CORRUPTION OF BLOOD: Part One
Robert F. Wangrud
Behold! Newsletter - October, 1990
by Robert W. Wangrud
with revisions and commentary
Copyright February, 2010
[Editor's Note: Perhaps the reader is following a link to this page from a discussion of interracial marriage. Interracial marriage accomplishes in fact what the legislatures envisioned in the delusional change in law after the Civil War. Rather than truly setting a people free, they used them and their condition to alter the fundamental law of the original Nation and their Posterity. The supposedly freed men were not elevated in status but the original Citizens were eventually brought down to bondage in the superficial attempt to make them equal; this of course does not help the situation of those supposedly released from bondage. Read these debates and see that the freedmen were not brought into the mainstream of liberty enjoyed by the Posterity of this Nation under the Judicial power of the States or united States; instead, a military jurisdiction was extended over all people. Through these debates, amendments and laws, legislators set the stage for the ultimate corruption of blood, marriage outside of your race, which obstructs the Common Law of both Peoples, not achievable through mere legislation. More elaboration will be found on this subject, for the benefit of all races, in a coming essay. Meanwhile, let's review the legislative history of our current events as presented by Robert Wangrud.]
The questions many have on their minds today are: Just what is the CONDITION OF THE REPUBLIC? Is the posterity of "We, the People" destroyed? Can the Republic as it once stood be reformed?
Nationally, today, the Republic is under a socialistic power enforced by a military venue and a martial law jurisdiction under the authority of the President of the United States and regulated by the socialist Congress. The legislatures of the several States have either been forced or have willingly cooperated in reforming America by converting the Christian Republic of our Nation into a Socialistic Republic under National Military Rule, i.e., Martial Rule.
This trend to reform America into a Socialistic Republic began in earnest with the 39th Congress. The 39th Congress of the United States convened in the Capitol at Washington on the 4th day of December, 1865.
The Civil War had been considered ended even though the Southern States were still under military authority (martial law) and the Southern States were not allowed to be represented in the House or Senate (at the time of the 39th Congress).
Only Congressmen and Senators from the Northern States were represented in the 39th Congress, which means the conditions of the Republic we live in and by today are a direct result from a Congress that did not have representation by Congressmen or Senators from eleven of the several States, and thus it was a Congress that convened with the full power of martial law to enforce all of its legislation.
The 39th Congress convened after President Lincoln had been slain and Andrew Johnson had assumed the office of President of the United States for America.
One positive note about President Johnson is that he fought to preserve the Christian Republic as founded by our forefathers and as accepted by the people known as "We, the People."
He was eventually impeached by the socialistic Congress for his effort. Therefore, Andrew Johnson never committed the crime of Corruption of Blood as many of the members of both houses of Congress did during the events of the 39th Congress.
For those who don't understand the term "Corruption of Blood" it simply means to commit treason against your race.
One such act of treason occurred over the issue of voting in the District of Columbia.
"Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the authority of Congress to legislate for States loyal or disloyal, or for Territories, there is entire unanimity as to the power and duty of Congress to enact laws for the District of Columbia. Here there is no countercurrent of 'reserved rights' or 'State sovereignty' as opposed to the authority of Congress.
"Congress being responsible for the legislation of the District of Columbia, we naturally look in that direction for an exhibition in miniature of the policy of the national legislature on questions relating to the interest of the nation at large." History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States by William H. Barnes, A.M., p. 50.
[Editor's Note: This book is available to download as a text file or PDF file.]
The words come to mind, "So goes the District of Columbia, so goes the Nation!" To support this idea is to also support an all-powerful central national government and a policy to destroy the sovereignty of the several States, which is the main object of the majority of the 39th Congress.
For example, the statement of Mr. Wilson of Iowa:
"Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, whose duty it was, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to report the bill, opened the discussion by speaking as follows in favor of the measure:
'Can we excuse ourselves in continuing a limitation on the right of suffrage in the capital of the republic that has no justification in reason, justice or in the principles on which we profess to have based our entire political system? Upon this question there seems to have been but little difference of opinion among the men who laid the foundation and built the superstructure of the Government. In those days no limitation was placed upon the enjoyment of the defensive rights of the citizen, including the right of suffrage, on account of the color of the skin, except in the State of South Carolina. All of the other States participating in the formation of the Government of the United States had some limitation, based on sex, or age, or property placed upon the right of suffrage; but none of them so far forgot the spirit of our Constitution, the great words of the Declaration of Independence, or the genius of our institutions, as to inquire into the color of a citizen before allowing him the great defensive right of the ballot." Ibid, p. 51.
This statement by Wilson is a total lie. Anyone who examines the evidence knows that the established law from the beginning of America was that only one race, the White Race, would govern America.
There were members in Congress back then who spoke the truth.
[Editor's Note: The following is a political statement which reflects upon the wisdom of including another race of people into the ranks of the Founding Race. Courts will not rule upon political questions but will rule upon matters of law as presented elsewhere in this article.]
"Mr. Boyer, of Pennsylvania, said:
'The design of this bill is to inaugurate here, upon this most conspicuous state, the first act of the new political drama which is intended to culminate in the complete political equality of the races and the establishment of negro suffrage throughout the States. Constitutional amendments with this view have been already introduced at both ends of the Capitol. The object of the leaders of this movement is no longer concealed; and if there is any thing in their action to admire, it is the candor, courage, and ability with which they press their cause. The agitation is to go on until the question has been settled by the country, and it may as well be met here upon the threshold. This monstrous proposition is nothing less than the absorption into the body politic of the nation of colored population equal to one-sixth of all the inhabitants of the country, as the census reports will show. Four millions of the population so to be amalgamated have been just set free from a servitude, the debasing influences of which have many a time been vividly depicted in the antislavery speeches of the very men who are the most prominent champions of this new political gospel.
'The argument in favor of the American negro's right to vote must be measured by his capacity to understand and his ability to use such right for the promotion of the public good. And that is the very matter in dispute. But the point does not turn simply upon the inferiority of the negro race; for difference without inferiority may unfit one race for political or social assimilation with another, and render their fusion in the same government incompatible with the general welfare. It is, as I conceive, upon these principles that we settle the question whether this is a white man's government.
'The negro has no history of civilization. From the earliest ages of recorded time he has ever been a savage or a slave. He has populated with teaming millions the vast extent of a continent, but in no portion of it has he ever emerged from barbarism, and in no age or country has he ever established any other stable government than a despotism. But he is the most obedient and happy of slaves." Ibid, p. 54.
[Editor's Note: See also the political reasoning in the Treatise by Judge Tombs, link to be provided later.]
These men who stood for God, Country and Race were few as only the brave would at this time speak out and run the risk of being called a traitor to the new socialist republic. Of course, the colored race received the privilege of voting in the District of Columbia and after the passage of the 15th amendment, under conditions of martial law, the voting privilege was extended to the colored in the several States. Is this not a loss of State Sovereignty over who could vote which was established by the original constitutions of those States?
The 39th Congress knew they could not perpetually maintain full martial law over the Southern States so they schemed to make a lesser form of martial law perpetual over these States. One such scheme was the Freedman's Bureau Bill.
"On the 19th of December Mr. Trumbull gave notice that 'on some early day' he would 'introduce a bill to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau so as to secure freedom to all persons within the United Sates, and protect every individual in the full enjoyment of the rights of person and property, and furnish him with means for their vindication.' Of the introduction of this measure he said it would be done 'in view of the adoption of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. I have never doubted that, on the adoption of that amendment, it would be competent for Congress to protect every person in the United States in all the rights of person and property belonging to a free citizen; and to secure these rights is the object of the bill which I propose to introduce. I think it important that action should be taken on this subject at an early day, for the purpose of quieting apprehensions in the minds of many friends of freedom, lest by local legislation or prevailing public sentiment in some of the States, persons of African race should continue to be oppressed, and, in fact, deprived of their freedom; and for the [word missing in original text] also, of showing to those among whom slavery has heretofore existed, that unless by local legislation they provide for the real freedom of their former slaves, the Federal Government will, by virtue of its own authority, see that they are fully protected.
"On the 5th day of January, 1866, the first day of the session of Congress after the holidays, Mr. Trumbull obtained leave to introduce a bill 'to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau.' The bill was read twice by its title, and as it contained provisions relating to the exercise of judicial functions by the officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, under certain circumstances, in the late insurgent States, it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
"On the 11th of January Mr. Trumbull reported the bill from the Judiciary Committee, to whom it had been referred, with some amendments of a verbal character. On the following day these amendments were considered by the Senate, in Committee of the Whole, and adopted. The consideration of the bill as amended was deferred to a subsequent day.
"The bill provided that 'the act to establish a Bureau for the relief of Freedmen and Refugees, approved March 3, 1865, shall continue until otherwise provided for by law, and shall extend to refugees and freedmen in all parts of the United States. The President is to be authorized to divide the section of country containing such refugees and freedmen into districts, each containing one or more States, not to exceed twelve in number, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint an assistant commissioner for each district, who shall give like bond, scribed by the act and the act to which it is an amendment. The Bureau may, in the discretion of the President, be placed under a commissioner and assistant commissioners to be detailed from the army, in which event each officer so assigned to duty is to serve without increase of pay or allowances.
"The commissioner, with the approval of the President, is to divide each district into a number of sub-districts, not to exceed the number of counties or parishes in each State, and to assign to each sub-district at least one agent, either a citizen, officer of the army, or enlisted man, who, if an officer, is to serve without additional compensation or allowance, and if a citizen or enlisted man, is to receive a salary not exceeding $1,500 per annum. Each assistant commissioner may employ not exceeding six clerks, one of the third class and five of the first class, and each agent of a sub-district may employ two clerks of the first class. The President of the United States through the War Department and the commissioner, is to extend military jurisdiction and protection over all employees, agents, and officers of the Bureau ..." Ibid, pp. 104-106.
Notice the bill provides for the President to establish districts and sub-districts; of course what is being done here is the establishment of districts within a regional area under a military jurisdiction. Mr. Trumbull wished to extend the power of the Freedmen's Bureau and empower it with the power of the federal militia under the authority of martial law. One Senator from Indiana saw this as an act to bring martial law over all of the States of the Union.
"On the following day, Mr. Hendricks presented his objections to the bill in a speach of considerable length. He was followed by Mr. Trumbull in reply. As both were members of the Judiciary Committee from which the bill was reported, and both had carefully considered the reasons for and against the measure, their arguments are given at length.
"Mr. Hendricks said:
'At the last session of Congress the original law creating the bureau was passed. We were then in the midst of the war; very considerable territory had been brought within the control of the Union troops and armies, and within the scope of that territory, it was said, there were many freedmen who must be protected by a bill of that sort; and it was mainly upon that argument that the bill was enacted. The senate was very reluctant to enact the law creating the bureau as it now exists. There was so much hesitancy on the part of the Senate that by a very large vote it refused to agree to the bill reported by the Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Sumner,] from a committee of conference, and I believe the honorable Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Trumbull,] who introduced this bill, himself voted against that bill; and why? That bill simply undertook to define the powers and duties of the Freedmen's Bureau and its agents, and the Senate would not agree to confer the powers that the bill upon its face seemed to confer, and it was voted down; and then the law as it now stands was enacted in general terms. There was very little gained, indeed, by the Senate refusing to pass the first bill and enacting the latter, for under the law as it passed, the Freedmen's Bureau assumed very nearly all the jurisdiction and to exercise all the powers contemplated in the bill reported by the Senator from Massachusetts.
'Now, sir, it is important to note very carefully the enlargement of the powers of the bureau proposed by this bill; and in the first place, it proposes to make the bureau permanent. The last Congress would not agree to this. The bill that the senate voted down did not limit the duration of the bureau, and it was voted down, and the bill that the Senate agreed to provided that the bureau should continue during the war and only for one year after its termination. That was the judgment of the Senate at the last session. What has occurred since to change the judgment of the Senate in this imortant matter? What change in the condition of the country induces the Senate now to say that this shall be a permanent bureau or department of the Government, when at the last session it said it should cease to exist within one year after the conclusion of the war? Why, sir it seems to me that the country is now, and especially the Southern states are now in better condition than the senate had reason to expect when the law was enacted. Civil government has been restored in almost all the Southern States; the courts are restored in many of them; in many localities they are exercising their jurisdiction within their particular localities without let or hindrance; and why I ask Senators, shall we make this bureau a perpetual and permanent institution of the Government when we refused to do it at the last session?
'I ask Senators, in the first place, if they are now, with the most satisfactory information that is before the body, willing to do that which they refused to do at the last session of Congress? We refused to pass the law when it proposed to establish a permanent department. Shall we now, when the war is over, when the States are returning to their places in the Union, when the citizens are returning to their allegiance, when peace and quiet, to a very large extent prevail over that county, when the courts are re-established; is the Senate now, with this information before it, willing to make this a permanent bureau and department of the Government?
'The next proposition of the bill is, that it shall not be confined any longer to the southern states,, but that it shall have a government over the States of the North as well as of the South. The old law allowed the President to appoint a commissioner for each o the States that had been declared to be in rebellion - one for each of the eleven seceding States, not to exceed ten in all. This bill provides that the jurisdiction of the bureau shall extend where, within the limits of the United States, refugees or freedmen have gone. Indiana has not been a State in insurrection, and yet there are thousands of refugees and freedmen who have gone into that State within the last three years. This bureau is to become a governing power over the State of Indiana according to the provisions of the bill. Indiana, that provides for her own paupers, Indiana, that provides for the government of her own people, may, under provision of the bill be placed under a government that our fathers never contemplated - a government that must be most distasteful to freemen.'" Ibid, pp. 108-110.
Senator Hendricks recognized that the Regional National Agency would have the National Military power even in the Northern States should the Black Race or any part of them decide to reside in Indiana. The Senator realized this condition would place the Citizens of Indiana under a military venue and a martial law jurisdiction as they interacted with the freedmen.
Next Senator Hendricks complains of the cost of the Freedmen's Bureau:
"'How is it that a department that has but a partial jurisdiction over the people shall cost almost as much for the management of four million people as it cost to manage the whole Government, for its army, its navy, its legislative and judicial departments, in former years? My learned friend from Kentucky suggests that the expenses under John Quincy Adams' administration were about thirteen million dollars. What was the population of the United States at that time I am not prepared to state. But it was fare about four millions. Now, to manage four million people is to cost the people of the United States, under law as it stands, nearly as much as it cost the people to manage the whole affairs of the Government under the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams.'" Ibid, p. 111.
