Today's Confederate "heritage" quote from Edward Sebesta's Web site is from Jefferson Davis, again in his 1881 memoirs. In this one, Davis tells with approval the story of a Virginia judge in 1867 who closed his court rather than follow the ruling of the military government to include freed slaves in the pool for jury selection:
The question of the qualification of jurors now became important. General Canby issued an order on September 13th, which required the jurors to be drawn from the "qualified voters," which included the newly emancipated slaves. The judges met, and sent a respectful request to the general to change the order to conform to the law of the state. By the jury law, as it then stood, no person was qualified to serve as a juror unless he was a free white man, twenty-one years of age. The judges were sworn to enforce the law and the constitution of the state. No notice was taken of the application. At the next court in Edgefield, Judge Aldrich, charging the grand jury, brought to their notice the order, the law and the constitution, and the oath of office, and then declared "he could not and would not obey the order." On going to open court a few days after, the adjutant of the post delivered to him a military order suspending him from office. He proceeded and opened the court, read the order and stated the circumstances, and, laying aside his gown, directed the sheriff, "to let the court stand adjourned while justice is stifled."
The context of the military order in 1867 is that it was part of the Northern occupation authorities' responsibility to enforce the recognition of citizenship for freed slaves. And the right and obligation to serve on juries is one of those, as most of us are reminded periodically when we receive those notices in the mail.
In the "antebellum" (prewar) South, even freed African-Americans were not allowed to serve on juries. And no white coule be convicted of a crime based soley on the testimony of a black person or persons. So it was a very important step to give black citizens equal standing in the courts.
The relation to the neo-Confederate mythology is that it tries to minimize the role of race and white racismin the Civil War, its preceeding events and its aftermath. Racism by blacks against whites is always an acceptable topic for discussion and emphasis for the neo-Confederate crowd.
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