Laurie Thomas Vass, The Citizens Liberty Party.
Part 1. Madison’s Attempt to Combine Two Cultures That Shared No Common Values
The cultural values that initially bound the citizens of America together, and compelled voluntary allegiance to the rule of law, are stated in the Declaration of Independence. The cultural values surrounding individual natural rights served to bind 13 independent states into a common nation.
Madison had to evade the cultural values of natural rights in order to implement his civil rules of procedure that elevated the financial interests of the natural aristocracy over the interests of common citizens.
Consequently, Madison deliberately left out reference to natural rights in the Declaration, deliberately left out reference to the Articles of Confederation, and left out any reference to the terms of surrender by King George, that designated that he surrendered to 13 independent sovereign states.
Madison’s “more perfect union” is based upon the British cultural values of shared plunder and greed. Shared plunder, unlike equal natural rights, does not bind citizens into a common mission.
As he did with failure to follow the British model for the office of president, and the separation of power, Madison failed to follow the British precedent of reciprocal rights and mutuality between the wealthy and the common classes.
The unwritten constitution of Great Britain is based upon the principles of reciprocal duties of the monarch and mutual obligations of the King and the commoners to defend British natural rights.
In British law, allegiance to the rule of law is a reciprocal obligation of both common citizens and the King.
In contrast to mutual and reciprocal duties, Madison’s Constitution creates a consolidated, centralized authority that is one-sided in its treatment of mutual obligations.
What Madison’s careful arrangement of separation of power does is create an effective system of civil rules for a market exchange society that fails to bind disassociated individuals to a shared sense of civic duty.
In Madison, the elites make the law, and the common citizens are bound to obey the law created by the elites.
The two social classes, the natural aristocracy and the common class, in Madison, did not share common values at the get-go of his Constitution.
The southern plantation society did not share Jefferson’s cultural value that all citizens are created equal.
Madison attempted to combine these various cultural factions under one nation that was based in the political value of shared plunder.
In order to implement his ruse, Madison had to eliminate reference to 13 sovereign states and substitute a collectivist, synthetic, entity of “We, the people.”
Madison waited until the last day of the regular Convention to pull off his ruse.
His notes for September 12, 1787, contain his acknowledgement of how he implemented his coup.
September 12. Committee of Style reported a 7 Article document which was read by paragraph. This document (the Constitution), is preceded by a preamble, which begins, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…” rather than “We the people of the states of New Hampshire, etc…”
The other delegates had never seen this version of the Preamble before, but the fix was in, and without debate, 37 of them voted to ratify the Constitution, on September 15, 1787.
By evading the cultural values of equal rights, Madison’s amoral rules spelled out how slaves should be counted for taxation and voting apportionment decisions, without addressing the larger moral issue of slavery.
The morality of slavery was irreconcilably opposed to “All citizens are created equal,” which Madison had to evade at all costs.
In the absence of stating the moral values of the nation, Madison’s attempt to combine various “factions” failed.
The small states were never satisfied that their interests were mutual to the big states.
The southern slave states were never satisfied that their interests in perpetuating slavery were reciprocal to the northern state’s interest in trade and commerce.
The bankers and merchants of the north feared and distrusted the political power of the southern planters.
The rich natural aristocracy in America did not share mutual obligations with the common citizens.
The principles of Madison’s one-sided representative republic were never reconciled with Jefferson’s principles of a democratic republic.
The Nation would not have ended in an aristocratic tyranny if the Declaration and the Articles had been allowed to continue as the founding documents of the Nation.
The Southern slaveocracy should never have been forced to combine with the Northern mercantile culture, under one Constitution.
The two cultures, in 1787, shared no common values, just as today, where the socialist Democrats share no common values with natural rights conservatives.
Madison’s flawed document was a historical mistake that overrode Jefferson’s natural rights republic and stuck the citizens of America with a set of irresolvable problems revolving around slavery, racism and secession.
The consequence of Madison’s flawed document is that the issue of slavery was never resolved, leading to a perpetual political civil war based upon the racism that black people are inferior to white people.
The politics of racism feeds periodic attempts to dissolve the nation, when the dissatisfied “factions,” rebel against the tyranny of the elites in Washington.
Black Democrat socialists, who advocate the destruction of America, continually invoke the original sin of slavery in the founding of the nation to promote their politics of hatred and victimization to bind voters to their ideology.
The Black Democrat socialists are positively accurate in their analysis, as it applies to Madison’s Constitution.
The Black Democrats are venal and vicious in their lie as it applies to the original founding documents of the nation. Jefferson’s Declaration and the Articles of Confederation are not created on the basis of slavery and racism.
As the documents speak for themselves, they are founded on the principle that all citizens are created equal.
The socialists today that seek to destroy the nation deploy the issue of slavery and racism as a tool because it is so effective for them in creating the conditions of riots and revolution, required to implement socialism.
The issues of racism and slavery will never be relinquished by the socialists.
The socialist states that seek to secede, today, should be allowed to leave the Union. Just like the Southern states should have been allowed to leave in 1861.
Just like the Southern states should have never been forced to join the Union in 1787.
There were no common moral values that held the slave states into a union with free states.
There are no common cultural values, today, that hold the socialist states together with the natural rights states.
The socialist states have a natural right to leave, and after the collapse, the socialist citizens who live in the natural rights states, have a natural right to renounce their citizenship, and emigrate to a socialist state.
Part 2. The Genesis of Racism in the American Constitution
On July 9th, 1787, John Dickinson, delegate from Delaware, wrote in his private notebook about the morality of including slavery as a founding principle in Madison’s Constitution.
