1938 USA Communist Party Convention -Abraham Lincoln as centerpiece
Like most people my age, #60+, I can remember a time when we all were a LOT more free. Rifles in the pickup trucks, shooting guns near suburban neighborhoods, playing outside ALL day with the parents not really knowing where their kids were at. This was all “normal”.
Also during this time, it was the college campuses that allowed and even encouraged thinking and expressing one’s own thoughts no matter how popular they might be. Anti-government speech was not just tolerated, it was at the heart of what it meant to be an American, the Spirit of ’76!
Well those days are long gone, and the transition to where we are today was not a linear one at all. At first there was some minor deviation, but in the past 5-10 years, the college campuses are more group-think than ever, where the narrative of the day is king, where thought police thrive.
This is not the first time this has happened, but it does seem to be the first time it has happened without a war in the past 150 years, but it does have some similarities to a time in American history over 220 years ago where the thought police surfaced, when the “Land of the Free” enacted the Alien and Sedition Act in 1798 which …:
made it a federal crime to publish any false, scandalous or malicious writing – even if true – about the president or the federal government
You see, freedom of speech is a natural, God-given right that governments can and will take away. In the “Land of the Free” in 1798, there were many who took issue with this course change that occurred only 22 years after the thirteen American colonies sought independence from the British Empire. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he and his administration repealed this act. However, one this course change is embedded in a nation’s/empire’s DNA, there is no going back:
Abraham Lincoln arrested Northerners who challenged the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson arrested Americans who challenged World War I. FDR arrested Americans he thought might not support World War II. LBJ and Richard Nixon used the FBI to harass hundreds whose anti-Vietnam protests frustrated them.
In our own post 9/11 era, the chief instrument of repression of personal freedom has been the government’s signature anti-terror legislation: the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants and gives those warrants the patriotic and harmless-sounding name of national security letters (NSLs). This authorization is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that that security can only be violated by a search warrant issued by a neutral judge and based upon probable cause of crime.
To most libertarians, this is where we are today, where the government has successfully transitioned the US Empire to a static point where the “Land of the Free” is no more. However, there is yet another effort that has been made in the past five years or so to continue the transition towards a totalitarian state, and this one comes from the corporate side of Lincoln’s dream of mercantilism, where government and big corporations become two wings of the same bird.
– Murray Rothbard on Mercantilism
As Rod Dreher of Russian Insider indicates in this article, “A Russian Woman Working as a College Professor in the US Writes About the Sovietization of Amerika”, it seems that it is the former citizens of the old USSR are the most sensitized to this trend the most while typical Americans see this as no big deal, much like the Germans in 1930’s Germany as the Nazi’s came to power.
Clarissa [not her real name] is a college professor who emigrated to the US from Russia as a young woman, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. She is yet another ex-Soviet bloc person who is extremely anxious about the emergence of soft totalitarianism here. Of course she can’t use her real name, because she fears professional retaliation. It should tell us something that not a single academic from a former communist country that I interviewed for this book was willing to speak using their own name — this, in the Land of the Free. Why not? Because they were afraid of facing professional consequences for speaking out against identity politics and the “social justice” regime.
I am pretty sure if I were to chart out freedom in the USA, we are now at an all-time low as both the government and corporate America are actively seeking out dissenters to the latest narratives. The tools are in place to “take out” people professionally both in social media attacks:
Totalitarianism is something that takes away from people the unbearable burden of freedom. It allows many people to hound and persecute with impunity. That is pleasant in many senses. There was a practice in the Soviet Union where people would be told to get together in groups at work and write letters to the newspaper to denounce famous poets or artists. We see that today in Twitter. People love that because it allows a little person to completely destroy somebody who has done something great.
.. as well inside universities and corporations with diversity and sensitivity training in the workplaces:
All your co-workers are enemies. Either they can get you in trouble, or they are out to destroy you with an accusation. It destroys all sorts of uncontrollable communities – friendship, families, church communities. When you set people against each other, they are much easier to control. This is what it was like under totalitarianism.
So one might think I just need to be more careful about what I share in certain social circles. But that is not how this works, to see how any flavor of totalitarianism actually works, we need to learn from those who lived there:
… wokeness in corporate America is a weapon used by white-collar professionals to weed out competitors for increasingly scarce jobs. She said, “People find ideological purity tests useful to weed out people who compete for jobs you cover. Progressive forces are completely allied with globalist capitalism.”
She also said that people have no idea how vulnerable they are to this mindset, because of social media. “You will not be able to predict what will be held against you tomorrow. You have no idea what completely normal thing you do today, or say today, will be used against you to destroy you. This is what people in the Soviet Union saw. We know how this works. This is why people like me are so upset today.
