Confederate monuments are being linked to rise of Jim Crow in early 1900’s and resistance to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950‘s-1960’s. The truth of the matter, however, is the earliest monuments were erected immediately after Reconstruction ended in 1877 and Union occupation forces were withdrawn from Southern States; by wives, widows, and daughters of Confederate veterans. The money was raised at tea parties, bazaars, and book sales. Economic conditions did not allow for construction of many monuments until the early 1900’s. Monuments erected at beginning of Civil Rights Movement coincided with Civil War Centennial (1959-1965) and 100th anniversary of adoption of 13th Amendment.
Those who believe monuments should be removed need to have a better understanding of the history of bondage in America and why these monuments are inscribed with words that speak of honor and the cause they fought for was considered in defense of freedom and resisting tyranny.
Bondage of one person by another goes as far back as Babylon in the 18th century BC. The word slavery derives from 10th century AD German expansion eastward to Slavic areas. So many Slavs were captured the generic name became slave.
Bondage of all servants/workers in the early settlement years in America, black, white, and Indian, was for a certain number of years (indentured). Beginning in 1619, blacks began being considered bonded for life. The first state to legalize slavery was Massachusetts in 1641, followed by Connecticut in 1650, and Virginia in 1661.
Nearly all of the slaves that were brought to America became slaves at the time one tribe in Africa raided another tribe and sold captives to slave traders, primarily, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Who bears the blame for slavery in America? The people who sold the slaves or the people who bought and kept them in bondage for life? Both.
It is estimated, up until the Revolutionary War, between 1/2 and 2/3 of white migrants to America were indentured. Both slaves and indentured servants were considered personal property. The indenture could be sold and inherited just like slaves or any other property. They could not marry or leave the plantation without permission of the master. Running away and other acts of disobedience could be punished by whipping and extension of the indenture period.
The distinction between the slave and indentured was the slave was bound for life and the indentured for a certain number years, generally 4-7. However, because of the harsh conditions of the early colonial period, many indentured died before their indenture period ended and were never free.
The Civil War began when South Carolina seceded from the Union and, when Abraham Lincoln mobilized 15,000 soldiers, Virginia feared invasion and seceded. Lincoln’s purpose was to preserve the Union and not to free slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was in 1862, two years after the war began, and only freed slaves in states still in rebellion. Slaves in areas occupied by the Union army, such as the Eastern Shore, were not freed until the 13th amendment was ratified by Congress on December 6, 1865.
Abel Upshur (1790-1844) of the Eastern Shore gave the legal and constitutional justification for nullification and secession. He argued that the states were sovereign from their original formation and had never given up that sovereignty when they entered the union; the Constitution constructed a union that was of a federal (federation) nature distinctly different from a union of a national character. Regardless of the federal character of the union, sovereignty was indivisible and existed only in the individual states.
He also believed the Declaration of Independence only shifted sovereignty from the British crown to individual states. The Articles of Confederation confirmed this by declaring that “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress Assembled.” Whereas, the preamble to the Constitution declares “We the people of the United States,” he argued as a matter of record the States, not “the people of the United States” appointed delegates to the Convention at Philadelphia to represent the people of their states. The states, not “the people of the United States,” had the power to ratify or reject the constitution.
Upshur’s writings on nullification and secession were written 20 years before the Civil War and required reading for a generation of law students at the University of Virginia and William and Navy.
At the time the Civil War began, slavery had been woven into the cultural fabric of the Southern states over a period of 250 years. The legal and constitutional arguments of nullification and secession had become accepted dogma. The efficacy of the rhetoric on the morality and endurance of slavery was being questioned by many slave holders in the South. The War, invasion, and reconstruction brought enduring memories and monuments.
You can remove the memorials to this history but you can not remove the history.
Charles Landis lives in Onancock and is author of An Introduction to the History of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Contact is charland2@verizon.net
Carla Jasper says
Great article. Facts not fiction. Thank you.
Bill Neville says
A great and enlightening explanation of our history.
Thank You.
Paul Plante says
WOW!
Kudos for a rational, well-thought-out response to this hysteria that is being literally dumped on us American citizens by the most obnoxious and down-right pushy and holier-than-thou crowd I have ever encountered in this country, and that includes during the VEET NAM epoch, zealots who believe that it is their eyes, and their eyes alone, which have seen the glory of the coming of what, of course, would be their Lord and theirs alone, who they see as trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, which right now, means Confederate statues, so that their Lord hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, and the Confederate statues are coming down, glory hallelujah, say amen, his truth is marching on.