Dickson wrote,
Acting before the World, What will be said of this new principle of founding a Right to govern Freemen on a power derived from Slaves,… [who are] themselves incapable of governing yet giving to others what they have not. The omitting [of] the WORD will be regarded as an Endevour to conceal a principle of which we are ashamed.
The morality of slavery was intertwined with the ideology of racism that black people were unable to govern themselves. The broader issue at the Convention was about who was fit to govern in a representative republic.
All of the elites, including Madison, believed that all blacks, and all common citizens, were unfit to govern. Madison believed that only the natural aristocracy were fit to govern, because they possessed the moral quality of “virtue.”
The collectivist, racist ideology of the elites was that they would make better decisions about the government than either blacks or common citizens. It is this same collectivist socialism of the socialist Democrats today that infects American politics.
The socialists deeply believe that they possess unique mental capabilities that make their collective decisions better for achieving social justice than the citizens themselves. The socialists do not believe that all legitimate authority is derived from the consent of the governed, and this socialist belief is irreconcilable with the natural rights philosophy.
The debate about slavery and racism was couched in terms of civil rules of procedure for voting and apportionment.
From Madison’s notes,
Mr. BUTLER and General PINCKNEY insisted that blacks be included in the rule of representation equally with the whites; and for that purpose moved that the words “three-fifths” be struck out.
In his racist response, Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, stated,
Mr. GERRY thought that three-fifths of them was, to say the least, the full proportion that could be admitted.
The delegates then proceeded to go around and around the issue of how to count slaves.
From Madison’s notes,
It was then moved by Mr. RUTLEDGE, seconded by Mr. BUTLER, to add to the words, “equitable ratio of representation,” at the end of the motion just agreed to, the words “according to the quotas of contribution.”
Mr. WILSON, seconded by Mr. PINCKNEY, this was postponed; in order to add, after the words, “equitable ratio of representation,” the words following: “in proportion to the whole number of white and other free citizens and inhabitants of every age, sex and condition, including those bound to servitude for a term of years, and three-fifths of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description, except Indians not paying taxes, in each State” — this being the rule in the act of Congress, agreed to by eleven States, for apportioning quotas of revenue on the States, and requiring a census only every five, seven, or ten years.
Mr. GERRY thought property not the rule of representation. Why, then, should the blacks, who were property in the South, be in the rule of representation more than the cattle and horses of the North?
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS was compelled to declare himself reduced to the dilemma of doing injustice to the Southern States, or to human nature; and he must therefore do it to the former. For he could never agree to give such encouragement to the slave trade, as would be given by allowing them a representation for their negroes; and he did not believe those States would ever confederate on terms that would deprive them of that trade.
In other words, slavery was a seminal issue to the plantation elite. Without slavery, the southern states would not join the Union. It would have been a better solution not to force the southern states to join the Union.
The issue of slavery then turned to taxation of slaves and the sanction to permit the slave trade. As noted by Rutledge, “the issue of religion and humanity had nothing to do with this question.”
From Madison’s notes,
Aug 21. Mr. L. MARTIN proposed to vary Article 7, Section 4, so as to allow a prohibition or tax on the importation of slaves. In the first place, as five slaves are to be counted as three freemen, in the apportionment of Representatives, such a clause would leave an encouragement to this traffic. In the second place, slaves weakened one part of the Union, which the other parts were bound to protect; the privilege of importing them was therefore unreasonable. And in the third place, it was inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution, and dishonorable to the American character, to have such a feature in the Constitution.
Mr. RUTLEDGE did not see how the importation of slaves could be encouraged by this section. He was not apprehensive of insurrections, and would readily exempt the other States from the obligation to protect the Southern against them. Religion and humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations. The true question at present is, whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to the Union. If the Northern States consult their interest, they will not oppose the increase of slaves, which will increase the commodities of which they will become the carriers.
Mr. ELLSWORTH was for leaving the clause as it stands. Let every State import what it pleases. The morality or wisdom of slavery are considerations belonging to the States themselves. What enriches a part enriches the whole, and the States are the best judges of their particular interest. The old Confederation had not meddled with this point; and he did not see any greater necessity for bringing it within the policy of the new one.
Aug 23. In Convention, — Governor LIVINGSTON, from the Committee of eleven, to whom were referred the two remaining clauses of the fourth Section, and the fifth and sixth Sections of the seventh Article, delivered in the following Report:
“Strike out so much of the fourth Section as was referred to the Committee, and insert, ‘The migration or importation of such persons as the several States, now existing, shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Legislature prior to the year 1800; but a tax or duty may be imposed on such migration or importation, at a rate not exceeding the average of the duties laid on imports.’
Aug 29. Mr. BUTLER moved to insert after Article 15, “If any person bound to service or labor in any of the United States, shall escape into another State, he or she shall not be discharged from such service or labor, in consequence of any regulations subsisting in the State to which they escape, but shall be delivered up to the person justly claiming their service or labor,” — which was agreed to, nem. con.
Delegates from the Southern states were adamant that they would not join the Union if the Constitution prohibited slavery or the slave trade. Their last demand, in August, was that non-slave states return runaway slaves to their owners in slave states
From Madison’s notes,
Mr. PINCKNEY. South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave-trade. In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress, that State has expressly and watchfully excepted that of meddling with the importation of negroes. If the States be all left at liberty on this subject, South Carolina may perhaps, by degrees do of herself what is wished, as Virginia and Maryland already have done.
Aug 22. Mr. SHERMAN was for leaving the clause as it stands. He disapproved of the slave-trade; yet as the States were now possessed of the right to import slaves, as the public good did not require it to be taken from them, and as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed scheme of government, he thought it best to leave the matter as we find it. He observed that the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees complete it. He urged on the Convention the necessity of despatching its business.