One would think that at least the church might be a place where one can be real in this regard. Anyone who understands the 1st century church, it was the underground Christians in the Roman Empire that actually turned the then-known-world upside-down NOT with violence or revolution, but with love of their neighbor where .. :
[NOTE: It seems that true “diversity” does not focus on division based on race, sex or anything else. A true team sees each unique God-created individual as part of the crew that can help to keep the ship afloat.]
Well, a note of caution, most of the churches today, especially ones with government registration in place (501c3), are part of the corporate woke-ness effort underway in this country. Most of the church of today bears little resemblance to the church in the generation after Jesus was killed by religion and empire.
Until this trend is reversed, the ‘circle of trust’ is going to get mighty small. Take your time in knowing who your friends are, it is better to be lonely than to be a fresh target for either empire or corporate-elite.
High angle shot of an unrecognizable family saying grace at the dining table on Thanksgiving
Donald Jeffries helped me this morning to reflect on the “official” federal (called general back in 1863) government declaration of the thanksgiving holiday and placed it in proper perspective, an act of deception.
Note that up until this point, the different English colonies and later American states each had their own day of Thanksgiving, if they had one. I think Lincoln here is trying to force this whole “union” thing. Since many still refer to him as “father” Abraham, there seems something magical to them when government decrees these kind of things, a vast majority people assume a god has spoken and the words are true.
Let’s take a look at the context:
It’s fitting that America’s biggest tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, first proposed a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863, after a pivotal victory by the Union army during the war he waged so relentlessly. His official proclamation, like all of Lincoln’s writings, distorted a horrendous reality into often beautiful poetry.
So Lincoln, over two years into a war “against insurrection”, but was actually against independence via secession like when the thirteen American colonies exited the British Empire, reflects on what he has accomplished to date:
While waxing over the wonderful bounties we all take for granted, Lincoln provided the following bit of political delusion: “In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict….”
Can any casual read call B.S. to this? I guess if you rely on government textbooks then maybe you believe this to be true. Maybe to the northern farmers of the time, you might have believed all this. But if you were an owner of a printing press, you would have known by now that there were many things you could not print. If you were a farmer in the south, you would have known by now the utter destruction the Union army accomplished against innocent civilians as they got more desperate for total victory, via total war. Lincoln, an avowed atheist, knows that many people DO believe in Providence and therefore speaks their language in his deceptive speech as Thomas DiLorenzo pointed out:
But as more and more fellow American citizens were murdered by the thousands by his army, and as the war crimes mounted, Abe stepped up his Biblical lingo.
Lincoln knew he had to connect with people to cover the lies he was spewing, like proclaiming government of/by/for the people? Really?:
“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” when he was trying to prevent the seceded Southern states from doing that.
Sheesh. I wonder how many people “got that”?
The author moves on in his analysis of this Thanksgiving proclamation:
Analyzing this proclamation further, Lincoln’s note that “order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed” was especially laughable, in light of the untold thousands of political prisoners he locked up in the north [18,000 to 38,000], the hundreds of newspapers he shut down, and his unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. “Harmony” certainly didn’t prevail in those makeshift prisons; one of those imprisoned was Frank Key Howard, grandson of Francis Scott Key. In an incalculable irony, Howard was incarcerated in Fort McHenry, the very spot where his grandfather was inspired by the glorious flying flag to write The Star-Spangled Banner.
While this is indeed a 19th century case of fake news, please know that fake news has been around a lot longer than we realize. Some people wake up to this fact along the way, but it usually involves using some critical thinking techniques that few seem to be equipped with.
Lincoln’s concern for all those widows and orphans didn’t compel him to order bloodthirsty Union generals like Sherman and Sheridan to cease their unprecedented “scorched earth” campaign. It’s impossible to determine how many of those widows were raped by soldiers, who also plundered their remaining valuables, burned their crops and salted the earth behind them. As far as Lincoln imploring the “Almighty Hand” for anything, this flies in the face of his own, well-documented atheistic beliefs. His cold exploitation of a faithful, religious populace with these persistent, flowery references to an Almighty being he didn’t believe in himself goes beyond even what we see in the modern world of practical politics.
Was Lincoln’s proclamation successful? Well, you can be sure no southern state decided to celebrate Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day any time soon. The truth is, Thanksgiving became a national holiday with the completion of the Reconstruction of the South after the War of Northern Aggression and the extermination of the Plains Indians by the Union generals in the 1870s. This actually taints the US Federal Government holiday “Thanksgiving” as a celebration of the preservation and expansion of the American Empire and accurately reflects the goal of the political forces behind Lincoln.
