I am asked some interesting questions by a reader and will answer, with the indulgence of my other readers.
What is my assessment of King George III or his successors prior to Elizabeth II?
In simple terms, I think the monarchy began to improve under King George III and the recognition of his position by both the Pope and the Cardinal Duke of York (the true King of England) enhanced his legitimacy.
Thereafter, I think, we may safely assume that the Hanoverian dynasty gains sufficient legitimacy by the simple fact of its secure establishment and longevity, together with recognition in international law and by the Pope and the real claimant, and an attempt at restoration of the Stuarts, especially as they no longer made a claim, would have been morally doubtful.
George IV was fat and idle and abandoned his real – and Catholic – wife and William IV was a debauchee, having 10 children by Mrs Jordan, his mistress, giving rise to many Fitzwilliams and Fitzclarences (he had been Duke of Clarence before he was King).
Nevertheless, I think the time had probably passed to contemplate overthrowing them in favour of the Stuarts.
However, the American, and particularly the French, Revolution had opened up a whole new – and terrifyingly immoral – concept of rebellion and revolution and many now sought to overthrow the Hanoverian monarchy for entirely immoral, spurious and wholly anti-Christian reasons.
Thomas Jefferson was one such spurious and hypocritical revolutionary.
Thomas JeffersonI do not admire revolutionaries and Jefferson is no exception. Indeed, he is exceptionally unattractive since he kept slaves, had a child by a slave whom he further kept as a slave, and yet bleated loudly about “freedom” and “liberty”.
It was of him that Dr Johnson said “Why is it that the cries for liberty come loudest from the drivers of slaves?”.
Well, indeed!
Jefferson also supported the French Revolution, at least to start with, and even said that “the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants” meaning King Louis XVI who was, by no stretch of the imagination, a tyrant. Indeed, Jefferson was more of a tyrant than Louis XVI.
It is true that Jefferson would almost certainly have supported the South in the War between the States but that is not enough to exonerate him.
Jefferson had, however, some good ideas about States’ Rights and was generally a decentralist which is good and reflects the Catholic concept of subsidiarity. But he was otherwise deeply anti-Catholic and hostile to the Catholic Church.
Robert E. Lee was, as I have said, a Christian gentleman – not perfect, of course, since he was not yet a Catholic. He supported the Constitution, even though it had been forged by revolutionaries, because, by his time, the idea of restoring the British monarchy to America was impossible and so he had a moral obligation to be loyal to the Constitution as it then was – which he did and which is why he fought for that Constitution and, in particular, the States’ Rights guaranteed by it.
I am asked what I think of Alexander Hamilton but I think it unwise to say as I do not know enough about him.
I am also asked what I think of the growth of capitalism and whether I am against it, as I appear to be, and if I am against it then wouldn’t I be deprived of the Internet without it.
Well, it depends what one means by capitalism. If one means “free enterprise” and “industry” then who can be against those except some crazy Communist or mad Marxist? And manifestly industry gave us the Internet.
But if one means Capitalism, with a big “C”, and/or a system of unrestricted capital accumulation by a few, or by anyone who can so accumulate, without regard to the moral laws that must bind the community of men, then, yes, I am against it.
In particular, I am against the sin of usury, condemned by the Catholic Church, solemnly and repeatedly, at more than one General Council, this being re-affirmed, but with appropriate distinctions, by Pope Benedict XIV in his Encyclical letter, Vix Pervenit, of 1745.
Usury is a form of theft because it consists in selling both money AND the use of money, as well as selling time (i.e. time to pay back the loan). This is to sell something which does not exist or is not one's own to sell, which is theft.
In modern conditions, the meaning of the usury ban is unchanged but its application is much more complex.
I might do a post on this one day.
Suffice to say, the goods of the earth are not meant for just a few men but for all - but not in equal proportions.
Equally, this does not mean that the wheelers and dealers – still less the crooks and swindlers – should be given the lion’s share and ordinary families only a small share.