Mr. PINCKNEY. If slavery be wrong, it is justified by the example of all the world. He cited the case of Greece, Rome, and other ancient states; the sanction given by France, England, Holland, and other modern states. In all ages one half of mankind have been slaves. If the Southern States were let alone, they will probably of themselves stop importations. He would himself, as a citizen of South Carolina, vote for it. An attempt to take away the right, as proposed, will produce serious objections to the Constitution, which he wished to see adopted…He contended, that the importation of slaves would be for the interest of the whole Union. The more slaves, the more produce to employ the carrying trade; the more consumption also; and the more of this, the more revenue for the common treasury. He admitted it to be reasonable that slaves should be dutied like other imports; but should consider a rejection of the clause as an exclusion of South Carolina from the Union.
Mr. RUTLEDGE. If the Convention thinks that North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, will ever agree to the plan, unless their right to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is vain. The people of those States will never be such fools as to give up so important an interest. He was strenuous against striking out the section, and seconded the motion of General PINCKNEY for a commitment.
Mr. WILSON did not well see, on what principle the admission of blacks in the proportion of three-fifths, could be explained. Are they admitted as citizens — then why are they not admitted on an equality with white citizens? Are they admitted as property — then why is not other property admitted into the computation? These were difficulties, however, which he thought must be overruled by the necessity of compromise. He had some apprehensions also, from the tendency of the blending of the blacks with the whites, to give disgust to the people of Pennsylvania, as had been intimated by his colleague (Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS). But he differed from him in thinking numbers of inhabitants so incorrect a measure of wealth. He had seen the western settlements of Pennsylvania, and on a comparison of them with the city of Philadelphia could discover little other difference, than that property was more unequally divided here than there. Taking the same number in the aggregate, in the two situations, he believed there would be little difference in their wealth and ability to contribute to the public wants.
At the very end of the Convention, as he did throughout the Convention, George Mason defended Jefferson’s principles of the natural rights republic. He attempted to explain that the commercial and financial forces that promoted slavery were global in scope, and were primarily perpetuated by the upper class of Great Britain.
Colonel MASON. This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants. The British Government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing States alone, but the whole Union. The evil of having slaves was experienced during the late war. Had slaves been treated as they might have been by the enemy, they would have proved dangerous instruments in their hands. But their folly dealt by the slaves as it did by the tories. He mentioned the dangerous insurrections of the slaves in Greece and Sicily; and the instructions given by Cromwell to the commissioners sent to Virginia, to arm the servants and slaves, in case other means of obtaining its submission should fail. Maryland and Virginia, he said, had already prohibited the importation of slaves expressly. North Carolina had done the same in substance. All this would be in vain, if South Carolina and Georgia be at liberty to import.
Just prior to the vote to approve Madison’s Constitution, on September 15, 1787, the 37 delegates tightened up the language and sanctions against free states that did not return slaves to their owners.
There was no discussion and no debate about the fugitive slave clause, before the final vote was taken.
From Madison’s notes,
Sept 15. Took up Article IV, Section 2 (Fugitive Slave clause):
Struck out “no person legally held to service or labor in one state escaping into another” and replaced it with “no person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another.
The issue of slavery was the key issue in the debates over Madison’s Constitution, and the Black Democrat activists today are correct that Madison’s Constitution was conceived under the sin of slavery.
The Democrats will never relinquish the politics of slavery and racism, until they are allowed to secede from the Union to form their own more perfect socialist state.
Part 3. Madison’s Unresolved Issue of Slavery and Secession.
Madison’s Constitution did not prohibit secession, and because the Constitution did not state the moral principles that bound different factions together, the various factions felt entitled to leave the Union, when political decisions did not favor their interests.
In addition to evading the issue of slavery, Madison could not implement his plan, unless it contained “We, the people, and not the states. Madison supported the philosophy expressed by George Read, that “We, the people,” replaced the states.
From Madison’s notes,
Mr. READ disliked the idea of guaranteeing territory. It abetted the idea of distinct States, which would be a perpetual source of discord. There can be no cure for this evil but in doing away States altogether, and uniting them all into one great society.
Read liked his idea about eliminating the states so much that on September 17, 1787, he signed the document twice. Of the 37 signatures, Read signed once for himself and once for John Dickinson, who was home sick with a migraine.
As a historical fact, only 36 delegates actually signed the Constitution because Read, without legal authority, signed twice. In other words, of the 75 original delegates to the Convention, less than 50% actually signed the document.
Most of the threats to secede were about the unresolved issue of slavery, and the underlying philosophy of racism.
Up until 1861, most of the threats to leave were political posturing to extract concessions from the other factions.
Some of the early threats to leave were about the financial interests of the natural aristocracy, who had organized themselves into a political party called the Federalists.
The issue of slavery and secession were left unresolved by Madison, even though Madison used the ploy that states had a fundamental right to leave the Union during the ratification debates.
Madison had no choice about slavery because the Southern delegates to the Convention of 1787 had made clear that they would not join the Union without slavery.
From Madison’s notes,
Mr. RUTLEDGE. If the Convention thinks that North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, will ever agree to the plan, unless their right to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is vain. The people of those States will never be such fools as to give up so important an interest. He was strenuous against striking out the section, and seconded the motion of General PINCKNEY for a commitment.
Aug 29. Mr. GORHAM. If the Government is to be so fettered as to be unable to relieve the Eastern States, what motive can they have to join in it, and thereby tie their own hands from measures which they could otherwise take for themselves? The Eastern States were not led to strengthen the Union by fear for their own safety. He deprecated the consequences of disunion; but if it should take place, it was the Southern part of the continent that had most reason to dread them. He urged the improbability of a combination against the interest of the Southern States, the different situations of the Northern and Middle States being a security against it. It was, moreover, certain, that foreign ships would never be altogether excluded, especially those of nations in treaty with us.