Politics of course was always at the forefront of Lincoln’s mind, the proclamation in the fall of 1863 was to set the tone for 1864 elections that he feared greatly that he would not win. Over the next year he would force the creation of a new state (West Virginia) out of part of a seceded one (Virginia), allow Nevada to join early even though it did not have enough people to qualify and also utilize the threat of force at the last minute as Lincoln won New York by 7,000 votes in 1864 “with the help of federal bayonets”.
Lincoln was not the first that tried to force Thanksgiving on ‘the people’, as George Washington issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation on November 26, 1789. However, the early presidents who were more Virginian and of a states’ rights disposition regarded such proclamations as excessively Yankee and Federalist. I have to agree. Let each region or state choose themselves what they want to celebrate, or not. Getting pretty tired of the national government forcing their heroes and their morality (immorality) on the balance of us to celebrate, as I hesitate to hear what new holiday might be in the works.
So here we are in 2019, in a land with our society ripped about by politics, where the politicians are happy that their own political big names are talked about more than family and real life. The bread and circus era is upon this empire to distract from some pretty serious red flags one sees in various aspects of this nation, its war on terror creating more terrorists, its war on drugs imprisoning millions, its war on poverty keeping millions dependent on the state and the continued deficit spending causing more ‘taxation without representation’ as our kids and their kids will have to pay this money back and be tax slaves the rest of their lives. This will undoubtedly cause generational warfare which politics will claim as something they can solve.
Being a contrarian, a rebel of sorts, I like to counter this government sprawl that has taken place with its decreed holy days with some good old common sense.
Consider making everyday Thanksgiving Day, as we could just unofficially wake up each day, thankful for what we have and balance that with a hope for the future, for us, our families and our friends. I am not saying to not take advantage of this day, but attempt to keep perspective of what we have gained, and what we have lost, each and every day.
Consider too making every family-centered celebration the main thing, as those in opposition to faith and family that try to utilize the state as their avenue for more stuff, that causes more and more divisions, will be curious in time of the deep love y’all have for family.
Enjoy the day y’all .. get hugs from family and friends and stay true to liberty and freedom and the One who gave us our natural rights in this very broken world.
Draft #1 of the declaration of independence from the British Empire:
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness ..
10 years after the Constitution was drafted, this act was signed by “patriot” John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
Just from my history education from the government, I know there were times in our history that one had to just agree with the government and not speak or write critically of their actions. Words like treason and sedition became mainstream.
A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. – John F. Kennedy
From the “Copperheads” during the Civil War (those who called out the tyrant Lincoln) to those critical of entering the “Great War” (WWI), who had to content with Woodrow Wilson’s U.S. Sedition Act of 1918, the act that made it a crime to ”willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.” Less than 25 years later aviation hero Charles Lindbergh would be criticized by FDR by not going along with his secret plan to get America involved in yet another world war. (WWII) From George Bush stating “you are either with us or against us” in his decision to invade Iraq to the same treatment when Barack Obama decided to attack Libya and back ISIS in Syria, it is the same song, different verse ad nauseum.
This is my 3rd post today, a trilogy of sorts, which:
covered the unhealthy big-business/government alliance and its impact on regions of this nation.
covered on a macro scale how there were two visions of the American Colonies “cause” for independence from the British Empire.
covered on a micro scale, where what one individual says or writes is held against them as a crime against the government.
Pure Redcoat.
Pure Soviet Union circa 1950s/1960s.
It turns out, it is also Pure America in 1798!
Today, under Trump, this whole critical views of government has again gotten personnel. In the last few years, individuals have been banned from social media or experienced a demonetization of their work online because of their words. The attitude these days aligns with that of John Adams back in 1798 when he signed the Alien and Sedition Act as described by Robert Ringer nearly 10 years ago:
… which made it a crime for anyone to criticize the government ”through writing or any other shape, form, or fashion.”
Specifically, criticizing the president, Congress, the military, or the flag was made illegal. This by a group of men who themselves had escaped bondage only twenty-two years earlier!
It was an audacious move by the Federalist-controlled Congress to silence the Republicans, particularly regarding their support of the French Revolution. It was, of course, in direct violation of the Bill of Rights, which clearly states, in the First Amendment, that ”Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech, or of the press.”
With the 21st century press looking more and more like the 20th century USSR mouthpiece “Pravda”, the only true “press” is the independent blogger, tweeter and friend of liberty that risks being the rebel in social settings both in the workplace/marketplace and in the neighborhood.
