Four Members of Lincoln’s Cabinet

Four Members of Lincoln’s Cabinet

Thoms Allen 

In To the Victor Go the Myths & Monuments: The History of the First 100 Years of the War Against God and the Constitution, 1776 - 1876, and Its Modern Impact (Appleton, Wisconsin: American Opinion Foundation Publishing, 2016), Arthur R. Thompson provides some interesting information about four members of Lincoln’s cabinet: William Seward, Montgomery Blair, Salmon Chase, and Edwin Stanton.

William Seward

William Seward (1801–1872) was Lincoln’s Secretary of State from 1861 to 1865. He remained President Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State until 1869.

As part of the anti-Masonic movement, Seward helped form the Anti-Masonic Party in 1828. Later, he became a Whig, and as a Whig Senator, he wanted the United States to annex Canada.

Although he knew about John Brown’s raid on Harper's Ferry beforehand, he lied and claimed he did not learn about it until after it happened.

Though the first choice of the abolitionists for the president of the Radical Republicans at the 1860 Republican Convention was Salmon Chase, they also supported Seward, who was the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president.

Further, he opposed the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.

Montgomery Blair

Montgomery Blair (1813–1883) was Lincoln’s Postmaster-General from 1861 to 1864. Among Lincoln’s cabinet, he was the most adamant in supporting resupplying Fort Sumter, which precipitated Lincoln’s War.

Also, Blair raised money for John Brown’s defense after his failed raid on Harper’s Ferry.

After Lincoln’s War began, Blair urged Lincoln to confiscate the estates of slave owners loyal to the South and to use the money from the sale of these estates to pay slave owners loyal to the North for their manumitted slaves. (Congress later enacted a law authorizing the confiscation of slave owners’ estates, but without compensating slave owners who emancipated their slaves. This law followed the fourth plank of the Communist Manifesto.)

Salmon Chase

Salmon Chase (1808–1873) was Secretary of the Treasury in President Lincoln's cabinet from 1861 to 1864. As Secretary of the Treasury, he supported and implemented the National Banking Act (for more about this act, see “National Banking System” by Thomas Allen) and the issuance of greenbacks (for more about greenbacks, see “The U.S. Note, 1862 – 1879" by Thomas Allen).

Chase began his political career as a radical. He was a leader of the Liberty Party and the Anti-Slavery Society. (The Liberty Party was an abolitionist party. As its name implies, the Anti-Slavery Society promoted the abolition of slavery.) Also, he helped form the Free Soil Party in 1848 and became a Senator for Ohio the following year, serving until 1855. (The Free Soil Party opposed expanding slavery into the western territories and supported preserving them for White settlers). Later, the Free Soil Party merged into the Republican Party, and Chase became the Republican Governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860. As the governor of Ohio, Chase embraced John Brown and expressed his support for Brown. 

Additionally, Chase was part of the conspiracy to submerge the Know-Nothing Party into the Republican Party. (The Know-Nothing Party opposed immigration, especially Roman Catholic immigrants. It officially became known as the American Party.)

In 1860, the Radical Republicans promoted him as the Republican presidential candidate until he declared his support for Lincoln. In 1868, he sought unsuccessfully the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party.

After Lincoln’s War, he wanted to keep the Southern States from returning to the Union with full voting power to prevent the Radical Republicans from losing power. However, since this plan failed (it was replaced with disenfranchising many Southerners), he toured the South soliciting the Negro vote for the Radical Republicans.

In 1864, Lincoln appointed Chase as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, where he served until 1873. As Chief Justice, he ruled against the greenback, which he had promoted when he was Secretary of the Treasury. The Court ruled that the greenback was constitutional, i.e., the US government can lawfully issue legal tender paper notes, which was contrary to the understanding of the drafters of the Constitution (see “Constitutional Money” by Thomas Allen).

Edwin Stanton

Edwin Stanton (1814–1869) was Lincoln’s Secretary of War from 1861 to 1865. When Johnson succeeded Lincoln as President, Johnson fired Stanton.

Stanton was a member of President Buchanan’s Southern Rights Cabinet. Some accused him of supporting the secessionists before he joined the Radical Republicans and became Lincoln’s Secretary of War.

Like many abolitionists, Stanton supported secession until the Southern States seceded. Then, he became a Unionist. Blair and others noted Stanton’s complete lack of character.

Stanton was a close friend of Adam Gurowski. Gurowski was a student of Hegel and participated in the Polish rebellion against Russia. Also, he was a Fourierist and promoted Fourierist socialism. (As defined by Merriam-Webster, Fourierism is “a system for reorganizing society into cooperative communities of small self-sustaining groups.”) Later, he became a Russophile and promoted Russia as the head of a Pan-Slavic empire. Stanton was well aware of Gurowski’s background. Moreover, Lincoln feared Gurowski would assassinate him. 

These four men could easily be part of any post-World War II cabinet. Little philosophical differences exist between them and most other post-World War II cabinet officers.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Allen.

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What Is Your View of the US Constitution?

What Is Your View of the US Constitution?

Thomas Allen

Do you view the US Constitution as the one that the founding fathers gave us? Or, do you view it as the one given us by Lincoln and the Radical Republicans as furthered developed by Presidents Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and carried to fruition by the Warren Court and especially Justice William Brennan, which is the current Constitution. To find out how you view the US Constitution, take the following test. The answers follow the test.

Test

1. Did the United States precede the States, or did the States precede the United States?

2. Can the United States exist without the States?

3. Does sovereignty reside in the United States (and, therefore, in the people thereof) as a whole, or in each State individually (and, therefore, in the people of each State)?

4. Currently, how many “we the people” are there?

5. When the Constitution was adopted, how many “we the people” were there?

6. Does the Constitution establish a national government or a federal government?

7. Are the United States a republic or a union of republics?

8. Is a person a citizen of a State by virtue of being a citizen of the United States (his loyalty is first to the United States and then to his State), or is a person a citizen of the United States by virtue of being a citizen of a State (his loyalty is first to his State and then to the other States, the United States)?

9. Was the Constitution written for a propositional (creedal) country or for a genetic country?

10. Should the Constitution be referred to as the “Constitution of the United States of American” or the “Constitution for the United States of America?”

11. Does/do the “United States” take a singular or plural verb?

12. Does the General Welfare clause grant Congress the power to enact any law that it considers being for the general welfare, or is this clause intended to restrict the powers of Congress?

13. Does the Interstate Commerce clause give Congress the power to regulate manufacturing, agriculture, mining, finance, employment, the environment, and all other production and consumption activities, or does it restrict Congress’ power just to regulating the trade and exchange of goods?

14. Does the Necessary and Proper clause grant Congress the power to enact any law that it finds convenient or useful, or does it restrict Congress to enacting incidental laws necessary to execute the powers delegated to Congress?

15. Does the Supremacy clause empower the US government to ensure that federal laws and treaties have precedence over State laws and State constitutions, or is its purpose to ensure that federal laws implementing the powers specifically delegated to Congress are constitutional?

16. Does the President have the authority to legislate by executive orders?

17. Can the President execute an offensive war without a Congressional declaration of war?

18. Does a State have the right to judge the constitutionality of laws of the US government and to interpose and nullify the laws that it finds unconstitutional?

19. Does a State have the right to secede?

20. Does the Constitution grant the US government the power to do whatever it wants to do unless the Constitution expressly prohibits such action, or does the Constitution limit the powers of the US government to those powers expressly granted?

21. Do States have only those powers that the US government allows them, or do States have all powers that the Constitution has not expressly denied them?

22. Does the Constitution authorize the US government to intervene and interfere with the internal affairs of a State?

23. Does the Bill of Rights apply to the States?

24. Does the US Supreme Court have the right, duty, and power to amend the Constitution with its rulings?

25. Is the Constitution teleological (establishing a society based on abstract principles of natural rights, equality, democracy, etc.) or nomocratic (bring government under the rule of law)?

Answer

1. Lincoln: The United States preceded the States.

Founding Fathers: The States preceded the United States.

2. Lincoln: Yes, the States are irrelevant administrative districts; just as a State can exist without counties, so can the United States exist without the States.

Founding Fathers: No, if the States ceased to exist, so would the United States — just as the union formed under the Articles of Confederation ceased to exist when North Carolina and Rhode Island finally seceded from it and acceded to the union formed under the US Constitution.

