It's been 235 years, and the British still aren't over the Declaration of Independence. A bunch of American and British lawyers had a debate in Philadelphia recently over whether the declaration was "legal." The British viewpoint:
The Declaration of Independence was not only illegal, but actually treasonable. There is no legal principle then or now to allow a group of citizens to establish their own laws because they want to. What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union?
Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right. The Declaration of Independence itself, in the absence of any recognised legal basis, had to appeal to "natural law", an undefined concept, and to "self-evident truths", that is to say truths for which no evidence could be provided.
The grievances listed in the Declaration were too trivial to justify secession. The main one - no taxation without representation - was no more than a wish on the part of the colonists, to avoid paying for the expense of protecting them against the French during seven years of arduous war and conflict.
Well, fine. Dig up Thomas Jefferson and try him for treason. It is an interesting tactic, though, to use Lincoln's view of secession to argue against Jefferson's. The simple fact is that we won, so our rebellion was treason, and our rebels lost, so they were "wrong."
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It's even simpler than that. The Declaration was treason as to England, but Patriotic as to the U.S. We don't give a shit about England, so the fact that it was treason to that country doesn't matter.
The same goes for the Confederates. They were treasonous to the U.S. and patriotic to the C.S.A. If your loyalty is to the U.S., you should view the Confederates as traitors. If you view them as patriots, then your loyalties apparently lie elsewhere.
Sorry, Leo. The colonists WERE treasonous. The fact that they won their war doesn't change the fact that that they betrayed the King.
I always find it funny when people talk about the Founding Fathers as if they were Christians, when in fact, they were mostly Deists and Masons. The Christians were members of the Episcopal church, the head of which was the King, and as good Christians, they would not have rebelled against secular authority, according to Romans 13:1-2
The side that wins writes the history books. If the Revolution had failed, it would have been treason.
Harl, I think you're overlooking the point made by Doug and littlejohn in slightly different ways. What is or is not "treason" is basically a political judgment, and we have to wait for the history books to declare winners and losers before we can make the final call.
I guess when England took the land from the Indians, what was that called? Claiming land on behalf of a country is what? Is that legal? Did the US Claim the Moon when it landed, no?
I suppose if we go back far enough, we would find lots of declarations of independence, not all written down, a few years ago I would be able to name a lot, but Sparticus is the only one right now.
I believe England kicked out the Romans.
If you get a divorce, Leo, and marry the Other Woman, does that mean it's not adultery? If you marry the mother of your child, does that make him something other than a bastard? If you pay the jewelry store for the necklace, does that mean you didn't shoplift?
Winning or losing a war doesn't determine whether you betrayed your king or not. What it determines is whether you get *punished* for your treason or you get away with it.