In a properly run society more regard is given to hierarchy and to recognising that those who rule and take responsibility deserve to be rewarded for having greater responsibility.
This was the original rationale for a ruling class, based upon family, with the Royal family at the apex of the hierarchy but with each class and stratum of society having rights and obligations to each other, guided by justice and moved by charity to serve each other, each in their own class and manner.
Every man is, and must be, in a Christian society, a servant to others, be he never so high. Hence the Pope is called servus servorum Dei - servant of the servants of God. So, too, was the Emperor.
The higher up the social class scale one is, the greater the obligation to society as a whole.
Thus the nobility had a special vocation to rule, to risk their lives in war, to adminster justice, to adminster the public patrimony and to care for and provide for their people as if they were an extended part of their own family.
This was the ideal but not always attained, of course.
The Capitalist ethos does not see the rich having any such intimate responsibility for the poor, the marginalised, the dispossessed and the weak.
Capitalism, of the unrestricted, self-interested kind, is essentially unchivalrous and is selfish and rapacious and enriches a man by unfairly exploiting others. This sort of Capitalism is not desirable.
Responsible free enterprise (by which I do NOT mean Socialism) enriches individuals and society. The wide distribution of capital is particularly to be encouraged but by incentive not by Socialist prescription.
Private social welfare is also preferable to state provision but almost impossible without a large network of the sort that existed in the Middle Ages through the Church and the monasteries.
Let us not forget that was an entirely PRIVATE system of social welfare and was most emphatically NOT state Socialism or anything like it, as some Leftists like to pretend.
On the hand, the Adam Smith school of thinking which claims that there is an automatic “hidden hand” which automatically and inevitably helps society by individual men seeking to enrich themselves by capitalist accumulation, is also not right, in my view.
Yes, it is good for men to work, invent, devise and plan to enrich themselves and others but it does not follow that ALL such self-enrichment is necessarily good.
My preference is for the system approved by St Thomas: the balanced constitution consisting of monarchy, nobility and democracy.
That, indeed, was the model of the old world and especially the Holy Roman Empire which was the prime model for Christendom of old.
This model is equally adaptable to the modern age. Indeed, there is no reason why a modern republic could not be modelled on similar lines. The United States, if it were Catholic, might readily become such a model and, indeed, it seems to be moving more in that direction than modern Europe which is rapidly abandoning all of its glorious Catholic past.
But that’s probably enough from me for one day!
...
Tribunus,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your reflections upon the questions I posed. My understanding of your views on capitalism are clarified, and I would be interested to read a post about how to interpret "usury" the contemporary world.
With regard to British monarchs from King George III onward, it is also important to note George III's contribution to the monarchy's survival through his sincere Christian (albeit Protestant) faith, evidenced in his marital fidelity and personal charity. After his scandalous sons, this Christian legacy was built upon through the generally positive examples ("Edward the Caresser" notwithstanding) set by the monarchs and consorts from Queen Victoria to King George VI.
In factual fairness to the revolutionary patrician Mr. Jefferson, the evidence suggests that as a widower, he fathered enslaved children by only one enslaved woman -- his wife's much younger half-sister Sally Hemings.
I would encourage you to learn more about Alexander Hamilton, as his debates with Thomas Jefferson instigated the American two-party political tradition. Hamilton deemed Jefferson a man "with pretentions to character" while Jefferson deemed Hamilton to be in a state of "continual machination against the liberty of his countrymen." George Washington ultimately trusted and agreed with Hamilton more than Jefferson in the former's efforts to strengthen the authority of the newly-constituted federal government and to promote the growth of a commercial economy.