3. Lincoln: Sovereignty resides in the United States as a whole.

Founding Fathers: Sovereignty resides in each State individually.

4. Lincoln: One.

Founding Fathers: Fifty.

5. Lincoln: One.

Founding Fathers: Thirteen.

6. Lincoln: National government.

Founding Fathers: Federal government.

7. Lincoln: Republic.

Founding Fathers: Union of republics.

8. Lincoln: A person is a citizen of a State by virtue of being a citizen of the United States.

Founding Fathers: A person is a citizen of the United States by virtue of being a citizen of a State; a citizen of the United State means a citizen of a States.

9. Lincoln: Propositional (creedal); therefore, it was written for all races.

Founding Fathers: Genetic; it was written solely for the White (Aryan, Homo albus) race (species) and for no other race.

10. Lincoln: The “Constitution of the United States of American.”

  Founding Fathers: The “Constitution for the United States of America.”

11. Lincoln: Singular.

Founding Fathers: Plural.

12. Lincoln: The General Welfare clause grants power to Congress.

Founding Fathers: The General Welfare clause restricts the power of Congress.

13. Lincoln: Yes.

Founding Fathers: No, the Interstate Commerce clause limits Congress to regulating trade and exchanges of goods.

14. Lincoln: The Necessary and Proper clause grants Congress the power to enact any law that it finds convenient or useful.

Founding Fathers: The Necessary and Proper clause restricts Congress to enacting incidental laws.

15. Lincoln: The purpose of the Supremacy clause is to empower the US government to ensure that federal laws and treaties have precedence over State laws and State constitutions.

Founding Fathers: The purpose of the Supremacy clause is to ensure that federal laws implementing the powers specifically delegated to Congress are constitutional.

16. Lincoln: Yes.

Founding Fathers: No.

17. Lincoln: Yes.

Founding Fathers: No.

18. Lincoln: No.

Founding Fathers: Yes.

19. Lincoln: No.

Founding Fathers: Yes. (By 1791 the States had already seceded twice: once from the British Empire and once from the union created by the Articles of Confederation.)

20. Lincoln: The US government has unlimited power.

Founding Fathers: The powers of the US government are restricted to those powers expressly delegated to it.

21. Lincoln: The States have only those powers allowed.

Founding Fathers: The States have all powers not denied them.

22. Lincoln: Yes.

Founding Fathers: No.

23. Lincoln: Yes.

Founding Fathers: No.

24. Lincoln: Yes.

Founding Fathers: No.

25. Lincoln: Teleological.

Founding Fathers: Nomocratic.

Scoring

If you agreed with “Lincoln” 20 or more times, you view the Constitution as the one Lincoln gave us. If you agree with the “Founding Fathers” 20 or more times, you view the Constitution as the one the founding fathers gave us. However, if you agree with “Lincoln” less than 20 times and with the “Founding Fathers” less than 20 times, you may suffer from some kind of dissociative disorder — at the very least, you are inconsistent or perhaps ignorant.

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Taylor’s Observations of Some Republican Leaders

Taylor’s Observations of Some Republican Leaders

Thomas Allen

In Destruction And Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War (1879), Richard Taylor (1826 – 1879), the son of  Zachary Taylor and a Lieutenant General of the Confederate Army, gives his impression of several Republican officials whom he met during his trips to Washington during Reconstruction. Following are his observations of President Johnson, Secretary of State Seward, Secretary of War Stanton, Representative Stevens, Representative Davis, President Grant, Senator Morton, and Secretary of State Fish.

About President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875), he writes:

. . . the President [was] a saturnine man, who made no return to my bow, but, after looking at me, asked me to take a seat. Upon succeeding to power Mr. Johnson breathed fire and hemp against the South, proclaimed that he would make treason odious by hanging traitors, and ordered the arrest of General Lee and others, when he was estopped by the action of General Grant. He had now somewhat abated his wolfish desire for vengeance. . . . (p. 240)

. . . he [President Johnson] always postponed action, and was of an obstinate, suspicious temper. Like a badger, one had to dig him out of his hole; and he was ever in one except when on the hustings, addressing the crowd. Of humble birth, a tailor by trade, nature gave him a strong intellect, and he had learned to read after his marriage. He had acquired much knowledge of the principles of government, and made himself a fluent speaker, but could not rise above the level of the class in which he was born and to which he always appealed. He well understood the few subjects laboriously studied, and affected to despise other knowledge, while suspicious that those possessing such would take advantage of him. Self-educated men, as they are called, deprived of the side light thrown on a particular subject by instruction in cognate matters, are narrow and dogmatic, and, with an uneasy consciousness of ignorance, soothe their own vanity by underrating the studies of others. To the vanity of this class he added that of the demagogue (I use the term in its better sense), and called the wise policy left him by his predecessor “my policy.” Compelled to fight his way up from obscurity, he had contracted a dislike of those more favored of fortune, whom he was in the habit of calling “the slave-aristocracy,” and became incapable of giving his confidence to anyone, even to those on whose assistance he relied in a contest, just now beginning, with the Congress.

President Johnson never made a dollar by public office, abstained from quartering a horde of connections on the Treasury, refused to uphold rogues in high places, and had too just a conception of the dignity of a chief magistrate to accept presents. It may be said that these are humble qualities for a citizen to boast the possession of by a President of the United States. (pp. 242-243)

About William Seward (1801–1872), Secretary of State (1861–1869), he writes:

A loin of veal was the piece de resistance of his dinner, and he called attention to it as evidence that he had killed the fatted calf to welcome the returned prodigal. Though not entirely recovered from the injuries received in a fall from his carriage and the wounds inflicted by the knife of Payne, he was cheerful, and appeared to sympathize with the objects of my mission [to visit Jefferson Davis, who was in prison] — at least, so far as I could gather his meaning under the cloud of words with which he was accustomed to cover the slightest thought. (pp. 240-241)

About Edwin Stanton (1814 – 1869), Secretary of War (1862 – 1868), whom Tayor did not meet, he writes:

A spy under Buchanan, a tyrant under Lincoln, and a traitor to Johnson, this man was as cruel and crafty as Domitian. . . . In the end conscience, long dormant, came as Alecto, and he was not; and the temple of Justice, on whose threshold he stood, escaped profanation. (p. 241)

About Thaddeus Stevens (1792 – 1868), Chairman of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee (1865 – 1868), he writes:

Thaddeus Stevens received me with as much civility as he was capable of. Deformed in body and temper like Caliban, this was the Lord Hategood of the fair; but he was frankness itself. He wanted no restoration of the Union under the Constitution, which he called a worthless bit of old parchment. The white people of the South ought never again to be trusted with power, for they would inevitably unite with the Northern “Copperheads” and control the Government. The only sound policy was to confiscate the lands and divide them among the negroes [sic], to whom, sooner or later, suffrage must be given. Touching the matter in hand, Johnson was a fool to have captured Davis, whom it would have been wiser to assist in escaping. Nothing would be done with him, as the executive had only pluck enough to hang two poor devils such as Wirtz and Mrs. Surratt. Had the leading traitors been promptly strung up, well; but the time for that had passed. (Here, I thought, he looked lovingly at my neck, as Petit Andre was wont to do at those of his merry-go-rounds.) (pp. 243-244)

About Henry Davis (1817–1865), a Republican member of the House of Representatives (1855–1865), he writes:

Like the fallen angel, Davis preferred to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven or on earth. With the head of Medusa and the eye of the Basilisk, he might have represented Siva in a Hindoo temple, and was even more inaccessible to sentiment than Thaddeus Stevens. (p. 244)

About General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) before he became president, Taylor writes:

The officers of the army on duty at Washington were very civil to me, especially General Grant, whom I had known prior to and during the Mexican war, as a modest, amiable, but by no means promising lieutenant in a marching regiment. He came frequently to see me, was full of kindness, and anxious to promote my wishes [to visit Jefferson Davis]. His action in preventing violation of the terms of surrender, and a subsequent report that he made of the condition of the South — a report not at all pleasing to the radicals — endeared him to all Southern men. Indeed, he was in a position to play a role second only to that of Washington, who founded the republic; for he had the power to restore it. His bearing and conduct at this time were admirable, modest and generous; and I talked much with him of the noble and beneficent work before him. While his heart seemed to respond, he declared his ignorance of and distaste for politics and politicians, with which and whom he intended to have nothing to do, but confine himself to his duties of commander-in-chief of the army. Yet he expressed a desire for the speedy restoration of good feeling between the sections, and an intention to advance it in all proper ways. (p. 244)

