Yes - The Constitution was Necessary

ArticleVBlog ^ | November 25th 2019 | Rodney Dodsworth

[Jacquerie]

Subtitle: The Matter of the Mississippi River.

A not inconsequential percentage of Article V opponents, like those in the John Birch Society, identify as Anti-Federalists. They question the 1780s need for the vigorous government of our Constitution.

Those familiar with the era know of Shays’ Rebellion. According to modern Anti-Federalists, Shays’ was the pretext for nationalists like George Washington and James Madison to justify the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. There were other problems facing the infant United States to which the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate. For instance, most of the great European and New World ports were closed to American shipping and the English and Spanish did their best to discourage American settlement of the Old Northwest and Southwest Territories respectively.

Central to the situation in the Southwest was the matter of the Mississippi River.

Background. While Great Britain ceded in the 1783 Treaty of Paris all claims to lands south of the Great Lakes, east of the Mississippi and north of Florida, to the United States, they retained frontier forts from Lake Champlain to Michilimackinac and influenced the Indian tribes and the fur trade. Their presence in the NW Territory virtually shut off American immigration. As a practical matter, there was little reason to parley with ambassadors from a country that couldn’t raise revenue, exclude unwanted shipping, or build a fleet. With whom, the Brits asked, should they negotiate, the States or Congress? Britain didn’t bother to send an ambassador to the US until 1791.

Foreign Secretary Lord Carmarthen informed John Adams he would not deliver the frontier posts per the treaty until the US paid its prewar debts.

Just as awful, there was little impetus for Britain to change the situation in commerce in which she had an outrageous balance of trade.

[sauropod]

bkmk

[GCFADG]

The Articles of Confederation were inadequate. That’s why delegates were sent to amend them. They ended up doing much more than that, of course.

[PGalt]

OUTSTANDING, informative. Thanks.

[BuffaloJack]

“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower

[Zionist Conspirator]

A not inconsequential percentage of Article V opponents, like those in the John Birch Society, identify as Anti-Federalists. They question the 1780s need for the vigorous government of our Constitution.

Anti-Federalists, huh? That doesn't surprise me at all considering their post-Cold War transformation into Liberty Lobby Mark II. But I guarantee there was a time when they supported the Federalists.

I vividly recall an article in American Opinion that praised the Federalists as "conservatives" while criticizing the Jeffersonians (mostly on the issue of the French Revolution, of course). They also sold To Covet Honor, a supportive biography of Alexander Hamilton, even calling him "our first great conservative secretary of the treasury" (or something like that).

Of course now they're fanatical anti-federalists, even claiming the Republican party was a creation of the Communist International and attacking Abraham Lincoln as if he were FDR (when I was a member Lincoln and the Republican party were never attacked). Oh, and now they're fanatically anti-Israel, always going out of their way to dissociate themselves from it even when they have to take a position in its favor.

JBS might as well be run by Willis Carto today.

Oh, but they don't attack George Washington. They, like the neo-Confederates, claim that Washington was a Jeffersonian!

[central_va]

The Constitution containing the disastrous 16th and 17th amendments is not really the Constitution anymore.

[Jacquerie]

So true. The 16th serves to fund what the 17th made inevitable.

[Jacquerie]

I appreciate.

[PGalt]

Educational BUMP!

[SunkenCiv]

One of those rare modern history pings. Thanks Jacquerie.

[BenLurkin]

[TADSLOS]

Was and still is if you value your Liberty.

[PistolPaknMama]

bump for later

[rollo tomasi]

Anti-Federalist were correct at:

Nailing Article III and the abuse of power the judiciary has over the people along with the legislature despite Alexander Hamilton pleading with the anti-Federalist that the Supreme Court would be the weaker of the three Branches by a larger margin Fed. No. 78.

Nailed the abuses the legislature and executive Branches had on the general welfare clause and the necessary and proper clause which has led to uncontrolled spending as well as bureaucratic agencies.