On the subject of the War Between the States, it seems to me that your tendency to lionize Lee as undoubtedly morally superior to Lincoln or even Jefferson is a bit too simplistic, according to the evidence or moral categories that you put forward. Jefferson, Lee and Lincoln all shared the same racial prejudices toward blacks that were common to whites of their times; Jefferson and Lee both deemed rebellious slaves to be deserving of corporal punishment (even if they didn't administer it themselves); and finally, although I wouldn't view it in quite the same negative light that you might seem to, Lee hoped that his beloved Virginia would not secede from the Union and didn't sign onto the Confederate cause until Virginia did secede.
Dear Stephen,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I agree that Lincoln and Lee shared the same racial prejudices.
Lee freed his slaves, Lincoln wanted, at one time, all blacks to be deported to Liberia in Africa.
Lee chased away Indians in the West before the War but he did not believe them a lower form of humanity as Lincoln seems to have done.
And, by the way, racialism was not endorsed by all "whites" of the time. The Catholic Church - and thus, in theory, all Catholics - has always been opposed to it believing that all men are made in the image of God.
Moreover, the Catholic Church since Roman times sought to ease out the institution of slavery altogether and, by the Middle Ages, it had largely succeeded, replacing first slaves with serfs and then replacing serfs with free, land-owning peasants.
This came crashing down with the Protestant Reformation during and after which slavery came back into Christian society and certain forms of Protestanism even began to consider certain races as inferior and more suitable to enslavement.
Cotton Mather memorably referred to negros as "Adam's degenerate seed" even blasphemously quoting the Bible to support his perverted opinions.
And it was Massachusetts - in the North - that first legalised slavery, doing so in 1625.
The Spanish Church and kings, on the other hand, had, by the Laws of Burgos of 1512, declared Indian enslavement banned from the Spanish Empire within a few years of Cortes' landing.
One must distinguish slavery, meaning legal ownership, from chattel-slavery, where the slave is treated as less than human. The latter is utterly forbidden by the Church. The former, being a property relation, is not intrinsically evil provided the slave is treated humanely and well, but it is undesirable that Christian men be slaves of other men and so the Church sought to phase it out altogether.
Above all Lee was nothing like as anti-Catholic as Lincoln, still less the vociferously anti-Catholic Jefferson.
Most of the Founding Fathers of the United States were anti-Catholic men who engaged in an immoral revolution against their lawful sovereign and most of them kept slaves and held the so-called "Enlightened" view that slavery of the "inferior" was allowable.
If in doubt, re-read their account of the so-called "intolerable acts" of King George III.
One act deemed "intolerable" was the Quebec Act which established the Catholic religion in Quebec.
To the American revolutionaries, this was "intolerable"!
Sorry, but the American pantheon of Founding Fathers is deeply flawed.
It is only since the treachery of the American revolution has receded into history that America has started to become a great nation.
Lee was a gentleman who felt he owed allegiance to the state and constitution in which he had been raised. That explains his conduct - not some supposed attachment to the anti-constitutional acts of the Union.
And he never regretted siding with the South.
It is true that some Southerners kept slaves (actually a relatively small minority) but, ironically, they had a more humane view of their slaves than did the Northern manufacturers of their wage-enslaved workers in the factories and mills of the North.
This, perhaps, explains why so many blacks in the South volunteered to fight for the Confederacy.
The Confederacy was far from perfect but it was, in many ways, preferable to the rapacious, anti-traditional, money-grabbing, worker-oppressing, anti-Catholic, lawless ways of too many in the North.
Lincoln was a Whig who favoured unrestricted and untrammelled capitalist accumulation and he had no attachment to Christianity but was a figure who embraced Enlightenment ideas fully. He was an opportunist above all. His sometime support for the bigoted anti-Catholic "Know-Nothings" illustrates this.
Having said that, he had abilities as a leader and provided some stability to the US at a time of instability and was a lawyer and politician of considerable skill and ability.
Dear Stephen,
ReplyDeleteYou will see that I have, however, taken on board your comment about Jefferson's slave-child, as I can find nothing (so far) to challenge your account.
Tribunus,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your reply.