About Grant after he became president, Taylor writes:

Before the conventions to nominate candidates for the Presidency met in 1868, I had much intercourse with General Grant, and found him ever modest and determined to steer clear of politics, or at least not permit himself to be used by partisans; and I have no doubt that he was sincere. But the Radical Satan took him up to the high places and promised him dominion over all in view. Perhaps none but a divine being can resist such temptation. He accepted the nomination from the Radicals, and was elected. . . . As ignorant of civil government as of the characters on the Moabitish stone. President Grant begun badly, and went from, bad to worse. The appointments to office that he made, the associates whom he gathered around him, were astounding. All his own relatives, all his wife’s relatives, all the relatives of these relatives, to the remotest cousinhood, were quartered on the public treasury. Never, since King Jamie crossed the Tweed with the hungry Scotch nation at his heels, has the like been seen; and the soul of old Newcastle, greatest of English nepotists, must have turned green with envy. The influence of this on the public was most disastrous. Already shortened by the war, the standard of morality, honesty, and right was buried out of sight. (p. 256) . . . In Boston, July, 1872, . . . President Grant and I met for the first time since he had accepted the nomination from the Radical party. He was a candidate for reelection, and much worshiped; and, though cordial with me, his general manner had something of “I am the State.” (p. 259) . .  .  Of a nature kindly and modest, President Grant was assured by all about him that he was the delight of the Radicals, greatest captain of the age, and saviour of the nation’s life. It was inevitable that he should begin by believing some of this, and end by believing it all. Though he had wasted but little time on books since leaving West Point, where in his day the curriculum was limited, he had found out to the last shilling the various sums voted by Parliament to the Duke of Wellington, and spoke of them in a manner indicating his opinion that he was another example of the ingratitude of republics. The gentle temper and sense of justice of Othello resisted the insidious wiles of Iago; but ignorance and inexperience yielded in the end to malignity and craft. President Grant was brought not only to smother the Desdemona of his early preferences and intentions, but to feel no remorse for the deed, and take to his bosom the harridan of radicalism. As Phalaris did those of Agrigentum opposed to his rule, he finished by hating Southerners and Democrats. (p. 265)

About Senator Oliver Morton (1823–1877) from Indiana (1867–1877), he writes:

. . . my first step in Washington was to call on the leader of the Radicals in the Senate, Morton of Indiana, when a long conversation ensued, from which I derived no encouragement. Senator Morton was the Couthon of his party, and this single interview prepared me for one of his dying utterances to warn the country against the insidious efforts of slave-driving rebels to regain influence in the Government. The author of the natural history of Ireland would doubtless have welcomed one specimen, by describing which he could have filled out a chapter on snakes; and there is temptation to dwell on the character of Senator Morton as one of the few Radical leaders who kept his hands clean of plunder. But it may be observed that one absorbing passion excludes all others from the human heart; and the small portion of his being in which disease had left vitality was set on vengeance. Death has recently clutched him, and would not be denied; and lie is bewailed throughout the land as though he had possessed the knightly tenderness of Sir Philip Sidney and the lofty patriotism of Chatham. (pp. 260-261)

About Hamilton Fish (1808–1893), Secretary of State (1869–1877), he writes:

Of a distinguished Revolutionary race, possessor of a good estate, and with charming, cultivated surroundings, this gentleman seemed the Noah of the political world. Perhaps his retention in the Cabinet was due to a belief that, under the new and milder dispensation, the presence of one righteous man might avert the doom of Gomorrah. (p. 261)

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Meaning of “We the People”

Meaning of “We the People”

Thomas Allen

[Note: This article is a more in-depth discussion of “We the People” in the preamble of the US Constitution as presented in “Some Thoughts Related to the US Constitution” by Thomas Allen.]

The preamble of the US Constitution begins with “We the People of the United States.” In The War Between the States or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861-65? (1915), Albert Bledsoe explains the meaning of this phrase (pages 51ff).

According to Abraham Lincoln, Justice Joseph Story, and Daniel Webster and through them most Northerners, this phrase means that “‘the whole people of the United States in the aggregate’” (p. 51) ratified the Constitution. According to John Taylor of Caroline, Judge Abel Upshur, and John Calhoun and through them most Southerners, this phrase means that the people of each State through a representative convention in their State ratified the Constitution. Thus, each State acting as an independent sovereign ratified the Constitution.

The Southern explanation is correct. Supporting the Southern explanation is the historical record. During the drafting of the Constitution, the preamble listed each State by name. Throughout the debate, the list of States remained in the draft preamble.

After the Constitution had been drafted, it was submitted to the committee on style. This committee substituted “We the People of the United States” for the list of the States. It made the change because no one knew how many States would ratify the Constitution.

Since the Convention approved the draft Constitution as revised by the committee on style without debate, no one conceived this revision replaced the sovereign States with one consolidated sovereign federal government.

Bledsoe remarks, “The Constitution neither declares that it was established by the people of the United States in the aggregate, nor by the people of the United States in the segregate” (p. 54). However, the history of its ratification shows that the people of each State, acting independently of the other States, ratified the Constitution. No State was bound to the Constitution without its own individual consent and ratification.

Early in the Convention, Gouverneur Morris, a proponent of a strong national government, proposed that the Constitution be ratified by the people of the United States in the aggregate as one nation. His proposal would “have made it a government emanating from the people of America in one General Convention assembled, and not from the States” (p. 55). Not only was his proposal rejected, but it did not even find a second. Consequently, the Convention rejected what became the Northern explanation of the Constitution and accepted what became the Southern explanation.

As a member of the committee on style, Morris replaced the list of States in the preamble with “We the People of the United States.” Did he trick all the members of the Convention into adopting his plan to replace thirteen bodies politic with one body politic? Later, he confused that as a member of the committee on style, he made changes in the Constitution to advance his agenda. However, he never confessed to replacing the list of States with “We the People of the United States” to advance his agenda of creating one sovereign body politic. Thus, he did not understand his own words as Story and Webster would later interpret them. With his change in wording, Morris did not intend to change the Constitution from a compact among States to one established by the people of America in the aggregate. About the Constitution, Morris said, “The Constitution was a compact, not between individuals, but between political societies, the people, not of America, but of the United States, each enjoying sovereign power and of course equal rights” (p. 57). Accordingly, Morris’ explanation of the Constitution supports the Southern explanation and not the Northern explanation.

More proof that the Southern explanation of the Constitution is correct and the Northern explanation is wrong is the method of ratification. “[T]he authors of the Constitution designed it to be ratified, as in fact[,] it was, by ‘the people of the United States,’ not as individuals, but as ‘political societies, each enjoying sovereign power, and of course equal rights.’ Or, in other words, without seeing that ‘the Constitution was a compact,’ not between individuals, ‘but between political societies,’ between sovereign States” (p. 57).

With the philosophy of “might makes right,” Lincoln and the Radical Republicans subverted the Constitution and changed it from a compact of sovereign States to a highly elastic constitution of the American people in the aggregate.  In other words, it became a constitution for an empire. They did this mostly through the unlawful and illegally ratified fourteenth amendment (subordinated the States and even the Constitution to the federal government by overriding the ninth and tenth amendments and Section 4 of Article 4 [v.i.]), and the sixteenth amendment (income taxes) and seventeenth amendment (direct election of senators). The Radical Republicans pushed through the fourteenth amendment, and their descendants, the Progressives, pushed through the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments. Consequently, today, the Northern explanation of “We the People of the United States” prevails, and the Southern explanation is lost in the memory hole of history. Thus, liberty dies.

Also, another important change resulting from the destruction of the original Constitution has been changing it from the Constitution for the United States as stated in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States as it is commonly called today. The phrase “Constitution for the United States” supports the Southern explanation of the Constitution while the phrase “Constitution of the United States” supports the Northern explanation.