Nailed the abuses of the Commerce Clause.

Nailed perpetual wars that impeded the Treasury/taxpayer

Nailed how the Federal government would grow into an uncontrollable power (In progress, but looking great already in that prediction).

Finally, without the anti-Federalists, there would not have been a Bill of Rights (No First or Second Amendment with the Federalists). Federalists argued that State Constitutions already had BOR, but anti-Federalists were adamant at including a Federal BOR due to the above concerns.

Simplistic labels of conservatives or liberals are cop-outs (Small and limited government verses larger more involved central government Federalists promoted). James Madison went from Federalists to "Anti-Federalists" for example. There were points both sides of the fence had, however, do to expediency, the Constitution was rammed through without debating the finer details. There should have been a lot more explicit enumerations instead of the generalities that eventually passed.

[nicollo]

Excellent article, thanks for posting. I hadn’t realized the influence of Spain on the federal project.

Have to always remind myself and students, it’s westward expansion that has ever driven American history.

[gleeaikin]

Wow, I had no idea that the Communist International was active during the 1861 election and helped Lincoln’s (R) election.

Around 1958 when I was in college in Iowa I saw an example of how confused people could be when Communism was involved. A group of young Republican students (fraternity men and sons of prosperous farmers) were sitting in the Student Union and singing a song.

“Oh, Franklin Roosevelt told the people how he felt
We damn near believed what he said.
He said, ‘I hate war and so does Eleanor
But we won’t be safe till everybody’s dead.”)

In August 1939 when Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact and a secret protocol for dividing up eastern Europe countries, US Communists were told they must work hard to prevent Roosevelt and other “warmongers” from getting the US into the European War. During the holidays when I was at home I talked with some middle aged and liberal friends of my parents and sang them this song. They laughed when I told them Republican college students were singing this. Actually it was a song from a left leaning musical group including Pete Seegar and Woodie Guthrie. “The Ballad of October 16,” attacked the military draft imposed by the government in the runup to World War II in 1940. The article below does not say if Communists told the group what to sing.

This link shows maps from 1939 and 1940 about planned and actual division of Europe by Germany and Russia. There is a small piece of the secret pact in German; translators at FR anyone?
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-21/pact-between-hitler-and-stalin-paved-way-world-war-ii-was-signed-75-years-ago

https://blogs.weta.org/boundarystones/2014/01/28/pete-seeger-washington

[PGalt]

Thanks for the ping/post and additional information. Thanks to all posters.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Finally, without the anti-Federalists, there would not have been a Bill of Rights.

Yes, and that was perhaps the biggest mistake of all. The BOR has been invoked more times in centralizing federal power and creating phony "rights" such as abortion and homosexual marriage.

True, the BOR quite explicitly applied only to the federal government at first (which would have meant no "constitutional carry"), but with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment the federal Supreme Court suddenly gained the power to tell states and localities what they could and couldn't do. It could be argued that without the Fourteenth (or if it had been worded differently) this would not have happened, but the very idea of enumerating rights was dangerous.

What good is the BOR today? Liberals ignore everything they disagree with and use it to push all their pathologies on the general population.

[Zionist Conspirator]

It isn't me; it's the JBS now claiming that the Republican party was created by the "conspiracy." And Marx apparently really did endorse Lincoln in 1864. But they connect Greeley, radical abolitionists, Marx, radical German immigrants from the revolutions of 1848, Giuseppe Mazzini and make the Republican party a subversive force created by them. Not a word about how it was the former Radicals who endorsed Liberal Republican Greeley who ran on ending Reconstruction.

After slavery had been abolished the Republican party's founder Alvin Earle Bovay actually said its goal had been achieved and there was no more need for it. Instead it should be replaced with another one issue party dedicated to prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

Yes, I know about the Almanac Singers and the hypocrites whose opinion changed every time Stalin altered a policy.