Tag: Articles of Confederation

When the Honeymoon is Over: Is the First Fight Always About Money?

One of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard is that the South left the North over slavery. Anyone with a thinking mind should have done their research and realize that when the media/government spins a yarn so very hard and for over a century, it is probably false.

In reading a 1960s well documented book by Murray Rothbard called “Conceived in Liberty, Volume 5: The New Republic”, it becomes apparent that the new “marriage” of several colonial regions in America had some high hopes and dreams that were quickly dashed with some harsh realities. Promises made or implied give away to a selfish attitude that neatly translates for the North into some more economic bondage for the South.

This core resentment and distrust would eventually be the key reason why the South (as of 04MAR1861, just the seven states of the deep south) did not flinch when Lincoln promised them LEGAL and PERMANENT slavery of blacks IF they would simply re-enter the Union. By this time the South was tired of the abusive relationship the North treated them with and it was apparent that as of NOV1860 that the North could elect a president without ANY Southern support or votes spoke volumes.

As the American Revolution ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, the engagement of the thirteen colonies signed 04JUL1776 with the Declaration of Independence led to the creation of the wedding vows on 15NOV1777 followed by the commencement of the marriage on 01MAR1781. Note that the language of the vows talks of a perpetual union, however, by the time a constitutional convention was called in 1787, these original vows were discarded for a new set (the United States Constitution) that “promised” a better relationship. In hindsight, it was all downhill from that point forward.

With the end of the war-period in which these thirteen colonies fought together, but with a wide range of sacrifice, it was time to settle all the debt incurred during this period. It is in this period that some significant character flaws started to make themselves known that should have been red-flags, especially for the South, to anticipate what a continued relationship might look like and if the North could be trusted in the long-term.

Murray Rothbard shares a summary:

“A key to the politico-economic problems of the Confederation period, as well as one of the leading arguments for centralized power, was the swollen corpus of war-born public debt. The mass of federal and state debt could have depreciated and passed out of existence by the end of the war, but the process was stopped by Robert Morris. Morris and the nationalists moved to make the depreciated federal debt ultimately redeemable at par, and also agitated for federal assumption of the states’ debts. This was done to benefit speculators who purchased the public debt at depreciated values and to force a drive for a national taxing power ..”

To have a “spouse” like that to hijack the relationship towards a future that philosophically was repulsive to the independent minded Southern colonies, in effect, USING the South for it’s economic engine (which at that time was much more healthy than the North, this in spite of the major conflicts that occurred in the South during the last 1/2 of the war).

As a result of the nationalists’ efforts to assume the public debt, the value of the public debt, in specie, increased from $11 million in 1780 to $27 million in 1783, the vast bulk of which was held in the northern states. While scrambling to assume some of the debt themselves, the states had also amassed a huge burden of their own debt. Thus, by the end of the war, Massachusetts’ total debt was nearly £1.5 million; Rhode Island, about $0.5 million; Connecticut, over $3.75 million; Pennsylvania, over £4.6 million; Virginia’s over £4.25 million. As a result, payment of interest on the debt amounted to an overwhelming proportion of the state budget, and one estimate is that 50–90 percent of state expenditures went for this purpose ..

Not cool. The elites looked to benefiting themselves and placing the common folk on the hook for all the taxes needed not just to satisfy the interest payments on the debt, but to eventually pay off all the American Revolutionary War debt,

One problem that bitterly divided the states during the Confederation period was the settlement of common accounts. Under the Articles, expenses made by the several states for causes common to them all would be lumped together as “common charges” and the charges paid proportionately by the various states. In short, “debtor” states would pay their share to claimant “creditor” states through Congress and thus settle their accounts. Wartime expenses were clearly a common charge for the general welfare, and therefore those states which had expended more in the war effort (notably the southern states, because of the nature of the last few years of the war) were entitled to payment from the others. Logically, the public debt incurred by Congress should also have been assumed pro rata by the separate states, but the nationalists’ fierce determination to amass and retain a federal debt was able to keep that debt a federal rather than a “common” charge.

Talk about a bait and switch. So the vows that were agreed to in 1781 were just words on paper and the actions after the war’s end were highly dishonorable in regards to the nationalist’s agenda:

Throughout the 1780s the southern states tried to obtain their just settlements, but the northern states faithlessly fell back on technicalities, lack of official vouchers and authorization, etc., to keep the southern states from their just due. Also the South in particular had gone much further than other states in assuming unliquidated federal debt during the war (e.g., Quartermaster and Commissary certificates) and had exchanged them for state debts, only to find Congress (i.e., the North) balking about accepting these federal certificates as evidence for expenditures in the common welfare. Again, the North was depriving the South of their just due.

