Continuation:
I never found mention of the location of the proposed trial and assumed that it would have been in Washington DC. I know that a trial in the US is held in the state the crime is committed, but your idea that it would be held in Virginia because that's where the southern capital was, is out of the question because the first Southern capital was in Alabama then moved to Richmond, Virginia. Also, that might be suggesting that the south was a country with a capital city.
No, the south did not loot northern armories for guns. In fact, the old flintlock weapons were moved out of northern armories into southern armories to make room for the more modern percussion rifles.
As for you "treason" accusation, haven't I demanded that you (Or someone, ANYONE) prove that secession was illegal at the time.
I know you have mentioned a ruling made AFTER the war, but that would violate the Ex-Post Facto provision in the US Constitution. In case you don't know what that means, it is the protection against being arrested, charged, tried or penalized for doing something BEFORE it's against the law.
Reply:
I found that out with basic research, and it's not because its' the Confederate capital but rather its' Jefferson Davis's HOME STATE, and in the constitution anyone held for treason has to be held in their homestate, hence Virginia, it has fuck all to do with its' importance as the state with the Confederacy's second capital and more to do with Davis being from there.
Except that's exactly what happened, numerous times over the course of months with each state's secession claiming arms from federal depos
"There was no right to secede under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union:
• Article 6 said “No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled.”
• Article 13 said “...and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.”
There continued to be no right to secede in the more perfect union ordained and established by the People of the United States in the Constitution. This had been settled at least 40 years earlier, in these Supreme Court cases:
Chisholm v. Georgia (1793)
Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816)
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
All of them settled that the Constitution was not a “compact” between the states, that could be dissolved like a contract, but rather an act of the people establishing a new government with substantive new powers; and that the Constitution was binding on the states and could not be set aside by them. The rulings in those cases explicitly reject “Compact Theory”, which was the idea that the states could rescind their joining of the Union.
That’s consistent with what Madison said in his letter to Hamilton of July 1788:
My opinion is that a reservation of a right to withdraw if amendments be not decided on under the form of the Constitution within a certain time, is a conditional ratification, that it does not make N. York a member of the New Union, and consequently that she could not be received on that plan. Compacts must be reciprocal, this principle would not in such a case be preserved. The Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever. It has been so adopted by the other States.
The standard work on Constitutional law in the 1800s was Justice Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833). It's viewable on Google Books. He demolishes Compact Theory in a lot of places; but in volume 1 ,"book 3", chapter 3 he spends 20 or so pages on it. It’s unambiguous.
Robert E Lee acknowledged the same in a letter to his eldest son in January 1861. Lee wrote:
Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy [league?] at will. It was intended for “perpetual union,” so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution.
To the extent that secession was a legal question, no state had a right to secede in 1860; because no state had EVER had a right to secede, going back to 1781 when the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were ratified."
In essence before the civil war it was more of a political question then a legal one as it was clearly illegal well before hand and don't say those were after as those court cases happened well before the civil war.