Missouri student loses driving rights for flying Confederate flag

[Yupster]

97. Personally I think calling Confederates traitors is unfair

Just to put a human face on it, the President of the CSA was Jefferson Davis. He was indicted for treason.

He got a high powered group of northern lawyers to defend him and he demanded his public and speedy trial.

His defence was a simple one. Secession was Constitutional, and was Constitutionally done.

Therefore the north's invasion was an illegal invasion of a foreign country, so would the northern army kindly go home so he could get to work rebuilding his unhappy nation.

The federal government delayed his trial. Then it delayed it again. And again.

The problem was the issue was not at all settled law. During the debates before the vote to ratify the Constitution, one of the arguments used to ratify it was that if a state didn't like it, it could always leave. The Constitution nowhere says you can't secede and the Tenth Amendment (which was part of the Constitution back then) says a state has a power unless given to the federal government specifically in the Constitution.

So there was a real possibility that the Supreme Court could rule secession was legal.

What then?

Better to never hold the trial.

Eventually Davis was bailed out of jail and spent the rest of his life demanding his trial which he never got.

So, let's say you were indicted for child molestation. You are devastated and can only say you are absolutely innocent and will prove your innocence and gain your good name back when you're found innocent at the trial. What if the governemnt refuses to ever start your trial? What if they just leave you induicted for the rest of your life? What if the prosecutor refers to you as the child molestor anyway?

How would you feel if 10 years later, a newspaper still refers to you as the child molestor?

Yet here we are calling Davis a traitor over 100 years later. It's wrong.