I ask you: How much has been the cost to maintain the black race today? How far have they advanced? One should consider whether or not Mr. Wilson of Iowa would, today, if he examined the experiment he supported and evaluated his assumption if he would decide he was wrong. Most of the excuses I read today why the black race are still below the standard of the Whites' Race are the same excuses I read that were made by the 39th Congress. I believe we can call this "experiment" a failure.
Senator Hendricks further recognizes the military takeover of Indiana.
"'Then, sir, when this army of officers has been organized, the bill provides: 'And the President of the United States, through the War Department and the commissioner, shall extend military jurisdiction and protection over all employees, agents, and officers of this bureau.
'Will some Senator be good enough to tell me what that means? If Indiana be declared a State within which are found refugees and freedmen, who have escaped from the Southern States, and if Indiana has a commissioner appointed to her, and if in each county of Indiana there be a sub-commissioner at a salary of $1,500 a year, with two clerks with a salary of $1,200 each, and then the War Department throws over this little army of office-holders in the State of Indiana its protection, what does that mean? The people of Indiana have been ground hard under the military authority and power within the last three or four years, but it was borne because it was hoped that when the war would be closed the military power would be withdrawn from the State. Under this bill it may be established permanently upon the people by a body of men protected by the military power of the Government. An officer is appointed to the State of Indiana to regulate the contracts which are made between the white people and the colored people of that State, and because he holds this office, not military in its character, involving no military act whatever, the military throws over him its iron shield of protection. What does that mean? I this officer shall do a great wrong and outrage to one of the people, and the wronged citizen appeals to the court for his redress and brings his suit for damages, does the protecting shield of the War Department prevent the prosecution of that suit and recovery of a judgment? What is the protection that is thrown over this army of office-holders? Let it be explained.'" Ibid, p. 112.
How many Regional National Agencies do we have in every State, County, and City in America today that are extended from the National military venue / martial law jurisdiction? Every one of them is the answer.
Senator Hendricks next shows how property rights are considered under a military venue / martial law jurisdiction:
"'The fifth section, as amended by the proposition before the Senate, proposes to confirm the possessory right of the colored people upon these lands for three years from the date of that order, or about two years from this time. ... I have no doubt that General Sherman had the power, as a military commander, at the time, to set apart the abandoned lands along the coast as a place in which to leave the colored people then surrounding his army; but that General Sherman during the war, or that Congress after the war, except by a proceeding for confiscation, can take land permanently from one person and give it to another, I do not admit; nor did General Sherman undertake to do that. In express terms, he said that they should have the right of possession; for what length of time he did not say, for the reason that he could not say. It was a military possession that he conferred, and that possession would last only during the continuance of the military occupation, and no longer. If General Sherman, by his General Order No. 15, placed the colored people upon the lands along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, for a temporary purpose, what was the extent of the possessory right which he could confer? He did not undertake to give title for any defined period, but simply the right of possession. It is fair to construe his order as meaning only what he could do, giving the right of possession during military occupancy. Now, sir, the President informs us that the rebellion is suppressed; that the war is over; that military law no longer governs in that country; but that peace is restored, and that civil law shall now govern. What, then, is the law upon the subject? A right of posseion is given by the commanding general to certain persons with that region of country; peace follows, and with peace comes back the right of the real owners to the possession. This possession that the General undertook to give, according to the law, could not last longer than the military occupancy. When peace comes, the right of the owners return with it.'" Ibid, p. 114-115.
Clearly, only the right of possession is available under a military venue / martial law jurisdiction. If the posterity of those who formed the original body politic joined the body politic formed by the Regional National social security act, would not the posterity then have lost their right of property under the common law principle of DROIT-DROIT? (See also, Dreit-Dreit)
"DROIT-DROIT. A double right; that is, the right of possession and the right of property. These two rights were, by the theory of our ancient law, distinct; and the above phrase was used to indicate the concurrence o both in one person, which concurrence was necessary to constitute a complete title to land. Mozley & Whitley." Black's Law Dictionary, 2nd Ed., (1910), West Pub., p. 399, title: Droit-Droit
[Editor's Note: You can see the word droit used singularly in the French copyright warning at the beginning of many rental movies on videotape and DVD.]
Senator Hendricks is clearly showing that under a military venue / martial law jurisdiction that only the right of possession is recognized. Isn't this the attitude of the officials today that person as defined by statue are not owners of property but only have a statutory privilege of possession? You know it is. Then is it not also true that the two body politics formed under the 14th amendment and the Social Security Act are under a military venue / martial law jurisdiction? You know they are. Senator Hendricks next addresses the issue of State Sovereignty:
"'The General Government may buy land when it is necessary for the exercise of any of its powers; but outside of that, it seems to me, there is no power within the Constitution allowing it.
'The most remarkable sections of the bill, however, are the seventh and eighth, and to those sections I will ask for the careful attention of Senator; for I think if we can pass those two sections, and make them law, then indeed this Government can do anything. It will be useless to speak any longer of limitations upon the power of the General Government; it will be idle to speak of the reserved power of the States; State rights and State power will have passed away if we can do what is proposed in the seventh and eighth sections of this bill. We propose, first, to legislate against the effects of 'local law, ordinance, police, or other regulation;' then against 'custom,' and lastly, against 'prejudice,' and to provide that 'if any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons' are denied to any person because of color, then that person shall be taken under the military protection of the Government. I do not know whether that will be understood to extend to Indiana or not. That will be a very nice point for the bureau to decide, I presume, after the enactment of the law. The section limits its operation to 'any State or district in which the ordinary course of judicial proceeding has been interrupted by the rebellion.' It will be difficult to say whether in the State of Indiana and Ohio the ordinary course of judicial proceeding has or has not been interrupted. We had some war in Indiana; we had a very great raid through that State and some fighting; and I presume that in some cases the proceedings of the courts were interrupted and the courts were unable to go on with their business, so that is might be said that even in some of the Northern States this provision of the bill would be applicable. Suppose that it were applicable to the state of Indiana, then every man in that State, who attempted to execute the constitution and laws of the State, would be liable for a violation of the law. We do not allow to colored people there, many civil rights and immunities which are enjoyed by the white people. It became the policy of the State in 1852 to prohibit the immigration of colored people into that State. I am not going to discuss the question whether that was a wise policy or not. A the time it received the approval of my judgment. Under that constitutional provision, and the laws enacted in pursuance of it, a colored man coming into the State since 1852 can not acquire title to real estate, can not make certain contracts, and no negro man is allowed to intermarry with a white woman. These are civil rights that are denied, and yet this bill proposes, if they are still denied in any State whose courts have been interrupted by the rebellion, the military protection of the Government shall be extended over the person who is thus denied such civil rights or immunities.
'The next section of the bill provides punishments where any of these things are done, where any right is denied to a colored man which under State law is allowed to a white man. The language is very vague, and it is very difficult to say what this section will mean. If it has as broad a construction as is attempted to be given to the second section of the constitutional amendment, I would not undertake to guess what it means. Any man who shall deny to any colored man any civil rights secured to white persons, shall be liable to be taken before the officers of this bureau and to be punished according to the provisions of this section. In the first place now that peace is restored, now that there is no war, now that men are no longer under military rule, but are under civil rule, I want to know how such a court can be organized, how it is that the citizen may be arrested without indictment, and may be brought before the officers of this bureau and tried without jury, tried without the forms which the Constitution requires.'" Ibid, pp. 116-117
How can a court be organized? Consider a court organized by statue passed by Congress under its power to legislate under martial law. This court could be created in appearance to look and to proceed as any court would that was not under a military venue / martial law jurisdiction. The judge would not be in uniform or referred to as a judge advocate (as a judge is in a military tribunal). The court would appear as the regular court exercising the judicial power of the United States or the States, but it would be supervised b the military venue / martial law jurisdiction as legislated by Congress under any of the three forms of martial law. [See March, 1990 issue of Behold!] Is there any evidence this is true today?
Look at the Flag of the United States that is displayed in the court. It has a fringe border around it, doesn't it? Nowhere in the information I have of the description of the National Flag of the United States does the authority for a fringe exist outside of a military venue and a martial law jurisdiction.
"The placing of a fringe on the national flag, the dimensions of the flag and the arrangement of the stars in the union are matter of detail not controlled by statute, but are with the discretion of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy.
"Ancient custom sanctions the use of fringe on the regimental colors and standards, but there seems to be no good reason or precedent for its use on other flags." The Adjutant General of the Army, March 28, 1924; 34 Op. Atty. Gen. 483, 485 (1925).
The military does require the fringe to be used on their flags.
AR 840-10, 1 October 1979
"2-3. Sizes and occasions for display.
"b. National flags listed below are for indoor display and for use in ceremonies and parades. For these purposes the United States flag will be rayon banner cloth, trimmed on three sides with golden yellow fringe, 2 1/2 inches wide. It will be the same size as the flags displayed or carried with it.
"c. Authorization for indoor display.
"(4) each military courtroom."
The display of the military's fringed United States flag outside of military venue / martial law jurisdiction is prohibited by their own regulations.
AR 840-10, 1 October 1979
"1-6 Restrictions. The following limitations and prohibitions are applicable to flags, guidons, streamers, and components.
"e. Unauthorized use of official flags, guidons, and streamers. Display or use of flags, guidons, and streamers or replicas thereof, including those presently or formerly carried by US Army units, by other than the office, individual, or organization for which authorized, is prohibited except as indicated in (3) below.
"(3) Recognized United States Army division associations ..."
All that needs to be uncovered is the President's Proclamation or Executive Order that the yellow fringed flag be installed in the State and federal courts - or is it the venue of the case which automatically places the military flag in the courts of the civil authorities? - and you can prove the courts under Article III (possessing the judicial power of the United States) or the State courts of record (having common law jurisdiction) are in suspension.
The President does have the power to do this in any court, State or federal, that hears cases either civil or criminal involving the enforcement of law proceeding from any Regional Title such as 26 USC or 42 USC, etc. Title 18 USC 241-242 are statutes protecting the body politic under the 13th and 14th amendments, which places them within the military venue / martial law jurisidiction.
Any court, State or federal, hearing cases under these statutes would fly the yellow fringed flag.
As far as I can determine it, there are only two courts on the federal level that have both criminal and civil jurisdiction and these are courts established under Article III and military courts. In the States, only two courts have criminal and civil jurisdiction; these are courts in possession of the judicial power of the State (Common Law Courts) or legislative courts under the federal military venue / martial law jurisdiction.
What is the difference between the criminal jurisdiction of a State court of common law jurisdiction and a State legislative court under federal military venue /martial law jurisdiction? It is simply that a State court of common law jurisdiction must prove hardship or damage to justify its criminal jurisdiction (as determined by a jury).
This is a criminal jurisdiction that is purely statutory, as compared to a common law criminal jurisdiction which is determined by a jury (either petit or grand) and not by statue. But a petit or grand jury under the common law could only be composed of Citizens as known and understood by the original constitution, either State or federal, whereas a jury (either petit or grand) under a military venue / martial law jurisdiction could only be composed of persons as defined by statute.
Legislative statues (either State or federal) only describe persons as found in the body politic under the 14th amendment or the Social Security Act.
Patriots across this Nation are demanding common law juries. What these people don't realize is common law jurors can only be called up from the body politic formed under the statute of 1776 (Declaration of Independence and its counterpoint, Citizens of the State). Those defined as persons by statute are not qualified to sit as a jury under the common law jurisdiction.
This is one of the purposes of the rescission program we offer, to reform the original body politic from where the common law jurors are drawn. How can any person demand that which does not exist? Only by reforming the original body politic can juries of common law jurisdiction be possible.
Senator Hendricks poses another question about how the Freedmen's Bill will hit at the core of State sovereignty:
"'Suppose a minister, when called upon, should refuse to solemnize a marriage between a colored man and white woman because the law of the State forbade it, would he then, refusing to recognize a civil right which is enjoyed by a white person, be liable for this punishment?
'I regard it as a very dangerous legislation. It proposes to establish a government within a government - not a republic within a republic, but a cruel despotism within a republic. In times of peace, in communities that are quiet and orderly, and obedient to law, it is proposed to establish a government not responsible to the people, the officers of which are not selected by the people, the officers of which need not be of the people governed - a government more cruel, more despotic, more dangerous to the liberties of the people than against which our forefathers fought in the Revolution. There is nothing that these men may not do, under this bill, to oppress the people.
'I have not heard, since Congress met, that any colored man has done a wrong in this country for many years; and I have scarcely heard that any white man coming in contact with colored people has done right for a number of years. Everybody is expected to take sides for the colored man against the white man. If I have to take sides, it will be with men of my own color and my own race ...'" Ibid, pp. 118-119.
Senator Hendrick's last statement holds true; white men can have all the compassion for the other races they wish; but when it comes down to committing Corruption of Blood, he had better stand with own race.
Senator Hendricks was not the only voice against Congress imposing a military venue / martial law jurisdiction over the Nation; Mr. Ritter of Kentucky also strenuously opposed the Freedmen's Bill.
Very strenuous opposition to the passage of the bill was made by most of the members from Kentucky. Mr. Ritter, of that State, uttered his earnest protest at considerable length against the measure. He presented his views of the "'grand purposes and designs of those who introduced this bill.'" In his opinion they intended "'to commence a colony in each one of the five States above named, which ultimately to drive out the entire white population of those States and fill their places with the negro race.'" And whether this is the design or not, it is certain, in my judgment, to have this effect. And they could not have devised a more effectual scheme for that purpose.
"'Sir, it is not to be expected that the two races will live contentedly where there are large number of the colored people living near to neighborhoods settled with white persons. Experience has proved to many of us that wherever large numbers of colored people live, that the white people living within five or ten miles of the place becomes sufferers to a very large extent. Now, sir, if this should be the case (as I have no doubt it will) in the States in which you purpose to establish these people, the whites and blacks will disagree to such an extent that, when people find that the colored people are permanently established, they will be compelled in self defense, to seek a home somewhere else. No doubt, Mr. Speaker, but that those who prepared this bill saw that the difficulties and disagreements to which I have just alluded would arise, and hence they require that military jurisdiction and protection shall be extended, so as to give safety in their movements; and if the white inhabitants become dissatisfied, the commissioner is prepared with authority by this bill to buy them out and put the negroes upon the land.'" Ibid, pp. 149-150.
Mr. Ritter's statements are true even to the present day; most regional government agencies do cater to the non-white races.
"Mr. McDougall have subsequently obtained the floor, make the remark:
'I, being a white man, say for the white men and white women that they will take care of themselves. This bill was not made for white women or white men, or white men and women's children.'" Ibid, p. 163.
