The Constitution Was Literally Written By Slaveowners. Why Is America Obsessed With Upholding It?

Last week, the Supreme Court eviscerated a woman’s right to abortion, undermined Miranda rights, expanded gun rights and allowed border patrol agents to operate with even further impunity. Today, it ruled that a former Washington state high school football coach can pray on the field immediately after games—regardless of the religious backgrounds of the students.

That sounds accurate.

I brought it up simply because the habit of equating slavery with the Democratic Party is tiresome.

I’m pretty sure that George Washington was a slave holder, a big one, and if he was anything he was a Federalist. It had been a feature of Colonial life for a long time before that.

Jefferson, Madison and Monroe all owned slaves and they belonged to the first Republican party that we now call the Democratic-Republican Party. But slave free John Q Adams belonged to it too.

In 1828 when Jackson and Van Buren founded the Democratic Party slavery wasn’t an issue.

And when the Whigs formed as opposition to the Jacksonians in 1830 slavery wasn’t cited as a reason for that party’s founding.

But the Whigs did divide into Conscience Whig and Cotton Whig factions in 1834 and that was over slavery. That may mark its emergence as a national issue.

A stronger case could be made with the creation of the Free Soil Party in 1848, which as you noted included Martin Van Buren.

(1) I would have to acquaint you with a lot of reading I have done

I appreciate you providing these references. I am no historian, and I admit to many gaps in my knowledge. But after some modest research into the works you cite, I am far from convinced that the Republican Party was "founded by religious kooks and corrupt businessmen."

Lincoln's Cooper Union speech and how he got the 1860 nomination show that Lincoln was an ambitious politician who wasn't above questionable politicking. But I don't see any evidence of religious kookery or corrupt business practices.
I read the 1862 letters of Charles Dickens on "The Charles Dickens Letters Project" website, but don't think I came across the letter you reference.
Clay and Jackson died before the Republican Party was founded. I don't see how anything they did or said could be rightly attributed to the founding of the Republican Party.

(2) The Corwin Amendment would not have made slavery permanent in the United States

The excerpt you highlighted in bold stated that Congress shall not interfere with State affairs with regard to slavery. But why couldn't the individual States, over time, choose to abolish slavery?

(3) What do you think the Republicans should have done in this situation?

What I meant here was that support for the Corwin Amendment did not indicate support for slavery. The decision for anti-slavery politicians of the time was a Catch 22. Either they accepted secession of numerous states, or they supported some deal like the Corwin Amendment. Either way, slavery would not be abolished.

“It didn’t matter what authority he (Lincoln) had as Commander-in-chief to make laws in a martial law situation of war if his military couldn’t actually win battles in key areas to implement his laws.”

Before we lose track, I am concerned about the tone of your earlier observations: “11 of the 13 states were willing to start the nation with slavery outlawed. Only 2 states (Georgia and South Carolina) dug their heels in and said they wouldn’t help start the nation unless they could keep slaves.”

You point is that slavery was not an American problem - certainly not a northern problem - it was a problem caused by just two states: Georgia and South Carolina. Those two states forced the other 11 to accept slavery; forced them to
build ships to transport slaves; forced them to insure slave cargoes; forced them to finance slave expeditions; forced them to buy slave grown cotton, ship it, and process into textiles; forced them to sell their own slaves “down the river” to deep South states rather than to emancipate outright. And to vote to enshrine slavery into the United States Constitution.

This is scapegoating. The temptation to scapegoat is strong because so much social justice pressure is being applied people feel the need to run from their own past.

“I’m from New York and New York never had slaves; just the South had slaves. New York fought to free the slaves. We never had a single slave.”

And so forth and so on.

We could do with a little less scapegoating; and more thought about what kind of nation we will be after the left has convinced us to abandon George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln (yes Lincoln), the Law of Moses, and the New Testament.

During the Constitutional Convention, 3 states were very much abolitionist, I didn't mean to suggest that all 11 states not named Georgia and South Carolina were abolitionist. However, those 3 states had a lot of sway over the conversation. (For example, James Madison himself said that Morris, an abolitionist delegate, did more speaking than anybody else.)