Daniel McAdams frames it nicely:
Are we agents of a foreign power for opposing the foreign policy of the US government? This is the way of thinking that dominated communist Europe for decades. The Party was always right, guided as it was by the inevitable and undeniable march of history. Any foreign policy position put forth by The Party was by definition the correct foreign policy. So anyone who disagreed was also by definition incorrect and a “wrecker.” When The Party is by definition correct, any deviationist must be punished and any deviation must be disappeared.
New interpretations by Trump’s Administration indicate that in its “Maximum Pressure” exercise with Iran have changed the rules to criminalize individuals who “associate” with Iranians. Originally intended to mean:
Responding to a query by a potential participant, an OFAC employee explained that ‘transaction’ and ‘dealing in transactions,’ as those terms are used by OFAC, are broadly construed to include not only monetary dealings or exchanges, but also ‘providing any sort of service’ and ‘non-monetary service,’ including giving a presentation at a conference.
So simple truth-telling about the US Empire’s sanctions that ban Iranian import of components to make medicine, there by indirectly causing unknown number of deaths in that nation, could subject one to fines and imprisonment.
We have all kinds of freedom in the USA today because of all the interventions around the world, especially in the Middle East, since 1990, NOT!
Pretty soon, your neighbors will be encouraged to “say something, if you hear something”, or maybe not, since your smartphone can report your words 24/7.
Sorry to end on a note like this, but there is a bright side, a silver lining if you will in the empire’s quest to silence us. A weakness.
Pride.
The myth of American Exceptionalism will help to unravel the powerful.
Pride will do 🙂
-SF!
Below: Script from the movie “The Patriot”:
MARTIN
I've just been inside the mind of a
genius. Lord Cornwallis knows more
about war than I could in a dozen
lifetimes.
BILLINGS
Cheerful news to greet the morn.
MARTIN
His victories at Charleston and
Camden were perfect, strategically,
tactically, logistically. But he
has a weakness.
They all turn to Martin.
MARTIN
Lord Cornwallis is brilliant. His
weakness is that he knows it.
GABRIEL
Father?
MARTIN
Pride is his weakness.
The men consider that.
DELANCEY
Personally, I'd would prefer
stupidity.
MARTIN
Pride will do.
The pendulum swing of politics has revealed much as to the gullibility of the masses who are swept up by emotion but rarely have principles by which to live by when the going gets tough.
It seems that Thomas Paine’s writings in 1776 helped put people in a position to better understand the battles, the war and the cause for which thirteen British colonies aligned with each other, for a moment in time, to repel the British Empire from their midst. By the end of this conflict, there were many who were disillusioned with the cause, either by British tactics used by Patriot forces or even having their property pillaged by the Whig faction that made them choose to be a Tory. The pendulum swung in villages, colonies as well as on this continent as people heard the news, fake or not.
At the end of the day, one wonders if those with power can be trusted to make decisions on their behalf, which is at its root, representative government. We have seen ourselves where HOAs and churches can become hotbeds of contention and power moves that can swiftly cripple the week and the meek. I believe this is why many founding fathers, but definitely not all, preferred the grass roots approach. Keeping the “representative” local, so someone could have the proximity to put a boot up their a** if need be, is essential for accountability.
As the War for Independence concluded, and the Articles of Confederation gave way to the Constitution that was created in Philadelphia in 1787, in secret, many “grassroot” promoters found themselves in the minority.
A recent article about St. George Tucker helps shed light not only on the two types of dreams for America that the “cause” help birth, but also the prophetical vision that this man had for seeing the end of the line for either of these visions. Allen Mendenhall’s article “St. George Tucker’s Jeffersonian Constitution” helps to frame my thoughts on what we gained, and what we lost, after the fight for independence from 1775-1783:
One could argue that there are two basic visions for America: the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian. The former is nationalist, calling for centralized power and an industrial, mercantilist society characterized by banking, commercialism, and a robust military. Its early leaders had monarchical tendencies. The latter vision involves a slower, more leisurely and agrarian society, political decentralization, popular sovereignty, and local republicanism. Think farmers over factories.
Both were birthed in the message of liberty. Both indicated the support of the common person in their leadership to create something new here in America that was different from the ways of the Old World, especially in Europe. You can see the thread by who you might consider our heroes:
Hamiltonian:
John Adams, John Marshall, Noah Webster, Henry Clay, Joseph Story, and Abraham Lincoln
Jeffersonian:
George Mason and Patrick Henry (who, because they were born before Jefferson, could be considered his precursors), the mature (rather than the youthful) James Madison, and then John Taylor of Caroline, John C. Calhoun, Abel Upshur, and Robert Y. Hayne.