Just as a point of clarification on what I wrote earler, I did intend to include Queen Elizabeth II in the monarchs who have tried to set a positive Christian example.
I am an American, but it is not my intent (if you thought it was) to advance a view of the American Founding Fathers as flawless. Had I lived in America during that time, I feel that I probably would have been a Loyalist. Ironically, I have worked as an historic interpreter at Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. Though I don't share his "Enlightenment" assumptions regarding religion or republicanism, Jefferson is so tied to American identity that it was a fascinating experience to engage with people on that topic, especially in light of his contradictions that reflect that of America. My statement about his relationship with Sally Hemings was not to defend it from a moral standpoint, but simply to clarify what the available evidence does suggest.
It seems that men like George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton would, on a relative scale, be more to your liking (as they are to mine). Although Jefferson denounced Hamilton as a monarchist or crypto-monarchist, you might not have affinity for his policies to stengthen commerce and manufacturing. You may also find it interesting to note that Robert E. Lee's father, Henry Lee III, was allied with the Federalists (Hamilton's party), and his uncle, Charles Lee, served in the cabinet of John Adams (another Federalist).
What is your reaction to knowing that one Catholic (Charles Carroll) signed the Declaration of Independence, and two Catholics (Daniel Carroll and Thomas Fitzsimons), signed the U.S. Constitution, not to mention the many other Catholics that supported the foundation of the Latin American republics? I'm not well-read on Spanish colonialism in Latin America, but it's good to know that Spanish kings and the Church forbade chattel slavery there. Was it followed in practice?
On the subject of your support of the Confederate cause during the War Between the States, would I be correct in interpreting your support as based on the South's advocacy of states' rights as being consonant with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity? By that same logic, would you not also be obliged to condemn King George III for asserting the British Parliament's right to tax the colonies? It just seems to me that the Southern secession was a rather logical extention of the War for Independence, and there was a time when Lee denounced it as "revolution."
As to the topic of Lee's racial views, I submit for your comment the following excerpt from an 1856 letter from Lee to his wife:
"I think it [slavery] however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence."
Cordially,
Stephen (sdemauri@hotmail.com)
Dear Stephen,
ReplyDeleteThanks for that. In some ways I prefer the Federalists and in other ways I prefer their opponents but both leave a lot to be desired.
Charles Carroll was a renegade Catholic and one of the first of the Modernists, in effect.
The Spanish ban on slavery was often not followed because in those days the Colonies were in an undeveloped state and the King's writ was often ignored just as the writ of Congress was often ignored in the Wild West of the US (which was much closer).
Nevertheless, the effect of royal decrees and the influence of the Church meant that Indians were far more readily accepted in Spanish Catholic America than they were in Anglo-Protestant America where racial bigotry was much more accepted as right and proper.
You are right that I think States' Rights was the issue in teh
he War and that it has something in common with Subsidiarity.
But Subsidiarity is not the same thing as independence. The difference is that the US Constitution, as Jefferson himself makes plain, permitted secession where a State government and people thought that the Federal government was acting unconstitutionally. That is why no Southern leaders were able to be convicted of treason.
The British government had every right to tax the colonies as it was the legitimate government. Moreover, there was no provision in the British Colonial Constitution for a Colony to secede. It was illegal.
But you are right that it was hypocritical of the North to complain about Southern secession whilst lauding the secession of the 13 colonies from Britain.
As one wag said to Lincoln "Why if secession be not legal then I say long live King George!".
Well, indeed!
The views expressed by Lee cannot be taken out of the context of his times but his views are far more Christian and humane than those of Abe Lincoln who, like almost all Whigs and "Enlightened" thinkers, simply thought that the negro race was an inferior race.
Lee clearly did not think that.
Tribunus,
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I am no fan of Old Abe, but I think I need to point out that he was was also no fan of the Know-Nothings, and was not "anti-Catholic."