Another important change has been referring to the United States in the singular (the United States is) instead of referring to them in the plural (the United States are). Before the Lincoln administration and the Radical Republicans, the United States were referred to in the plural as they are in Section 3 of Article III of the Constitution. Using the plural means that the United States are a union of several sovereign bodies politic. With the singular, the meaning is one consolidated body politic.

Moreover, when Lincoln and the Radical Republicans destroyed the sovereignty of the States, they subverted Section 4, Article IV of the Constitution. This Section reads, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.” That is, the federal government is supposed to guarantee each State its sovereignty by guaranteeing each of them a republic form of government. Instead, the government that Lincoln and the Radical Republicans controlled destroyed the sovereignty of the States. (A sovereign body politic is necessary for a republican form of government.)

Worst of all, Lincoln, the Republicans, and the Progressives changed the Constitution from limiting the power of the federal government to limiting the powers of the States. Now, the federal government has unlimited powers while the States have only the powers that the federal government allows them. Originally, the States had unlimited powers, except those they denied themselves in Article 1, Section 10, while the federal government had only those powers that the Constitution expressly granted.

Lincoln's War changed the Constitution. States were sovereign before Lincoln’s War to destroy the Constitution. After Lincoln’s War, the federal government usurped the sovereignty of the States — especially with the fourteenth, sixteenth, and seventh amendments. Before Lincoln’s war, the United States were a union of sovereign States, and the Constitution was a compact between those States. After Lincoln’s War, the United States became a nation, and the Constitution became an agreement of the people as a whole. The skeleton of the original Constitution remained the same, but Lincoln and the Radical Republicans and later the Progressives change the muscle and skin by usurping the sovereignty of the States. They change the political structure of the country from one where all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government or denied the States belonged to the States to one were all power belongs to the federal government and the States have only those powers that the federal government allows them.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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John Birch Society and Segregation

John Birch Society and Segregation

Thomas Allen

In the April 23, 2020, online New American, Alex Newman writes an article, “NeverTrumper Lies About Birch Society & Schlafly in ‘Daily Beast.’” In this article, he refutes what Ronald Radosh wrote about Phyllis Schlafly in “Phyllis Schlafly, ‘Mrs. America,’ Was a Secret Member of the John Birch Society,” the Daily Beast,  April 20, 2020.  Newman writes that Radosh is “a former Communist Party USA operative turned NeverTrump neoconservative Buckleyite.”

The discussion that follows is about what Newman writes about the John Birch Society (JBS) and its founder Robert Welch and their support of integration instead of what he writes about Schlafly. Most of what Newman writes in his article focuses on the JBS and Welch’s opposition to racial segregation and support of racial integration.

On racial issues, Welch and the JBS were at the forefront of political correctness. While attacking communism and communists, they supported the communist organized and led desegregation-integration movement.

Newman ardently objects to Radosh’s characterization of the JBS as a “far-right group infamous for its support of segregation.” On the contrary, the JBS was and still is dedicated to integration and, apparently, everything that has grown out of integration, such as, Black privileges and the movement to genocide the White race — although, most likely, Newman would argue otherwise.

Noting that the JBS has never supported segregation, Newman lists several notable Black activists who were members of the JBS: George Schuyler, Manning Johnson, and Julia Brown. Continuing, he adds that members of the JBS “helped lead the fight against racism, racial collectivism, government-enforced segregation, discrimination, and so on.” Except for racial collectivism, progressives, liberals, and communists also fought against these things.

Although it may have opposed governmental-enforced integration, the JBS has never been as vigorous in opposing government-enforced integration as it was in opposing government-enforced segregation. Moreover, it seems to have accepted segregation by custom (the Northern approach) while opposing government-enforced segregation (the Southern approach). Thus, the JBS is a right-wing Puritan Yankee organization out to reconstruct Southerners into its own image. (Most Southerners never wanted to force segregation in the North. However, most Northerners wanted to force integration in the South, but not in the North.)

Although Welch was a Southerner, he was a scalawag par excellence. Obviously, he believed that the Radical Republicans failed to remake the Southerner into the image of the Puritan Yankee.  Consequently, he sought to finish their work. While he failed to replace segregation with integration, the communists succeeded.

Newman remarks that National Review and its founder, William Buckley,  supported segregation into the 1960s. He condemns Buckley for claiming that Whites were more advance than Blacks and that Southerners should suppress voting by Blacks to preserve civilization. Apparently, Newman believes that the civilization of post-civil-rights America, with its increased sexual promiscuity, divorces, acceptance of homosexual marriages, abortions, crimes by Blacks, lost liberties, socialism, police state, drug abuse, power of the Establishment, etc., is superior the civilization to pre-civil-rights America.

Even as late as the mid-1960s, Buckley was fighting a rearguard action to save the White race and Western Civilization, while the JBS and Welch were rejoicing covertly their demise —at least that has been the result of their war against racial separation. (The communists knew this destructive result of integration, which is why they fought for it.) Later, Buckley repented his evil ways and adopted the politically correct racial view that Whites, especially Southerners, are the vilest creatures in the Universe — Welch would have been proud of him.

Next, Newman writes that Welch wrote an article, “A Letter to the South,” in which he argues against segregation in the South. In that article, Welch argues “that segregation was on its way out, that this demise was a good thing, and that the communist exploitation of the “civil rights” cause had set back this progress by a generation.” Welch was wrong. Within a decade after this article, the communist lead civil rights movement had won; integration had replaced segregation in the South. Only mop-up operations against the few remaining renegades and expansion into the North remained. Because of this victory for which Welch longed, the White race is on its way to extinction —and the American Black may not be far behind.

Although Welch condemned communist racial agitators for stirring up racial hatred and for impeding integration, they did achieve victory quickly and completely. For this victory, Welch should have been glad. Was Welch’s hostility toward the communists coming from his lust for glory, i.e., he wanted the credit for ending segregation in the South? Does this explain the hostility of the JBS toward communists?

On racial issues, Welch was an extremely progressive and indefatigable promoter of racial equality, which is among the most detrimental hoaxes that the Establishment, the ruling elite, has ever advanced. (For the unbiased, science has proven that the races are not equal. They differ in physical abilities, intelligence, temperament and many other aspects. As history has shown, races differ in their abilities to develop civilizations, technologies, and many other things.)

Being racial egalitarians, Welch and his fellow Birchers are a step away from being full-fledged socialist and communists. They believe that the several races of men are identical in attributes. Except for a few external physical features, which no one but a liar can deny, the races are identical and, therefore, equal. (Nevertheless, the races of man differ in blood and bone, which are not readily visible.) If the attributes of the races are identical and equal, then the attributes of each individual comprising the races must be identical and equal. From this egalitarian notion, socialists, especially communists, derive the logical conclusion that each individual should, therefore, be equal in wealth. However, Birchers have not come to this logical conclusion of racial equality. Consequently, they are not as logical in their reasoning as are socialists and communists. Is because the egalitarianism of the communists is more consistent and logical than that of the Birchers a reason that Birchers despise communism?

In the 1950s, most Southerners, both liberals and conservatives, and many Northerners opposed race-mixing. Only communists and their kindred and Birchers favored race-mixing, which leads to miscegenation, which is genocide — the destruction of the races. Thus, integration is genocide.

Apparently, Welsh and the Birchers who followed him in advocating integration did not care about the Black man. If they did, they would not have pushed policies that would eventually lead to his death.

Welch “openly promoted and supported an end to segregation” because ending segregation would result in “exposing evildoers and reduce government.” One must wonder what drugs Welch was taking to believe this nonsense. The death of segregation birthed an explosion in the size of the government. (More government is needed to enforce integration than segregation because integration is unnatural.)  Moreover, what vile evildoer has been exposed and, if exposed, has suffered any penalty?

Much of the hostility of the JBS and Welch toward communists and communism seems to come from the civil rights movement. While the JBS failed to replace segregation with integration, the communists succeeded. Does much of the JBS hatred of communists come from the communists succeeding where the JBS failed?

Welch is not the only leader of the JBS to support genocide via race-mixing. JBS President Emeritus John McManus also promotes genocide via race-mixing. (Also, see “A Letter: Miscegenation” by Thomas Allen.) Unlike most Blacks and other nonwhites, Welch and his fellow Birchers are racial nihilists who follow the new morality.

