In Memory of These United States (1776-1865)

EverVigilant.net ^ | 04/09/2004 | Lee R. Shelton IV

[sheltonmac]

It was on this day in 1865 that Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Virginia town of Appomattox Court House, marking the end of our Second War for Independence. But April 9 holds an even greater significance: it is the 139th anniversary of the death of these United States of America.

The signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, saw the birth of a new nation. It was not a single, monolithic entity but a confederation of free and independent states. Although the original 13 colonies had existed in relative unity under the British Crown - and had even enjoyed some measure of autonomy - the Declaration officially severed all ties of subjugation to King George.

Contrary to what many of us were taught in the government school system, this wasn't a revolution. The colonists had no desire to overthrow the King of England and weren't prepared to send troops across the Atlantic to do so. They merely wanted to break the chains of tyranny and become self-reliant. The Declaration was, in essence, an ordinance of secession from the British Empire - and many of the colonists paid for that act of defiance with their lives.

That spirit of independence continued to flourish when it came time to ratify the U.S. Constitution. In fact, several states made it clear during the ratification process that they retained the right to break away from the new Union if it was ever deemed necessary to preserve the liberty of their citizens. For example, the delegates from Virginia stated that "the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will." New York followed suit, claiming the same power for its citizens if and when "it should become necessary to their happiness."

Unfortunately, maintaining a working knowledge of history was a problem even then. People began to forget. When the South grew tired of oppressive tax policies and a federal government bent on interfering with state affairs, they decided to call it quits in 1861. President Abraham Lincoln, however, refused to honor their right to secede.

Suddenly, people were once again forced to fight for their independence - only this time, the enemy was the very government they helped to create. Lincoln's unholy crusade against the South lasted four years and claimed over 600,000 American lives. The country was no longer the same and has never fully recovered.

Following the war, the federal government wasted no time in browbeating the Southern people into submission. Vengeful Yankee Republicans passed punitive "Reconstruction Acts" in 1867 that essentially stripped the Southern states of their representation in Congress and brought them under martial law. The implied threat was that things would remain that way until the South ratified the 14th Amendment. Sen. James Doolittle of Wisconsin went so far as to say the North should "march upon them and force them to adopt it at the point of the bayonet."

There is still debate over whether or not the 14th Amendment was ever legally ratified, but one thing is certain: the federal government has used it to expand its power and exert pressure on the states. Over the years, the 14th Amendment has been used consistently by federal courts to erode states' rights, forcing upon them those portions of the U.S. Constitution that once applied only to Congress. If the United States died on April 9, 1865, then the 14th Amendment is its death certificate.

Lincoln's war effectively destroyed the United States as envisioned by the founding fathers - and we are still feeling those effects today. The federal government dictates what can be taught in our schools. A corrupt Washington bureaucracy controls what goes out over the nation's airwaves, even to the point of limiting political speech. We are burdened by an oppressive system of taxation that at one time would have sent citizens running for their muskets. Any semblance of the nation that once was has long since disappeared.

Rather than the "more perfect Union" of free and independent states our forefathers had conceived, we are now dominated by a strong, centralized government that they and their Southern descendants gave their lives to prevent. Out of respect for their dream, and in memory of these United States, let us observe a moment of silence...

[sheltonmac]

*ping*

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[CatoRenasci]

The War for Southern Independence is over. Get over it.

If even Confederate General "Fighting Joe" Wheeler could put on Army blue again in 1898 to take command of the American cavalry in the Spanish-American War, you can, too. My grandmother lived through Radical Reconstruction, and even watched her house burned by the Union league, Freedmen, carpetbaggers and scalawags in the 1876 election. She always taught me to cherish my Southern heritage, but to be an American, not a sectionalist.

[Havoc]

Bump

[rdb3]

For what it's worth, that ain't a memory I wish to hold on to because it is absolutely nothing to celebrate. And if you want to be consistent, you must make it 1776-1965.

Show 'em my motto!

[Keith]

Then why don't you just pick up your hockey stick and get the puck outa here. When I read crap like this, I wish John Brown had succeeded...

[tpaine]

THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Address:http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Amar1.html


--- "The structural imperatives of the peculiar institution led slave states to violate virtually every "right" and "freedom" declared in the Bill- not just rights and freedoms of slaves, but of free men and women too. [106]

Simply put, slavery required repression. Speech and writing critical of slavery-even if plainly religious or political in inspiration-was incendiary and had to be suppressed in Southern states, lest slaves overhear and get ideas. [107]

Teaching slaves to read (even The Bible) was a criminal offense punished severely in some states. [108] In a society that saw itself under siege after Nat Turner's rebellion, [109] access to firearms had to be strictly restricted, especially to free blacks. [110] The problem of fugitive slaves created further pressures on civil liberties that made life treacherous indeed for free blacks. Typically, all Southern blacks were legally presumed to be slaves, subject to arbitrary "seizures" of their "persons," triable as fugitives without juries in proceedings lacking basic rudiments of due process and, if adjudged to be escaped slaves, subject to great cruelty as a warning to others. [111]

To counter this regime of repression, abolitionist and antislavery lawyers could not simply rely on positive law, for slavery itself was deeply embedded in positive law.
Beginning in the 1830's, abolitionist lawyers developed increasingly elaborate theories of natural rights, individual liberty, and higher [Page 1217] law-theories far more compatible with a "declaratory" reading of the federal Bill than with Barron's technical legalism. [112]

The fabric of the original Bill of Rights, interweaving freedom and federalism, was unraveling under the strain of slavery. And once the Civil War came, Barron seemed plainly anachronistic.
For if the years leading up to the Revolutionary War had dramatized the special danger of central tyranny, leading to Barron's Bill, the Civil War era demonstrated that states required constitutional restraints as well."