President Andrew Johnson sent along with his veto of the Freedmen's Bill his objections in writing. Here are some of his statements: (pay attention)
"'In those eleven States the bill subjects any white person who may be charged with depriving a freedman of 'any civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons' to imprisonment or fine, or both, without, however, defining the 'civil rights and immunities' which are thus to be secured to the freedmen by military law. This military jurisdiction also extends to all questions that may arise respecting contracts.'" Ibid, p. 165.
Notice the bill's definition of a crime requires deprivation of statutory "civil rights or immunities" to freedmen, again jail and fine determining statutory crimes. The common law definition of a crime is that hardship or damage has been done and determined by a jury, not the legislators.
"'The punishment will be, not what the law declares, but such as a court-martial may think proper; and from these arbitrary tribunals there lies no appeal, no writ of error to any of the courts in which the Constitution of the United States vest exclusively the Judicial power of the country.'" Ibid, p. 165.
This is just what we face today in the regional federal Courts. These Courts are not Courts in possession of the judicial power of the united States; even the appellant Courts carry the same military jurisdiction. The supreme Court under these conditions is barred from using the judicial power of the united States in a military jurisdiction. Whether or not the supreme Court should be accepting cases within a military jurisdiction is highly questionable.
On the question of land - when President Andrew Johnson made the following statement - remember that the due process he is referring to is the due process of the Fifth Article in Amendment as the 14th amendment had not been passed yet.
"'In addition to the objections already stated, the fifth section of the bill proposes to take away land from its former owners without any legal proceeding being first had, contrary to that provision of the Constitution which declares that no person shall 'be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' It does not appear that a part of the lands to which this section refers may not be owned by minors or persons of unsound mind, or by those who have been faithful to all their obligations as citizens of the United State. If any portion of the land is held by such persons, it is not competent for any authority to deprive them of it. If, on the other hand, it be found that the property is liable to confiscation, even then it can not be appropriated to public purposes until, by due process of law, it shall be declared forfeited to the Government.
'In this connection the query presents itself, whether the system proposed by the bill will not, when put into complete operation, practically transfer the entire care, support, and control of four million emancipated slaves to agents, overseers, or task-masters, who, appointed at Washington, are to be located in every county and parish throughout the United States containing freedmen and refugees? Such a system would inevitably tend to a concentration of power in the Executive which would enable him, if so disposed, to control the action of this numerous class and use them for the attainment of his own political ends.'" Ibid, pp. 167-168.
Andrew Johnson's last remark is interesting, as he indicates that the people should decide the issue - which was the furthest thing in the minds of the turncoats in the 39th Congress.
"'In accordance with the Constitution, I return the bill to the Senate, in the earnest hope that a measure involving questions and interests so important to the country will not become a law unless, upon deliberate consideration by the people, it shall receive the sanction of an enlightened public judgment." Ibid, p. 170.
The 39th Congress voted to override the President's veto on both the first and the second versions of the Freedmen's Bill and made it law in violation of the organic law of the nation.
Also before the 39th Congress was the Civil Rights Bill.
"'The preceding Congress having proposed an amendment to the Constitution by which slavery should be abolished, and this amendment have been 'ratified by three-fourths of the several States,' four millions of the inhabitants of the United States were transformed from slaves into freemen. To leave them with their shackles broken off, unprotected, in a new and undefined position, would have been a sin against them only surpassed in enormity by the original crime of their enslavement.
'As provided in the amendment itself, it devolved upon Congress 'to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.' The Thirty-Ninth Congress assembled, realizing that it devolved upon them to define the extent, privileges, and duties of the freedmen. That body was not slow in meeting the full measure of its responsibility." Ibid, p. 188.
Notice - the language of the power clause of section two of the Thirteenth Amendment is the language of martial law.
"Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." 13th amendment, section 2.
Mr. Johnson of Maryland, even though in favor of conferring citizenship on the Negro, has a hard time justifying this bill due to the unauthorized power which Congress would self-appoint to itself.
"Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, made a speech in which he expressed himself as in favor of conferring citizenship upon the negro, and yet unable to vote for this bill from the opinion he entertained on 'the question of power.' He referred to the Dred Scott and other decisions, and showed their bearing upon the legislation now proposed. He said: 'I have been exceeding anxious individually that there should be some definition which will rid this class of our people from that objection. If the Supreme Court decision is a binding one, and will be followed in the fuure, this la which we are now about to pass will be held, of course, to be of no avail, as far as it professes to define what citizenship is, because it gives the rights of citizenship to all persons without distinction of color, and, of course, embraces Africans or descendants of Africans.'" Ibid, p. 198.
But, Mr. Davis of Kentucky in his opposition of the bill, had no problem with the fact that Congress couldn't justify its position.
Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, spoke against the propriety and constitutionality of making all negroes citizens of he United States. He said:
"'There never was a colony before the Declaration of Independence, and there never was a State after the Declaration of Independence, up to the time of the adoption of the Constitution, so far as I have been able to learn by the slight historical examination which I have given to the subject, that ever made or attempted to make any other person than a person who belonged to one of the nationalities of Europe a citizen. I invoke the chairman of the committee to give me an instance, to point to any history or any memento, where a negro, although that negro was born in America, was ever made a citizen of either of the States of the United States before adoption of this Constitution. The whole material out of which citizens were made previous to the adoption of the present Constitution was from the European nationalities, from the Caucasian race, if I may use the term. I deny that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the negro race. I deny that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the Mongolian race. I controvert that a single citizen was ever made by one of the States out of the Chinese race, out of the Hindoos, or out of any race of people but the Caucasian race of Europe.
'I come, then, to this position: that whenever the States, after the declaration of Independence and before the present Constitution was adopted, legislated in relation to citizenship, or acted in their governments in relation to citizenship, the subject of that legislation or that action was the Caucasian race of Europe; that none of the inferior races of any kind were intended to be embraced or were embraced by this work of Governemtn in manufacturing citizens.'" Ibid, p. 199.
[Editor's Note: The use of the word Caucasian is lax in that citizenship of the united States was reserved only to members of the white race. Other peoples had passed through or lived in the Caucasus Mountains such that Caucasian could be mistaken for other peoples as well.]
Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, brings into the argument the citizenry of the Statute of 1776 (The Declaration of Independence). He knew the source of Citizenry in America. Further when challenged on his statements by Mr. Clark, Mr. Davis brings full explanation to the citizenry in America.
"At the close of Mr. Davis' speech, much debate and conversation ensued among various Senators upon a proposed amendment by Mr. Lane, of Kansas, by which Indians 'under tribal authority' should be excluded from the benefits conferred by this bill. After this question was disposed of, Mr. Davis was drawn out in another speech by what seemed to him to be the necessity of defending some positions which he had assumed. He said:
'I still reiterate the position that the negro is not a citizen here according to the essential fundamental principles of our system; but whether he be a citizen or not, he is not a foreigner, and no man, white or black, or red or mixed, can be made a citizen by naturalization unless he is a foreigner.'
"Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, interposed:
'I wish the Senator from Kentucky would tell us what constitutes a citizen under the Constitution.'
Mr. Davis:
'A foreigner is not a citizen in the fullest sense of the word at all.'
"Mr. Clark:
'The Senator is now telling us who is not a citizen, but my question is, What constitutes a citizen?'
"Mr. Davis:
'I leave that to the exercise of your own ingenuity.'
"Mr. Clark:
'That is it. Washington is dead; Marshall is dead; Story is dead; I hoped the Senator from Kentucky would have enlightened us. He says a negro is not a citizen, and a negro is not a foreigner and can not be made a citizen. He says that a person who might be and was a citizen before the Constitution, is not a citizen since the Constitution was adopted. What right was taken away from him by the Constitution that disqualifies him from being a citizen? The free negroes in my State, before the Constitution was adopted, were citizens.'
"Mr. Davis, having admitted that free negroes were citizens before the Constitution in New Hampshire, Mr. Clark said:
'I desired that the Senator should tell me what, in his opinion, constituted a citizen under the Constitution.'
"Mr. Davis replied:
'I will answer the honorable Senator. We sometimes answer a positive question by declaring what a thing is not. Now, the honorable Senator asks me what a citizen is. It is easier to answer what it is not than what it is and I say that a negro is not a citizen.'
"Mr. Clark:
'Well, that is a lucid definition.'
"Mr. Davis:
'Sufficient for the subject.'
"Mr. Clark replied:
'That is begging the question. I wanted to find why a negro was not a citizen, if the gentleman would tell me. If he would lay down his defnintion, I wanted to see whether the negro did not comply with it and conform to it, so as to be a citizen; but he insists that he is not a citizen.'
"Mr. Davis:
'I will answer that question, if the honorable Senator will permit me. 'Government is a political partnership. No persons but the partners who formed the partnership are parties to the government. Here is a government formed by the white man alone. The negro was excluded from the formation of our political partnership; he had nothing to do with it; he had nothing to do in its formation.'
"Mr. Stewart, of Nevada:
'Is it a close corporation, so that new partners can not be added?'
"Mr. Davis:
'Yes, sir, it is a close white corporation. You may bring all of Europe, but none of Asia and none of Africa into our partnership.'" Ibid, pp. 201-202.
[Editor's Note: At this point, Senator Davis is describing the limit of authority to which the White People held their elected officials, that no one other than White People were allowed into this Union. Each of the politicians in the State Legislatures and the US Congress were White men who took oaths of office to uphold the Constitutions ratified by We, the People in their family capacity as the White Race. None of these politicians were qualified to propose the changes made in the US and State Constitutions after the Civil War, much less grant themselves authority to do so, nor ratify those changes. Another essay is in the works which will describe the reasoning, based in organic law, which justifies this position; this same position is ripe for presentation to a judicial forum, if any still exists.]
The Senators in disagreement with Mr. Davis were very careful to avoid the Statute of 1776 (The Declaration of Independence); for their argument that the Constitution makes no distinction between races is only acceptable if the national Constitution stood alone in authority, which it does not. The national Constitution is completely governed by the Statute of 1776 and is under its authority. The national Constitution is as Mr. Davis said, "a closed white corporation." Notice that Mr. Davis did not say incorporated.
Mr. Roger, of New Jersey, recognized the Civil Rights Bill to be just what it was and is today, the destruction of State sovereignty.
"Mr. Rogers, of New Jersey, followed with an argument against the bill, because it interfered with 'States' Rights.' Under its provisions, Congress would 'enter the domain of a State and interfere with its internal police, statutes, and domestic regulations.' He said:
'This act of legislation would destroy the foundations of the Government as they were laid and established by our fathers, who reserved to the States certain privileges and immunities which ought sacredly to be preserved to them.
'If you had attempted to do it in the days of those who were living at the time the Constitution was made, after the birth of that noble instrument, the spirit of the heroes of the Revolution and the ghosts of the departed who laid down their lives in defense of the liberty of this county and of the rights of the States, would have come forth as witness against the deadly infliction and the destruction of the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the States in violation of the Constitution, and the breaking down of the ties that bind the States, and the violation of the rights and liberties of the white men and white women of America.
'If you pass this bill, you will allow the negros of this country to compete for the high office of President of the United States. Because if they are citizens at all, they come within the meaning and letter of the Constitution of the United States, which allows all natural-born citizens to become candidates for the Presidency, and to exercise the duties of that office if elected.'
[Editor's Note: Observe that Mr. Rogers uses the phase 'natural-born citizens' and the 14th amendment uses the phrase 'all persons born' which substitutes the word 'person' for 'citizen' and deletes the word 'natural.']
'I am afraid of degrading this Government; I am afraid of danger to constitutional liberty; I am alarmed at the stupendous strides which this Congress is trying to initiate; and I appeal in behalf of my country, in behalf of those that are to come after us, in generations yet unborn, as well as those now living, that conservative men on the other side should rally to the standard of sovereign and independent States, and blot out this idea which is inculcating itself here, that all the power of the States must be taken away, and the power of the Czar of Russia or the Emperor of France must be lodged in the Federal Government.'
[Editor's Note: No offense to any non-white race or mixture, but when you attempt to join the white people in the operation of their government, you degrade it by your presence. This is no fault of yours as far as intelligence or ability is concerned; it is based on the fact that your ancestry is not the same as the white people. Everyone wants the benefits of what they saw in the US but did not examine the source of those benefits which was the judicial power applied to moral life in the US. By attempting to join what you think is desirable, you destroy what you think is desirable; rather, find and develop your story of origin / common law or follow the white people's law by example to secure your own happiness in your own country.]
''I ask you to stand by the law of the country, and to regulate these Federal and State systems upon the grand principles upon which they were intended to be regulated, that we may hand down to those who are to come after us this bright jewel of civil liberty unimpaired; and I say that the Congress or the men who will strip the people of these rights will be handed down to perdition for allowing this bright and beautiful heritage of civil liberty embodied in the powers and sovereign jurisdiction of the States to pass away from us.'" Ibid, pp. 222-223.
[Editor's Note: What forethought a handful of defenders had at the crossroads of our Nation before and after the Civil War, that the resolution of the slavery issue would be used ultimately to destroy our form of government. It should be added that all races will suffer for this.]
Behold! Newsletter - October, 1990
by Robert W. Wangrud
with revisions and commentary
Copyright February, 2010
The Congress went ahead and passed the Civil Rights Bill and submitted it to the President for his approval or veto.
"The Civil Rights Bill having finally passed through Congress, on the 15th of March, by the concurrence of the Senate in the amendments of the House, was submitted to the President for his approval. Much anxiety was felt throughout the country to know what would be the fate of the bill at the hands of the Executive. Some thought it incredible that a President of the United States would veto so plain a declaration of rights, essential to the very existence of a large class of inhabitants. Others were confident that Mr. Johnson's approval would not be given to a bill interfering, as they thought, so flagrantly with the rights of the States under the Constitution.
"All doubts were dispelled, on the 27th of March, by the appearance of the President's Secretary on the floor of the Senate, who said, in formal phrase: 'Mr. President, I am directed by the President of the United States to return to the Senate, in which house it originated, the bill entitled 'An act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and to furnish the means of their vindication,' with his objections hereto in writing."
"'To the Senate of the United States:"
"'I regret that the bill which passed both houses of Congress, entitled 'An act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and furnish the means for their vindication,' contains provisions which I can not approve, consistently with my sense of duty to the whole people and my obligations to the Constitution of the United States. I am therefore constrained to return it to the Senate, the house in which it originated, with my objections to its becoming a law.
"'By the first section of the bill, all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States. This provision comprehends the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people called Gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks, people of color, negroes, mulattoes, and persons of African blood. Every individual of those races, born in the United States, is by the bill made a citizen of the United States. It does not purport to declare or confer any other right of citizenship than Federal Citizenship. It does not purport to give these classes of person any status as citizens of States, except that which may result from their status as citizens of the United States. The power to confer the right of State citizenship is just as exclusively with the several States as the Power to confer the right of Federal citizenship is with Congress.