These people call themselves “progressives” as they seek, like ISIS in the Middle East, to destroy all history they don’t like to replace it with a falsified version which never happened, but which serves to transfer the balance of political power in their direction, but that is horse****, because a true progressive does not destroy history to sugarcoat it to trick and fool and gull and mislead people as these history book burners and midnight statue snatchers are trying to do as they skulk in the darkness while honest people are home asleep in their beds.
So whatever else they may be, these midnight skulkers who go creeping around in the dark to tear down Confederate statues are not progressives, period.
As to the points raised in the excellent essay, according to documented New York state history from that period, Abel Upshur (1790-1844) of the Eastern Shore was dead on the money when argued that the states were sovereign from their original formation and had never given up that sovereignty when they entered the union, and how anyone could come to a different conclusion save by altering history, eludes me.
These court-martial records from the publicly-available CALENDAR OF HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS RELATING TO THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION IN THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE ALBANY NY for Tuesday the 10th June 1777, make it incandescently clear, that in that year, 4 years before the Articles of Confederation, New York state was an independent nation:
The Court met pursuant to adjournment.
Present: Colonel STEPHEN J. SCHUYLER, President
Colonels:
Anthony Van Bergen
Jacobus Van Schoonhoven
Peter Vrooman
Peter Van Ness
Lieut. Col.:
Philip P. Schuyler
John H. Beekman
Henry K. Van Rensselaer
James Gordon
Cornelius Van Vechten
Majors:
Abraham Cuyler
Issac Goes
Captain:
Andrew Douw
Jacob Miller of Half Moon District in the County of Albany, being a Prisoner was brought before the Court & the Judge Advocate Exhibited the following charges against him Vizt
“You Jacob Miller stand charged for that you being a member of the state of New York, residing within the said state, protected by the Laws thereof & owing allegiance thereunto, on the 21st Day of March last and at Divers other days and Times both before & after and since the 16th Day of July 1776 at the District of Half Moon in the County of Albany, Wickedly, Traitorously & Treasonably & Contrary to your allegiance aforesaid Did levy war against the state of New York within the same whilst owing allegiance thereto, Enlist men for the service of the King of Great Britain now in actual war against the said state and being adherent to the said King of Great Britain & others the Enemys of the said state Contrary to the Resolution of the Convention of said state.”
The Prisoner pleads not Guilty to the Charge.
Friday 13th June
The Court met pursuant to adjournment.
Present as before.
The Judge Advocate having no further Evidence to produce the Court proceeded to the Consideration of the Evidence offered and are of the opinion that the Prisoner is Guilty of Levying war against the State & being adherent to the King of Great Britain and do sentence him to suffer death.
end quotes
That the Articles of Confederation four years later did nothing to change that independent nation status is obvious and apparent to someone of even moderate intelligence, as follows:
To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting.
Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
end quotes
Now, does the word “perpetual” in there have any real meaning, in light of what transpired ten months after the Constitutional Convention when nine states unilaterally scvered their political connections with that version of the “United States” created by the Articles of Confederation, and instead joined a new version that at the time of creation, excluded New York state?
What would have been the fate of the nation of New York had not ratified the new Constitution?
What would have been New York’s fate?
Clearly, when the nine states ratified and formed the new union, and thus unilaterally dissolved their supposed “perpetual” ties with New York state, which political ties had previously existed in supposed perpetuity pursuant to the Articles of Confederation, New York was an outcast nation, looked on with suspicion by the nine states in the New union, which New York was not a part of until forced to ratify, and as a result, New York was out in the cold, literally.
That is what I call the first secession, when those nine states seceded from the union created in perpetuity by the Articles of Confederation.
How did they do that legally – dissolve a union created in perpetuity with thirteen members to create a new union comprised of only nine of the original thirteen?
And that question in our history has never, ever been answered – it just happened.
So when it came time for the south to secede prior to the Civil War, does anyone in here seriously think those people making those decisions to leave the union were unaware or ignorant of what had transpired previously to another “union in perpetuity” when with some literal HOCUS-POCUS and ABACADABRA leavened with a dose of “plunk your magic twanger, Froggy,” nine states in the original perpetual union simply said to hell with it and walked away to form a new nation to replace the one created by the Article of Confederation?