NOTE:
According to Eustace Mullins (Murder by Injection: The Story of the Medical Conspiracy Against America, 1988, page 200), the Rockefellers sponsored the JBS. Nelson Rockefeller bought the Welch Candy Company from Robert Welch, a 32nd degree Freemason, for a handsome price. For the principal officers of the JBS, Welch chose from his acquaintances at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). (Years later, the JBS would attack the CFR as a more dangerous group than the Communist party. Because of the support that the CFR gave the Soviet Union through its control of the US government, multinational corporations, and international financiers, the Soviet Union lived decades longer than it would have lasted without such aid.) As Buckley, who was a CIA operative (and a member of the CFR and Skull and Bones), and his National Review were established to control conservatives and the Right, so Welch and the JBS seemed to have been established for the same purpose. When the JBS credibility began to fade, Buckley gave the JBS free publicity by attacking it in his magazine.

According to Mark Hines (“A Good Reason to Leave the John Birch Society: Masonic Roots of Mormonism,” The Federal Observer, Vol. 06, No. 343, Dec. 10, 2006, http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=8610, accessed Dec. 10, 2006), the JBS “is a front organization set up to attract and control unsuspecting Patriots that wish to band together to make a difference in our Country.” He criticizes the JBS for collecting a great deal of money and expending much time and energy without ever accomplishing anything. Hines discovered that Mormons controlled the JBS. The Mormons had a different, even the opposite, agenda than the common members. Mormons pushed the Freemasonry agenda of globalism, which the common Bircher vehemently opposed.

In Kangaroo Court Versus the John Birch Society (“The Belmont Brotherhood,” http://watch.pair.com/belmont. May 5, 2006.), A.J. MacDonald discusses some founders and council members of the JBS and their connection with the Establishment, Insiders, Ruling Elite, Globalists, or whatever one wants to call them. Moreover, Welch’s view of Christianity is similar to that of an ultra-liberal “Christian” — far more humanistic, communistic, Masonic, and Illuministic than Christian. (Perhaps, this explains why Welch promoted policies that would lead to the genocide of the races that God created.) About Welch, Nicholas J. Bove, Jr. writes, “Welch has provided the most valuable service of all time to the Conspiracy. He founded an organization to neutralize millions of Americans from discovering what the true power behind the Illuminati really was.” (“The Belmont Brotherhood,” op. cit.)

According to Dr. Henry Makow, before founding the JBS, Welch had been a member of the Communist (Trotskyite) front League of Industrial Democracy ("The Zionist Billionaires Who Control Politics," Feb. 23, 2011, http://www.henrymakow.com/koch.html, accessed Feb. 24, 2011).

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Conservatives and Their Worship of Equality

Conservatives and Their Worship of Equality

Thomas Allen

Mainstream conservatives, establishment conservatives, neoconservatives, social justice conservatives, and their kindred (hereafter, referred to as “these conservatives”) dominate and control what now passes for “conservatism.” Anyone on the Right who dissents from their underlying philosophy of equality and democracy and their praise of Lincoln and the work of the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction — except to condemn the Radical Republicans for not finishing the task of genociding the Southerner — is ignored, purged, or deplatformed. Moreover, these conservatives are statists, centralists, and racial nihilist. They are the Girondists of the American political spectrum. Examples of these conservatives are Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, William Bennett, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, George Will, Karl Rove, William Kristol, and Harry Jaffa.

For these conservatives, equality is the higher law, to which even the Constitution is subordinate. (Using the higher-law argument, the abolitionists precipitated the Civil War, and the Radical Republicans destroyed the fundamental principles of the original Constitutions.) Equality governs all. It is the primary and essential principle of conservatism — the very essence of conservatism.

Many of these conservatives distinguish between the equality of rights and opportunity, which they claim to support, and equality of condition, which they claim to oppose. However, this distinction is sophistry. In this world, obtaining equality of rights, opportunity, and condition is impossible. Moreover, the demand for equal rights and especially equal opportunity naturally and eventually leads to the demand for equality of condition. (Equality of rights and opportunity can only be proven by equality of condition.)

Rejecting the notions that the United States are a genetic country, these conservatives support the notion that the United States are a propositional country. Their purpose is to spread equality and democracy throughout the world. (Like all statists and centralists, these conservatives refer to the United States in the singular, “the United States is” instead of the plural, “the United States are.” Consequently, they contradict the Founding Fathers and nearly all other Americans before the revolution of Lincoln and the Radical Republicans. The Founding Fathers and most other antebellum Americans referred to the United States in the plural.)

To these conservatives, the only clause in all the founding documents of any importance is the phrase “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. This declaration of equality is the primary, if not the sole, reason and purpose for the existence of the United States. According to these conservatives, the purpose of America’s political founding was not the establishment of republican self-government. Instead, the purpose was the establishment of equality.

These conservatives fail to recognize the paradox and hypocrisy in praising the Founding Fathers, the original Constitution, and their philosophy of States’ rights (federalism, localism, and decentralization) while simultaneously praising Lincoln, who destroyed the Constitution and the Union formed by it with his war, and the Radical Republicans, who destroyed States’ rights with the fourteenth amendment.

For these conservatives, Lincoln is the divine lawgiver, who recalls the country to its providential mission of equality. Like Moses calling his people back to the worship of the true God, Lincoln called his wayward people back to their conventual promise of equality.

Equality has now evolved into diversity. Thus, every nonwhite in the world has an equal right to settle in the United States. Moreover, no White American has any moral or political right to prevent this racial and cultural transformation of their country.

Along with the worship of equality has come the elevation of Martin Luther King, a Communist frontman, to the Olympian of great conservative forefathers. Such an elevation of a Communist sympathizer may seem strange until one realizes that these conservatives have usurped nearly everything that King advocated.

An essential part of these conservatives’ program of sacrificing all on the altar of equality is the eradication of the traditional South. They thoroughly loathe the Antebellum South and everything related to the Confederacy. The South needs to be remade into an egalitarian society where Blacks and Whites can breed themselves out of existence. Moreover, the South needs to be fully purged of its sin of opposing the Puritan Yankee and his industrialization and globalization. Further, these conservatives see the Civil War (their term for the War for Southern Independence) and Reconstruction as a righteous cause well-worth the million-plus lives lost because of them. However, they bemoan the failure of Reconstruction to destroy completely the Southerner and his culture and ethnicity.

According to these conservatives, the War and Reconstruction were primarily, if not solely, about equality, democracy, and race. Economics, culture, religion, and other issues and differences were of little or no importance, except where they related to the sacred equality, democracy, and racial nihilism.

Most of these conservatives consider the traditional, pro-Confederate Southerner a greater threat to the country than the invading hordes of third-world nonwhites. To these conservatives, no differences exist between the South and Nazi Germany.

Opposed to these conservatives are the traditional Southern conservatives, who care little for abstract universals, such as equality. The traditional Southern conservatives do not reject the equal dignity of all human souls in a spiritual sense or to all being equal before the law. (Today, the United States have a two-tier justice system: one for the common man and one for the ruling elite and some of their agents.) However, they do oppose using governmental powers to obliterate social differences.

Joining the traditional Southern conservatives in their opposition to these conservatives are a few pariah conservatives. All these cast-off conservatives have one thing in common: They do not worship equality or Father Abraham. Moreover, they abhor the Radical Republicans and their reconstruction of the South. Instead, they continue to adhere to the original Constitution, and the traditions and founding principles of the United States.

Moreover, these conservatives defend the welfare state. However, these conservatives seek to manage the welfare state more efficiently than liberals, progressives, and socialists. Their worship of equality explains why these conservatives seek to make the welfare state of the liberals, progressives, and socialists operate more efficiently rather than dismantling it.

Furthermore, these conservatives favor foreign intervention and wars in the name of spreading equality and democracy. Even globalism grows out of their lust for equality — although globalism leads to a two-tier system: the global elite on top and the masses on the bottom, who are at least equally slaves of the elite.

Distinguishing between these conservatives and liberals, progressives, and socialists is often difficult. While giving lip service to the original Constitution, these conservatives praise the radical transformation that the Radical Republicans caused and that their descendants, the Progressives, enhanced and extended. By claiming equality as a conservative principle, even the guiding conservative principle, these conservatives stole the key ideology of the Left.