"'The right of Federal citizenship thus to be conferred on the several excepted races before mentioned is now, for the first time, proposed to be given by law. If, as is claimed by many, all persons who are native-born, already are, by virtue of the Constitution, citizens of the United States, the passage of this pending bill can not be necessary to make them such. If, on the other hand, such persons are not citizens, as may be assumed from the proposed legislation to make them such, the grave question presents itself, whether, when eleven of the thirty-six States are unrepresented in Congress, at this time it is sound policy to make our entire colored population and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States? Four millions of them have just emerged from slavery into freedom. Can it be reasonably supposed that they possess the requisite qualifications to entitle them to all privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States? Have the people of the several States expressed such a conviction? It may be also be asked whether it is necessary that they should be declared citizens in order that they may be secured in the enjoyment of civil rights? Those rights proposed to be conferred by the bill are, by Federal as well as by State laws, secured to all domiciled aliens and foreigners even before the completion of the process of naturalization, and it may safely be assumed that the same enactments are sufficient to give like protection and benefits to those for whom this bill provides special legislation. Besides, the policy of the Government, from its origin to the present time, seems to have been that persons who are strangers to and unfamiliar with our institutions and our laws should pass through a certain probation, at the end of which, before attaining the coveted prize, they must give evidence of their fitness to receive and to exercise the rights of citizens as contemplated by the Constitution of the United States.
"'The bill, in effect, proposes a discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy, and patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the negro, to whom after long years of bondage, the avenue to freedom and intelligence have now been suddenly opened. He must, of necessity, from his previous unfortunate condition of servitude, be less informed as to the nature and character of our institutions than he who coming from abroad, has to some extent at least, familiarized himself with the principles of a Government to which he voluntarily intrusts 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Yet it is now proposed by a single legislative enactment to confer the rights of citizens upon all persons of African descent, born within the extended limits of the United States, while persons of foreign birth, who make our land their home, must undergo a probation of five years, and can only then become citizens upon proof that they are of 'good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.
"'The first section of the bill also contains an enumeration of the rights to be enjoyed by these classes, so made citizens, 'in every State and Territory in the United States.' These rights are, 'To make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property,' and to have 'full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.' So, too, they are made subject to the same punishment, pains, and penalties in common with white citizens, and to none other. Thus a perfect equality of the white and black races is attempted to be fixed by Federal law, in every State of the Union, over the vast field of State jurisdiction covered by these enumerated rights. In no one of these can any State ever exercise any power of discrimination between the different races.
"'In the exercise of State policy over matters exclusively affecting the people of each State, it has frequently been thought expedient to discriminate between the two races. By the statutes of some of the States, Northern as well as Southern, it is enacted, for instance, that no white person shall intermarry with a negro or a mulatto. Chancellor Kent says, speaking of the blacks, that 'marriages between them and whites are forbidden in some of the States where slavery does not exist, and they are prohibited in all slave-holding States, and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are revolting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum.
"'I do not say this bill repeals State laws on the subject of marriage between the two races, for as the whites are forbidden to intermarry with the blacks, the blacks can only make such contracts as the whites themselves are allowed to make, and therefore can not, under this bill, enter into the marriage contract with the whites. I cite this discrimination, however, as an instance of the State policy as to discrimination, and to inquire whether if Congress can abrogate all State laws of discrimination between the two races in the matter of real estate, of suits, and of contracts generally, Congress may not also repeal the State laws as to the contract of marriage between the two races? Hitherto every subject embraced in the enumeration of rights contained in this bill has been considered as exclusively belonging to the States. They all relate to the internal policy and economy of the respective States. They are matters which in each State concern the domestic condition of its people, varying in each according to its own peculiar circumstances, and the safety and well-being of its own citizens. I do not mean to say that upon all these subjects there are not Federal restraints, as, for instance, in the State power of legislation over contracts, there is a Federal limitation that no State shall pass a law impairing the obligations of contracts; and as to crimes, that no State shall pass an ex post facto law; and as to money, that no State shall make any thing but gold and silver a legal tender. But where can we find a Federal prohibition against the power of any State to discriminate, as do most of them, between aliens and citizens, between artificial persons called corporations and natural persons, in the right to hold real estate?"
"'If it be granted that Congress can repeal all State laws discriminating between whites and blacks, in the subjects covered by this bill, why, it may be asked, may not Congress repeal in the same way all State laws discriminating between the two races on the subject of suffrage and office? If Congress can declare by law who shall hold lands, who shall testify, who shall have capacity to make a contract in a State, then Congress can by law also declare who, without regard to color or race, shall have the right to sit as a juror or as a judge, to hold office, and, finally, to vote, 'in every State and Territory of the United States.' As respects the Territories, they come within the power of Congress, for, as to them the law-making power is the Federal power; but as to the States, no similar provisions exist, vesting in Congress the power 'to make rules and regulations' for them.
"'The object of the second section of the bill is to afford discriminating protection to colored persons in the full enjoyment of all the rights secured to them by the previous section. It declares 'that any person who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or cause to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory to the deprivation of any right secured or protected by this act, or to different punishment, pains, or penalties on account of such person having at one time been held in a condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or by reason of his color or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of white persons, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $1,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, in the direction of the court.' This section seems to be designed to apply to some existing or future law of a State or Territory which may conflict with the provisions of the bill now under consideration. It provides for counteracting such forbidden legislation by imposing fine and imprisonment upon the legislators who may pass such conflicting laws, or upon the officers or agents who shall put, or attempt to put, them into execution. It means an official offense, not a common crime committed against law upon the persons or property of the black race. Such an act may deprive the black man of his property, but not of the right to hold property. It means a deprivation to the right itself, either by the State Judiciary or the State Legislature. It is therefore assumed that, under this section, members of State Legislators who should vote for laws conflicting with the provisions of the bill; that judges of the State courts who should render judgments in antagonism with its terms; and that marshals and sheriffs, who should, as ministerial officers, execute process, sanctioned by State laws and issued by State judges, in execution of their judgments, could be brought before other tribunals, and there subjected to fine and imprisonment for the performance of the duties which such State laws might impose.
"'Legislation thus proposed invades the judicial power of the State. It says to every State court or judge, If you decide that this act is unconstitutional; if you refuse, under the prohibition of a State law, to allow a negro to testify; if you hold that over such a subject-matter the State law is paramount, and 'under color' of a State law refuse the exercise of the right to the negro, your error of judgment, however conscientious, shall subject you to fine and imprisonment. I do not apprehend that the conflicting legislation which the bill seems to contemplate is so likely to occur as to render it necessary at this time to adopt a measure of such doubtful constitutionality.
"'In the next place, this provision of the bill seems to be unnecessary, as adequate judicial remedies could be adopted to secure the desired end without invading the immunities of legislators, always important to be preserved in the interest of public liberty; without assailing the independence of the judiciary, always essential to the preservation of individual rights; and without impairing the efficiency of ministerial officers, always necessary for the maintenance of public peace and order. The remedy proposed by this section seems to be, in this respect, not only anomalous, but unconstitutional; for the Constitution guarantees nothing with certainty, if it does not insure to the several States the right of making and executing laws in regard to all matters arising within their jurisdiction, subject only to the restriction that, in cases of conflict with the Constitution and constitutional laws of the United States, the latter should be held to be the supreme law of the land.
"'The third section gives the district courts of the United States exclusive 'cognizance of all crimes and offenses committed against the provisions of this act,' and concurrent jurisdiction with the circuit courts of the United States of all civil and criminal cases 'affecting persons who are denied or can not enforce in the courts or judicial tribunals of the State or locality where they may be any of the rights secured to them by the first section.' The construction which I have given to the second section is strengthened by this third section, for it makes it clear what kind of denial or deprivation of the rights secured by the first was in contemplation. It is a denial or deprivation of such rights 'in the courts or judicial tribunals of the State.' It stands, therefore, clear of doubt, that the offense and the penalties provided in the second section are intended for the State judge, who, in the clear exercise of his function as a judge, not acting ministerially, but judicially, shall decide contrary to this Federal law. In other words, when a State judge, acting upon a question involving a conflict between a State law and a Federal law, and bound, according to his own judgment and responsibility, to give an impartial decision between the two, comes to the conclusion that the State law is valid and the Federal law is invalid, he must not follow the dictates of his own judgment, at the peril of fine and imprisonment. The legislative department of the Government of the United States thus takes from the judicial department of the States the sacred and exclusive duty of judicial decision, and converts the State judge into a mere ministerial officer, bound to decree according to the will of Congress.
"'It is clear that, in States which deny to persons whose rights are secured by the first section of the bill any one of those rights, all criminal and civil cases affecting them will, by the provisions of the third section, come under the exclusive cognizance of the Federal tribunals. It follows that if, in any State which denies to a colored person any one of those rights, that person should commit a crime against the laws of the State -- murder, arson, rape, or any other crime -- all protection and punishment through the courts of the State are taken away, and he can only be tried and punished in the Federal courts. How is the criminal to be tried? If the offense is provided for and punished by Federal law, that law, and not the State law, is to govern.
"'It is only when the offense does not happen to be within the purview of the Federal law that the Federal courts are to try and punish him under any other law; then resort is to be, had to 'the common law, as modified and changed' by State legislation, 'so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.' So that over this vast domain of criminal jurisprudence, provided by each State for the protection of its own citizens, and for the punishment of all persons who violate its criminal laws, Federal law, wherever it can be made to apply, displaces State law.
"'The question here naturally arises, from what source Congress derives the power to transfer to Federal tribunals certain classes of cases embraced in this section. The Constitution expressly declares that the judicial power of the United States 'shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more States, between a State and citizens of another State, between citizens of different States, between citizens of the same State claiming land under grants of different States, and between a State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens, or subjects.
"'Here the judicial power of the United States is expressly set forth and defined; and the act of September 24, 1789, establishing the judicial courts of the United States, in conferring upon the Federal courts jurisdiction over cases originating in State tribunals, is careful to confine them to the classes enumerated in the above recited clause of the Constitution. This section of the bill undoubtedly comprehends case, and authorizes the exercise of powers that are not, by the Constitution, within the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States. To transfer them to those courts would be an exercise of authority well calculated to excite distrust and alarm on the part of all the States; for the bill applies alike to all of them -- as well to those that have as to those that have not been engaged in rebellion.
"'It may be assumed that this authority is incident to the power granted to Congress by the Constitution, as recently amended, to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the article declaring that 'neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' It can not, however, be justly claimed that, with a view to the enforcement of this article of the Constitution, there is, at present, any necessity for the exercise of all the powers which this bill confers.
"Slavery has been abolished, and, at present, nowhere exists within the jurisdiction of the United States; nor has there been, nor is it likely there will be, any attempt to revive it by the people of the States. If, however, any such attempt shall be made, it will then become the duty of the General Government to exercise any and all incidental powers necessary and proper to maintain inviolate this great constitutional law of freedom.
"'The fourth section of the bill provides that officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau shall be empowered to make arrests, and also that other officers may be specially commissioned for that purpose by the President of the United States. It also authorizes circuit courts of the United States and the superior courts of the Territories to appoint, without limitation, commissioners, who are to be charged with the performance of quasi judicial duties. The fifth section empowers the commissioners so to be selected by the courts to appoint, in writing, under their hands, one or more suitable persons, from time to time, to execute warrants and other processes described by the bill. These numerous official agents are made to constitute a sort of police, in addition to the military, and are authorized to summon a posse comitatus and even to call to their aid such portion of the land and naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, 'as may be necessary to the performance of the duty with which they are charged.
"'This extraordinary power is to be conferred upon agents irresponsible to the Government and to the people, to whose number the discretion of the commissioners is the only limit, and in whose hands such authority might be made a terrible engine of wrong, oppression, and fraud. The general statutes regulating the land and naval forces of the United States, the militia, and the execution of the laws, are believed to be adequate for every emergency which can occur in time of peace. If it should prove otherwise, Congress can, at any time, amend those laws in such a manner as, while subserving the public welfare, not to jeopard the rights, interest, and liberties of the people.
"'The seventh section provides that a fee of ten dollars shall be paid to each commissioner in every case brought before him, and fee of five dollars to his deputy, or deputies, 'for each person he or they may arrest and take before any such commissioner,' 'with such other fees as may be deemed reasonable by such commissioner,' 'in general for performing such other duties as may be required in the premises.' All these fees are to be 'paid out of the Treasury of the United States,' whether there is a conviction or not; but, in case of conviction, they are to be recoverable from the defendant. It seems to me that, under the influence of such temptations, bad men might convert any law, however beneficent, into an instrument of persecution and fraud.
"'By the eighth section of the bill, the United States courts, which sit only in one place for white citizens, must migrate, with the marshal and district attorney (and necessarily with the clerk, although he is not mentioned), to any part of the district, upon the order of the President, and there hold a court 'for the purpose of the more speedy arrest and trial of persons charged with a violation of this act;' and there the judge and the officers of the court must remain, upon the order of the President, 'for the time therein designated.'
"'The ninth section 'authorizes the President, or such person as he may empower for that purpose, to employ such part of the land and naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, as shall be necessary to prevent the violation and enforce the due execution of this act.' This language seems to imply a permanent military force, that is to be always at hand, and whose only business is to be the enforcement of this measure over the vast region where it is intended to operate.
"'I do not propose to consider the policy of this bill. To me the details of the bill seem fraught with evil. The white race and the black race of the South have hitherto lived together under the relation of master and slave -- capital owning labor. Now, suddenly, that relation is changed, and, as to the ownership, capital and labor are divorced. They stand, now, each master of itself. In this new relation, one being necessary to the other, there will be a new adjustment, which both are deeply interested in making harmonious. Each has equal power in settling the terms, and, if left to the laws that regulate capital and labor, it is confidently believed that they will satisfactorily work out the problem. Capital, it is true, has more intelligence; but labor is never so ignorant as not to understand its own interests, not to know its own value, and not to see that capital must pay that value. This bill frustrates this adjustment. It intervenes between capital and labor, and attempts to settle questions of political economy through the agency of numerous officials, whose interest it will be to foment discord between the two races; for, as the breach widens, their employment will continue, and when it is closed, their occupation will terminate.
"'In all our history, in all our experience as a people living under Federal and State law, no such system as that contemplated by the details of this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted. They establish, for the security of the colored race, safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race. In fact, the distinction of race and color is, by the bill, made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race. They interfere with the municipal legislation of the States, with the relations existing exclusively between a State and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State -- an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced in, must sap and destroy our federative system of limited powers, and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States. It is another step, or rather stride, to centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the National Government. The tendency of the bill must be to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion, and to arrest the progress of those influences which are more closely drawing around the States the bonds of union and peace.