Mr. SHERMAN proposed, that the proportion of suffrage in the first branch should be according to the respective numbers of free inhabitants; and that in the second branch, or Senate, each State should have one vote and no more. He said, as the States would remain possessed of certain individual rights, each State ought to be able to protect itself; otherwise, a few large States will rule the rest. The House of Lords in England, he observed, had certain particular rights under the Constitution, and hence they have an equal vote with the House of Commons, that they may be able to defend their rights.
Mr. FRANKLIN “I must own, that I was originally of opinion it would be better if every member of Congress, or our national Council, were to consider himself rather as a representative of the whole, than as an agent for the interests of a particular State; in which case the proportion of members for each State would be of less consequence, and it would not be very material whether they voted by States or individually. But as I find this is not to be expected, I now think the number of representatives should bear some proportion to the number of the represented; and that the decisions should be by the majority of members, not by the majority of the States.
On Mr. BUTLER’S motion, for considering blacks as equal to whites in the apportionment of representation, — Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, aye — 3; Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, no — 7; New York, not on the floor.
In order to hide their endorsement of slavery, the delegates, at the very last moment, modified the clause on the guarantee of a Republican form of government.
From Madison’s notes,
Alterations having been made in the Resolution, making it read, “that a Republican constitution, and its existing laws, ought to be guaranteed to each State by the United States,” the whole was agreed to, nem. con.
George Nicholas, a Federalist ally of Madison, stated during the time of the convention in Philadelphia, and again later, in the Virginia ratifying convention, that if “the Federal Government abused its powers, Virginia could withdraw from the union.”
Madison knew, at the time this statement was made by Nicholas, that it was false.
During the Virginia Legislature’s ratification debate, Madison chose not to correct this statement made by Nicholas, on the floor. By leaving unchallenged the subterfuge of secession related to slavery, Madison’s flawed Constitution provoked the Civil War.
The Southern states assumed that they had a legal right to secede.
During the debate over the fascist components of the 1798 Sedition Act, Madison again wrote that states had a right to nullify Federal legislation and to secede.
Southern states assumed that the Father of the Constitution was the ultimate voice of authority on the issue of secession. Their vote to leave in 1861 was predicated on this belief.
After Jefferson won the election, in 1801, the Federalists were afraid that his government would upset their unequal rights and privileges. In March of 1801, the Federalists refused to inaugurate Jefferson, and the Governor of Virginia called out the militia to prepare for war with the Federalists.
As early as 1804, Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts and a few other Federalists, envisioned creating a separate New England confederation, possibly combining with lower Canada to form a new pro-British nation.
The Embargo Act of 1807 was seen by the New England aristocracy as a threat promoted by Jefferson to the economy of Massachusetts, and the state legislature debated in May, 1808, how the state should respond.
In 1809, the legislature of Massachusetts issued an ultimatum to the Federal government on the Embargo Act. The ultimatum stated that the Embargo Act was intolerable, and that the state would be forced to leave the Union.
The negative effects of the embargo were primarily on bankers and merchants, perpetuating the social class conflict inherent in Madison’s Constitution.
The embargo negatively affected the levels of bank loans, the bank-issued component of the money supply. The values of financial stock and bond yields fell, directly affecting the financial welfare of the wealthy elites, who owned the stocks and bonds.
The positive economic effects of the embargo on the rest of the nation, outside of New England, was a dramatic increase in domestic manufacturing and a strengthening of the domestic income multiplier effects, primarily in small manufacturing supply chains.
Fighting the embargo by New England elites was a precursor to the first significant threat to secede. According to the Federalists, the War of 1812, negatively affected their financial interests in shipping and trade with Great Britain.
The Federalists claimed that the War was primarily about protecting the interests of the southern slaveocracy. The Federalists deployed a subterfuge that their opposition to the War was primarily about political domination by the “Virginia dynasty.”
In 1813, the Legislature of Massachusetts called for a convention of New England states to secede.
The Hartford Convention of 1814 convened the secret meeting of Federalists, many of whom had signed, or supported the enactment of Madison’s Constitution. The Federalists continued to work out the plan to secede by extending the earlier plan of Pickering to form a new pro-British nation.
During the New England debate on secession, no political faction, in either the Federal government, or the other states, objected to the idea that the states had a right to secede.
The southern states assumed that the northern states had a right to secede.
After 1814, the issue of slavery continued to roil the political factions, with various states threatening to leave if the western states were admitted to the Union as slave states.
Henry Clay, of Kentucky, was able to avert secession with his Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Missouri Compromise was successful in delaying the threats of secession until the late 1830’s, with the election of Andrew Jackson.
Jackson’s populist appeal to common citizens again served to threaten the financial interests of New England elites. The issue of slavery was the political subterfuge that the elites used to attack Jackson’s animosity to the Second Bank.
In the early 1830s, the issue of trade and tariffs again erupted between northern and southern states. This time, the debate was both about secession and nullification.
In 1832, the South Carolina Exposition and Protest stated in a resolution that, “Levying tariffs for the purpose of promoting New England manufacturing was not an enumerated power.”
The resolution stated that the “Compact was between the sovereign states and the federal government.” The Constitution, according to South Carolina, was created by 13 concurrent state majorities, and the states retained a negative on the acts of the majority.
In 1832 the South Carolina legislature passed the Ordinance of Nullification, which stated that if the federal government used military force to enforce the tariff, South Carolina would secede.