Like the liberals, progressives, and socialists, these conservatives adhere to the Robespierrean motto of “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Also, like the liberals, progressives, and socialists, these conservatives abhor the underlying principle of the American Revolution: “life, liberty, and property.” Like them, these conservatives prefer equality to liberty (because liberty creates inequality, equality and liberty are incompatible).

Most conservatives fall between these conservatives and their conservative opposition. They are the confused conservatives. Although most admire Lincoln, only a few admire the actions of the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction. Also, most esteem King highly. Moreover, most do not hate the South. After all, many are Southerners. While they oppose flooding the country with nonwhites, most tend to be racial nihilists. Although they object to nonwhites coming into the country illegally, few seem to have any objection to large numbers of nonwhites entering the country legally.  Most are not States’ rightists on principle. Unless the federal government opposes an issue that they support, most confused conservatives are centralists. Only when the federal government opposes their particular issue do they become States’ rightists. Furthermore, most confused conservatives confound liberty and freedom with democracy and equality — believing that they are essentially the same. Moreover, most lean toward the welfare state; rare is one who wants to dismantle it. For the most part, confused conservatives are more inclined to ally with these conservatives than with their opponents.

References
Gottfried, Paul. “From the Editor: Thoughts on Bradford v. Jaffa.” Chronicles, February 2020, pages 34-38.

McClanahan, Brion. “The Reinvention of Reconstruction.” Chronicles, February 2020, pages 31- 35.

Trask, H.A. Scott. “The Great Debate: Lincoln’s Legacy.” Chronicles, February 2020, pages 34-38.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Addendum to “For Whom Is the Constitution Written?”

Addendum to “For Whom Is 

the Constitution Written?”

Thomas Allen

Additional evidence that the US Constitution was written by and for Whites is that the US Supreme Court ruled that Blacks were not citizens, and the fourteenth amendment was needed to make them citizens. Unfortunately, the fourteenth amendment, which is discussed below, also changed the construct of the country and the US Constitution.

Missouri Compromise
Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph 1 of the US Constitution, reads: “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” During the debate on the Missouri Compromise in 1821, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, who was the author of this clause said, “At the time I drew that Constitution, I perfectly knew that there did not then exist such a thing in the Union as a black or colored citizen, nor could I then have conceived it possible such a thing could ever have existed. .  . .”[1] The most important clause in the Constitution about citizenship is this comity clause, and its author says that it applied only to Whites and not to Blacks; therefore, the US Constitution is only for Whites.

Dred Scott Decision
The Dred Scott decision ruled that Negroes were not citizens under the US Constitution. Contrary to the popular myth, the Dred Scott decision did not declare or make the Negro nonhuman or subhuman. It merely declared that Negroes like foreigners were not citizens of the United States. Not being a citizen under the Constitution, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Scott, a Black slave, could not sue in a court of the United States government.
The Supreme Court ruled that Negroes were not, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and, therefore, they could claim none of the rights and privileges that it provided and secured to citizens of the United States. Moreover, the Court acknowledged that a State could grant Negroes the rights and privileges of the citizens of that State, as some of the New England States had done. However, having the rights and privileges of a citizen of a State did not make a Negro a citizen of the Union or grant him rights in other States. (It also recognized that some States had given foreigners who intended to become citizens of the United States the rights and privileges of citizenship in that State, but this action did not make them citizens of the United States until they had been naturalized according to the nationalization law of the United States.)
Further, the Court declared that at the time of its adoption, the Constitution recognized as citizens the citizens in the several States. This recognition made them citizens of the new political body created by the Constitution when it was adopted. No other classes of people were included in this citizenship. They formed the Constitution for themselves and their posterity, and for no one else. All the personal rights and privileges guaranteed to citizens under this Constitution were intended only for those who were then members of the several State communities, or who should afterward, by birthright or otherwise, become members, according to the provisions of the Constitution and the principles on which it was founded.
The Court identified two clauses in the Constitution that point directly and specifically to the Negro race as a separate class of people. These two clauses clearly show that the Negro was not considered part of the people or citizens under the Constitution. One was the clause that reserves to each State the right to import slaves until the year 1808 (Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 1). This sanction unquestionably referred to the Negro. The other provision was the pledge of the States to each other to maintain the right of property of the master by delivering up to him any slave who escaped if he were found within their respective territories (Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph 3).
Thus, with the Dred Scott decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Negro could not be a citizen of the United States although a State could grant him the rights and privileges of a citizen of that State. By inference, no nonwhite could be a citizen of the United States under the Constitution.
Although the Supreme Court did not rule on the status of Indians in the Dred Scott decision, the Constitution strongly implies that Indians were not and could not be citizens of the United States. However, some States had granted Indians rights and privileges of citizens of their States. (Even after the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, Congress declared that Indians not taxed were not citizens under that amendment.)