"'My lamented predecessor, in his proclamation of the 1st of January, 1863, ordered and declared that all persons held as slaves within certain States and parts of States therein designated, were and thenceforward should be free; and, further, that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, would recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons. This guarantee has been rendered especially obligatory and sacred by the amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the United States. I, therefore, fully recognize the obligation to protect and defend that class of our people whenever and wherever it shall become necessary, and to the full extent compatible with the Constitution of the United States.
"'Entertaining these sentiments, it only remains for me to say that I will cheerfully cooperate with Congress in any measure that may be necessary for the protection of the civil rights of the freedmen, as well as those of all other classes of persons throughout the United States, by judicial process under equal and impartial laws, in conformity with the provisions of the Federal Constitution.
"'I now return the bill to the Senate, and regret that, in considering the bills and joint resolution -- forty-two in number -- which have been thus far submitted for my approval, I am compelled to withhold my assent from a second measure that has received the sanction of both houses of Congress.
"'ANDREW JOHNSON - WASHINGTON, D. C., March 27, 1866
History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States, by William H. Barnes, A.M. Reprinted 1969 by Negro Universities Press, A Division of Greenwood Publishing Corp., New York, SBN 83711288-5, pp. 246-253.'"
President Johnson recognized the total breakdown between National and State sovereignty. The President recognized the States would no longer exist as a separate power from the National power. Today, we of the Posterity have seen all of the evil conditions which President Andrew Johnson recognized in the Civil Rights Bill come true. Our State judges obey none of the provisions of the State Constitutions and sit as "quasi" Federal judges which, in fact, under the 13th, 14th, 15th, & etc. the State judges truly are.
Mr. Johnson of Maryland made a speech sustaining the President's Veto Message.
"On the next day, April 5th, Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, made a speech sustaining the Veto Message. He argued that negroes were not citizens of the United States by reason of their birth in the United States, and that Congress had no authority by law to declare them such. To sustain his position, he made quotations from the opinion of the minority in the Dred Scott case, as rendered by Mr. Justice Curtis. He then proceeded to reply to some of Mr. Trumbull's arguments against the Veto Message:
"'The honorable member from Illinois disposes of the President's objection to the first section of this bill by saying that it is merely declaratory. I know it is competent for any legislative body, on a question where difference of opinions exist in relation to any legal proposition, to remove them by declaratory legislation; but that is not the purpose of this bill. It professes to be passed in the exercise of a positive and absolute power to change the law -- not to declare what the law was in order to remove doubts, but to make the law. It assumes, or otherwise there would be no occasion for it, that birth alone does not confer citizenship; and assuming that no citizenship would exist in consequence of birth alone, it declares that birth alone, in spite of State constitution and State laws, shall confer citizenship. Now, with all deference to the opinion of the honorable Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, that seems to me to be a proposition as clearly erroneous as any proposition can be in relation to constitutional law. The States were sovereign before the Constitution was adopted; and the Constitution not only, according to its very terms, does not profess to confer upon the Government of the United States all governmental power, but as far as Congress is concerned, professes to confer upon that department of the Government only the particular delegated powers there enumerated; but so anxious were the framers of that instrument and the great men of that day, to whom the subsequent organization of this government was left, that although they had no doubt as to the principle that only the delegated powers were granted, (and the debates in the Convention itself as well as the debates in the conventions of the several States, when the Constitution was before them for adoption or rejection, all went upon the theory that no powers were conferred except such as were expressly granted, or as were reasonable implied to be as necessary to carry out the power expressly granted, by the tenth amendment adopted recently after the Constitution went into operation, and recommended by the men, many of whom were the framers of the Constitution itself, that the powers not delegated by the Constitution, and not denied to the States by the same instrument, were to be considered reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
"'I hold, with Mr. Justice Curtis -- and his opinion to this day has never been questioned -- that citizenship of the United States consequent upon birth in a State is to depend upon the fact whether the constitution and laws of the State make the party so born a citizen of the State.
"'But that is not all. This first section has another provision. Not satisfied with making the parties citizens and clothing them with all the rights belonging to white citizens by the laws of the States, it says that they 'shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other.' That invades the jurisdiction of the States over their criminal code. Congress assumes to define a crime, and defining a crime gives to its own courts exclusive jurisdiction over the crime and the party charged with its perpetration. It strikes at the criminal code of the States. The result, therefore, of the three provisions in this section is, that contrary to State constitutions and State laws, it converts a man that is not a citizen of a State into a citizen of the State; it gives him all the rights that belong to a citizen of the State; and it provides that his punishment shall be only such as the State laws impose upon white citizens. Where is the authority to do that?
"'But you, Mr. President, know very well that consolidation of power in the Government of the United States was looked upon as certain ruin to republican institutions. In the first place, it would be sure to result in anarchy; and in the second place, in order to be saved from the horrors of anarchy, we should be compelled to take refuge in despotic power, and the days of constitutional liberty would soon be numbered. The doubt then was, and the doubt now should be more firmly settled in the public mind, that a country as extensive as that of the United States can not exist except by means of divided sovereignties; one sovereignty having charge of all external matters, or matters between the States to which the powers of the States are inadequate; the other sovereignties have power over all internal matters to the management of which they are adequate. Despotism would soon be our fate, preceded by anarchy; the military chieftain instead of being looked upon, as he should be by every republican, with alarm and concern, would be hailed as a savior in order to save us from the horrors of disorganization." Ibid, pp. 265-267.
Senator Johnson of Maryland understood that the Federal power under the Civil Rights Bill would suspend the criminal and civil law of the States, which is the common law. He understood the separate sovereignty between the national and State powers would be destroyed. A principle our forefathers gave their blood for to place in existence.
The 39th Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill on the 9th day of April, 1866 over the veto of the President. No one reading these debates on the floor of the Congress can say the issues were not fully addressed.
Notice the 39th Congress never repealed or even attempted to repeal any of the original articles of the national Constitution. They dared not go that far! We, today can judge the actions of the 39th Congress and evaluate their reasoning for their actions.
We, today, can clearly understand whether or not their "great experiment" has worked or not. If you decide that the adding of the other races and the destruction of the sovereignty of the several States has destroyed the Christian Republic -- both Nationally and the republics of the several States -- then it is time to end the cause of its destruction or the words of Mr. Garrett Davis of Kentucky will surely come true.
"Mr. Garrett Davis, of Kentucky, addressed the Senate in a long speech, of which the following is the closing paragraph:
'Public justice is often slow, but generally sure. Think you that the people will look on with folded arms and stolid indifference and see you subvert their Constitution and liberties, and on their ruins erect a grinding despotism. No; erelong they will rise up with earthquake force and fling you from power and place. I commend to your serious meditation these words: 'Go tell Sylla that you saw Caius Marius sitting upon the ruins of Carthage!'" Ibid, p. 287.
The actions of the 39th Congress pertaining to the Freedman's Bill and the Civil Rights Act, by the Senator's and Congressmen's own words, you were exposed to Congress' disobedience to the organic law by their misuse of their power to legislate under the conditions of martial law. The "Pandora's Box" of martial law was opened by the misconduct of President Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln abused the Presidential power under Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution in his abuse of the Presidents power as Commander-in-, Chief. Lincoln never had the authority to use the power of martial law as a vehicle to abolish the organic law.
When the Founding Fathers wrote Article 2, they intended the power of martial law to protect the organic law, not to be used to destroy it. Lincoln did not believe in the government system of two separate limited sovereignties as set out in the organic law.
Lincoln used the power of martial law to set in motion the destruction of State sovereignty and to nullify the 9th and 10th Articles in Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Bill of Rights). He wanted an all powerful Federal government and complete centralized Federal power. Lincoln's ruse that the Civil War was over the issue of Slavery was a lie; the Civil War was over the issue of State Sovereignty.
The 39th Congress was composed of many socialistic members at the end of the Civil War and the eleven States declared in rebellion were still under martial law and not permitted to participate in its decisions. The 39th Congress also is responsible for the Reconstruction Acts and the creation of the 14th amendment.
"Mr. Stevens open his speech with remarks on the condition of the rebel States. He said:
"'The President assumes, what no one doubts, the late rebel States have lost their constitutional relations to the Union, and are incapable of representation in Congress, except by permission of the Government. It matters but little, with this admission, whether you call them States out of the Union, and now conquered territories, or assert that because the Constitution forbids them to do what they did do, that they are, therefore, only dead as to all national and political action, and will remain so until the Government shall breathe into them the breath of life anew and permit them to occupy their former position. In other words, that they are not out of the Union, but are only dead carcasses lying within the Union. In either case, it is very plain that it requires the action of Congress to enable them to form a State government and send Representatives to Congress. Nobody, I believe, pretends that with their old constitutions and frames of government they can be permitted to claim their old rights under the Constitution. They have torn their constitutional States into atoms, and built on their foundations fabrics of a totally different character. Dead men can not raise themselves. Dead States can not restore their own existence 'as it was.' Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the Constitution place the power? Not in the judicial branch of Government, for it only adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not in the Executive, for he only executes and can not make laws. Not in the commander-in-chief of the armies, for he can only hold them under military rule until the sovereign legislative power of the conqueror shall give them law." Ibid, p. 308.
Remember this arrogant ass is talking about our White Brethren. Stevens' remarks do show the 39th Congress was absorbed with their new found power of legislative authority under martial law.
The supreme Court in Texas v. White, three years after Mr. Stevens had his say, corrects his erroneous remarks:
"What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?
"But the perpetuity and indissolubility of the Union, by no means implies the loss of distinct and individual existence, or of the right to self-government by the States.
"Not only, therefore, can there be no loss of separate and independent autonomy to the States, through their union under the Constitution, but it may be not unreasonably said that the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government.
"The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States." Texas v. White, (1868), 7 Wall 724-726.
Mr. Steven's then goes on and remarks:
"'Then they may fall under the provision of the Constitution which says, 'the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government.' Under that power, can the judiciary, or the President, or the commander-in-chief of the army, or the Senate or House of Representatives, acting separately, restore them to life and readmit them into the Union? I insist that if each acted separately, though the action of each was identical with all the others, it would amount to nothing. Nothing but the joint action of the two houses of Congress and the concurrence of the President could do it. If the Senate admitted their Senators and the House their members, it would have not effect on the future action of Congress. The Fortieth Congress might reject both. Such is the ragged record of Congress for the last four years.'
"He cited a decision of the Supreme Court to show that 'it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State,' and then remarked;
'But Congress does not mean the Senate, or the House of Representatives, and President, all acting severally. Their joint action constitutes Congress. Hence a law of Congress must be passed before any new State can be admitted or any dead ones revived. Until then, no member can be lawfully admitted into either house. Hence, it appears with how little knowledge of constitutional law each branch is urged to admit members separately from these destroyed States. The provision that 'each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members,' has not the most distant bearing on this question. Congress must create States and declare when they are entitled to be represented. Then each house must judge whether the members presenting themselves from a recognized State possesses the requisite qualifications of age, residence and citizenship, and whether the election and returns are according to law. The houses separately can judge of nothing else.'" Ibid, p. 311.
The hypocrisy of Stevens, and as it turned out - Congress, is clear. First, the Civil War was instituted on the ground that no State could secede from the Union. Then once the States who attempted succession were subdued, men like Stevens claimed that the succession was complete, that the States were conquered and are now subject to martial law.
Mr. Stevens' remarks reduce the white people of the eleven States to the status of aliens and declares the Civil War a war of conquest.
The supreme Court also rejected this view in 1868.
"Conqueror Stevens" now sets the rules for readmission of the rebel States:
"'Two things are of vital importance: First, so to establish a principle that none of the rebel States shall be counted in any of the amendments of the Constitution until they are duly admitted into the family of States by the law-making power of their conqueror. For more than six months the amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery has been ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States that acted on its passage by Congress, and which had Legislatures, or which were States capable of acting, or required to act, on the question.
"'I take no account of the aggregation of whitewashed rebels, who, without any legal authority, have assembled in the capitals of the late rebel States and simulated legislative bodies. Nor do I regard with any respect the cunning by-play into which they deluded the Secretary of State by frequent telegraphic announcements that 'South Carolina had adopted the amendment,' 'Alabama has adopted the amendment, being the twenty-seventh State,' etc. This was intended to delude the people and accustom Congress to hear repeated the names of these extinct States as if they were alive, when, in truth, they have now no more existence than the revolted cities of Latium, two-thirds of whose people were colonized, and their property confiscated, and their rights of citizenship withdrawn by conquering and avenging Rome.'
"A second thing of vital importance to the stability of this republic, Mr. Stevens asserted to be
"'that it should now be solemnly decided what power can revive, recreate, and reinstate these provinces in the family of States, and invest them with the rights of American citizens. It is time that Congress should assert its sovereignty, and assume something of the divinity of a Roman Senate." Ibid, p. 313-314.
Is there any wonder about the resentment our White Brothers feel for their brothers in the North? Socialists such as Stevens were all too common in the 39th Congress; there were but a few in Congress who were not so eager to commit Corruption of Blood.
"At length, three days afterward, Mr. Raymond, as a representative of the 'Conservatives,' ventured a reply. He thus set forth his theory as in opposition to that of Mr. Stevens:
"'I can not believe that these States have ever been out of the Union, or that they are now out of the Union. I can not believe that they ever have been, or are now, in any sense a separate power. If they were, sir, how and when did they become so? They were once States of this Union -- that every one concedes; bound to the Union and made members of the Union by the Constitution of the United States. If they ever went out of the Union, it was at some specific time and by some specific act. Was it by the ordinance of secession? I think we all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of this Union is simply a nullity, because it encounters in its practical operation the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land. It could have no legal, actual force or validity. It could not operate to effect any actual change in the relations of the States adopting it to the National Government, still less to accomplish the removal of that State from the sovereign jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States.
"'Well, sir, did the resolutions of these States, the declarations of their officials, the speeches of members of their Legislatures, or the utterances of their press accomplish the result? Certainly not. They could not possibly work any change whatever in the relations of these States to the General Government. All their ordinances and all their resolutions were simply declarations of a purpose to secede. Their secession, if it ever took place, certainly could not date from the time when their intention to secede was first announced. After declaring that intention, they proceeded to carry it into effect. How? By war. By sustaining their purpose by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against it. Did they sustain it? Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact; if not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt, a purpose unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question of fact, and we all know what the fact is. They did not succeed. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms; in other words, they failed to secede.'" Ibid, p. 314-315.