So the Federalists (who were not really federalists, but as you know with political parties, their name does not always reveal their core) surged into power on the tails of the Constitution that helped assure a more powerful centralized general government but then over played their hand especially during “Alien and Sedition Act” John Adams administration. The Anti-Federalists, called the Democratic-Republican Party (or simply the Republican party) by the time Thomas Jefferson sought the presidency would sweep into office and would change the political landscape some for the next 30 years or so before the Whigs would emerge and eventually the Republican party that nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
From St. George Tucker’s time, he could see the years and the decades unfolding in his mind. Here are a few of his thoughts:
Under this [Compact Theory of the US Constitution] model, each sovereign, independent state is contractually and consensually committed to confederacy, and the federal government possesses only limited and delegated powers—e.g., “to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations.”
That is indeed one way to interpret the US Constitution, as even Alexander Hamilton would talk this way about it, until it passed and until he was in power with George Washington.
.. summarizing competing contentions about the Sedition Act, Tucker subtly supported the position that “the United States as a federal government have no common law” and that “the common law of one state . . . is not the common law of another.” The common law, in Tucker’s paradigm, is bottom-up and home-grown; it’s not a formula that can be lifted from one jurisdiction and placed down anywhere else with similar results and effects.
This is another core principle that IF had been understood by the political elite of the 20th/21st century, it would not have thought that the USA could bring “democracy” to any other nation in the world. Even in the United States, the STATES represent different cultures, morals and standards. We would have done well in keeping it that way, but our ancestors believed Hamilton and Lincoln over Jefferson and Calhoun.
Allen ends his article with the wisdom that can be gained in understanding what we lost after the War for Independence:
Reading Tucker reminds us that for most of our country’s formative history the principal jurisprudential debates were not about natural law versus positivism, or originalism versus living constitutionalism, but about state versus federal authority, local versus national jurisdiction, the proper scale and scope of government, checks and balances, and so forth. To the extent these subjects have diminished in importance, Hamilton has prevailed over Jefferson. Reading Tucker today can help us see the costs of that victory.
It seems that only the recovery of the wisdom and the thoughts of these 18th century thinkers can lead this land towards a better day for us, our kids and our grand-kids. The US Empire’s current trajectory is self-defeating in the long term and not sustainable.
Local city-state and region-state philosophy is a much needed idea, but the powers residing in the political elites funded by an evil moneyed elites will not give up their multi-century grasp for total control and power easily.
I find it very sad, that the United States of America (formerly known as the ‘united States of America’), had to eventually devote an entire day, or weekend, once a year to honor all our war dead. Who would have thought, in the early days of this republic, that the military deaths of 1.3 million men would one day be the sum total of over 240 years of war and strife.
It would have been one thing IF a majority of these deaths had been due to other nations attacking us, UNPROVOKED, but this is not the case. The United States has NEVER been attacked unprovoked for these major conflicts and wars. Not the War of 1812, not the Mexican-American War, not the so-called Civil War when seven states exited the “union”, not the Spanish-American War, not WWI, not WWII (if you have any doubts, read “Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor“), not the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War I or even Gulf War II against Iraq and Afghanistan (no, the 9/11 attacks were NOT directed from these two countries, do your research!).
I have become convinced that the creation and adoption of the US Constitution led us to become a warfare state, that even with Thomas Jefferson (who was away during the Philadelphia exercise that removed the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with the Constitution we have today in 1787) as president, even he could not keep this republic, this federation of states from war.
From this 2010 Mises Institute article where H.A. Scott Trask shares excerpts from Chapter 3 of Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John V. Denson, it is clear that Jefferson’s view would have led to many fewer wars, and less of a need for a national holiday to honor all who died, not fighting for our freedom, as that has been our natural right from the begining, but fighting wars that enrich the monied class (protectionist and mercantile segment that looks to find a partner in government and the state and its power) of people in the United States, now known as the Military-Industrial Complex.
Here is Jefferson’s dream:
… the happiness of his countrymen would be promoted best by a policy of “peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” He envisioned his country as a peaceful, agrarian-commercial federal republic of self-sufficient farmers and mechanics slowly spreading across space to fill in the beautiful and bountiful land vouchsafed them by Providence. Possessing “a wide and fruitful land,” “with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation,” and “kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe.” America, Jefferson believed, had the blessed opportunity to keep itself free from the incessant rivalries, jealousies, and conflicts of the Old World. For Jefferson, the wise and patriotic statesman would take advantage of his country’s fortunate geography and situation by defending a policy of national independence, neutrality, and noninvolvement in European affairs.