Below is a letter he wrote in 1855 to Joshua Speed, his best friend since young adulthood. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
PS - Also, you remarked in your post on Jefferson Davis that he was received into the Church before he died. I've read much on Davis, and am familiar with his Catholic education and life-time habit of wearing the Brown Scapular, but have never read that he'd actually been received into the Church (as was Lee's right-hand man, Gen. Longstreet). I'd be very interested if you could cite your source.
Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Joshua F. Speed
August 24, 1855
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.
I didn't say that Lincoln was a Know-Nothing but only that he gave them sometime support. This was to win them over to the Republican Party.
ReplyDeleteThe Joshua Speed letter is a real politician’s letter. Why would Lincoln have to deny any connection with the “Know Nothings” if there wasn’t a feeling abroad that he was favouring them?
The Whig Party was in its death throes, and Lincoln and others struggled to fuse disparate political factions — including moderate Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, abolitionists, German immigrants, and Know Nothings — into the emergent Republican Party.
These groups, though often at odds, all agreed on the necessity of strengthening the Federal government. Free-state Know Nothings represented a large bloc of hoped-for Republican voters, and Lincoln was not about to alienate potential allies.
It is notorious that, whatever he may have thought in private, he kept the "Know Nothings" on side and did not speak against them publicly.
Abe the Unbeliever
Here are a variety of quotes from Lincoln which tend to show that he was something of an unbeliever.
“My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them”.
-- to Judge J S Wakefield, after Willie Lincoln's death (Willie died in 1862), quoted by Joseph Lewis in "Lincoln the Freethinker," also appearing in Remsburg's "Six Historic Americans".
“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree”.
-- quoted by Mary Todd Lincoln in William Herndon's Religion of Lincoln, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, p.118.
“It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to Infidelity”.
-- Manford's Magazine, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, p.144.
“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession”.
-- quoted by Joseph Lewis in "Lincoln the Freethinker".
“The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient”.
-- quoted by Victor J Stenger in Physics and Psychics
“Oh, that [his Thanksgiving Message] is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools”.
-- to Judge James M Nelson, in response to a question from Nelson: "I once asked him about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twitted him with being an unbeliever in what was published." Quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, p.138.
There was the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose with few exceptions, got all of that Church. My wife had some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some in the Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to vote for me because I belonged to no Church, and was suspected of being a Deist and had talked of fighting a duel”.
-- letter to Martin M Morris (March 26, 1843), in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (Nicolay & Hay Edition, volume 1, page 80), quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents (page 112).
Chiniquy's book ("Fifty Years in the Church of Rome") claims a statement from Lincoln ("Lincoln's warning") very hostile to the Catholic Church. I am inclined to disbelieve it as Chiniguy was, himself, a renegade priest.
Nevertheless, other writings of the time speak of the feeling that Lincoln was hostile to Catholicism and it would not be at all surprising given the above quotes.
It is even less surprising when one considers his praise for the philosophic views of the Founding Fathers, almost all anti-Catholic themselves.
I'm afraid I can't remember where I read of Jeff Davis's conversion. I think it was one of Gary Potter's books but I cannot now find the references.
I shall therefore remove it from the blog unless and until I do find it.
Tribunus,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your comments. However, can you cite where it is "plain" that the US Constitution permits secession? You made what I took to be a reference to Jefferson's and Madison's Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which was a debatable intepretation. If the Constitution was so "plain" about the matter, why would there have been constantly recurring interpretive debates about it througout the USA's first century of existence?
Dear Stephen,
ReplyDeleteI didn't say it was "plain". I said that Jefferson said it was.
And I think I've answered why he had a point.
The prime answer is this: if the Colonies had the right to secede from their lawful sovereign and form a union then so did the states of that union have the same right and the framers of the Constitution cannot deny to them what they claimed from King George III.
Moreover, as is a matter of record, none of the Southerners was successfully tried for treason because it was accepted that they had not committed treason precisely because secession was lawful and constitutional.