If those nine states could do it, why not the states of the Confederacy?
My readings of history say they were well aware of that first secession, and there found their own justification for severing their ties with a political body that was no longer seen to be serving their needs.
Can any one of us today put forth a rational, not an emotional argument, as to why the second union would be perpetual when the first one clearly was not?
Can these so-called “progressives,” who aren’t progressive at all, do so?
And if not, then why are they so bent on destroying our history as it happened, in order to be able to replace it with a faux version that will have us no longer knowing how we became the troubled nation we clearly are today, precisely because we share no common values in this country, nor do we have any kind of shared political history?
Paul Plante says
As to Abraham Lincoln’s view of the “perpetutity” or lack thereof of the “union” at the time of the secession of the south and the commencement of the hostilities variously known as the War of the Rebellion in the north, or War of Northern Aggression in the south, perhaps our best evidence of that is to be found in his Letter to Horace Greeley, dated August 22, 1862.
By way of review, Greeley, who was the editor of the influential New York Tribune, had just addressed an editorial to Lincoln called “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” making demands and implying that Lincoln’s administration lacked direction and resolve.
President Lincoln wrote his reply when a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation already lay in his desk drawer.
His response revealed his concentration on preserving the Union.
The letter, which received acclaim in the North, stands as a classic statement of Lincoln’s constitutional responsibilities.
A few years after the president’s death, Greeley wrote an assessment of Lincoln.
He stated that Lincoln did not actually respond to his editorial but used it instead as a platform to prepare the public for his “altered position” on emancipation.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune.
If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them.
If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them.
If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union.
I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution.
The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.”
If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.
If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours,
A. Lincoln.
end quote
That is what Abraham Lincoln actually said about American history on that date, when he was alive, and none of us here in America today were.
He describes life in America as it existed at that time when he happened to be alive, and the problems he was confronted with as a result of the operative beliefs extant in America at that time, all of which these history book burners and midnight skulkers and statue snatchers would have buried because it offends them, and everybody in America should have to bend to their will, because.
This letter to Greeley on August 22, 1862 follows Lincoln’s “House Divided” Speech four years earlier in Springfield, Illinois on June 16, 1858, when more than 1,000 delegates met in the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse for the Republican State Convention, choosing Abraham Lincoln as their candidate for the U.S. Senate, running against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, after which Lincoln delivered this address to his Republican colleagues in the Hall of Representatives, wherein Lincoln stated as follows concerning the slavery question as it existed in America at that time:
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.
Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidence of design and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.
But, so far, Congress only, had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition.
Four days later, commenced the struggle, which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition.
This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.
This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of “squatter sovereignty,” otherwise called “sacred right of self government,” which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man, choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.
end quotes
There was a time in this country when we were supposed to know that speech, word for word for word, and the meaning of those words as they apply to the actions of which people, supposedly fellow human beings, but are they really, are capable of when unrestrained by any laws, as was the case back then, a point Lincoln makes with eloquence there when he talks about “squatter sovereignty.”
We were supposed to know those words so we would not be stupid enough to repeat those times of division in America that brought on that conflict.
Because Lincoln talks about slaves in this speech, should it be suppressed and buried and hidden like these Confederate statues are to be hidden?
Should we pretend Lincoln never made this speech, I wonder, because it might make some of these people in America today who are not in control of their emotions upset because it talks about a reality that existed in America before they were born that they want no mention made of today because it offends them?
But why would we do that?
Why would we bury our history to placate some few in America who don’t like it and don’t want to hear it?
Sounds silly to me, anyway.
As to the subject of human bondage, the Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people, who created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Kaganate, which sat astride a major artery of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia,
Known to history as Khazaria, it became one of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East and Kievan Rus’.
For some three centuries (c. 650–965) the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.
As to their economy, the import and export of foreign wares, and the revenues derived from taxing their transit, was a hallmark of the Khazar economy, though it is said also to have produced isinglass.
Distinctively among the nomadic steppe polities, the Khazar Qağanate developed a self-sufficient domestic Saltovo economy, a combination of traditional pastoralism – allowing sheep and cattle to be exported – extensive agriculture, abundant use of the Volga’s rich fishing stocks, together with craft manufacture, with a diversification in lucrative returns from taxing international trade given its pivotal control of major trade routes.