Clearly some of the Northern Representatives and Senators were not willing to treat the Civil War as a war of conquest. The Reconstruction Acts were intolerable, the white Citizens of the South were subjected to Federal agencies under the authority of martial law that demanded the White Christian Citizens obey regulations which not only violated the organic law but violated the Word of God. That the white people of the South endured at all is remarkable. [Editor's Note: Where is the scrutiny of the People, both then and NOW?]
Today, "We the People" are experiencing the same federal agencies performing the same control over our Christian Republic using the same power of martial law. Only this time, both North and South are subject to the "Reconstruction Acts" of a socialist Congress and a socialist President.
Perhaps the Citizens of the North, as they awaken to the "New Republic" started by old Abe (Jew) Lincoln, will now understand the feelings suffered by the South as this "New Republic" destroys their liberty also.
The question of representation was proposed as the Southern States could no longer use the number of Negroes as a part of the consideration in determining the number of representatives the Southern States would be allowed in Congress if and when they should ever be allowed to be represented again. Rest assured, the socialists in the 39th Congress would make sure that the rebellious States would be required to alter their State Constitutions and swear a loyalty oath before representation would even be considered.
On the 22nd of January, 1866, Congress proposed just such an amendment.
"Although the Joint Committee of Fifteen were assiduous in their attention to the work assigned them, it was not until the 22d of January, 1866, that they were ready to make a partial report and recommend a practical measure for the consideration of Congress.
"On that day Mr. Fessenden, of the Senate, and Mr. Stevens, of the House of Representatives, brought before those bodies respectively a partial report from the committee, recommending the passage of the following joint resolution:
"'Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both houses concurring,) That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Constitution, namely;
"'ARTICLE --. Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed: Provided, That whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation.'" Ibid, p. 324.
Remember, at this time the Congress was still creating legislation under the authority of full martial law over the nation, North as well as South.
Mr. Rogers voices his objection as to the procedure of passing this amendment.
"'More than that: this bill attempts, in a indirect manner, to have passed upon, by the Legislatures of the different States, a question which the party in power dare not boldly and openly meet before the people of this country, because there can be but one object lying at the foundation of this bill -- an object which has been explained and expatiated upon in this House -- and that object, as I have said, is, through the Federal power, to force the States to adopt unqualified negro suffrage, by holding over them the penalty of being deprived of representation according to population.
"'But I object to this joint resolution upon another ground -- upon the same ground that I objected to the passage of the Negro Suffrage Bill for the District of Columbia -- without consulting the people. It has been said in this country that all power emanates from the people. And I say that to submit this grave question to the consideration and decision of partisan Legislatures in the different States -- Legislatures which were elected without any regard to this question -- is violative of the great principles which lie at the foundations of the liberties of this country; that no organic law, affecting the whole people, should be passed before submitting it to the people for their ratification or rejection. Now this joint resolution proposes simply to submit this amendment for ratification to the Legislatures of the different States. The Legislatures are not the States; the Legislatures are not the people in their sovereign capacity; Legislatures are not the source from which all power emanates. But the people, the sacred people, in the exercise of their sovereign power, either at the ballot-box or in conventions, are the only true and proper forum to which such grave and serious questions should be submitted." Ibid, p. 327.
Mr. Rogers of New Jersey, felt the people should approve or disapprove the amendment. Of course, a power drunk Congress was not about to chance that. In the discussions of the Congress, you begin to see what the Civil War really accomplished by freeing the Negroes; Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution would have to be amended.
This breaking of the conditions set by those known as "We the People" would now demand alteration of the other Articles of the U.S. Constitution. The Civil War opened the door to completely break the seal on the organic law and as you can see, Congress made sure the people had no say in how these Articles were amended.
The 39th Congress chose the second mode provided in Article 5 to amend the U.S. Constitution (without the consent of "We the People").
Mr. Marshall of Illinois made one true remark when he said:
"'In reference to the time and place of inaugurating constitutional amendments, Mr. Marshall used the following language: 'If any amendments are necessary to the Constitution of our country, this is not the time, and more especially is this not the place, to inaugurate such amendments. I believe, notwithstanding the conceded wisdom, ability, and virtue of this House, that the fathers who framed our glorious Constitution were wiser, better, and nobler than we are; yet ever day we have offered here some dozen or twenty proposed amendments to the Constitution, offered as if we were discussing resolutions in a town meeting.'" Ibid, p. 352.
The socialists, drunk with power, had over-played their hand and a few Congressmen were beginning to wake up to the fact that the organic law approved by "We the People" was being made a joke and that the people would not, even at that time, stand for it.
"Mr. Rogers denounced the proposed amendment in emphatic terms. He said:
"'The first section of this programme of disunion is the most dangerous to liberty. It saps the foundation of the Government; it destroys the elementary principles of the States; it consolidates every thing into one imperial despotism; it annihilates all the rights which lie at the foundation of the union of the States, and which have characterized this Government and made it prosperous and great during the long period of its existence. It will result in a revolution worse than that through which we have just passed; it will rock the earth like the throes of an earthquake, until its tragedy , will summon the inhabitants of the world to witness its dreadful shock.'" Ibid, p. 448.
Before the vote on this amendment, as it was finally before the Congress in its final form, the amendment drew this remark from Mr. Rogers:
"'Let me tell you,' said Mr. Harding, 'you are preparing for revolutions after revolutions. I warn you there will be no peace in this country until each State be allowed to control its own citizens. If you take that from them, what care I for the splendid machinery of a national government?''" Ibid, p. 462-463.
The 14th amendment in its final form:
"The following is the Constitutional Amendment as it passed both Houses of Congress:
"'ARTICLE --
"'SEC.1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property with out due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
"'SEC.2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of such male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
"'SEC.3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
"'SEC.4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppression insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.
"'SEC.5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provision of this article.'"
"The President was requested to send the Amendment to the several States for ratification.
"On the 22d of June, President Johnson sent a message to Congress informing them that the Secretary of State had transmitted to the Governors of the several States certified copies of the proposed amendment. 'These steps.' said the President, 'are to be considered as purely ministerial, and in no sense whatever committing the Executive to an approval of the recommendation of the amendment.' It seemed to the President a serious objection to the proposition 'that the joint resolution was not submitted by the two houses for the approval of the President, and that of the thirty-six States which constitute the Union, eleven are excluded from representation.'
"The President having no power under the Constitution to veto a joint resolution submitting a constitutional amendment to the people, this voluntary expression of opinion could not have been designed to have an influence upon the action of Congress. The document could have designed by its author only as an argument with the State Legislatures against the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment, and as a notice to the Southern people that they were badly treated.
"The President's message was received by Congress without comment, and referred to the Committee on Reconstruction." Ibid, p. 464-465.
The 14th amendment was part of the Reconstruction Acts passed by the socialistic 39th Congress. One interesting fact comes to light in the passage of this Act.
"The President having no power under the constitution to VETO a joint resolution ..."
The 14th amendment was proposed by Congress to the Legislators of the several States, not including the eleven Southern States, as a joint resolution. Is this the process for amending the constitution under conditions of martial law?
When Congress passes an Act, it is supposed to be subject to Presidential VETO! Is this the difference between an "Act" and a "joint resolution?" Congress has by "joint resolution" passed all of the amendments (after the first ten) with the exception of the 21st amendment. If Congress is using this procedure to pass amendments, it stands to reason that one of the three forms of martial law is still active today making that form perpetual since the Civil War!
Once the 14th amendment was ratified by the Northern States the eleven Rebel States were offered readmittance to Representation in the National Congress. The condition for readmittance was their acceptance of all of the provisions of the 14th amendment.
"The most important practical step in the work of reconstruction taken by the Thirty-ninth Congress was the restoration of Tennessee to her relations to the Union. Of all the recently rebellious States, Tennessee was the first to give a favorable response to the overtures of Congress by ratifying the Constitutional Amendment." Ibid, p. 473.
Each of the Rebel States were offered the same conditions for readmittance or recognition as a State in the Union. One by one, they accepted or should I say the puppet State legislators (most of whom were established by and controlled by military law as provisional governments under military rule) sent their acceptance of the 14th amendment.
The people have never voiced their approval or disapproval on any of these War Amendments, then or now. This is why Judge L.H. Perez ruled the 14th amendment unconstitutional (reprints offered by Behold!) as acceptance of an amendment with a military gun in your back is not the proper procedure for self-government.
Under martial rule, there is no State sovereignty or freedom of decision. Once the State Legislators accepted the 14th amendment, State sovereignty was abolished as the 14th amendment completely violates the 9th and 10th Articles in Amendments. The 14th, as well as the rest of the latter amendments, destroyed State sovereignty until only the Federal power remains as the supreme power of this nation.
Consider the 17th amendment, it took the State Senators out from under the control of the State Legislators which contributed to the destruction of State sovereignty. Today, what you call State Senators are, in reality, Federal Representatives for the District within a given Federal Regional Area called the State of (Fill in your State Name).
Under Article 1, Section 3, Clause 1, the State legislators could recall the State Senators back to the State. If the national Senate was reduced below the needed two-thirds required to pass Bills or Resolutions, the Congress would be stopped from legislating on anything until the States returned their Senators to the District of Columbia, i.e. the seat of government.
Under Article 1, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the national Congress was dependent on the several States for its very existence. This condition kept the Congress very mindful of the power of the several States when passing legislation. Depriving a State of its sovereignty by the passage of the 17th amendment, the States lost the ability of shutting down Congress.
The Federal / National Government gained the ability to exist without the support of the States and no longer feared passing legislation destructive of State sovereignty. Now the National Congress tells the States through its (Congress') "State Senators" what it wants done in its Federal Districts and the States, being deprived of representation, do whatever is asked of [told to] them.
Even in the local levels of government, an understanding of State sovereignty is almost lost; it has been reported to BEHOLD! that one member of a city commission was so bold as to tell a Citizen that if it is Federal legislation, then the city must change its rules and ordinances to agree; if the State and Federal legislation don't agree, the State must conform to the Federal's will, and the cities and counties must agree with the Federal's also.
Under the original organic law, the structure of our republican form of government, in simple terms was stated by Mr. Morris in 1866 in the Congressional Globe, page 2689:
"'What is a State?
"'In the language of Bouvier, it is 'a body of persons united in one community for the defense of their rights.' Or, as defined by Halleck, it is 'a body-politic, a society of men united together for mutual advantage and safety.'
"'These authors define sovereign and independent States. We have none such in our Government.
"'The original thirteen colonies, after severing their relations with Great Britain, entered into a 'perpetual Union.' This Union not meeting their expectations, afterward, and for the purpose of 'a more perfect Union,' the people of these colonies, then States, framed and adopted the Constitution of the United States. Thus the people, of their own volition, carved out of the then existing States and created the General Government. By this voluntary act each State passed under and became a subordinate part of a new Government, established expressly for national purposes. This new Government being clothed with certain definite powers, which were taken from, thereby of necessity lessened the powers of, these States. For national purposes this new Government is sovereign; for municipal purposes, the States are each sovereign; in all else they are subjects. Aggregated, the national and the State Government make a unit. It requires this aggregation to constitute complete sovereignty. They are compound, in which the original and the new elements are clearly discernible, and yet, as chemical affinities, they intermix, neutralize, and unite.
"'As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many, are one body,' so it is in our Government.'" The Congressional Globe, May 19, 1866, p. 2689.
Of course, the 17th amendment did not exist in 1866, if it did Mr. Morris would never have made those statements.
The 14th amendment when first passed by the House of Representatives was passed without much debate for the reason of "party unity." But when the 14th was submitted to the Senate, the Senate altered the first section of the 14th which made it mandatory for it to be revoted on by the House of Representatives. Under the Rules of Joint Resolutions, the remark of Mr. Rogers in the Appendix to the Congressional Globe, June 18, 1866, page 230 reveals the party hold on the 14th's first approval by the House of Representatives
"'But, sir, I do say, that although upon this side of the House we are in hopeless minority, we are yet the representatives of two million voters, and of nearly one half of the population of the adhering States, and more than a majority of the whole people of the whole Union; and although the majority can in secret caucus so arrange their tactics as to force the action of the House upon such measures as they may see fit, under the whip of caucus discipline, the minority have no such power, and all that they can do and what it is their bounden duty to do is to protect and vote against action of this character, and ask the House as the Senate was asked by members of the Opposition, that each man individually shall exercise his judgment upon this proposition to change the charter of our liberties, according to the dictates of his own conscience, free from the controlling influence of caucus. If you look at the history of this committee of fifteen from its organization few to the present time you will find that the whole object of its organization was to carry into effect party purposes, to effect the fall campaign, and to dismember and dissolve the American Union.'" Appendix to the Congressional Globe, June 13, 1866, p. 230.
The Committee of fifteen was the Committee that drafted the 14th amendment presented to Congress for their approval of the amended original draft.
Further Mr. Rogers says:
"'The party lash was again applied, and the previous question was used to gag debate, and it passed this House by the overwhelming vote of the entire radical and so-called conservative element, amid the shouting of the negroes and radicals in the galleries and waving of handkerchiefs. It went to the Senate, and there the first offspring of the committee was strangled, though not killed, and instead of receiving a two-third vote, as required by the Constitution, it got barely a majority. The committee became nervous, and determined that the party lash should be more thoroughly applied, and that Mr. Sumner and the radicals who defeated it in the Senate should yield their opposition or be read out of the party.'" Appendix to the Congressional Globe, June 13, 1866, p. 230.
Further Mr. Rogers says:
"'Shall our charter of liberty be amended in a secret cabal with closed doors? What would the American people think if we were to close the doors of this House and in secret amend the work of their fathers? They would burst open the doors and demand to know what their servants were doing. The doors of the Senate, after the work of death to constitutional liberty had been inaugurated by this secret cabal, were opened for the consideration of the work. Party corruption had done its work and the dictates of honest consciences had been smothered. Mr. Sumner and his followers who defeated the first proposition, trembled with fear and unblushingly voted this monstrous abortion through the Senate with the aid of those who supported the first. It now became necessary to manipulate the House. It had given its views upon the proposition of the committee.
"'But the forging process begun. The House are ordered to cringe and cower before the awful power of the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Stevens.] The orders had been delivered and must be obeyed. Radicalism walks forth with bold impunity, and the last link of conscience is ordered to be broken. But, sir, that caucus we never shall forget; it was the crowning act of the radicals in Congress; it was one more obstacle to the restoration of the Union. If the President of the United States could have looked in upon that body then he would have been reminded of the time when history says the Romans danced and shouted over the downfall of liberty, made memorable by the love of centuries.