The other 8 states were somewhere in between staunchly abolitionist and staunchly pro-slavery. They were willing to sign onto an abolitionist constitution (some say not vehemently abolition but leaning that way more than other nations at the time) even if some states were a bit reluctant to do so. Some of the delegates for abolition were even slave owners themselves. I know by the left's standards that puts those delegates into cancel culture territory. But for me that means they had the most to lose by doing the right thing, adding to their street cred. So I'm admitting slavery was an American problem and yes a world problem, while also acknowledging that America's founders were leaning towards abolition with only 2 states digging their heels in and saying no way --- at a time when virtually no one else in the world was even considering abolition at that level. (Unfortunately Charleston was the wealthiest city in that day, so South Carolina had a lot of sway too. Then there's the not-so-irrelevant fact that Georgia and South Carolina acted as buffers between the new nation and the Spanish Empire in Florida -- giving Georgia and South Carolina more bargaining power).

The only reason I brought it up to begin with is the political left wants to give no attaboy at all for the fact that our nation was leaning very close to being an abolitionist nation in the 18th century (that's 1700's to those of you in Rio Linda). They don't do that with their own icons. For example, they say the TV show Will and Grace advanced gay rights even though, horror of horrors, it didn't have gay marriage (the bigots!). And that show was in the recent past. If they can cut that silly show some slack for being today immoral (not gay marriage) but heading in the right direction (in their view of today's morals that'd be normalizing gay relationships), then they can cut our country some slack for being close but not quite abolitionist at the founding, even if it meant changing habits of slavery a lot of them already had.

I am no historian, and I admit to many gaps in my knowledge. But after some modest research into the works you cite, I am far from convinced that the Republican Party was "founded by religious kooks and corrupt businessmen."

You are quite ambitious if you thought you could get as far as my conclusions with just a little bit of reading.

Most of the references I provided were support for the corruption side of the topic, only the Charles Dickens letter was part of the "kook" side of the topic.

Here is the significant excerpt.

And here is another bit that supports the "kook" side. That's John Brown. Famous and violent abolitionist.

Or this if you prefer. https://www.grunge.com/221366/the-crazy-true-story-of-abolitionist-john-brown/

John Brown also covers the corruption side. Look up the wealthy men of Massachusetts that financed his efforts. Look up John Brown's efforts to unify Massachusetts wool merchants into a cartel, and what do you suppose would have happened to the price of wool if Southern cotton production went up in flames? (such as would have occurred with a massive slave rebellion.)

Lincoln's Cooper Union speech and how he got the 1860 nomination show that Lincoln was an ambitious politician who wasn't above questionable politicking.

No he wasn't, and this is shown again and again throughout his life. He was not the clean honorable person we had all been led to believe. He used bribes, intimidation and dirty tricks to get what he wanted.

But I don't see any evidence of religious kookery or corrupt business practices.

You should look up Lincoln's religious views. You may be shocked to hear what his Law partner related about his views on religion.

Clay and Jackson died before the Republican Party was founded.

Henry Clay was Lincoln's mentor. You know Lincoln was a congressman before he became president? Lincoln admits Clay taught him a lot, and the most significant thing Clay taught him was "mercantilism." (Using the government to boost industry. What we nowadays regard as "crony capitalism.")

Andrew Jackson killed the Bank of the US. Here is what he said on the matter.

" You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out."

Andrew Jackson, to a delegation of bankers discussing the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, 1832

The Bank of the US is roughly akin to the Federal Reserve today, and it allows all sorts of mischief to be made with the money supply.

Jackson and Clay were political enemies. Clay, of course, supported the Bank.

But why couldn't the individual States, over time, choose to abolish slavery?

Well of course they could, but at the time it was passed, which Republicans ever thought that a state would voluntarily give up the most significant method of economic production in their state?

So far as the men (2/3rds majority of congress) voting for it were concerned, it would be permanent, but of course if every state chose to give it up, it could eventually be eradicated, but that eventuality wasn't in view in 1861.

