Treason?

The Confederate Battle Flag

From: vaproto@optonline.net
To: ralphlesliesmith@gmail.com

Dear Sir:

You are incorrect if you believe that the Confederate States of America
and/or any of her symbols is/was treasonous. Secession was permitted
under the Constitution. Indeed, during the War of 1812 (political
uprisings during wars tend to be viewed much more harshly than during
times of peace), the New England states met in convention to declare
their succession from the Union; this was known as the Hartford
Convention. In the end, they failed to secede for the most part owing to
the end of the war which was interrupting their trade. However, though
the states involved voted against secession, the fact is they voted and
they did so without armed federal troops making their appearance to stop
the “treason” involved. Why? Because there was no treason involved; it’s
as simple as that. Years after the War of Secession (it wasn’t a “civil
war”) Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Gen. Robert E. Lee asked why the
Constitution did not make secession openly unlawful if, as the Union
maintained, it was in fact unlawful under that document. The answer that
he received from those familiar with the history of the time was this:
had the Founding Fathers made secession unlawful in the Constitution,
the Constitution never would have been ratified! So your point that
secession was treason is refuted by history and therefore nonsense.

Furthermore, if secession actually was treason, two questions then
arise: first, why was it necessary for Congress to act after the War to
make secession unlawful? If it was already illegal, why the need to make
further legislation on the matter? And secondly, where were the treason
trials? One can claim that the terms granted by Grant and Sherman to the
Confederate military required that Southern soldiers – even at the
highest levels - be spared prosecution for this crime, but no such
excuse can be made for the Confederacy’s civilian government. Indeed,
Jefferson Davis was kept in close confinement under horrible
circumstances for two years while several groups of federal attorneys
attempted to devise a treason trial only to discover that to proceed
with same would lose the war in court that had been won on the
battlefield; Davis was released and no charge of treason was ever
brought against him or any other Southerner. Secession was not
unconstitutional or treasonous.

You may not agree with the actions taken by South Carolina and those
Southern states that followed her out of the Union (however, that is
probably because you are ignorant of the situation extant), but those
states had every right to make that choice, a choice denied them by
unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and wicked war waged against them not
by “the Union”, but by the federal government. Now that was “treasonous”
and we have been paying the price of that treason ever since. According
to Maine Professor Jay Hoar, “The worst fears of those Boys in Gray are
now a fact of American life – a Federal government completely out of
control.”

I really would suggest, sir, that you foreswear the “history” being
bruited about today. It is totally Marxist-revisionist and has no more
to do with American history than Burton’s “Tales of the Arabian Nights”
has to do with the history of the Middle East. The facts are available
to you should you care to abandon the ignorant regurgitation of
mendacity and discover why the States of the South determined that their
only hope of freedom from tyranny lay in abandoning the old Union.
Interestingly enough, you will find that not every state seceded for the
same reason. Indeed, Virginia and North Carolina only seceded after
Lincoln demanded that they furnish troops to make unlawful war on their
Southern brethren. It was then and only then that these two “founding
states” determined that they could no longer remain in what had become a
criminal and tyrannous nation.

Valerie Protopapas
Long Island, New York