Of interest to this discussion, the Khazars constituted one of the two great furnishers of slaves to the Muslim market (the other being the Iranian Sâmânid amîrs), supplying it with captured Slavs and tribesmen from the Eurasian northlands.
It was profits from the latter which enabled it to maintain a standing army of Khwarezm Muslim troops.
The capital Atil reflected the division: Kharazān on the western bank where the king and his Khazar elite, with a retinue of some 4,000 attendants, dwelt, and Itil proper to the East, inhabited by Jews, Christians, Muslims and slaves and by craftsmen and foreign merchants.
end quotes
What is this Muslim slave market here which the Khazars were supplying with captured Slavs and tribesmen from the Eurasian northlands?
How come these do-gooders in this country who want people to believe that it was only white supremacists in the south who had slaves never talk about any of that?
Why do they skew history, one must wonder?
Paul Plante says
As one studies American history through each of the Federalist Papers, considering those Papers were written in 1787, in an attempt to gain a further understanding into how Americans in that period subsequent to the end of the War of the Revolution and before the Civil War thought about citizenship in this country, and any duties they as citizens might have owed to the federal government, versus their state governments, to which they owed allegiance after the Declaration of Independence, in FEDERALIST No. 2 for the Independent Journal by John Jay to the People of the State of New York, we find as follows:
WHEN the people of America reflect that they are now called upon to decide a question, which, in its consequences, must prove one of the most important that ever engaged their attention, the propriety of their taking a very comprehensive, as well as a very serious, view of it, will be evident.
Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.
end quotes
Think on that innocuous sounding statement for a moment – Whenever and however a government is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.
Is that a true statement?
Was it ever a true statement?
Is that something we would universally agree to do today?
Getting back to Federalist 2:
It is well worthy of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of America that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, or that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to the head of each the same kind of powers which they are advised to place in one national government.
end quotes
Now consider that when those words were written, there was as of yet no “United States of America’ as we think of the term today, because the Constitution had yet to be ratified, so there were not yet any “citizens of the United States of America,” as we think of ourselves today.
There were only citizens of the 13 separate and independent states and thus the question presented to the people of America at that time – It is well worthy of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of America that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government!
What were the ramifications of that?
And the answer is that back then, nobody really did now.
All they knew for certain was that the Articles of Confederation were no longer working and the 13 independent states which comprised the “United States of America” pursuant to the Articles of Confederation were on the verge of going to war with each other.
As to the concept of “national unity” extant in America at that time, whether we today can understand it or not, this is what Jay had to say in 1787:
It has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion that the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest citizens have been constantly directed to that object.
But politicians now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and that instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to seek it in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties.
However extraordinary this new doctrine may appear, it nevertheless has its advocates; and certain characters who were much opposed to it formerly, are at present of the number.
Whatever may be the arguments or inducements which have wrought this change in the sentiments and declarations of these gentlemen, it certainly would not be wise in the people at large to adopt these new political tenets without being fully convinced that they are founded in truth and sound policy.
end quotes
Consider that at that time, 1787, the people of America had no real experience with self-government in a time when the states were not at war with England, having been until lately subjects of a tyrant English king, so these were questions of great gravity, and as one reads the Federalist Papers from 1787, one can already see the conflict that became the War Between The States brewing.
It just took some time for the seeds to sprout, is all, but the seeds are right here before us in Federalist No 2, and this question of instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, should it instead be sought in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties.
At the time of secession, the people of the south, after long reflection, chose the latter option.
Can any of us alive today say those people alive back then were wrong to think as they did back then, starting with these statue-snatching zealots who believe that it is their eyes, and their eyes alone, which have seen the glory of the coming of what, of course, would be their Lord and theirs alone, who they see as trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, which right now, means Confederate statues, so that their Lord hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, and the Confederate statues are coming down, glory hallelujah, say amen, his truth is marching on?
As to the original “United States of America,” the version which existed between the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution, Federalist No. 2 provides us with this information:
A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people, at a very early period, to institute a federal government to preserve and perpetuate it.
They formed it almost as soon as they had a political existence; nay, at a time when their habitations were in flames, when many of their citizens were bleeding, and when the progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and well balanced government for a free people.
It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer.
This intelligent people perceived and regretted these defects.