In response Daniel Webster switched sides from his earlier advocacy of northern secession and stated that the Constitution was the creation of the whole people, “We, the people,” and not individual states.
The southern states, therefore, according to Webster, did not have a right to nullify the Acts of Congress because the states were not parties to the contract.
In the early 1840s, New England abolitionists began meeting to plan how the non-slave states could secede.
In 1843, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society endorsed secession of the northern states, by a vote of 59 to 21.
Throughout the 1840s to the election of Lincoln, in 1859, the issue of slavery continued to animate political conflict in the Nation. As they did during the Convention of 1787, the Slaveocracy threatened to leave if they did not get their way on slavery, the slave trade, or fugitive slaves.
In 1856, Governor Henry Wise, of Virginia, issued a plea to other southern governors to meet to plot secession. Their main fear was that if the new Republican Party, and the older Whig Party combined to win the election, the southern states would secede.
The slave trade in New York was lucrative because the New York merchants and traders made money by shipping slaves to the South.
In 1861, Fernando Wood, the mayor of New York City, proposed that the city secede from New York State and become its own nation city state, to protect their financial interests in the slave trade.
Lincoln won the election and the first state to secede was Mississippi in December, 1860. It was followed by five more in January, 1861, and Texas on February 1, bringing the total to seven.
These seven states met in Montgomery and formed the Confederate States of America.
In May, 1861, after having first rejected the referendum to secede, North Carolina voted to join the CSA, and the capital was moved from Montgomery to Richmond.
During the Civil War, the western part of Virginia seceded from the state and became West Virginia in 1863. The proximate cause of the secession of West Virginia was slavery.
The secession of West Virginia was unconstitutional because Madison’s Constitution, while founded on the principle of “We, the people,” and not on the sovereignty of the individual states, none-the-less required that no part of a state could secede without the approval of the other states.
Partial secession, in other words, was prohibited by Madison, but full state secession of the Southern states was not prohibited, until 1869.
Texas v. White, (1869), was a case argued before the United States Supreme Court in 1869. The case involved a claim by the Republican Reconstruction Government of Texas that the United States bonds owned by the State of Texas had been illegally sold by the Confederate state government, during the Civil War.
The Supreme Court followed the legal reasoning of Lincoln that the Southern states never really seceded. Lincoln maintained that there was no Confederate States of America, and that the 13 southern states were in rebellion, not war.
The Supreme Court ruled that Texas had remained a United States state ever since it first joined the Union, despite its joining the Confederate States of America.
While there is no text in the Constitution about secession, the court further held that the Constitution contained a penumbra that did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States.
The Court further ruled that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legal acts of seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were “absolutely null”.
From 1869 to today, the act of secession of a state is prohibited by a decision of the Supreme Court, not by the Constitution.
Madison’s ambiguity and inconsistency in the Constitution has led the Nation into an unsolvable quagmire around the legacy of slavery, and the underlying ideology of racism that black people are unfit to govern.
Either “All people are created equal,” or, they are born into the shackles of slavery, never to escape bondage.
Either the 10th Amendment is valid, or the centralized government has unlimited, implied powers.
Either the nation is “We, the people,” or 13 independent states. Depending on the circumstances, Madison fluctuated on the question.
Either states have a right to secede, or they don’t. Madison played both sides of the issue.
The southern states either left the nation to form the CSA, or they did not.
The 14th Amendment was either ratified by the states in a legitimate ratification process, or the ratification of the Amendment was a fraud.
The North’s victory in the Civil War did not solve any of Madison’s inconsistencies. The primary difference now is that the issue of slavery and racism has been adopted by the socialist Democrats to promote their ideology of global socialism.
As explained by Merrill Jensen, in his book, Articles of Confederation, what the anti-federalist did not understand, in 1781, was that the degree of ideological commitment of the elites to creating a government that protected their privileges.
Jensen writes, “…the nationalists adopted a theory of the sovereignty of the people, in the name of the people, and erected a nationalistic government whose purpose was to thwart the will of the people in whose name they acted…”
In turn, Jensen explains that what Madison failed to see, in 1787, was that the one-sided government that he had created would be captured in 2008, by elected leaders who were traitors to the sovereign interests of the nation..
Madison did not anticipate that elected representatives would hate the Nation that they governed.
This is exactly the outcome that George Mason predicted, when he said that Madison’s Constitution would end in an aristocratic tyranny. Except that Mason did not anticipate that it would be a socialist elite tyranny that captured the central government.
Part 4. Slavery and the Enduring Politics of Racism In America
In a flip-flop of history from Justice Marshall’s decision in Marbury, on the issue of “We, the people,” Justice Kennedy, in 1995, said, “Our federalism requires that Congress treat the states in a manner consistent with their status as residuary sovereigns and joint participants in the governance of the nation.”
This type of judicial flip-flopping is a common feature of American history because there can not be a strict interpretation of the text of the Constitution. The interpretation of the text depends on the ideological predisposition of the Justices who serve at that moment in history.
If the Southern states had been sovereign, as Justice Kennedy stated, then Lincoln’s Civil War would not have been constitutional. But, Lincoln believed that the nation was created by “We, the people,” and therefore, Lincoln felt justified in saving the “Union,” at any cost.
Lincoln’s War solved nothing. The underlying flaws in Madison’s Constitution remain, and are not resolvable by amending or modifying the text. The text unleashed an enduring saga of racism, based upon Madison’s implicit endorsement of slavery.
After the Civil War, the former Plantation Aristocracy formed the “Party of Our Fathers,” on the idealized version of history that the Civil War had been a grand effort to protect the “Southern Way of Life.”
The loss of the southern states to the northern states was reinterpreted by the Plantation elite as the “Lost Cause.”
