860 through today's lens.
No... he was deported during the war, when he was openly supporting letting the states secede while they were killing Union soldiers.
And yes I support historical relativism, but even in the 1860's slavery was widely viewed as an amoral practice. America was one of the last Western nations to abolish slavery, and the Northern states were universally moving towards either abolishing it or preventing its expansion. Also, no new slaves were allowed to be shipped in for over a decade before this, so New England ship captains were not involved. Only the rich Southern planation owners wanted to expand it. Even in those times the South was a moral outlier
Yes, he was deported during the war. But BEFORE the war and BEFORE the states seceded, he supported allowing them to secede which was NOT treasonous.
Basically, Lincoln made the decision to not let the states secede. He was determined to hold the country together. He declared that anyone who spoke against the war would be arrested. Was this an overstep on his part? Kind of like the Patriot Act of recent years. Not allowed to speak out against the war because that was considered "treason." I am not saying it was a wrong thing to do -- just saying it's worth a debate or discussion.
The point I am trying to make is that rather than focus on Vallandigham's support of slavery and the South or focus on his shooting himself in court, to focus on the whole swirl of breaking the union and people's right to express their opinions about it (or not) and how that played out.
In the 1860's, slavery was viewed by many people as an amoral practice. But not 100%. Be realistic. Just like there are racists today, there were people who thought that it was OK because they were "taken care of" and introduced to Christianity. As more information became available about the actual conditions of slaves and slavery laws, more people were against it.
The slave trade was abolished in the US in 1808. In other words, no slaves could legally be imported into the US after that. But prior to that time, New England ship captains were definitely involved.
I think that mostly, the rich Southern plantation owners just wanted to be left alone so they could continue doing what they were doing. And that is...... raising cotton (mostly) and selling it and making money.
"Moral outlier?" Hm. Along with the destruction of Native Americans, I guess. Done by the Federal Government.
There's a definitely a debate to be had about Lincoln's actions and the extreme measures he took, but once bullets started firing everything changed. Lincoln didn't suspend habeus corpus and imprison dissenters until the South fired upon Northern troops. There's a big distinction.
And I'm not talking about 1808. I'm talking about 1860. The South were outliers among the Western world, and was viewed as such. Rich Southerners wanted to continue to have cheap labor, while also maintaining their racial superiority.
And I am not here to defend the actions of the Federal Government when it came to slavery. That was abhorrent. But what I can stay is the Federal Government got it correct when it came to slavery and the Civil War
I don't disagree with anything you have written - except - that "outliers among the Western world" when there were still slaves in the Caribbean islands and elsewhere in Central and South America.
Only if you view it from the lens of today, not what it is in the past. Hell, up north we have to Deal with Quebec wanting to succeed from Canada every couple decades, and now Alberta. I won't view them as treacherous, just moronic, since they don't have the capacity to support themselves as a sovereign nation.
That's not over slavery, though, is it?
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