"'I am here to protest against amending the great charter of our liberties by a secret caucus. Every member, under the duty which he owes to his own conscience, to his country, and to his oath, ought not to be controlled by secret caucus, and should vote according to the dictates of his own judgment. He should not be controlled by secret cabals in his action, especially in matters pertaining to the fundamental principles which lie at the base of the liberties of the people, and which were founded in old revolutionary times and handed down to this generation, and which this generation should hand down to their descendants unimpaired as a great jewel and legacy of liberty.
"'I say this amendment would never pass by the necessary two thirds if free from the control of party whip and party ties. It does not meet the deliberate judgment of two thirds of either House.'" Appendix to the Congressional Globe, June 13, 1866, p. 230.
Should the posterity by studying the principles set by the 39th Congress awaken, surely a bloody civil war will begin in America. Once the Whites understand the treachery of the 11th through 26th amendments, they will reject the evil principles behind them.
When you boil down all of the information you have just read - what it amounts to is the socialistic Congress, today, is demanding that "We the People" obey their disobedience, the disobedience of the 39th Congress of the organic law.
Not today, not tomorrow or ever will any true Israelite obey the conditions set by the 39th Congress or even the present Congress that continues the disobedience of our organic laws that are based on our Father's Holy Word!
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children." Hosea 4:6
The Father's meaning is clear - obey his law or live without Him; this is not a condition acceptable to any true Israelite.
Next to pick up the fight for the original organic law was Mr. Davis, a Senator from Kentucky. His comments are found in the Appendix to the Congressional Globe 1866 June 7, page 231, 1st Session, 39th Congress. Following is the first part of his speech:
Speech of Hon. Garrett Davis, of Kentucky In The United States Senate, June 7, 1866.
"The Senate having under consideration the joint resolution (H.R.No.127) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States --
"Mr. DAVIS said:
"'Mr. President: We have been admonished by some of the leading members of the majority in the Senate, that Congress is now about entering upon the seventh month of its session, and that the public business was never so far behind at so late a period at any previous session of Congress as it now is. I think, that the honorable Senators who give this admonition and their friends, are alone responsible for the great backwardness of both Houses in the transaction of the public business. I admit that there is a very great state of backwardness in relation to the transaction of the legitimate, proper, and useful portion of the public business; but as to the business that is of an illegitimate and mischievous character, and that is calculated to produce results deleterious to the present and the future of the whole country, there has been a good deal, much too much, of progress made. This tardiness in the transaction of the important, useful, and appropriate business of the country has resulted from a fixed and determined purpose, manifested in various propositions, of the majority of Congress to elevate what are denominated the freedman, to aggrandize them, to make an unparalleled provision in its extent and expensiveness for the maintenance of the young, the aged, the infirm, and the helpless, [Ed. Note: Sounds like Social Security!] and the religious and intellectual education of them all; and to force, if possible, upon Congress and the country the dogma of negro suffrage.
"'Another cause of the consumption of time is the general disposition of the majority to tinker with the Constitution, their numerous propositions to amend it, and the discussion of them in both Houses. And still another fruitful cause of much waste of time has been the war that is prevailing between that majority in both Houses and the Executive, not upon his part as I conceive, but by that majority upon him. I was never of the politics of the President, nor he of mine; but at the present time and for some time past his leading measures have received my approval and my hearty support. I think, notwithstanding the number of protests to the contrary in this Chamber, that his policy, as it is termed, is but a continuation of the later policy of the late President, but a continuation of the policy and principles to which the majority of both Houses of Congress stand pledged in the most solemn forms. We now see, though, that this majority, lately the friends of the President, are engaged in a war upon him, and that war manifests itself in various aspects and modes. They denounce him; they denounce his measures, his policy. He is a coordinate branch of Government; or at least the executive department is, and he is the chief executive officer. He is as independent in his constitutional position in the Government, and in the legitimate exercise of the powers and functions of his office as is Congress in the exercise of its powers and functions, and he ought no more to be assailed by Congress, or to be obstructed in the legitimate exercise of those powers, than Congress should be in the exercise of its powers by him.
"'Among his powers is the veto. We have seen repeated and persevering efforts made by Congress, with a considerable amount of success, to checkmate the veto power of the President by their achieving, as I think, illegitimately and unconstitutionally, a majority of two thirds, and over two thirds, in both Houses. And one of the objects of the majority in presenting the extraordinary proposition under consideration is to attain and continue a political power that will enable it and its sectional successors to control the future legislation of Congress; to overrule presidential vetoes; to hold possession of and direct all the operations of the Government. But what is the immediate cause that has brought down the majority in such relentless hostility to the President? Let us examine for the object and the animus. Under the late Administration the President and Congress were in accord; that is, the good man who then filled the office of President was so flexible in his nature and will that he permitted himself to be driven from his own principles and purposes, often, by the vehemence, energy, and stronger will of the radical leaders in Congress. One of the most celebrated apostles of abolitionism in America, Phillips, remarked on a certain occasion, 'Mr. Lincoln is a growing man; and why does he grow? Because we have watered him.' And there was a great deal of truth expressed in those few words. The abolitionists in Congress and out of Congress watered the late President. They caused him to grow in the direction and shape that they wished him.
"'They warped him from his own principles and policy to theirs. And what is the great sin of the present Executive of the United States? It is that he will not make himself the leader, the obedient tool of the majorities in the two Houses of Congress; that his judgment of his powers, of his duties to the country and to the Government, and of what is constitutional, wise, and good for the country, is inconsistent with and may conflict with their party purposes; and because he will not tamely submit his own reason and the conclusions of his own judgment and conscience to their behests.
"'To prove that this position of mine has not been taken without facts, I will read extracts from a speech of the honorable Senator from Michigan, [Mr. HOWARD] delivered in this chamber some two weeks or more since. That able senator referred to the measures of the President for restoring relations between the States lately in rebellion and the United States Government, and characterized them as 'his policy.'"
The Senator then proceeded to make these remarks:
"'I complain of this course of conduct on the part of the Executive, because I believe it to be a usurpation of the authority which pertains not to him but to Congress, and here is the gist of the controversy, here is the bone of contention.
Further:
"'I will not say that it is not competent for a military commander in the field, whether he be 'Commander-in-Chief' or acting in any other capacity under the Constitution of the United States, to impart political or legislative rights to the conquered community. That is what I assert. The Commander-in-Chief holds the sword of physical force; all his acts as 'Commander-in-Chief' are connected with the prosecution of the war as such, and go not a single inch beyond the necessities of war. He has no authority to assume the legislative power that appertains to the Government who appoints him, and whose servant he is, and undertake to exercise legislative authority in the country where he is the conqueror. Let the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania read the numerous cases in Roman and Grecian history, and, indeed, in all other histories, in which attempts have been made on the part of commanders in the field, and he will not find a single instance in which any attempt to exercise legislative authority over a conquered people has been tolerated by the Government at home.' * * *
"'The mere formal question of the power of each House to decide upon credentials is one which I am not discussing. I go far behind that; I go down to the bottom, to the essence of the question, and deny to the President the power to impart to the people of any rebel State any political rights whatever; and I claim that the power belongs to Congress and to Congress alone.' * * *
"'It is said that the States have the right of coming back to Congress. I grant it. They have the right to return to their allegiance and be represented in the two Houses of Congress; but that right does not accrue and cannot accrue until the conqueror, the Congress of the United States, has seen that it is consistent with their interests, with the interests of their people, the interest of the whole people of the United States. We hold them to-day not by their own will, not by their willing fealty to the Government, not in virtue of their fidelity to the Constitution, but solely, in my judgment, even to-day, by virtue of this highest law known to communities, physical force.
"'Mr. President, I have read these extracts from the speech of the distinguished Senator from Michigan, who was upon this illegitimate and hybrid committee of fifteen, raised without any proper authority, acting and coming to conclusions and making recommendations without sanction or authority, and obligation upon no person; my purpose being to show the animus and the objects which he and the party of which he is such a distinguished member, having in relation to the President and his constitutional powers in the war which they are making upon him. I will read, with the same purpose, a short paragraph extracted from one of the trusted oracles of this party in the Northwest, the Chicago Tribune, in these words:
"Mr. Johnson is merely the agent of the Republican party, which is the governing party, or, in other words, the Government. He is in duty and in honor bound to carry out its measures and principles. When he refuses to do so he commits a breach of trust, and stands in the light of a swindler."
"'What is this power called "the Government" by the members of this majority in the Senate in the last Administration? The majority of Congress and the Executive were then in harmony. The Executive was denominated by them "the Government." Gentlemen could hardly rise in their places and utter a sentence upon this floor without referring to the President as "the Government." True loyalty, all loyalty, then consisted in supporting the President -"the Government" -- and his measures; and myself and other humble men who had the independence or the hardihood, to dissent from the measures of "the Government," -- of the President -- and to condemn them, were denounced as "copperheads," as "disloyal." You see now, sir, the arrogant, profligate, and monstrous position assumed by this Tribune in Chicago. With him the President is no longer "the Government." "The Government" is the majority of Congress, according to its designation. By what authority is the President deposed and the majority in the two Houses of Congress installed as "the Government?" In this Chamber no senator now denominates the President "the Government." Nor do I subscribe to any such absurdity. It is an abuse of terms to call either the Congress or the President the Government. The three departments, the legislative, executive, and judicial, and nothing less, constitute the Government. All the powers of government of sovereignty trusted to the United States are divided out by the Constitution among the three Departments. These departments are coordinate, and in the exercise of their appropriate constitutional powers they are equally independent; and where one is making encroachments upon another, or upon the Constitution generally, and the liberties of the people, it was the intention of the founders, not that one department should be the Government, but that each should be a check upon the other, and each should defend the Constitution and the liberties of the country from the assaults of the others.
"'Andrew Johnson is the existing impersonation of the chief executive power of the Government of the United States -- that power is very limited, to be sure, not extending one particle beyond the powers enumerated in the Constitution, and those with which he is clothed by the laws of Congress within the sphere of its authority so to invest the President with incidental, auxiliary powers as expressed by the Constitution. The powers of the judicial department are enumerated, meted, and bounded out to the Supreme Court and the courts inferior to it, with the same authority of Congress by law to invest it with all proper and necessary incidental powers to execute those expressly delegated to it.
"'Now, Mr. President, I proceed to state what I understand to be a few plain and self-evident truths as connected with the American system of government:
"'1. The great leading feature of the complex political system of the United States is, that all sovereignty is divided between the State governments and a General Government common to all the States; and that the affairs of the people with foreign nations, and with each other as residents of different States, are confided to the General Government; and those affairs which relate locally to the people of each State, their institutions, and rights of person and property, were reserved to the States respectively, and are exclusively under the jurisdiction of their governments.
"'2. The Constitution of the United States forms a Government of delegated and limited powers, and that Government, or any of its departments or officers, has not a vestige of power but what is conferred by the language of the Constitution.
"'3. Military law exists by the legislation of Congress in the form of the Articles of War, and the Rules and Regulations of the Army. What is called martial law is the overthrow of all law and the domination of the arbitrary will of the military commander. This state of things cannot exist in any place in the United States where the civil law can be enforced by the civil courts with the aid and support of the military power. It is only in such localities where the civil law and courts have been in fact deposed by a hostile military force, and this disposition continues by the actual presence and operation of the cause which produced it, that the will of the military commander becomes of necessity, the law of the place; and only to the limits and so long as the civil law is thus deposed. So soon as the hostile force is withdrawn, or driven away, or conquered by friendly arms, the civil law and courts are reinstated by the principles of the Constitution, and become again de facto as they are all the time de jure the supreme law and authority.
"'Now, Mr. President, these propositions, in their length and breadth, are based upon the Constitution of the United States. They are not original with me. I have learned them. I have learned them from Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist, from the debates in the Convention which framed our Constitution, from the debates of the different State conventions that adopted it, from the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, particularly the decisions rendered by Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Story, and from the Commentaries of Chancellor Kent. These great truths or principles are a part of our system of government; they are moored in that Government and will abide there as long as it lasts intact by revolution; and I defy the honorable Senator from Michigan and all of his associates here or elsewhere to shake these principles, incorporated as they are in the Constitution.
"'But, Mr. President, about the year 1860 it became manifest that the American people were fast coming to a civil war. The just authority of the Government of the United States and the execution of its laws, it became apparent, were to be resisted. In the beginning of the year 1861 the banner of revolt, of insurrection, was unfurled. What was the duty of the Government of the United States, of its departments and of the men who occupied those department when this demonstration against the laws, authority, and power of the Government was made? They were not to remain torpid, inactive, as stocks and stones. That condition of things had been anticipated by the wise statesmen who framed the Constitution. The Constitution was cradled in a rebellion in the State of Massachusetts got up by Shays. It was just for the conditions of things that arose in 1861 that the framers of the Constitution had made provision, and they had made it by prescribing the manner in which such resistance to the execution of the laws of the United States or such insurrections were to be met. They had designated the departments of the Government and the officers that were to undertake this great work of putting down such insurrections, and coercing obedience to the Constitution and laws, and with what means.
"'I now propose to examine what each department of the Government was to do in this great work, according to the provisions of the Constitution and laws made in pursuance of it. The Constitution reads thus, in various sections and paragraphs:
"'The Congress shall have power --
"'To raise and support armies;
"'To provide and maintain a navy;
"'To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the law of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
"'To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
"'According to my understanding of the Constitution, this short summary embraces every provision of the instrument that invests Congress with any power to act, immediately or remotely, upon the subject of invasion, insurrection, or domestic disturbance in a State. Let us now see what other provisions in relation to this subject have been made by the Constitution, and to what departments or officers of the Government they appertain:
"'The President," * * * "before he enters upon the execution of this office, shall take the following oath or affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.'"
"'The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States.
"'He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
"'These words are not many, but they are comprehensive and explicit, and, in my judgment, they are all that were necessary or intended to meet the great exigence that came upon the country in 1861. How and by whom is such an exigence to be met? What is the oath of you, sir, as a member of this body and of every member of each House? All of us swear to support the Constitution. May the Lord have mercy upon us for the manner in which some of us have disregarded that oath! What is the oath of the President? That he will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. The members of Congress are simply to support the Constitution; the President is to preserve, protect, and defend it. He is to fight for it. When it is assailed, it is his duty to wield all the military power with which the Constitution and the laws of Congress have intrusted him for its preservation, its protection, and its defense.