So what did Jefferson attempt to do to keep these United States from the typical knee-jerk reaction to try to fix problems in other countries and somehow believe in American Exceptionalism? He reduced the standing army substantially (from well over 6000 men to around 3000 men) and relying on the major factor that actually allowed the thirteen colonies to wear down the British Empire, state militias. Not perfect, the fact that every state had a ready force in its own citizens that had armed themselves with state of the art muskets and rifles, would be more than enough to allow a DEFENSE of these states should a foreign power attempt an invasion.
Jefferson’s defense policy was to maintain a peacetime military establishment composed of a small standing army (about 3,000 men) to defend the frontier against hostile Indians and possible Spanish incursions from the Floridas, and a small naval squadron to protect American commerce from the depredations of third-rate powers, such as the Barbary states of North Africa. Jefferson possessed a classical republican aversion to large military and naval establishments both for their expense (which required either taxes or debt to maintain) and their potential threat to the liberties of the people.
Far from being idealistic or Utopian, Jefferson’s vision and policies were based on a realistic understanding of America’s geopolitical situation in the Atlantic world. He believed that it would be pure folly and extravagance to build a large oceangoing fleet, composed of hundreds of frigates and ships-of-the-line. He rightly surmised that building such a fleet would alarm the British and encourage a preemptive strike by their navy in the event of hostilities. Thus, building a fleet could actually increase the possibility of war with England.
Jefferson rejected the Federalist axiom that in order to have peace one must prepare for war — the theory being that the more powerful a country was in armaments the less likely it was to be attacked. Jefferson doubted both the wisdom of this theory and Federalist sincerity in invoking it. He believed that history demonstrated that the more a country prepared for war, the more likely it was to go to war. First, having a powerful military force offered a temptation to rulers to engage in wars for conquest and glory.14 And second, far from deterring aggression, a powerful navy and army often frightened other nations into building up their own forces and forming hostile alliances, tempting them to instigate hostilities for the purpose of gaining a strategic advantage or weakening their rival.
Let us look then to how Jefferson handled and reacted to the tribute the Barbary Coast pirates were demanding of American commercial shipping attempting trade in the world on the free and open seas:
Early in his first term, Jefferson was faced with the question of whether he should use the naval force inherited from the Federalists to protect American trade in the Mediterranean. The pasha of Tripoli, the leader of one of the four Barbary powers on the northern coast of Africa (the others being Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis), demanded additional tribute from the United States as the price for allowing American shipping to trade in the Mediterranean free of piratical raids by his navy.
This was a true test of how “limited” this republic might be when faced with a threat, in this case, half the way around the world.
It does have to be noted that at this point, President Jefferson had at hand a naval force and would not have to rely on Congress to utilize another tool called:
… to vest sovereign authority to use force against enemy nations and their subjects with private parties only. Exercising that power, Congress could authorize so-called privateers to engage in military hostilities, with neither government funding nor oversight (other than after-the-fact judicial determinations of prizes by the prize courts).
Yes, engaging privateers to carry out a mission.
Jefferson actually had a significant navy (more than what he would have desired) that had been enhanced during his predecessor’s (John Adams) term BUT was NOT initiated by President Adams or Congress.
This rabbit trail is especially interesting to this former US Navy sailor that demonstrates that society itself can indeed direct the private initiative to provide port security as well as international trade security means. From this very informative article called “Privately Funded and Built U.S. Warships in the Quasi-War of 1797-1801”:
In 1798, the United States faced an undeclared naval war with France. The existing tax-funded vessels of the U.S. Navy consisted principally of three large frigates–not the ideal weapons for coping with the French threat on the seas. Therefore, a number of self-interested citizens undertook to provide nine additional fighting ships. These privately funded frigates and sloops-of-war served with distinction. Most of them were considered outstanding examples of naval architecture. Some saw action only against France. Others lasted through the Barbary Wars and even the War of 1812.
The lesson to be drawn from this little-known episode in U.S. history seems clear. Effective naval fighting forces can be financed and constructed largely if not entirely by means of voluntary contributions. National governments need not direct the process, and taxes need not be used to fund the projects.