[Havoc]

He's got it mostly right. The problem is, that the governors of the south in defiance of our common proclamations were speaking out one side of their mouths to shout freedom for themselves, whilest telling slaves they had no right to it. The slaves only had a right to breath and serve their masters and only to the extent that massah prevailed to let them. By any accounting possible, this was far worse treatment of human beings by those who rebelled against a king for far less. And Lincoln recognized it and would not put up with it. What the south did was make a fraud and a lie of the agreement they signed and then threw a fit when they were called on it.

And now we are once again revisiting whether workers have any rights and staring a modern version of slavery in the face - the disenfranchisement of the US workforce and subversion of US business by outside governments in the name of trade. When a mexican worker can take a 30k a year job for 600 bucks a month and sell that service back to our economy - knowing the average retail worker makes more than that, there is something wrong here. Those workers don't have the protections or the rights we enjoy. Nor do they spend back into our economy. Nor do they have the same cost of living. We're being told it's ok to pay someone less than the going rate, throw off the rules of competition, kill all notion of fair trade and destroy American livelyhoods in the name of what? Higher profit for the greedy who have no compunction about doing anything they can justify to turn a buck. They can't get away with paying people less than retail wages for a skilled or semi-skilled job here, so they cheat the system and run off where slavery is in vogue and do it there because they can.

And this time, the government is telling them it's ok. Not while I'm alive it isn't!

[stainlessbanner]

We are burdened by an oppressive system of taxation that at one time would have sent citizens running for their muskets.

bump

[Jack Black]

Here is the 14th Ammendment mentioned in the article:

Amendment XIV

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3. 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.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

[antisocial]

"The War for Southern Independence is over. Get over it."

We have lost our independence and you want to just "get over it"?

I will continue to work (fight) for my independence until I get it or die.

[Jack Black]

Question for legal minds; the article says in part: 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. Now, Kerry took an oath as a naval officer prior to his service in Vietnam. Upon his return he led an organization designed to pressure the government to end a war. I think many would agree this clearly rose to the level of "aid and comfort" to the enemy. Thus a plain reading of the Constiution suggests that Kerry is not eligible for President, unless 2/3 of each House remove such disability.

How is this enforced? Effectively at the present time who certifies people eligible for office? Each state's secretaries of state? Getting Kerry ruled ineligible to run for President, in even one state would be an intersting exercise.

Fair minded Republicans could then introduce, simultaneously, resolutions "removing the disability, caused by the aid and comfort given to the enemy Communist Party of Vietnam in 1970, that disqualifies John Kerry from running for office."

We could then have long congressional hearings, witness, executive sessions, demand to make records public, etc.

Anyone considered this?

[tpaine]

Fighting against our 14th amendment rights to life, liberty & property will not gain independence.

[billbears]

Lincoln's war effectively destroyed the United States as envisioned by the founding fathers - and we are still feeling those effects today. The federal government dictates what can be taught in our schools. A corrupt Washington bureaucracy controls what goes out over the nation's airwaves, even to the point of limiting political speech

One wonders at times how much longer it can truly exist at the levels we are seeing. We are, if not already there, closing in on Tyler's state of 'bondage'. I just pray that some remembrance of our ancestors' fight for freedom makes it to future generations. Because the saving grace for this nation of states is not going to, unfortunately, come from the new version of 'conservatism'

[Havoc]

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Yep, that ammendment cemented our rights once and for all, except for those who chose to deny us equal protection of the law by subverting the law with treaties intended to nullify those laws. When you favor a non-citezen who doesn't have equal protection to begin with under our system because he isn't in our system or under our rules, you have abrogated my protections by doing an end run around them. Like I said, we're fighting about the same thing right now.

[Havoc]

Anyone got a good constitutional law attourney?

[yankeedame]

I wish John Brown had succeeded...

I remember being stunned when I read how John Brown was the darling of the "white-wine-and-brie" liberal chic class back then. (You know, like Rosenburgs were during the 1950; Sacco-Vanzetti during the 1920's; the Black Panters were during the 1960's, etc.) What is it with this "radical chic" and the upper classes? They seem to go hand and glove no matter what era.

[kittymyrib]

The government owns you and what you have. In the famous last words of Claytie Williams, loser to Ann Richards in the Texas governor's race, "If you are going to get raped, you'd just as well relax and enjoy it." The concept of actual states' rights and individual rights is gone. Relax and enjoy the nanny state taking care of you and taking everything you have so you can't take care of yourself. Past generations of patriots would puke if they could see what sniveling wimps we are and how we have traded their legacy of freedom for a mess of government programs.

[antisocial]

Our rights to life liberty and property aren't given by the 14th amendment. They are God given. The 14th amendment is only used to take away State's rights. The original intent was that we were free to move to another state if we didn't like the way our state protected our rights.

DEO VINDICE