What I meant here was that support for the Corwin Amendment did not indicate support for slavery.

It meant they didn't care about slavery as much as they cared about keeping the Southern states, and you will have to ask yourself why in the world was it so important to them to keep the Southern states that they would vote to keep slavery?

In a word, it was money.

The decision for anti-slavery politicians of the time was a Catch 22. Either they accepted secession of numerous states, or they supported some deal like the Corwin Amendment. Either way, slavery would not be abolished.

Why wouldn't the more desirable choice for them to be to let the repugnant slave states go? Why would they want to keep them in the Union, indeed, why would they go so far against their announced political agenda of abolishing slavery, to actually *VOTE* for a continuation of slavery, Just to keep the Southern states?

What could the Southern states possibly have that would induce them to make such a humiliating gesture?

Money. Here is a more graphic way of showing it.

Most of that money you see in New York came from the South.

There is a lot to cover, and I have only scratched the surface of it.

The logical consequence of this is that anyone that requires the 14th amendment to be a citizen, is *NOT* a natural citizen. They are a "naturalized" citizen.

Absolutely erroneous. The ONLY people defined as citizens under the 14th Amendment are those born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

Only the slaves, who were neither citizens nor aliens, but who were born in the United States, ever became citizens by virtue of the 14th Amendment after their birth.

Nobody born in the United States currently requires the 14th Amendment to acquire citizenship. The 14th Amendment took the then-in-effect common law on birthright citizenship and removed it from the control of Congress. If the 14th were repealed, it would not change existing law. It would enable Congress to pass a law redefining birthright citizenship, but until such a law were passed, nothing would change.

All persons born outside the territory of the United States do not fall under the 14th Amendment at all. Their citizenship status at birth is determined by United States law in effect at the time of their birth. They acquire citizenship at birth, by virtue of their birth, if they meet all the conditions set forth in the applicable statute. They are not naturalized, they are citizens at birth, i.e., natural born citizens. Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, born in Canada with one alien parent. President Chester Arthur had one alien parent when born on October 5, 1829, well before the 14th Amendment. President Barack Obama had one alien parent when born in Hawaii. Vice President Kamala Harris had two alien parents when born in California. Presidential candidate Ted Cruz was born in Canada with one alien parent. It is past time to give up birther insanity.

The freedmen were not citizens at birth. The could not be natural born citizens. They were legally present in the country, but could not be naturalized under the provisions of Federal law, as they were not aliens. The 14th Amendment performed what the statute law on births overseas could not. It defined a class of non-alien, non-citizen people as citizens.

A similar problem is faced by illegal aliens. They are not eligible for naturalization because while they are aliens, they are not lawfully present in the United States. Making their present lawful would make the millions of illegal aliens eligible for naturalization, i.e., give them a path to citizenship.

Parentage is irrelevant to birthright citizenship recognized by the 14th Amendment. The child born in a detention center in the United States of two illegal aliens awaiting deportation is a natural born United States citizen.

The only case in which parentage matters is if one parent confers immunity from United States jurisdiction upon the child. This occurs with the child of an accredited foreign diplomat or visiting royalty.

I'm not following you. Isn't it obvious that the 3/5ths compromise lowered the political power of slave states?

You cited https://www.ushistory.org/us/15d.asp

Your source stated, "The proposed constitution actually strengthened the power of slave states in several important respects. Through the "fugitive clause," for example, governments of free states were required to help recapture runaway slaves who had escaped their masters' states."

What I said was, "The Constitution increased the protections of slavery."

The Fugitive Slave Clause directly protected the property rights of slave owners. No slave could claim freedom by escaping to a free state. No state law could give the escapee freedom, and the clause required all states to deliver up the escapee.

There was no way to abolish slavery other than a constitutional amendment. That was not happening. The importation of slaves could not be abolished or taxed out of existence for twenty years. The slave trade could not be interfered with by constitutional amendment for twenty years. The South could import additional representation. The North imported even more white Europeans. California in recent decades has imported enough illegal aliens to garner an additional four or five representatives for the state. Each illegal alien counts as a whole person for purposes of representation.

