Posted by MARTIN on September 12, 1998 at 22:45:24:
In Reply to: When the Civil War ended ... posted by Paul Andrew Mitchell, B.A., M.S. on September 12, 1998 at 14:36:45:
RE: If Andrew Johnson made any serious errors
at that time, I believe it was his failure
to take the Reconstruction Acts directly
before the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead,
when his veto was overridden, he obeyed
Congress instead. This was his fatal
constitutional error. If the High Court
had upheld those laws, he would have been
on solid ground to dispatch troops back
into the South. If the High Court had
struck down those laws, he would have
been on solid ground to burn those bills
in effigy.
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The COURTS have no jurisdiction in matters of political power that were decided on the
battlefield.
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STATE OF GA. v. STANTON, 73 U.S. 50 (1867)<>The CHIEF JUSTICE
This court has no jurisdiction.-The distinction between judicial and political power is so generally acknowledged in the jurisprudence both of England and of this country, that we need do no more than refer to some of the authorities on the subject.
The Attorney-General quite understates the effects of these Reconstruction Acts. Their actual effect is to restrain at once the holding of any election within the State for any [73
U.S. 50, 64] officers of the present State government by any of the State authorities; to direct all future elections in the State to be held under the direction of, and by officers
appointed by, the military commander; and that all persons of certain classes described shall be the electors permitted to vote at such election. It is, therefore, an immediate paralysis of all the authority and power of the State government by military force; a plain setting aside of the
present State government, and depriving it of the necessary means of continuing its existence. It is substituting in its place a new government, created under a new constitution, and elected by a new and independent class of electors
But these defendants cannot compel the registration. These laws compel no man in Georgia, black or white, to be registered; nor do they authorize the military commander to seize and punish any one for not going to the election. It is left entirely to the citizens to decide for themselves whether they shall be registered or not. You cannot very well stop them. What next? An election is held. Who votes at the election? Just who chooses. How do you know that anybody is
going to attend that election? [73 U.S. 50, 60] How do you know that an election will be ordered, or that, if ordered, Georgia is going to accept the offer made by Congress? The people that the State of Georgia comes here to protect, can
protect themselves against all this mischief by not going to the election, because the mischief is the election of a government that is going to displace the existing government.
But suppose the people go to the election and vote for delegates; the delegates are not obliged to go to the convention; there is no law to punish them for not attending.
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The CSA was a sovereign nation. This sovereign nation was defeated in the highest court of the land; the battle fields of the 1861-65 war.
This defeat created a new source of law for the victors (the Federal Union forces). This 1861-65 war was fought under the law of nation's law of war and the common law of war not any constitution.