I contend that this method would be much more effective and efficient than the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) method which is to start wars and intervene in other countries around the world (i.e. Syria, Venezuela, etc) to drive the demand for over-priced and poor-quality weapons (i.e. F-35, Littoral Class, Super Carriers, etc):
Back to the main focus of this post, how did Jefferson do when faced with this treat? He indeed did send the frigates USS Philadelphia, USS President, and the USS Essex, along with the schooner USS Enterprise to the Barbary Coast via Gibraltar (at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea) which constituted America’s first navy to cross the Atlantic. These frigates brought the following speed and power:
They carried 24-60 guns, were up to 175 feet long, displaced up to 1,600 tons, .. had crews of 200-450 men, and were comparable to the cruisers of World War II. With rare exceptions, no frigate could survive one-on-one combat with a ship-of-the-line. However, because frigates were faster than ships-of-the-line, they could usually escape from those more powerful vessels. Owing to their combination of speed and significant firepower, frigates often served as scouts for the battle fleet, as escorts for convoys of merchant ships, or as commerce raiders acting independently. In 1800, the most powerful warships of the U.S. Navy were the 44-gun frigates United States, Constitution, and President.
So was this a “shock-and-awe” moment? No. This action was deliberately annoying in the same way the militia was annoying to a larger force in the colonies backed by a much larger British Empire from 1775 to 1782. Off the coast of Africa, the US Navy harassed the larger forces that harassed our shipping by demanding tributes.
Upon reaching Gibraltar in the late summer, the naval squadron found two Tripolitan cruisers on blockade duty awaiting American vessels. The American squadron chased off the two cruisers; the schooner Enterprise engaged one of them in battle and captured it; and the squadron proceeded to Tripoli where it blockaded the harbor. Thus, for the second time in only four years, the United States found itself in an undeclared naval war.
Jefferson sent additional forces to the Mediterranean each year until, by the summer of 1805, almost the entire American navy was deployed off the shores of Tripoli.
In addition to escorting American merchant vessels and blockading Tripoli (in 1801 and 1803–1805), the American fleet bombarded Tripoli five times in August and September of 1804.
By the early summer of 1805, facing a renewed and even more destructive series of bombardments from the American navy, and hearing of the fall of the town of Derbe to a land force composed of Americans, Greeks, and Tripolitan exiles commanded by William Eaton (the former American consul at Tunis), the pasha sued for peace and signed a treaty ending the war. The June 1805 treaty abolished annual payments from the United States to Tripoli and provided for the payment of a $60,000 ransom for more than 200 American captives, mostly sailors from the U.S. frigate Philadelphia that had been captured after running aground off Tripoli in 1803.
In the end, a land effort by the Marines finally accomplished an end to free trade on the open seas. Up until this time, Europe itself paid these tributes while the American’s fought for the ability to use the oceans as free-trade zones.
How many US military deaths came from this limited engagement?
35 combat deaths
39 other deaths (disease, etc)
Total of 74 deaths of American sailors and Marines in four years.
Compared to the balance of wars that our government engaged in over the course of the following 220 years, this is impressive. I applaud you Thomas Jefferson for doing this honorable thing.
Subsequent larger wars, War of 1812 (15,000 US military deaths), Mexican-American War (14,000 US military deaths) and Civil War (750,000 US military deaths) were horrendous. It was actually at the conclusion of the War Against Southern Independence that the southern women first decided to honor ALL of the fallen soldiers (USA and CSA) of that horrific conflict, as mentioned in this article towards a “Decoration Day” which eventually became ‘Memorial Day’:
In January 1866, the Ladies’ Memorial Association in Columbus, Georgia, passed a motion agreeing that they would designate a day to throw flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers buried at the cemetery, Gardiner said.
However, the ladies didn’t want this to be an isolated event, so Mary Ann Williams, the group’s secretary, wrote a letter and sent it to newspapers all over the United States.
“You’ll find that letter in dozens of newspapers,” Gardiner said. “It got out, and it was republished everywhere in the country.”
In the letter, the ladies asked people to celebrate the war’s fallen soldiers on April 26 — the day the bulk of Confederate soldiers surrendered in North Carolina in 1865.
“That’s what many people in the South considered to be the end of the war,” Gardiner said. Even though Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, “there were still 90,000 people ready to fight. And until those 90,000 surrendered on April 26, the war was effectively still going on,” Gardiner said.
At the end of the day, it was the illogical violent reaction, on the part of Abraham Lincoln, towards seven southern states (former American colonies) that had asked for a divorce from this voluntary federation of states established first by the Articles of Confederation (agreed to in Congress 15NOV1777 and ratified and in force 01MAR1781) and eventually by the US Constitution (Created 17SEP1787, Ratified 21JUN1788 and in force 04MAR1789) that ramped up US military deaths!