“The only reason I brought it up to begin with is the political left wants to give no attaboy at all for the fact that our nation was leaning very close to being an abolitionist nation in the 18th century.”

I recommend we all stop worrying about whether or not the left is going to issue an attaboy to conservatives, past or present.

Net: It doesn't matter that 13 of the original 13 states were slave states. The nation they founded had the best governing doctrines ever devised by humans so far as I know.

And, in the Constitution the founders even incorporated an amendment process so that slavery could be abolished peacefully.

Further, it doesn't matter that liberals don't like what St. Paul said about master-servant relationships.

I might consider apologizing for our nation's founding fathers if it would undo any of the hardships resulting from being bound to service.

If it would help, I would retroactively say out loud that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is now effective July 4, 1776 and call for his impeachment for tacitly supporting the Corwin Amendment; but that would be dishonest pandering because it would be meaningless.

Thanks again for the references.

I guess for me it boils down to this. I’m convinced that some early Republicans were religious zealots, and some were corrupt. Among the politicians, I’m convinced that most were corrupt in some regard. But I think that’s always true of politicians of any party with national aspirations.

But to what extent were they kooky zealots, and to what extent were they corrupt? The Proceedings of the First Republican Convention suggest most if not all in attendance were motivated by their anti-slavery views, and among these, many were motivated by their religious beliefs. None of the speakers come across to me as kooks or particularly corrupt, though there is some politicking for POTUS and VP nominations, which I suppose could be viewed as corrupt:

https://archive.org/details/proceedingsoffir00repu/page/11/mode/1up?view=theater

Of course, it’s impossible to tell the true motivations of people, especially of politicians, and most especially of dead politicians. Even if we spent the rest of our lives researching the early Republicans, I doubt we’d ever come to an agreement on how to characterize their motives.

But to backtrack to my earlier posts on this thread, my contention is that, if the author rejects the Constitution because it was written in part by slaveowners, then she should support the Republican Party and reject the Democrat Party due the the relative composition of slaveowners among their respective founders. I stand by this contention.

But to what extent were they kooky zealots, and to what extent were they corrupt?

This must be compared with the norms for that era. The Abolitionists wanted slavery abolished because they thought it was immoral and oppressive to the slaves.

The vast majority of the nation at this time did not hold these beliefs. By the standards of the 1850s, the abolitionists were kooks and religious zealots.

It is true that most people in the North opposed slavery, but not for the reasons we have been led to believe. Most people in the North opposed slavery for two main reasons, and various lesser reasons.

The primary reason most people opposed slavery was because they regarded it as a threat to their own labor and wages. Indeed, if you will look at the most heavily Unionized (Labor Unions) areas of the Country, you will see they roughly coincide with the same states that opposed slavery in the 1850s.

If a slave can be made to do a job for free, then people who must earn wages to do labor are prevented from earning a living by the usage of slave labor. So yes, they would *HATE* slavery with great passion because they saw it as a threat to their own bread and butter. The Labor Unions nowadays call such people who will work for less, "scabs."

The second main reason why most people hated slavery was because they hated black people in general. They did not want them in their communities, and they did not even want them in their country. Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, James Monroe, and many other movers and shakers engaged in great efforts to get black people out of the country. According to Union General Benjamin Butler, Lincoln was discussing another effort to export blacks the very day he was assassinated.

The laws of states such as Illinois, which were known as the "black codes", illustrates very clearly how much people hated the idea of having black people in their communities.

I found this comment about the Illinois "black codes" so that you can get an idea about how bad they were.

So if that's the sort of laws passed by the people of Illinois, it becomes clear why they saw Abolitionists as "kooks."

Another reason people hated slavery was envy/hatred of the slave owners. People of that era looked at them as a sort of "Aristocracy" who obtained their fortunes without having to work for them, and they hated these wealthy people for being so much more well off than they, especially since it came from "scab" labor.

As for the corruption side, I am having to remember bits i've found over the years so that I can give you more references.

