Forgetting Joseph Wheeler, Colorado and Maine, Citing Section 3, 14th Amendment, Bar Trump from Ballot

 The following Constitutional verbiage, Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment, is causing all of the current kerfuffle.

“Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.’

The self-righteous deluded  among Americans, who live by the code that only illegal aliens can violate the Rule of Law on American soil without consequences, believe that former President Donald Trump, on January 6, 2021,  either engaged in an insurrection, or gave aid and comfort to an insurrection.

Those self-righteous Americans want President Trump barred from participating in the electoral process; to accomplish that, they intend to bar him from appearing on electoral ballots. 

They cite American history, to justify their position; they say the  framers of Section 3, would never have allowed an insurrectionist to gain political or military command.

Or so they say.

None of the self-righteous seemed to have followed the career path of Confederate General "Fighting Joe" Wheeler.

The State of Colorado’s Supreme Court, comprising of seven Democrats, handed down a decision, by a 4-3 vote, that President Trump was guilty of insurrection and therefore could not appear on the Colorado State Republican Primary ballot, pursuant to Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment.

The Court handed down this decision even though President Trump has never been convicted of insurrection, nor for that matter, indicted by the Federal government for insurrection.

It is unusual for the Federal Government not to indict suspected insurrectionists for treason. After the Civil War, thirty-eight Confederate leaders, including the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, and the uber Confederate General, Robert E. Lee were indicted for treason.

There is historical precedence; if Joe Biden believed Donald Trump committed insurrection, indict him.

On February 15, 1869, federal prosecutors entered a “nolle prosequi,” or statement of decision not to prosecute Davis or Lee, or any of the other indicted Confederate leaders.

It is particularly rich that four Democratic  appointed judges, decided to go where no American jurisprudence has ever gone before; so much for Rule of Law.

The Colorado decision is as dangerous as importing killer bees from Africa to the Americas, for scientific purposes and mistakenly unleashing them. If one takes the time to read the three dissenting opinions, one comes to realize  the totality of the danger.

If the Colorado decision is judicial hubris; then the Maine decision to bar President Trump from the ballot is egregious crass personal pettiness.

In Maine, no set of misguided Judges made the decision to bar Trump from the ballot, but  a supercilious Democratic appointed apparatchik, Shenna Bellows, still marinating in bitterness, from her defeat at the polls by Republican Susan Collins.

The Maine Secretary of State Bellows, has the demented personality of a high school drama major, who never got the lead role, but has a bladder of bile from being a perpetual understudy.  In her race to unseat Senator Susan Collins, she only won 31% of the vote.

Once Secretary Bellows made her decision; the Liberal Elite rallied to her; they regenerated John Dean from his crypt to anoint her as the great dragon slayer.

The travesty of her melodramatic defense was revealed when  she intoned, like a mad member of a Greek chorus, her rendition of  Section 3 of 14th Amendment on MSNBC, for all the unwashed masses.

In 1898, the Republic  made its decision concerning enforcement of Section 3, 14^th Amendment; when it decided it needed Confederate military expertise and courage to win the Spanish American War as quickly as possible.

To do that, the Republic, under President William McKinley, who had fought on the Union side as a soldier during the Civil War, named insurrectionist Confederate General “Fighting Joe “ Wheeler as a Major General in the American Army.

" Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler (September 10, 1836 – January 25, 1906) was a military commander and politician of the Confederate States of America. He was a cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and then a general in the United States Army during both the Spanish-American and Philippine–American Wars near the turn of the twentieth century. For much of the Civil War, he was the senior cavalry general in the Army of Tennessee and fought in most of its battles in the Western Theater.

….. He was the grandson of Brigadier General William Hull, a veteran of the American Revolution.

………at the start of the Civil War, Wheeler entered the Confederate States Army….. He was promoted to brigadier general …. he became a major general on January 20, 1863……., Wheeler and his troopers received the Thanks of the Confederate Congress on May 1, 1863.

…..During U.S. Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, Wheeler's cavalry corps screened the flanks of the Army of Tennessee as Gen. Joseph E. Johnston drew back from several positions toward Atlanta. In July, Sherman sent two large cavalry columns to destroy the railroads supplying the defenders of Atlanta. With fewer than 5,000 cavalrymen, Wheeler defeated the enemy raids, capturing one of the two commanding generals,….. Sherman decided to dismantle a pontoon bridge to distance his army from a group of escaped slaves who sought refuge and safety with the Union forces. According to Sherman's account, Wheeler ordered his cavalry to charge the refugees. This action forced the men, women, and children into the water…. While attempting to cover Confederate President Jefferson Davis's flight south and west in May, Wheeler was captured at Conyer's Station just east of Atlanta. He had intended to reach the Trans-Mississippi and Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, still resisting out west, and had with him three officers from his staff and 11 privates when he was taken……During his career in the Confederate States Army, Wheeler was wounded three times, lost 36 staff officers to combat, and a total of 16 horses were shot from under him…..In 1880, Wheeler was elected from Alabama as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives……

….In 1898, Wheeler, now aged 61, volunteered for the Spanish–American War, receiving an appointment to major general of volunteers from President William McKinley. He assumed command of the cavalry division, which included Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders....Approaching Las Guasimas de Sevilla on June 24, American reports suggested the Spaniards were digging in with a field gun; however, Cuban scouts contradicted these, revealing the Spaniards were preparing to abandon their position. In fact, the Spanish troops at the position had received orders to fall back on Santiago. Wheeler requested the assistance of the attached Cuban forces in an immediate attack, but their commander, Col. Gonzales Clavel, refused. Wheeler attacked anyway, ... in what came to be called the Battle of Las Guasimas, the first major engagement of the war.

During the excitement of the battle, Wheeler is said to have called out, "Let's go, boys! We've got the damn Yankees on the run again!"…..Wheeler fell seriously ill during the campaign and turned over command..... Wheeler was still incapacitated in July when the Battle of San Juan Hill began, but once he heard the sound of guns, the "War Child" returned to the front despite his illness. …..

Wheeler sailed for the Philippines to fight in the Philippine–American War, arriving in August 1899. He commanded the First Brigade in Arthur MacArthur's Second Division during the Philippine–American War until January 1900. During this period, Wheeler was mustered out of the volunteer service and commissioned a brigadier general in the regular army, reentering the organization he had resigned from over 39 years before….Wheeler also appeared in an early film called Surrender of General Toral (1898)….While attending the hundredth-anniversary celebration of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point, New York) in 1902, Wheeler approached the old West Point hotel, where his Confederate comrades James Longstreet and Edward Porter Alexander were seated on the porch. At the festivities, Wheeler wore the dress uniform of his most recent rank, that of a general in the U.S. Army. Longstreet recognized him coming near and reportedly said, "Joe, I hope that Almighty God takes me before he does you, for I want to be within the gates of hell to hear Jubal Early cuss you in the blue uniform." (Longstreet did predecease Wheeler, dying in January 1904.)”

This Blogger’s position is clear; if the Republic can forgo Section 3, 14^th Amendment for Fighting Joe Wheeler, who had the thanks of the insurrectionist Confederate Congress for services rendered; surely it can forgo  Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment for Donald Trump; who may well be the only man who can secure America’s open borders.

Joseph Wheeler as a Confederate General, prior to adoption of Section 3, 14th Amendment

Joseph Wheeler as an American General, post adoption of Section 3, 14th Amendment.