Fourteenth Amendment
Because of the Dred Scott decision, the fourteenth amendment was necessary to make Negroes citizens of the United States. Unfortunately, it did more than that. It destroyed the original Constitution and changed the whole concept and construction of the country. Not only did the fourteenth amendment make the Black man a citizen of the United States, but it also made the White man a citizen of the United States. Before, one was a citizen of a State, and by virtue of being a citizen of a State, he was a citizen of the United States. Under the fourteenth amendment, any citizen of the United States became a citizen of the State in which he resided. Thus, the fourteenth amendment changed the construction of the United States from a confederation of sovereign States to a consolidated union of States.
Before the fourteenth amendment, no national citizenship existed; a person was a citizen of a State. The term “citizen of the United States” was a term of convenience that meant that someone was a citizen of a State. According to one of the promoters, Senator James Blaine, of the fourteenth amendment, its intent was to change the status of citizenship by replacing citizen of a State with a citizen of the United States. Senator Blaine said, “. . . we are not confining the breadth and scope of our efforts to the Negro. It is for the white man as well. We intend to make citizenship national. Heretofore, a man has been a citizen of the United States because he was a citizen of some-one of the states: now we propose to reverse that.”[2]
Besides changing citizenship, another purpose of the fourteenth amendment was and still is to humiliate and shame Southerners by making the Negro their master. Its purpose was and still is to degrade the Southerner to the level of the Negro and even below that level. Its objective was to degrade the Southerner by creating conditions that would encourage interracial mating. Sacrificing their beloved Negro to destroy the Southerner was of little concern for the Radical Republicans; they were just so much collateral damage. After all, Puritan Yankees considered Southerners to be subhuman at best and most likely a nonhuman beast.
Unfortunately, for the Northerner, but not the Radical Republicans, who were Puritan Yankees, whose descendants are Liberal Democrats, this degradation spread across the country as the Negro became elevated above Whites everywhere. Not only has the Negro been elevated above Whites, so have all other nonwhite races.
The fourteenth amendment was illegally, unlawfully, and unconstitutionally ratified. Most of the so-called legislators of the Southern legislatures who voted to ratify the fourteenth amendment were not citizens when they voted on the amendment. They did not become citizens entitled to vote until after the amendment was ratified. Moreover, the fourteenth amendment has other irregularities in its proposal and adoption, such as failure to achieve two-thirds of the votes in the Senate needed for its proposal.
When it was first sent to the States, 11 States rejected it (only 10 were needed to kill the amendment). Then, Congress refused to recognize the governments of the Southern States and replaced them with Negro governments controlled by carpetbaggers and scalawags backed by the US army to ensure the ratification of the amendment. Besides the ten Southern States voting to reject the fourteenth amendment, seven other States also voted to reject it. Although military might forced these 10 Southern States to change their rejection of ratification, two States, Ohio and New Jersey, that had previously voted to ratify the amendment changed their vote to reject it. While accepting the approvals of the unlawful governments of the Southern States, the Secretary of State refused to recognize the disapproval by these two States.
The Southern States that had rejected the fourteenth amendment were stripped of their representation in the US House of Representatives and the Senate and had their constitutions voided. Then, Congress through the army forced them to draft and adopt a new constitution for Congress’ approval and to ratify the fourteenth amendment before they were allowed any representation in Congress. Male inhabitants who were not disenfranchised because of participation in the rebellion elected delegates to the convention for drafting the new constitutions. Thus, most White males were disqualified. The legislature elected under the new constitution had to ratify the fourteenth amendment. Only then would Congress readmit that State and allow its Representatives and Senators be seated in Congress. Consequently, according to the law enacted by Congress to reorganize the governments of the Southern States, these States had no legitimate government when they ratified the fourteenth amendment.
Thus, many whites were disenfranchised for participating in the rebellion, and therefore, Negroes elected most of the delegates to the States’ constitutional conventions, although they had no legal right to vote. The constitutions drafted by these conventions were presented to the voters of the State for ratification. These voters were largely male Negroes since most Whites were disenfranchised for participating in the rebellion. Again, these Negroes had no legal right to vote.
The legality of the Southern States was not questioned when they ratified the thirteenth amendment, which forbade slavery. However, these same governments became illegal when they rejected the fourteenth amendment.
The Congress that passed the fourteenth amendment for submission to the States did so without Representatives and Senators from the Southern States although all, except Texas, had been entirely restored to all their functions as States in conformity with the organic law of the land.
To get the fourteenth amendment ratified, Congress had to enfranchise the Negroes and disfranchised the White men. Then, Congress had the Negroes, with the aid of carpetbaggers and scalawags, elect delegates to a convention to draw up a constitution that gave Negroes the right to vote. Afterward, the constitution was adopted without the vote of most White men. Next, a legislature was elected without the votes of most Whites. Thus, the State legislature consisted mostly of Negroes with some carpetbaggers and scalawags. After that, the Negro dominated legislature ratified the fourteenth amendment to make Negroes citizens of the United States. Consequently, people who were not citizens and could not vote elected a body that ratified the amendment that made them citizens with the right to vote. Such is the infamy of the fourteenth amendment.
The most hideous consequence of the fourteenth amendment was to destroy the original Constitution and the original construct of the United States. The United States were established as a federation of free and independent sovereign States. These States were a genetic nation, and they established the United States as a genetic country, that is, a country of, by, and for the White race. However, by making Negroes citizens, the fourteenth amendment changed the construct of the United States. They cease being a genetic federation and became a propositional empire. As a result, the purpose of the United States ceased being to protect, preserve, and promote the White residents thereof. A new purpose had to be found to include the Negro. That purpose became equality and democracy. From now on the United States would war to make the world safe for equality and democracy.
To accomplish this goal all men had to be changed into faceless beings called citizens. Moreover, each citizen was as good as another citizen. That is, citizens became interchangeable with one another. Importantly, people cease identifying themselves by race and identified themselves as citizens. Then, these citizens could be united to fight for democracy and equality. As long as these citizens would fight for democracy and equality, the United States fulfilled its purpose. Provided that these citizens would fight for democracy and equality, the type and quality of citizens mattered little: whether the citizen was White or Black or some other race did not matter. (Not only do liberals and libertarians revel in the conversion of the United States and the Constitution from a White country and Constitution to a propositional country and Constitution, so do nearly all conservatives.)
Thus, the fourteenth amendment completely destroyed the United States and subverted the US Constitution. It changed the country from one dedicated to protecting, preserving, and promoting the White race (the Aryan race) to a proportional country dedicated to spreading democracy and equality. Moreover, what the repeal of the prohibition amendment (the twenty-first amendment) did to the prohibition amendment (the eighteenth amendment), the fourteenth amendment effectively did to the ninth and, especially, the tenth amendments.
When the Negro became a citizen and the equal of the Aryan, the United States as originally founded died. The Hamiltonian-Lincolnians, Puritan Yankees, Marxists, Cabalist Jews, and their ilk won, and they have ruled the country ever since. Liberty has waned, and the US government and its despotism have waxed. Nearly all the governmental programs that many conservatives and most libertarians rail against have grown out of the fourteenth amendment.

Endnotes

1. Erst LaFlor, The Betrayal of the White Race (LaFlor Publishing Co., 1970), p. 4.

2. Bill Ivy, “Attention Constitutional Celebrities.”

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Southern History: The First Reconstruction

The First Reconstruction
Thomas Allen

With the end of the War came Reconstruction. When the War ended with the Northern army carrying the day on the battlefield, the Radical Republicans were determined to carry the day in the political arena. They were determined to reconstruct the Southern States in their own image. They were determined to remake the entire United States. They were determined that the Republican Party would rule forever and would rule absolutely. To accomplish this agenda, Congress, under the control of the Radical Republicans, enacted a number of laws to remold the South and maintain Republican supremacy. According to Thomas Robinson Hay, “The chief aim of these Reconstruction acts was political and the result was the creation of a class government subject to and supported by the military. In addition, the acts were designed to cripple and so handicap Southern business and industry as to eliminate them as effective competitors of Northern business.”[1] In his Third Annual Message to Congress on December 3, 1867, President Andrew Johnson expressed his objection to these despotic acts as follows:

Yet the system of measures established by these [Reconstruction] acts of Congress does totally subvert and destroy the form as well as the substance of republican government in the ten States to which they apply. It binds them hand and foot in absolute slavery, and subjects them to a strange and hostile power, more unlimited and more likely to be abused than any other now known among civilized men. It tramples down all those rights in which the essence of liberty consists, and which a free government is always most careful to protect. It denies the habeas corpus and the trail by jury. Personal freedom, property, and life, if assailed by the passion, the prejudice, or the rapacity of the ruler, have no security whatever. It has the effect of a bill of attainder or bill of pains and penalties, not upon a few individuals, but upon whole masses, including the millions who inhabit the subject States, and even their unborn children. These wrongs, being expressly forbidden, can not be constitutionally inflicted upon any portion of our people. . . .[2]

(President Johnson’s statement is just as appropriate today — perhaps even more appropriate — when applied to the Second Reconstruction. Judicial decrees issued since 1954 and federal laws enacted since 1960 have done even more damage to republicanism, federalism, and freedom than the Reconstruction laws of the 1860s. If only Lyndon Johnson had been more like Andrew Johnson.) Johnson held that high officials of the Confederacy should be punished, but he opposed punishing Southerners in general. He adamantly objected to subverting the Constitution and the republican form of government in order to punish those Southerners that he held guilty. Although he acknowledged that military rule would not be perpetual, nevertheless he did not favor it. He remonstrated:

If the guarantees of the Constitution can be broken provisionally to serve a temporary purpose, and in a part only of the country, we can destroy them everywhere and for all time. Arbitrary measures often change for the worse. It is the curse of despotism that it has no halting place. The intermitted exercise of its power brings no sense of security to its subjects, for they can never know what more they will be called to endure when its red right hand is armed to plague them again. Nor is it possible to conjecture how or where power, unrestrained by law, may seek its next victims.[3]

Johnson’s remonstration was ignored. The South endured tyranny for twelve years following the War. What Johnson predicted would happen has again happened in the South, for the South once again endures tyranny.

The South would now endure the tyranny of Reconstruction, which Richard H. Cain, a Black man, described as follows: “When the smoke and fighting is over, the Negroes have nothing gained, the whites have nothing left, while the jackals have all the booty.”[4] Claude G. Bowers wrote about Reconstruction, “Brutal men, inspired by personal ambition or party motives, assumed the pose of philanthropists and patriots.”[5] Frank Owsley declared of Reconstruction, “For ten years the South, already ruined by the loss of nearly $2,000,000,000 [nearly 25 billion in 2006 dollars] invested in slaves, with its lands worthless, its cattle and stock gone, its houses burned, was turned over to the three millions of former slaves. . . . For ten years ex-slaves, led by carpetbaggers and scalawags, continued the pillage of war, combing the South for anything left by the invading armies, levying taxes, selling empires of plantations under the auction hammer, dragooning the Southern population, and visiting upon them ultimate humiliations.”[6] Robert Somers, an English writer traveling through the South five years after the War, described life in the South as follows: “nearly every respectable white man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under fear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were utterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted internal the remains of the Confederate armies — swept after a long and heroic day of fair fight from the field — flittered before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan.”[7] It was, in the words of John Peale Bishop, a “ten-year period of dictatorship of the proletariat, under the Republican Party. . . .”[8] Reconstruction was an era characterized by Thomas Nelson Page as an attempt “made after the war to destroy the South. She was dismembered, disfranchised, and denationalized. The States which composed her were turned by her conquerors into military districts, and their governments were subverted into military tribunals.”[9] Although the Northerners did not literally follow the advice of the Honorable George W. Julian, an Indiana Republican, “I would hang liberally while I had my hand in,”[10] it did deprive most Whites of their political rights as long as they could. With the backing of the Union army, Northern carpetbaggers, Southern scalawags, and Black quislings stole as much property as they could. (The Independent Monitor of Tuscaloosa gave a most appropriate description of the Southern scalawag, “Our scalawag is the local leper of the community. Unlike the carpet bagger, he is native, which is so much the worse. Once he was respected in his circle; his head was level, and he would look his neighbor in the face. Now, possessed of the itch of office and the salt rheum [tears] of Radicalism, he is a mangy dog, slinking through the alleys, haunting the governor’s office, defiling with tobacco juice the steps of the Capitol, stretching his lazy carcass in the sun on the Square, or the benches of the Mayor’s Court.”[11]) The United States government’s treatment of Southerner’s during Reconstruction was based on the principle that Southerners were, as General Pettus said, “an inferior, degraded people and not fit to be trusted.”[12]