It is widely acknowledged that the Grant Administration was the most corrupt Administration in American history. It is also widely acknowledged that President Grant was not involved in the corruption and had nothing to do with it.

So how then did his Administration become know so widely for corruption?

Well following Lincoln's assassination, President Johnson finished Lincoln's term, but the bureaucrats then working in the government were pretty much Lincoln's team. Johnson was regarded as suspect by all because he was a Southerner, and therefore could not be trusted, and indeed he was very nearly impeached.

By the time Grant came to run the government, the Administration was pretty much in the hands of corrupt bureaucrats, not unlike how it was when Trump took over.

Grant had inherited all this corruption from the previous administrations, and especially from Lincoln. All the agencies involved in occupying the south were robbing everything they could get to enrich themselves, and one of the worst among them was the "freed man's agency."

And of course there is the old story about Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

"Mr. Lincoln reportedly asked Thaddeus Stevens about Cameron’s honesty and was told that “I do not believe he would steal a red hot stove.”

Lincoln was greatly amused with this comment and related it to several other people. This of course offended Simon Cameron who asked for an apology, and Thaddeus Stevens replied that he would withdraw his claim that Simon Cameron would not steal a red hot stove. (This delighted Lincoln even further.) :)

Simon Cameron was removed from office for corruption, patronage, mismanagement and other things.

Are you aware that it was Republican votes which passed the Corwin Amendment through congress and sent it to the States for ratification? William Seward (Lincoln's secretary of State) was it's prime proponent in the US Senate. Lincoln called for it's passage in his first inaugural address.

The Corwin Amendment would have made slavery permanent in the United States, and it was passed only by the votes of all those Republicans that claimed to be against slavery.

That's more evidence that they were corrupt. Why would they do such a thing when they campaigned on abolishing slavery?

Also, there is some evidence that Lincoln wrote the thing, even though he denied having ever seen it during his first inaugural address.

With the evidence Phil Magness presents, this looks like a lie.

You just don't stop with this garbage. I suppose everyone else is just tired of responding to your foolishness.

You write about this with incredible detachment, as though you aren't worried about losing your job because, say, Chinese convicts can do it cheaper. I think we can safely ignore your thoughts on this matter, they are so detached from ordinary human realities.

You are looking at this in 21st century terms. People who opposed slavery at the beginning 19th century, generally assumed that Black and White couldn't live together in the country. Even the slave owners believed that without slavery, Blacks would either be expelled or killed or would take over. Colonization was an attempt to get the country beyond slavery. It may appall us now, but at the time it seemed like the only way out. It was not necessarily associated with hatred of African-Americans either. Some proponents of colonization thought rather well of Blacks.

Again, you are disconnected from the real world and you don't even know yourself. You constantly spit out bile at "elites," but remain curiously neutral when writing about people who built their fortunes on actual, literal slavery. Again, we can basically ignore your drivel.

By the time Grant came to run the government, the Administration was pretty much in the hands of corrupt bureaucrats, not unlike how it was when Trump took over.

You do not know US History. The civil service started a decade or more after Grant's presidency. Most officials were appointed by the President, and this was usually done to pay off party loyalists. Permanent employees of the government were mostly lower level. Grant appointed his friends and supporters. They weren't longtime Washingtonians. They were people from back home and elsewhere. They were crooks. That is why he had such a bad reputation, even though he was personally honest and not such a bad president.

Why would they do such a thing when they campaigned on abolishing slavery?

The Republicans did not campaign on abolishing slavery. They opposed the expansion of slavery. Democrats feared the Republicans would build a national party and undermine support for slavery in the South, so they agitated for secession. The country was falling apart. Any Congress and any president would try to do what they could to save the country.

Also, there is some evidence that Lincoln wrote the thing, even though he denied having ever seen it during his first inaugural address.

You are misreading the evidence. Through Seward, Lincoln submitted three possible amendments to a Congressional committee. The committee received different proposals from people. There is no evidence that Lincoln wrote the amendment.

With the evidence Phil Magness presents, this looks like a lie.

You guys were bound to get together some time.

Just like Hitler and Stalin.

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