The Lost Cause, in their minds, meant the loss of elite domination over black people. They formed the Ku Klux Klan, and implemented apartheid in the South, based upon their racist version of slavery and black people.
The “Party of Our Fathers” combined racism against blacks with an appeal to white supremacy of common whites that proved irresistible.
Towards the end of Federal occupation, (1875), according to Otto Olsen, in Reconstruction and Redemption in the South, the Bourbon Democrats regained their political footing, and made it clear that they “…sought to destroy rather than compete with Republicanism, and that they were willing to utilize any means necessary to do so…”
It took the Democrats about 25 years to make good on their promise to destroy the nascent Republican Populist political movement. The Democrats undermined the Republican Populist Party by infiltrating the farmer’s organizations and subverting the political allegiance of the farmers, based upon appeals to white supremacy.
A leader of the Democratic Party, in an 1874 letter to the Greensboro Patriot, said “We assure the Negro equality before the law, but we also assure that we will strike down the Republican Party forever.”
In a letter of 1891, Robert Rhett wrote to North Carolina State Representative Joseph Wheeler, a Democrat and laid out the strategy for destruction of the Republican Party,
I deem it of the utmost importance, that strong and substantial Democrats throughout this District should enter the order and control it, as they readily can do, if they choose and will go to the trouble.
The political collaboration between white farmers and Black Republicans was called fusion, and it was a drastic threat to the progeny of the Plantation.
“At issue,” for the populists, according to Bruce Palmer, in Man Over Money, “was not private ownership of wealth and property but their concentration in a few hands. A wider distribution of private property through equalization of opportunities would correct this.”
The same interpretation of the Populism is given by Carl Degler, in The Other South, who wrote, “The Agrarians did not object to the (free market) system; they merely wanted a fair chance to prosper under it. They had been led to believe…that America was the home of opportunity.”
As a part of their political reforms in North Carolina, in 1892, the Republicans attempted to use taxes to educate black children. The use of tax dollars to educate black children provided the needed propaganda for the Democrats to tar the farmers and Republicans with the epithet that the Republicans loved Negroes, better than they loved white people.
Eventually, it was the threat posed by the political coalition of common whites and blacks, in the guise of the Republican Populist Party, that led to the violent counter-attack of the Bourbon Democrats, using the war cry of “Negro Rule.”
Beginning in 1898, the war cry of “Negro Rule” was successful in banishing the Republican Party from Southern states for at least 100 years.
According to Paul Escott, the “Elite Democrats did more than beat back the challenge of the Agrarians, disfranchise black people, and stigmatize cooperation between Tar Heels of both races. They imposed an undemocratic electoral system, so complete and effective that all future political discourse had a restricted character.”
The Democrats were successful, in November of 1898, in conducting the nation’s first military coup d’etate to overthrow a constitutionally elected Wilmington city government of black citizens.
According to press reports of the coup, the Cape Fear River was swollen with the carcasses of unarmed blacks who had been killed by the Democrats.
The Democrats chortled their victory in a telegram from the Democrat military leaders in Wilmington to the Democrat political leaders in Raleigh. The telegram read,
“We have taken the city.”
According to Escott, after the coup of 1898, Democratic Party leaders were quoted as saying that,
we will no longer be ruled, and we will never be ruled by men of African origin.
Furnifold Simmons, Chairman of the State Democratic Party, and a long time U. S. Senator from North Carolina said in 1898,
North Carolina is a White Man’s State, and White Men will rule it, and they will crush the party of Negro domination beneath a majority so overwhelming that no other party will ever dare to establish Negro rule here.
In seeking to justify the coup, the Wilmington Semi-Weekly Messenger wrote: “Intelligent citizens…owning the greatest percent of the property and paying the greatest percent of the taxes should rule.”
This is a perfect re-statement of Madison’s ideology that the virtuous natural aristocracy should rule.
Furnifold Simmons solicited contributions from “…the bankers, railroad executives, lawyers and manufacturing interests, and promised that the Democrats would not raise corporation taxes if the Democrats regained power.”
The alliance the Democrats sought was between the white racist party and the corporate elite. This is the same coalition, today between global socialists and global corporations, that rules the swamp.
The political contract between racist Democrats and the corporate elite was based upon racism.
In exchange for corporate support of one-party white apartheid rule in North Carolina, the Democrats promised the corporate elite not to raise corporate taxes, preferring always to shift the burden to common citizens through the use of sales and property taxes.
The violence of the Democrats in North Carolina, beginning in 1900, included the forced sterilization of black people who were considered by the Democrats to be too insane to have children.
The official state-sanctioned language used by the Democrats for the sterilization program was black insanity.
The common phrase used by the Democrats for insane black people was “uppity” blacks who had voted with the white Republicans. Their insanity was demonstrated by their coalition with Republicans.
The forced sterilization of black people by the government of North Carolina finally ended in the mid-1970s. By that time, 50,000 black people, both males and females, had been sterilized.
As a political strategy, the forced sterilization of uppity blacks was a huge political success for the Democrats. With the DNA genetics of uppity Blacks purged from society, Blacks in North Carolina now vote almost 100% for the Democrats.
Much of the violence of the Plantation elite took place under the auspices of the Klan, whose leadership mirrored the leadership of the Democratic Party.
During the day, the prominent Democrats held elected offices and wielded official power. At night, they donned their robes and hoods, and went out looking for uppity blacks to lynch.
The contract between the Democrats and the corporate elite was held together by the constant threat that Negroes would be used to replace white workers in the textile mills.
The Democrats made the threat, which was implemented by the textile, tobacco and furniture elite, an effective economic use of racism derived from a position of Democratic Party political monopoly.