"'If the execution of the laws is obstructed without force of arms, force of arms cannot be intervened to have them executed, or to aid in their execution. It is only when the authority of the Government and the due execution of its laws are resisted by arms that arms can be interposed for the purpose of putting down the resistance and enforcing the execution of the laws. And who is to interpose the arms? Not Congress. Congress has nothing to do with wielding the military power that may thus be properly invoked. Who is to do it? The President. That is his duty by the Constitution, made so by plain language. He is to execute the office of President of the United States faithfully; that is, to perform all the duties devolved upon him by the Constitution and laws. He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed; and to do this, when it becomes necessary, he must apply and direct the military power of the United States. He is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; and to do this, when it is assaulted by men in arms, he, as Commander-in-Chief, must repel the assault by the Army and Navy, and the militia of the States raised, provided, and called into the public service by laws passed by Congress. That is the aid which Congress is to afford him, and that is the only part which it can take in this grave business.
"'The act of 1793 was the first that was enacted to carry out the provisions of the Constitution for suppressing insurrections, &c. It was found defective, and in 1795 another and more complete act was passed. In 1861, after the insurrection had broken out, Congress took up the subject again and passed a more elaborate and probably a better considered law, in which the provisions of the act of 1795, so far as they related to the subject of insurrections, were repealed. I will read a clause from the law of July 29, 1861, drafted, as I understand, by the late Senator Collamer:
"That whenever, by reason of unlawful obstructions, combination, or assemblages of persons, or rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States, it shall become impracticable, in the judgment of the President of the United States, to enforce by the ordinary course of judicial proceeding the laws of the United States within any State or Territory of the United States, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of any or all the States of the Union, and to employ such parts of the land and naval forces of the United States as he may deem necessary to enforce the faithful execution of the laws of the United States or to suppress such rebellion, in whatever State or Territory thereof the laws of the United States may be forcibly opposed, or the execution thereof forcibly obstructed."
"'That is a most proper and constitutional provision. It limits itself to the occasions and the exigencies of resistance by force to the execution of the laws of the United States, or a rebellion, which is a great insurrection against the authority of the United States."
"'Now, sir, the honorable Senator from Michigan says that Congress is the conqueror, and that the people of the rebel States who were subdued by our arms and who capitulated and acknowledged obedience to the authority and laws of the United States occupy the position of a conquered people; and as such are subject to Congress, the conqueror.'"
"Mr. HOWARD.
"'If the Senator from Kentucky will pardon me for a very brief interruption, I should be glad to lay before the Senate a very high authority upon that particular point.'"
"Mr. DAVIS.
"'You can do that at our leisure after I have concluded.'"
"Mr. HOWARD.
"'It is no less an authority than Andrew Johnson, who adopted the principle in a deliberate speech made in this body.'"
"The PRESIDING OFFICER, (Mr. RAMSEY in the chair.)
"'The Senator from Kentucky, who is entitled to the floor declines to yield.'"
"Mr. DAVIS.
"'Mr. President, my principle is to support Andrew Johnson when he is right and to oppose him when he is wrong, and that is the principle upon which I practice in relation to all Presidents and all parties and all Administrations; but I will proceed.
"'How can Congress be the conqueror of the Southern States? Is Congress clothed by the Constitution with any military power? Not a particle. It is vested with the power to declare war, but not to declare war against a State or any portion of the people of the United States, but only against foreign nations. Such is the plain meaning of the Constitution and the ruling of the Supreme Court. That position is conceded by all American statesmen.
"'The war power of Congress has no application whatever to the suppression of insurrection or rebellion, except merely to exercise the legislative power to raise and support armies, to provide a Navy, and to call forth the militia and to raise the necessary supplies to enable the President to suppress the insurrection and see that the laws are faithfully executed. That fulfills the whole power and duty of Congress in the suppression of insurrection and rebellion; the consummation of the work belongs to the President, and not by the authority of Congress, but the Constitution.
"'I concede that when the United States is invaded, when a State or a portion of the people are in a state of insurrection, when there is such domestic violence in a State as requires the protection of the United States, to decide when the state of facts amount to either of those conditions does not appertain to the President as "Commander-in-Chief," and is nowhere given to him by the Constitution; yet he is invested with that high discretionary power.
"'How, then, does he get it? By the act of Congress. First by the act of 1793; second, by the act of 1795; and lastly, by the act of July, 1861, in the section which I have read. Whence the authority of Congress to invest the President with this power? Here it is in these few words of the Constitution:
"Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or any Department or officer thereof."
"'Mr. President, these provisions of the Constitution and of the laws of Congress have been before the Supreme Court, and have been construed by the final arbiters, organized by the Constitution, after the maturest consideration. I will refer, first, to the case of Martin vs. Motley, 12 Wheaton. It came up to the Supreme Court from the State of New York. The President had made a call on the Governor of that State for a militia force. Martin had been enrolled and ordered by the proper military authority to report at the place of rendezvous, but failed. The powers of the President, the duties of subordinate military officers to obey his orders, and the effect upon the militiamen, all arose as questions in the case, and the court, in the opinion, say:"
"'If we look at the language of the act of 1795, every conclusion drawn from the nature of the power itself is strongly fortified. The words are,
"'whenever the United States shall be invaded or be in imminent danger of invasion, &c., it shall be lawful for the President, &c., to call forth such number of the militia, &c., as he may judge necessary to repel such invasion.
"'That is a quotation from the law. Here is the reasoning of the court:
"'The power itself is confided to the Executive of the Union, to him who is, by the Constitution, 'the Commander-in-Chief of the militia, when called into the actual service of the United States,' whose duty it is to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,' and whose responsibility for an honest discharge of his official obligations is secured by the highest sanctions. He is necessarily constituted the judge of the existence of the exigency in the first instance, and is bound to act according to his belief of the facts. If he does so act, and decides to call forth the militia, his orders for the purpose are in strict conformity with the provision of the law, and it would seem to follow as a necessary consequence that every act done by a subordinate officer, in obedience to such orders, is equally justifiable. The law contemplates that, under such circumstances, orders shall be given to carry the power into effect, and it cannot, therefore, be a correct inference that any other person has a just right to disobey them. The law does not provide for any appeal from the judgment of the President, or for any right in subordinate officers to review his decision, and in effect defeat it. Whenever a statute gives a discretionary power to any person, to be exercised by him upon his own opinion of certain facts, it is a sound rule of construction that the statute constitutes him the sole and exclusive judge of the existence of those facts. And in the present case we are all of opinion that such is the true construction of the act of 1795. It is no answer that such a power may be abused, for there is no power which is not susceptible of abuse.
"'In precise accordance to the judgment of the Supreme Court in that case was its ruling in the case of Luther vs. Borden, which arose out of the Dorr rebellion in Rhode Island. I will read one or two short passages from that opinion. Speaking of the act of 1795, the court say:
"'By this act, the power of deciding whether the exigency had arisen upon which the Government of the United States is bound to interfere, is given to the President. He is to act upon the application of the Legislature or of the Executive.
"'That is, when there is domestic violence in a State, as was the case then in Rhode Island.
"'And consequently he must determine what body of men constitute the Legislature, and who is the Governor, before he can act.
"'This principle, as the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. SUMNER] said some time ago, in relation to another matter, runs in several directions. It is an important principle. It has a multiform application; and it may receive other and more important applications is the course of events. I do not know that it will. I hope there will be no necessity for it. If there should be, I have no knowledge that it will be exercised; although it ought, and might be with the plainest sanction of the Constitution, and the highest considerations of duty and patriotism operating upon the President.
"'The fact that both parties claim the right to the government cannot alter the case, for both cannot be entitled to it. If there is an armed conflict, like the one of which we are speaking, it is a case of domestic violence, and one of the parties must be in insurrection against the lawful government. And the President must, of necessity, decide which is the government, and which party is unlawfully arrayed against it, before he can perform the duty imposed upon him by the act of Congress.
"'What was the decision of the President in that case? He decided that the old charter government of Rhode Island was the true and legitimate government of the State; that the Governor, under that charter government, was the true and legitimate executive Chief Magistrate of the State. He decided that the Dorr government was spurious; that the election of Door [sic] under it, and every attempt to set up and organize a government under the Dorr constitution in the State of Rhode Island was illegal, unconstitutional, void, a wrong, and an outrage upon the existing government, and authorized the existing government to put it and all of its supporters down by force of arms. The President in that case did not interfere by the actual march of troops into Rhode Island, but he declared his purpose to do so, and that declaration induced the insurgents and the Dorrites to submit. Here is what the court say on that point:
"'The interference of the President, therefore, by announcing his determination, was as effectual as if the militia had assembled under his orders. And it should be equally authoritative. For certainly no court of the United States, with a knowledge of this decision --
"'That he had determined to interfere simply --
"'-- would have been justified in recognizing the opposing party as the lawful government; or in treating as wrong-doers and insurgents the officers of the government which the President had recognized and was prepared to support by an armed force.
"'Here is another point stated in this opinion which carries a truth, a principle with it, of which I have an application to make presently:
"'In the case of foreign nations, the Government acknowledged by the President is always recognized in the courts of justice. And this principle has been applied by the act of Congress to the sovereign States of the Union.
"'Let gentlemen ponder a little upon the principle involved in that language. In relation to foreign countries, we all know, as the uniform practice and history of the Government, that whenever the President recognizes an existing de facto foreign Government, the Congress and the courts, and all the authorities of the United States, in obedience or in conformity, at least, to the acknowledgement by the President, recognize the existence of the same government. And the court says, "this principle has been applied by the act of Congress to the sovereign States of the Union." Here is the very point decided, that when a State is acknowledged by the President it will then be recognized by the courts, the act of 1795 vesting that power in the President. This opinion, in remarking upon the provision of the act of 1795, which was the subject of the main question in the case of Martin vs. Mott, says:
"'The power given the President in each case is the same --
"'That is, in relation to invasions, insurrections, or domestic violence --
"'with this difference only, that it cannot be exercised by him in the latter case except upon the application of the Legislature or Executive of the State. The case above mentioned arose out of a call made by the President by virtue of the power conferred on him by the first clause; and the court said that --
"'Whenever a statute gives a discretionary power to any person to be exercised by him upon his own opinion of certain facts, it is a sound rule of construction that the statute constitutes him the sole and exclusive judge of the existence of those facts,
"'There is no appeal from his judgment; there is no correction of it; there can be no revision of it; it is the law and the fact of the case; and it must be so received by all, not only by military officers who are exercising power in subordination to him as "Commander-in-Chief," but by Congress and by the courts; and such has been the uniform practice of the entire Government and all its officers. The opinion proceeds:"
"'It is a sound rule of construction that the statute constitutes him the sole and exclusive judge of the existence of those facts.' The facts that make up the case upon which he is to act by moving the armed forces of the United States.
"'What I have read from the Constitution, the laws of Congress, and the decisions of the Supreme Court, establish these propositions: that in 1861 it was the power, right, and duty of the President to decide whether, in any locality of the United States, "by reason of unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages of persons," or insurrection or rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States, it was "impracticable to enforce, by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, the laws of the United States;" and that his decision of this point is final, and concludes Congress and all the people of the United States.
"'The enforcement of the execution of the laws in the places where the obstructions existed had become a military operation; and all that Congress had the power to do, and which it was its highest duty to perform, was to furnish the President with the men and the money to enable him to take care that the laws be duly executed. That could only be done by the removal, the cessation, the non-existence of further resistance and obstruction. When the work was thus completed, whether by the voluntary submission of the insurgents, or their suppression by force of arms, the office of the President in the important matter was fulfilled; military operations and military expenses in it were to terminate, and Congress was under no obligation to vote more men and more money to put down an insurrection, a rebellion which no longer had existence, or for the enforcement of the execution of the laws to which there was no longer either resistance or obstruction.
"'But there was a necessity for some power, some officer of the Government to declare when the insurrection was suppressed. There is such a power and such an officer to execute it; and who is he? The Constitution had been attacked by an armed resistance to the execution of the laws, and an attempt to set up an independent power and government within the United States. It is made the duty of the President, by the Constitution, to the best of his ability to preserve, protect, and defend that Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed throughout the United States. To give him the ability to perform those important trusts he is made by the Constitution the permanent Commander-in-Chief of the whole military force of the United States. The law intrusts him with the sole, exclusive, and unappealable power to decide when and where there is an insurrection or an armed resistance to the execution of the laws; and the Constitution and the law authorize him to move the whole military force to suppress the insurrection, to stifle all resistance or obstruction to the due execution of the laws. He is to determine upon and conduct every movement and operation to that end, and to continue them until it is effected. Not Congress, but the President, in fact and of necessity, is the functionary to know and declare when the work has been ended, and then to withdraw the military forces. Congress cannot know when it is done, but he knows because it is being done under his orders, and he is in constant communication with those who are in the performance of it. Congress might not be, as it was not, in session when the late rebellion terminated; but the Senator from Michigan says it was the duty of the President to convene Congress. It might be that a large number of the members of Congress were not then chosen. And for what purpose is Congress to be convened? That it might be informed by the President that he had suppressed the rebellion by the operations of the Army; or that it had terminated by the voluntary submission of the insurgents; and that it might authorize him to withdraw and disband the forces, and stop the heavy expenditure of public money when there was no longer any armed resistance in existence or threatened, but, on the contrary, all was submission, obedience, and peace. Could any proposition be more absurd and unsound? No, sir. The President is the constitutional and legal organ to decide and declare when the insurrection begins, how long it continues, and when it ends; and it is the duty of all the other departments and officers of Government to accept and act upon the particular state of the affair according to his decision and judgment upon it.
"'But the Senator from Michigan announces that the southern States and people, in consequence of their rebellion, have ceased to be States, and have forfeited all their rights as States and American citizens; that Congress is their conqueror, and holds them this day in the condition of a conquered people, and has the right so to hold them until the interests and the will of the conquerors will allow them to reconstruct the States that revolted and readmit them as States into the Union; that this whole business of the reestablishment of relations between these States and the Government of the United States is a congressional affair exclusively, with which the President has nothing to do; and that "his policy" of reconstruction is nothing but errant and audacious usurpation of power, an infringement of the rights and powers of Congress, to which it ought not and cannot submit without degradation.
"'A most lofty and imperial pretension, truly, made for Congress by the Senator from Michigan! And where is its warrant? Not in the Constitution. If it be there, will some of the Websters, the Kents and the Storys of the majority, in this body refer me to the provision, that I may read and be instructed? But neither the Senator, nor any of his coadjutors in support of this measure, can find any support for this most extravagant claim of power for Congress in the Constitution. Indeed, he deigns not to place it on so humble a footing, but in swelling phrase claims it for Congress, as the conqueror of those States, and by the laws of war. If there be any right to the appellation of conqueror in the suppression of the rebellion it would appertain to the President rather than to Congress.'" Congressional Globe 1866 June 7, page 231, 1st Session, 39th Congress.
Continued as Corruption of Blood - Part 2.
http://www.beholdonline.info/essays/corruption_part_1.html