Why would seven states seek separation towards divorce? Why in 1861? In a 2017 Paul Craig Roberts article sharing the thoughts of Thomas DiLorenzo:
The rate of federal taxation was about to more than double (from 15% to 32.7%), as it did on March 2, 1861 when President James Buchanan, the Pennsylvania protectionist, signed the Morrill Tariff into law, a law that was relentlessly promoted by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party .. The South, like the Mid-West, was an agricultural society that was being plundered twice by protection tariffs: Once by paying higher prices for “protected” manufactured goods, and a second time by reduced exports after the high tariffs impoverished their European customers who were prohibited from selling in the U.S. by the high tariffs. Most of the South’s agricultural produce –as much as 75% or so in some years — was sold in Europe.
Having separated, the seven states decided in Montgomery, Alabama to take almost an identical constitution and return toward 1775 economic principles that aligns with Thomas Jefferson’s:
The Confederate Constitution outlawed protectionist tariffs altogether, calling only for a modest “revenue tariff” of ten percent or so. This so horrified the “Party of Great Moral Causes” that Republican Party-affiliated newspapers in the North were calling for the bombardment of Southern ports before the war. With a Northern tariff in the 50% range (where it would be after Lincoln signed ten tariff-raising pieces of legislation, and remained in that range for the succeeding fifty years) compared to the Southern 10% average tariff rate, they understood that much of the trade of the world would go through Southern, not Northern, ports and to them, that was cause for war. “We now have the votes and we intend to plunder you mercilessly; if you resist we will invade, conquer, and subjugate you” is essentially what the North, with its election of lifelong protectionist Abraham Lincoln as a sectional president, was saying.
This action by a new federation of seven states threatened northern industry and businessmen. This was the source of fear that had Lincoln reinforce in his 1st inaugural address on 04MAR1861 to try to entice the southern seven states back into the union by declaring:
Lincoln then pledged to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, which he in fact did during his administration, returning dozens of runaway slaves to their “owners.” Most importantly, seven paragraphs from the end of his speech he endorsed the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which had already passed the House and Senate and was ratified by several states. This “first thirteenth amendment” would prohibit the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery. It would have enshrined slavery explicitly in the text of the Constitution. Lincoln stated in the same paragraph that he believed slavery was already constitutional, but that he had “no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
This may have sounded good to those in the southern states, but then the abuse they felt the previous 35 years rose up in their minds when they heard Lincoln’s following words:
“The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against or among the people anywhere” (emphasis added).
The “duties and imposts” he referred to were the tariffs to be collected under the new Morrill Tariff law. If there was to be a war, he said, the cause of the war would in effect be the refusal of the Southern states to submit to being plundered by the newly-doubled federal tariff tax, a policy that the South had been periodically threatening nullification and secession over for the previous thirty-three years.
Once in power, Lincoln’s cabinet was not in favor of war at their first meeting. Since Lincoln wanted to ensure collection of Southern port tariffs, he wanted to hold on to the forts still in his possession at Fort Pickens (Pensacola) and Fort Jefferson (Key West) in Florida and Fort Sumter (Charleston) in South Carolina.
By the end of March 1861, influenced by the fears both northern and western (Midwest today) businessmen had about a free trade zone adjacent to the northern states and the thought of Mississippi River trade being more expensive, war seemed to be the only alternative thought of in the North. Lincoln, a lawyer, knew secession was legal under the Constitution, so he decided to call this a general insurrection that under a 1807 act was under the President’s purview:
Whenever there is an insurrections in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.
Lincoln then proceeded to resupply Fort Sumter, not just with food, but with troops forcing those guarding Charleston harbor to fire on the fort before the supply ships arrived. This accomplished Lincoln’s desire. The coastal defenses around Fort Sumter firing on a US held fort would inflame the hearts of all who remained in the union, or so Lincoln thought.
No one died in this bombardment, and if Lincoln had relented and finally agreed to peace negotiations that had been attempted all of March 1861, things would have been much different.
No need for “Memorial Day”. Thanks Abraham, thanks GOP! Not!
A President’s (Abraham Lincoln) unilateral decision (he failed to call Congress into session until well after war preparations were underway, not until 04JUL1861) to call up 75,000 volunteers on 15APR1861 sealed the deal towards a war. This notice extended to all the states that were in sympathy to the original seven states, and as a result, Virginia and other states would again vote on secession and four more would do so.
Lincoln’s subsequent actions like placing the Maryland legislators who favored southern independence in prison, placing cannon aimed at the Delaware statehouse, closing down hundreds of newspaper presses that called him out on his actions as well as his placing thousands of newspaper press on prison ships indicated the type of tyrant the office of president could produced. This was in my opinion, America at its darkest moment, so far, in its history. By the end of this conflict, ‘total war’ would be adopted as innocent civilians and their homes would be the target of this standing army followed by military occupation of all southern states.
War and military occupation are at the very root of the GOP DNA.