Still continuing no less attached to union than enamored of liberty, they observed the danger which immediately threatened the former and more remotely the latter; and being pursuaded that ample security for both could only be found in a national government more wisely framed, they as with one voice, convened the late convention at Philadelphia, to take that important subject under consideration.
end quotes
People today think that the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention put an end to strife in this country, but not hardly.
To the contrary, the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention was the first step on the road to secession and the War of Northern Aggression, and as this discussion on Confederate monuments continues on, that is something each person in this nation should understand.
And why shouldn’t they, when as children in this nation at the close of the bloody chapter known as WWII, we were supposed to know our history so we wouldn’t be stupid enough to repeat it?
With that said, I once again return to Federalist No. 2, as follows, concerning the union versus a bunch of separate confederacies, to wit:
It is worthy of remark that not only the first, but every succeeding (Continental) Congress (subsequent to the Declaration of In dependence), as well as the late convention, have invariably joined with the people in thinking that the prosperity of America depended on its Union.
To preserve and perpetuate it was the great object of the people in forming that convention, and it is also the great object of the plan which the convention has advised them to adopt.
With what propriety, therefore, or for what good purposes, are attempts at this particular period made by some men to depreciate the importance of the Union?
Or why is it suggested that three or four confederacies would be better than one?
I am persuaded in my own mind that the people have always thought right on this subject, and that their universal and uniform attachment to the cause of the Union rests on great and weighty reasons, which I shall endeavor to develop and explain in some ensuing papers.
They who promote the idea of substituting a number of distinct confederacies in the room of the plan of the convention, seem clearly to foresee that the rejection of it would put the continuance of the Union in the utmost jeopardy.
That certainly would be the case, and I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim, in the words of the poet:
“FAREWELL!”
“A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS.”
Paul Plante says
“The Confederation was dissolved.”
Those were words spoken, not at the end of the War Between the States, or War of Northern Aggression as it is known here in the south, but circa 17 June, 1788, when news that New Hampshire had ratified the new Constitution came one week into the New York convention, and those words were spoken by a man known to subsequent as Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, an American lawyer, politician, diplomat from New York, and a Founding Father of the United States known as “The Chancellor”, after the high New York state legal office he held for 25 years.
Livingston was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Roger Sherman, so it can be presumed that he knew those times he was living in far better than any of us do today, including these self-righteous, holier-than-thous and midnight skulkers and statue snatchers who are bent on erasing our American history as it happened to replace it with some faux version of their own in their bid to gain political power over us in this country.
What just a few years earlier, but subsequent to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, had been deemed a “union in perpetutity,” was now gone, as Chancellor Livingston said, “dissolved,” and that by a vote of only nine of the 13 supposedly “united” states at that time.
That is what I call the “First Secession,” the secession from the original union that was to lead in an unbroken chain to the second secession, which occurred at the outbreak of the civil War.
By way of review, by the end of May 1788, proponents of the Constitution had secured the approval of eight state ratifying conventions.
Everything rested on the three remaining states: New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York.
According to Livingston in 1788 when news came that New Hampshire had ratified, “The question before the committee (New York state ratifying committee) was now a question of policy and expediency,” as New York state at that time had effectively been kicked out of the “united” states of America as it had previously existed.
News that Virginia had ratified reinforced Livingston‘s observation.
In An Address to the People of the State of New-York On the Subject of the Constitution, Agreed upon at Philadelphia, The 17th of September, 1787. New-York: Printed by Samuel Loudon, Printer to the State. 1788, by John Jay, member of the New York State Convention, the precarious position New York was being placed in by not joining the “new” United States of America was outlined as follows:
Consider my fellow citizens what you are about, before it is too late—consider what in such an event would be your particular case.
You know the geography of your State, and the consequences of your local position.
Jersey and Connecticut, to whom your impost laws have been unkind—Jersey and Connecticut, who have adopted the present plan, and expect much good from it—will impute its miscarriage and all the consequent evils to you.
They now consider your opposition as dictated more by your fondness for your impost, than for those rights to which they have never been behind you in attachment.
They cannot, they will not love you—they border upon you, and are your neighbors; but you will soon cease to regard their neighborhood as a blessing.
You have but one port and outlet to your commerce, and how you are to keep that outlet free and uninterrupted, merits consideration.
What advantage Vermont in combination with others, might take of you, may easily be conjectured; nor will you be at a loss to perceive how much reason the people of Long Island, whom you cannot protect, have to deprecate being constantly exposed to the depredations of every invader.
