Lies from the beginning

Andrew Johnson's "Message to Congress," December 4, 1865.

Including such whoppers as that the US constitution was ratified by the whole people of the whole nation, who voted for that purpose, and that the assertions of the perpetuity of the Union in The Articles of Confederation, ignored in every way at Philadelphia, mean the Philadelphia constitution disallows secession.

And that secession did not really happen, but the states that had attempted it, still and always in the Union, were subjected to civil tumult and unrepublican government the general government had every right and duty to put down.

Hence the US president was not a conqueror and the Union army did not occupy the territory of a defeated foreign power.

Though it is not all lies, it is a complete rejection of the realism urged by Stevens.

Reading John David Smith.

Update.

Lincoln was criticized for fighting a war without congressional authorization.

Fighting a war against a foreign power would constitutionally require that.

Putting down domestic insurrection, civil disorder, and domestic tumult, seeing that the laws are faithfully executed, would arguably not.