It might be said that the 13 Colonies, after illegally rebelling against their rightful sovereign King George, nevertheless bound themselves to a new sovereign in the form of the Federal Congress and President of the Union.
Apart from the intrinsic unlikelihood of such, there are good legal arguments why that was not so.
A "delegation" clause, such as existed in Article II of the Articles of Confederation, cannot necessarily be construed as a compromise or surrender of sovereignty.
The sovereignty of the states was partially retained from the Declaration of Independence, and this was made clear in the Declaration itself, when it says:
"That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do" (emphasis in original).
That is pretty clear! They are free and independent and claim the right to levy war, for starters, which only a sovereign power can do. It would have been highly unusual to refer to a unitary, sovereign state as a collection of "free and independent states". I can think of no other nation that has done so except, perhaps, the United Provinces of the Netherlands where the same questions arose and, eventually, the Catholic part broke away and formed what is now Belgium.
Thus the United States government appears to have no more claim in permanently binding South Carolina or Virginia, than it had in binding England or France, save insofar as the states themselves continued willing to delegate such power to the Federal government.
Lincoln and his defenders must believe that the states somehow "surrendered" their status as sovereign nations, in the act of ratifying the Constitution.
However this theory is negatived by the 10th Amendment specification that powers were merely delegated, i.e., "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people".
It was thus a delegation of powers only and not a surrender.
Powers were delegated to the Federal government by the states ratifying the Constitution, not in order to establish a new sovereign but for the purposes of practical harmony in co-existence.
The 9th amendment likewise states that:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
So one may not read into the Constitution more rights and powers than are there.
There are other arguments but these will do.
The reality is that it is virtually impossible to have a collection of sovereign states in one union becuase it is naturally fissiparous. This is precisely why nations need a sovereign power and why they should not rebel against that sovereign power as the American colonists did.
The reality is that the American revolution was, like the Protestant Reformation from whence it derived its ideas, a revolution of the rich against their due sovereign so that they could merely replace that sovereign and make themselves the new sovereign.
All this talk of "free and independent states" turned out to be exactly the humbug that more law-abiding men (like Dr Johnson) said it was at the time. It was the usual "revolt of the rich" who said, like their real master, "I shall not serve" and, instead, sought to make themselves king.
That is the real nature of most revolutions. They are simply the work of liars, robbers and humbugs who don't like someone else being in charge and want to make themselves boss instead.
All the talk of government "of the people, by the people, for the people" is just a lot of hot air designed to sweeten the bitter pill of revolution.
The "people" cannot rule qua people. It is impossible. Others must rule for them and for their common good. These "others" are the King or President with the advice of Parliament or Congress.
The "brave new world" rhetoric of the Founding Fathers was just a lot of self-serving nonsense, typical of revolutionaries on the make.
That is why it was inevitable that the Federal government would eventually make its move to seize power from the states.
That such was what they were doing cannot, however, be denied.
The simplest demonstration thereof is, as I said, neatly summarised by Lincoln's waggish interlocutor:
"Why if secession be not legal then I say long live King George!".
The position, now, however, is different. The Supreme Court, the President, the Congress and the States have now accepted that the Federal government IS a sovereign and have thus changed the Constitution - rightly or wrongly - to that effect.
The Union would also argue right of sovereignty by lawful conquest but Confederates would mostly not concede that it was lawful. But that is now water under the bridge since the Supreme Court accepts the sovereignty of the Federal government.
This is now the status quo and has been for so long that to attempt to upset it would be tantamount to revolution and rebellion and thus wrong.
It would almost certainly also be disproportionate and thus wrong in any event, in just war theology.
The new "King" is the President and, I may add, he has many more powers than most modern kings and is more a locus of sovereignty than most prime ministers and most heads of state. So, in some ways, he is more of an old style king or Royal Sovereign than most modern kings are - ironically.
But that was by no means the case in 1862.
I hope that is a helpful reply.