Let it rest can mean forget. What happened in this country should never be forgotten. Once we forget, it may happen again.
I saved this from a link back in 2005 among some others over the years. The link doesn't work now but I have the text.
The mock trial of Abraham Lincoln
Morgan Kelly /
[email protected]
March 27, 2005
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U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was found guilty of war crimes against the Confederacy on Saturday.
Among other crimes, a three-member military tribunal found him guilty of illegally seizing Southerners’ property and trying to prevent the South from seceding.
As guards led Lincoln from the courtroom, public spectators cheered and whistled “Dixie.â€
The tribunal spared Lincoln’s life, but ordered Lincoln and his Cabinet to resign.
The trial came shortly after Confederate troops captured Washington, D.C., following their victory in Gettysburg, Pa.
The Confederate States of America has no intention to further invade the North, Confederate President Jefferson Davis said.
“That’s the last thing we want,†he said. “We just want to be left alone.â€
He then removed his microphone, took a sip of bottled water and posed for pictures with Lincoln and Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The Confederacy’s “honorable president†is actually Jim Bazo, an actor in the mock trial of Abraham Lincoln held Saturday as part of Liberty University’s weekend Civil War Seminar.
Entitled “What if the South Had Won the Civil War,†the event was meant to spark conversation rather than make a political statement, said Brian Melton, an LU history professor.
“There’s not much historical importance, but it’s interesting,†he said. “I think it’s a good way to get the issues - like whether Lincoln was justified or not, was secession legal or illegal - across in a more creative way than a dry lecture.â€
“It’s a learning experience,†Bazo said. “I generally don’t cotton to the alternative histories. I generally stick to the facts, but to look at things from
the other side - it expands your mind beyond description.â€
“We’re simply exploring something that could possibly have happened had the South been victorious,†said Al Stone, who portrayed Lee.
What did happen was a near four-hour grilling of Lincoln, wherein he was compared to Genghis Khan leading a “vile and scurrilous Union Army†to “invade an innocent country.â€
“Of course it is (biased toward the South),†said James Massie, a Madison Heights attorney and the Confederate prosecutor.
“I think there was a lot of intensity and aggression toward the Union and I think (a Confederate prosecutor) would’ve been aggressive, bombastic and want the most extreme punishment for Lincoln they could get.â€
Other Union icons were attacked: the Emancipation Proclamation - the document freeing the slaves - was lambasted as a “cunning†military device meant to justify Lincoln’s illegal war.
“(Slavery) was a dark hour for the South, but the Emancipation Proclamation would have never been needed,†Massie said.
“I feel slavery as an institution was something that was coming to a conclusion,†Bazo said. “It didn’t need a war to end.â€
Actor Fritz Klein, as Lincoln, didn’t agree.
“I knew from the beginning that slavery and the struggle to make slavery a national institution were at the bottom of Southern resentment of the Northern states,†he said, addressing the tribunal as Lincoln.
“In the South in particular - but not only in the South - there are many who believe that the South should have seceded and it would have all been fine,†he said. “(But) they (the U.S. and C.S.A.) would’ve renewed hostility and taken up arms at another time.â€
The trial was relevant to modern times because of the division it highlighted, said Bevin Alexander Jr., a Lynchburg attorney and Lincoln’s defense counsel.
“Especially with the last election,†he said. “With everybody in red states and blue states, the question of what makes up a union is extremely important.â€
“Hopefully, we can get people to think - do more than wave the stars and bars and think,†Klein said.
Both men said Lincoln would have received a fair trail in a Confederate court and he did.
“Knowing the character of Jefferson Davis and Southern culture they would’ve done exactly what they did to him in there,†said Robert Barbour, a former state commander for the Virginia Sons of Confederate Veterans.
“We were more gentlemanly, but that’s probably the reason we lost the war.â€
For fellow spectator Grover McCloud - in the uniform of a private in the Army of Northern Virginia - the trial was a relief.
“It just confirmed what I believed all along - that Lincoln was actually guilty of war crimes,†he said. “There was really an encroachment on every one’s rights because of what he did.â€
Still, viewing the ranks of people happily donning Confederate regalia in a land where Jim Crow reigned for nearly a century, it was hard to think of what exactly the South had been prevented from doing.
And a quote from my Hero's.
"General Thomas Jonathan Jackson"
"If the Republicans lose their little war, they're voted out in the next
election and they return to their homes in New York, or Massachusetts or
Illinois fat with their war profits. If we lose, we lose our country. We
lose our independence. We lose it all." Some things seem constant.
The fates of the Irish at the battle of Fredericksburg show the bottomless cruelty of war. General Lee sums it up succinctly: "It is well that war is so terrible... for we should grow too fond of it."