With the emancipation of the slaves after the War came the Black Codes in several Southern States. The Black Codes of the South were modeled after New England labor codes. However, the abolitionists and unionists quickly castigated and vetoed these codes. If Blacks comprised as large a percentage of the population in the North as they did in the South, undoubtedly most Northern States would have had Black Codes. Perhaps an exception would have been Indiana and Illinois: They made it illegal for Negroes to enter them.

The North proclaimed the equality of the Black man with the White man — in the South, of course, but not in the North. The Northern industrialists, bankers, and their politicians saw the importance of the Black man in the South in maintaining their control of the United States government through the Republican Party. The Black man was the key to their new world order (centralized banking, regulated business for the advantage of big business, growing governmental debt, subsidies from the government, protective tariffs, i.e., the concentration and consolidation of political and economic power) that Southerners opposed. “Equality of the franchise for freedmen was deemed essential to Republican supremacy, and Republican supremacy was considered necessary by influential classes to protect the new economic order,”[13] wrote C. Vann Woodward. Thus, Blacks received the vote in the Southern States before they received the vote in most Northern States. Their vote was unnecessary in the North for Republican supremacy; in the North, the bloody shirt was all that was needed. To ensure further Republican supremacy in the South, many Whites were deprived of their right to vote.

Blacks were to be enfranchised in the South but not in the North. On the Black enfranchisement issue, the Republican platform of 1868 proclaimed, “The guaranty by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude, and of justice, and must be maintained; while the question of suffrage in all loyal States properly belongs to the people of those States.”[14] Such was the position of the Republican Party until Grant became President and the Fifteenth Amendment was proposed and ratified. (This Amendment was more vigorously enforced in the South, and continues to be, than it ever was, or has been, in the North.)

The abolitionists and other Northerners who hated the South and Southerners saw equality as the means to punish Southerners. C. Vann Woodward described this hatred for Southerners:

Abolitionists had grounded their whole crusade against slavery on the proposition that it was a ‘sin.’ It is not sufficient simply to abolish a sin; it has to be expiated, and the sinner purified. Purification and expiation involve penance and suffering. Equality had a punitive purpose: the infliction of a penance of humiliation upon the status of the sinner. For those with an uncomplicated interest in sheer vengeance upon a hated foe, equality had punitive uses of a simpler sort.[15]

Lincoln’s solution to the race problem was repatriation. In an executive proclamation issued concurrently with his Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln stated:

I have urged the colonization of the Negroes, and I shall continue. My Emancipation Proclamation was linked with this plan. There is no room for two distinct races of white men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks. I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as equal. . . .[16]

Why wasn’t Lincoln’s plan to repatriate Blacks implemented after the War? It was not implemented because the pious, sanctimonious Radical Republicans hated the South and all that was Southern. They wanted to humiliate Southerners by having Blacks rule over them. But more than that. They wanted to destroy Southerners. They wanted to use the Negro to breed the Southerner out of existence.

“The war had been fought upon the theory that the old Union must be preserved; but the basic theory of the reconstruction was that a new Union was to be created,”[17] wrote Walter Fleming. The abolitionists were determined to create a new South without Southerners. Thaddeus Stevens, who was arguably the most powerful man in the United States government from the death of Lincoln in 1865 until his own death in 1868, said that the United States should treat the Southern States “as conquered provinces and settle them with new men and exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles.”[18] (Such was the object after the War; such remains the objective today.) Walter Fleming described Stevens as “vindictive and unscrupulous, filled with hatred of Southern leaders, bitter in speech and possessing to an extreme degree the facility of making ridiculous those who opposed him.”[19]

What Stevens and the Radical Republicans did was, as Thomas Nelson Page informed, to take “eight millions of the caucasian race, a people which in their devotion and their self-sacrifice, in their transcendent vigor of intellect, their intrepid valor in the field, and their fortitude in defeat, had just elevated their race in the eyes of mankind, and placed them under the domination of their former slaves.”[20] According to Thomas Page, “the eight years of negro domination in the South cost the South more than the entire cost of the war, inclusive of the loss of values in slave property.”[21]

Commenting on Reconstruction, Charles Francis Adams, a Union officer, public official, and historian, wrote, “It may not unfairly be doubted whether a people prostrated after civil conflict has ever received severer measure than was dealt out of the so-called reconstructed Confederate States during the years immediately succeeding the close of strife.”[22] Reconstruction was an era of actual servile domination and outrages and humiliations worse than outrages.

Whatever else Reconstruction gave the South, it gave the Southern States corrupt governments. E.L. Godkin, editor of the New York Nation and supporter of the Reconstruction acts, described the State governmental officials in Georgia as “probably as bad a lot of political tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place.”[23] This description could have been written as equally well about the White officials of all the other reconstructed States. Richard Weaver elucidated on the governments of the Southern States during this period: “State governments were set up consisting of outsiders with various axes to grind, the scum of local populace and the misled and eventually victimized freedmen.”[24] (The legacy of corrupt government continues to curse the South even to this day. Unfortunately, corrupt governments controlled by the scalawags, carpetbaggers, and quislings have been more the rule than the exception since the War.)

In the end, what Reconstruction gave the South was, as Walter Fleming described, a “new generation of whites [that] was poor, bitter because of persecution, ill educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the race problem.”[25] Perhaps this is what Yankeedom really wanted for the South all along. Demoralized people are easily controlled people.

With the election of 1876, the Republican Party needed to cut a deal with the South to maintain power. The South gave the presidential election to the Republicans, and the Republicans ended Reconstruction.

Endnotes
1. Jeffery St. John, “Reconstruction & French Revolution,” The New American (December 9, 1985), p. 60.

2. “The Evil Ends of Radical Republicans,” The New American (December 9, 1985), p. 58.

3. Ibid., p.58.

4. William F. Freehoff, Southern Partisan, IX (Third Quarter, 1989), p. 9.

5. “Southern Sampler,” Southern Partisan, VII (Spring, 1987), p. 57.

6. Frank L. Owsley, “Irrepressible Conflict,” in A Southern Treasury of Life and Literature, ed. Stark Young (New York, 1937), p. 449.

7. Walter L. Fleming, The Sequel of Appomattox: A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States (New Haven, 1919), p. 243.

8. John Peale Bishop, The Collected Essays of John Bishop Peale, ed. Edmund Wilson (New York, 1948), p. 452.

9. Thomas Nelson Page, The Old South; Essays Social and Political (New York, 1911), p. 4.

10. “Southern Sampler,” Southern Partisan, VII (Summer, 1987), p. 57.

11. The Stars & Bars (January 1994), p. 2.

12. Fleming, p. 250.

13. C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (New York, 1960), p. 75.

14. Ibid., p. 98.

15. Ibid., p. 76.

16. “Abraham Lincoln Was a White Separatist!” Crisis Paper #19, p. 1.

17. Fleming, p. 139.

18. Ibid., p. 59.

19. Ibid., p. 122.

20. Page, pp. 308-309.

21. Ibid., p. 333.

22. Basil L. Gildersleeve, The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 (Baltimore, 1915), p. 121.

23. Fleming, p. 226.

24. Richard M. Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, ed. George M. Curtis III and James J. Thompson Jr. (Indianapolis, 1987), p. 249.

25. Fleming, p. 280.

Copyright © 1995 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles on the South.