The lesson that common white factory workers learned from this system was that if they ever voted for Republicans or Populist Agrarians again, they would lose their jobs.
In his analysis of how the Bourbon Democrats destroyed the Republican Party, V. O. Key noted that the system of apartheid imposed on the South was not simply about “white supremacy.”
He said, “the issue of Negro suffrage is a question not of white supremacy but the supremacy of which whites.”
The philosophy that undergird the Democratic assault combined their view that Blacks were an inferior race with the view that common whites were unfit to govern.
The philosophical hostility towards political rights for certain individuals originated in the unresolved differences between the values about individual freedom, contained in the Declaration of Independence, and the absence of those moral values in Madison’s constitutional rules.
Writing in 1922, in The Journal of Social Forces, Ashby Jones connected the paternalistic collectivism of the plantation elites to the cultural collectivism that viewed all blacks as a social class.
“Although upper-class whites had inherited a benevolent feeling toward the individual Negro, they expressed a social and political fear of the race en masse.
Ashby wrote, “This dehumanization of blacks among the better classses of southern whites was responsible for the unspeakable record of barbaritees committed against this weaker race.”
In adopting race hatred as a political weapon to promote socialism, Obama deployed the rhetorical charade that the Democrats were not the party of racism. Obama said, “There’s not a black America and white America,” at the 2004, Democrat Convention, “there’s the United States of America.”
As explained by Noam Scheiber in his May 30, 2004, New Republic article:
“Whereas many working-class voters are wary of African American candidates, whom they think will promote black interests at the expense of their own, they simply don’t see Obama in these terms. This allows him to appeal to white voters on traditional Democratic issues like jobs, health care, and education—just like a white candidate would.”
After Obama was elected, he continued using the rhetoric and imagery of slavery because it is such a useful tool for making black Americans hate America.
Obama’s strategy was to keep the grievances of slavery vivid. The image of slavery at the founding of the Constitution of 1787 will never end for the socialist Democrats.
As Obama said, in March 2008, Madison’s constitution was irrevocably flawed:
“The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.”
Throughout his tenure, Obama continually invoked the symbols of racism and slavery, in a three step political strategy, to transform America into a global socialist state.
The first part of his strategy was to create race hatred between socialists and non-socialists, in order to attract converts who began to hate America, and who had a heightened sense of grievance about the founding of the Nation.
The second part of Obama’s strategy was to promise the aggrieved and downtrodden citizens that he and the Democrats, would remedy their grievances against the right-wing forces that were oppressing them.
The final part of Obama’s strategy was to use tax-funded welfare payments to hook the downtrodden into a life of dependency on the socialist government.
Obama understood that once the citizens become servile to the State, they would lose their capacity for rational decision-making, the bedrock citizen requirement in a natural rights republic.
Lyndon Johnson, Democrat President, made this same connection between welfare payments and Democrat political dominance. After passing the first phase of his Great Society welfare program, in 1963, Johnson stated,
These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference… I’ll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.
Obama knew that his hardest job in his conversion process was the very first part of making citizens hate America. Given the image of NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem, for no objective reason, it is clear that Obama was successful in his use of race hatred.
At the same 2004 Democrat convention where Obama spoke, the black nationalist, Al Sharpton, complained that Lincoln had promised the slaves that they would get “40 acres and a mule.”
According to Sharpton, the Republicans never made good on their promise, and according to Democrats, the Republicans will never make good on their promise because Republicans are fundamentally, and forever, racists.
In his last weeks of office, Obama continually invoked the legacy of racism and slavery to heighten the fear of Democrats of President Trump.
“We have, by no means overcome the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow and colonialism and racism,” he said.
As he did with using the agency of the IRS to undermine the rule of law, Obama unleashed the deep state spy apparatus to find some pretext for halting Trump’s inauguration.
The central tenant of the Democrat socialist religion is that the minority of socialist elites are much smarter than the citizens, and therefore, the socialist elites should have all the constitutional power to make decisions.
The socialist Democrats have learned that the cultural values of “We, the people,” collectivism, was an effective weapon for controlling both blacks and whites, who are seen by the Democrat socialists as collectivist identity groups “not fit” to participate in political decisions.
Once the Democrats were successful in having both blacks and common whites view the Republicans as a collectivist group, to be vilified and hated, their political system became much more effective at maintaining political power.
If the socialists are successful in taking over the central government, there is nothing in Madison’s Constitution stopping them from permanently imposing their special form of slavery on the non-socialists.
They will take over the institutional mechanisms of power designed by Madison for the natural elite.
Part 5. Ending Racism in the Natural Rights Republic
The historical consequence of Madison’s flawed arrangement is neither a representative republic, based upon the rule of law, nor a system of government, based on the natural rights of the consent of the governed.
Madison’s government ended in a centralized global tyranny, operated for the benefit of the few global elites, against the many.
In the case of Democrat socialist subjugation, or slavery, the socialist political elite hold institutional structural power, derived from Madison’s rules, not from the consent of the governed.
Rather than the voluntary allegiance to the rule of law, the structural power grants undelegated authority to socialist elites to compel, against a citizen’s sovereign will, obedience to the socialist state.
The structural power denies the individual citizen the freedom to break away from the subjugation. In this instance, the sovereign life mission of the common citizen is subjugated to the greater glory of social welfare of the State.
This institutional structural power is the operative force in Madison’s Constitution that elevates the financial interests of the elites over the class interests of common citizens.
His “balance of power,” and 3 branches of “checks and balances,” is the framework of constitutional structural power that can not be altered or abolished. His arrangement bestows undelegated, unelected power to the elites in the swamp.