These are short hints—they ought not to be more developed—you can easily in your own mind dilate and trace them through all their relative circumstances and connections.
Pause then for a moment, and reflect whether the matters you are disputing about, are of sufficient moment to justify your running such extravagant risques.
Reflect that the present plan comes recommended to you by men and fellow citizens who have given you the highest proofs that men can give, of their justice, their love for liberty and their country of their prudence, of their application, and of their talents.
They tell you it is the best that they could form; and that in their opinion, it is necessary to redeem you from those calamities which already begin to be heavy upon us all.
You find that not only those men, but others of similar characters, and of whom you have also had very ample experience, advise you to adopt it.
You find that whole States concur in the sentiment, and among them are your next neighbors; both whom have shed much blood in the cause of liberty, and have manifested as strong and constant a predilection for a free Republican Government as any State in the Union, and perhaps in the world.
They perceive not those latent mischiefs in it, with which some double-sighted politicians endeavor to alarm you.
You cannot but be sensible that this plan or constitution will always be in the hands and power of the people, and that if on experiment, it should be found defective or incompetent, they may either remedy its defects, or substitute another in its room.
end quotes
So many years later, the southern states who did secede did find that Constitution to be defective or incompetent, so being unable to remedy its defects, they substituted another in its room, simple as that, and we fought a very bloody civil war as a result, as we seem to be getting set to do all over again as we watch state after state rebelling against the federal government in Washington, D.C.
This is all the history these history revisionists in this country want to sweep under the rug and hide away from us, to keep us ignorant, and therefore malleable and tractable.
Getting back to that history as it was expressed back then by John Jay in that address:
Who on a sick bed would refuse medicines from a physician, merely because it is as much in his power to administer deadly poisons, as salutary remedies.
You cannot be certain, that by rejecting the proposed plan you would not place yourself in a very awkward situation.
Suppose nine States should nevertheless adopt it, would you not in that case be obliged either to separate from the Union or rescind your dissent?
end quote
Obliged to separate from the union!
Hmmmmm, how about that.
Jay then continued as follows:
Consider then, how weighty and how many considerations advise and persuade the people of America to remain in the safe and easy path of Union; to continue to move and act as they hitherto have done, as a band of brothers; to have confidence in themselves and in one another; and since all cannot see with the same eyes, at least to give the proposed Constitution a fair trial, and to mend it as time, occasion and experience may dictate.
It would little become us to verify the predictions of those who ventured to prophecy, that peace: instead of blessing us with happiness and tranquility, would serve only as the signal for factions, discords and civil contentions to rage in our land, and overwhelm it with misery and distress.
Let us also be mindful that the cause of freedom greatly depends on the use we make of the singular opportunities we enjoy of governing ourselves wisely; for if the event should prove, that the people of this country either cannot or will not govern themselves, who will hereafter be advocates for systems, which however charming in theory and prospect are not reducible to practice.
If the people of our nation, instead of consenting to be governed by laws of their own making, and rulers of their own choosing, should let licentiousness, disorder, and confusion reign over them, the minds of men every where, will insensibly become alienated from republican forms, and prepared to prefer and acquiesce in Governments, which, though less friendly to liberty, afford more peace and security.
end quotes
And so the seeds that led to the creation of the Southern Confederacy were born, right there in those closing words of John Jay to the people of New York circa 1787.
Getting back to history, and to bring this to a close, the minutes of the New York ratifying convention, which we as children in this state were once required to know, back before knowledge of history became the forbidden subject it is becoming today, for the period July 19 – July 26, 1788 state as follows:
Lansing urged a “consideration [of] a draft of a conditional ratification, with a bill of rights prefixed, and amendments subjoined.”
[The Recorder: “Debates arose on the motion, and it was carried.” “The committee then proceeded to consider separately the amendments proposed in this plan of ratification.”]
The condition was that New York could secede from the Union if a convention had not been called in four years.
end quotes
There, people, is what gave the southern states so many years later their belief that that could secede from the Union.
That is American history as I learned it when young, and I will be damned today if I will un-learn that history and substitute a faux version of it to appease some very violent and totally ignorant crowd of juvenile history haters who want us all to be as ignorant as they are, and if they don’t like it, my refusal to bend to their will, well, that is just too bad, for I am not changing to suit their model of what an American citizen is supposed to be.
Mary Dawkins says
I appreciate all of the history that you post, Mr. Landis.