In Madison’s Constitution, both the individual states, and the individual citizen’s freedom to leave the constitutional relationship, without resort to violence, is nonexistent.
Madison’s Constitution can possibly continue for states that choose not to leave the United States of America, if and when, the socialists leave to form their Socialist States of America.
A better solution to re-store the natural rights republic is to start over with a new nation, under the new Constitution of the Liberty States of America, that reconnects the nation to the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.
In order to correct Madison’s flawed document, and his enduring legacy of racism, the Constitution of the Liberty States of America contains the following components:
From the principles of government:
“…that individual citizens who freely give their consent to form a government through constitutional conventions are bound by the original contract until the operation of the government becomes destructive to the original intent of obtaining individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness…”
“…that the parties to the constitutional contract are individual citizens acting through their elected representatives at the state and national levels of government…”
“…that the citizens of each state have mechanisms in place in the constitutional contract to modify or abolish the governments that they have created which have become destructive to the ideals and goals under which the National Government is instituted, including the right of each state to vote on remaining a member of the national government in a referendum to be held every 20 years from the date of admittance…”
“…that the National Government that is created by this union of states shall never usurp the sovereign power or authority of the individual states or the sovereignty of the citizens in each state and that states have an inalienable right to call a convention of the states, without Congressional approval, to modify, amend, or abolish this Constitutional Contract.”
“…that the 1776 American Revolution was ordained by God to allow citizens to pursue individual human freedoms and liberty from oppression and is an exceptional model in human history…”
“…that all citizens are created by God with equal natural rights, and that the purpose of the Nation is to protect the equal application of the law to all citizens, regardless of race or religious beliefs…”
From the Bill of Rights:
The right of citizens of the Liberty States America to vote, hold elected office, or deliberate in public debates, shall not be denied or abridged by the National Government, or by any State, on account of race, color of skin, sex, or religious beliefs.
From the President’s Duties:
It is the constitutional duty of the President to preserve, protect and defend the natural and civil rights of citizens and to defend the sovereign borders of the nation from foreign and domestic threats.
From the Right of Secession and Emigration:
Any state may secede from this Union by a petition ratified by a majority of the state legislature, presented to the National Senate.
The Senate must act upon the petition to grant secession within 14 days.
The grant of secession is irrevocable and permanent.
Notwithstanding the permanency of secession of a state, verified citizens of a partial geographical territory of the former state may petition the Senate for admission as a new state.
A citizen of the Liberty States of America may emigrate to a non-member territory or state by a petition of citizenship revocation. A citizen revocation of citizenship is irrevocable and permanent.
The new constitution ends slavery and racism by substituting free market competition for aristocratic financial privilege. Race hatred and race envy ends when all citizens share an equal opportunity for upward occupational mobility.
Individual freedom provides the framework for the free competitive markets to function. In the chronology of events leading to the formation of a natural rights republic, God grants citizens freedom.
From God’s grant of freedom, citizens form governments to protect their freedoms.
One of their God-given freedoms is property. Property, protected by government comes first, and then after the protection of property, come free markets, which create the greatest individual and national wealth.
Free markets and free citizens depend on the rule of law to function as a part of a free society.
In a natural rights republic, it is individual freedom that allows entrepreneurs to make money in the future time period from the risky investments that they make in the current time period. Part of this idea is based in Jefferson’s notion that citizens own their own labor, and have a natural right to use their labor to create their own happiness.
Without investments, there is no economic growth. Without economic growth, there is no job growth. Without job growth, there is no upward occupational mobility. Without upward occupational mobility in a natural rights republic, common citizens turn to socialism.
Sean Willenz, in The Rise of American Democracy, opens up his study by addressing the absence of the “res publica” or the public thing to be pursued by Madison’s conception of the constitution.
The absence of the res publica raises, for Willenz, the overriding question of democracy in America: “Should unelected private interests, well-connected to government, be permitted to control, for their own benefit, the economic destiny of the entire nation?”
According to Willenz, under the set of constitutional rules promoted by Hamilton, “the idea that the private banking and business community should have special powers in deciding economic policy” was adopted. Without those special powers, according to Hamilton, the wealthy citizens would not have allegiance to the new nation, and without their allegiance, his concept of the free market system would not function well.
In contrast to Hamilton and Madison, the glue that holds society together is a common trust in the truth of Jefferson’s natural rights.
As Michael Zuckert explains, in The Natural Rights Republic, “…the evidentness of the truth is contained within the truths themselves…the truths are not affirmed to be in themselves self-evident, only to be held as such by the Americans…the truths are held as if self evident within the political community dedicated to making them effective. The truths serve as the bedrock or first principles of all political reasoning of the natural rights regime.”
Without these common moral values, in the natural rights republic, no force binds citizens to voluntary allegiance to the nation.
The public purpose in the natural rights republic is served by constitutional rules that promote common external values of trust, fair dealing, truthful representations, and promise keeping.
Racism is ended due to cooperation between individuals that occurs when the individuals assume, prior to entering into the exchange process, that these common values are influencing the interpretation of truth the same way, in both citizens to an exchange.
In the natural rights individualist society, the moral freedom of the individual involves the decreasing reliance on externally imposed standards of behavior and ethical values regarding the treatment of others in civil exchanges.
Moral development of the individual occurs during life through an increasing reliance on internalized mental values that address the welfare of others.
The outcome of fair income distribution occurs as a result of the moral values at the beginning of the constitutional exchange, not after the exchange has occurred.
Fairness in the distribution of wealth and income ends racism.
Madison’s flaw was his deliberate omission that the ultimate goal of the constitution was protecting individual freedoms.
The Constitution of the Liberty States of America corrects Madison’s flawed document.