It should be noted that many Southern militia members never got the pensions deserved and yet so many New Englanders who never fought a battle received the same pension. Basically, the Yankee’s word meant nothing, and this was only the beginning:

As the dispute dragged on during the decade with the southern states unable to redeem their claims, Robert Morris’ wily “solution” proposed in 1783 began to look better to all concerned. An ultra-nationalist’s dream, the proposal was to accept all southern claims without cavil, but not to be paid by the debtor states: to be assumed by the federal government, which would issue federal securities for all claims. In short, the federal government would assume all war-born state debts. The tax-and-debt burdens of the states were, of course, aggravated when the depression of 1784 hit the country, for now a fixed sum of taxes and debt payments had to be exacted from a depressed economy in which prices were generally lower and therefore the real tax burden greater. One critical problem was whether the debt would be paid at its depreciated market value, which at least reflected current economic realities, or whether the state would insist on paying them at their far greater face value, and thus impose an enormously greater tax burden upon the people. The anger of people at paying debt charges was considerably aggravated by the fact that the bulk of this debt had passed from its original owners at highly depreciated amounts into the hands of speculators. Payment of face value, then, would not even benefit the original public creditors; in fact, they too would suffer from being taxed for the benefit of a windfall to a comparative handful of speculators in the public debt.

The way two former colonies would handle this situation showed the difference in character between the regions, which to me meant that they were not compatible for a “tight” marriage but might work in a loose “federation”. Unfortunately, the actions in 1787 with the new “vows” (the US Constitution, coup d’tat) would make this marriage so tight that it could only become abusive in the long haul.

Virginia showed honorable character:

Virginia was sensible enough to pay much of the debt at its depreciated market value, and make its taxes to pay the debt payable in depreciated certificates. Hence, Virginia was able to reduce its debt rapidly and without imposing enormous burdens on its taxpayers .. Numerous county petitions in Virginia pleaded the impossibility of paying taxes, a condition aggravated by the low price of tobacco in the mid-1780s. The Virginia legislature reacted sagely to the protests .. and agreed to lower or suspend taxes, and to allow hemp-growing western farmers to pay their taxes in hemp or flour. Indeed, Virginia agreed, in the spring of 1784, to suspend all tax collections for six months, and then agreed to cut taxes in half for the year 1785.

Massachusetts not so much:

Massachusetts, on the other hand, so handled its debt during the war as to benefit its debt holders and speculators, consolidating its debt by 1784 at twice its market value. To pay this particularly large debt, Massachusetts levied enormous taxes and insisted on collecting them in specie. This is not surprising, since the Massachusetts government was basically run by the very groups that owned the great mass of state debt. The debt burden was borne particularly by the poor, since roughly 33 to 40 percent of Massachusetts’ state revenue was raised by poll taxes, which were equal for each citizen. As a result, it is estimated that at least a third of a Massachusetts farmer’s income after 1780 was extracted from him in taxes, and in specie at that. Farmers and the poor demanded that the state debt at least be scaled down to market value, but the conservative ruling groups angrily refused. Typical of the eastern mercantile oppression over the mass of citizens and farmers was the imposition of excise taxes, which harmed the bulk of consumers. Thus, the tax on spirits (e.g., cider brandy) distilled from one’s own apple orchard was twice the level of the tax on New England rum: a clear privilege to the Boston and other eastern merchants over the western farmers. Tax oppression upon the Massachusetts people was enormous, and the courts ruthlessly threw those who could not pay into jail. Tax defaulters’ property was seized, but in the time-honored way of neighborhood solidarity, local mobs prevented anyone but the owner from bidding for the property.

The rifts were real and would be aggravated over time.  These events should have given caution to the southern states by the late 1780s that had the nationalists accelerate their efforts to centralize the US general government and create a central bank. It seems the longer the South stayed with the North the more the North sensed that it OWNED the South, as a slave and not respected her as a spouse.

Hindsight is indeed 20/20 .. but learning these things from real history is priceless!

-SF1

Traits of an Empire: Rarely if Ever Honorable

From my last post lamenting the benefits of small nations or federations of small republics and city-states, it became rather obvious that the formation of the Articles of Confederation which linked thirteen colonies together to fight against the British Empire was a noble effort, and that Switzerland decided early on to retain this focus unlike the United States:

After the revolutionary war, many founders abandoned the Swiss model as being too week and opted again towards the large-state model..

In today’s post, I use primarily an article from Darius Shahtahmasebi that explains the impact that many of the US Empire’s wars have had on Muslims over time. Darius does a great job of balancing the fact that it is not that the Muslims were targeted, but like the American Indians, it has more to do with the content their lands have for potential empire resources or disruptions in trade routes.

There are then several phases of the US Empire’s history that I hope to unpack today as a lesson we can all learn from so we can better understand the true character of the empire’s endeavors.

The first phase happened when the united States, having been victorious in its quest for independence from the British Empire, was potentially left unprotected in world trade. The source I chose for this was an article that helps to identify what really might have gone town in the tension between the US (which many consider to be a Christian nation) and the Barbary Powers (that happened to be primarily Muslim in religious terms). The truth is that these Barbary ‘corsairs’ were not only Muslim but also included English privateers and Dutch captains who exploited the changing loyalties of an era in which friends could become enemies and enemies friends with the stroke of a pen.

In the Barbary ‘pirate’ era, these entrepreneurs were not content with attacking ships and sailors, the corsairs also sometimes raided coastal settlements in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, and even as far away as the Netherlands and Iceland. They landed on unguarded beaches, and crept up on villages in the dark to capture their victims. This did not begin with these powers that ended up enslaving over one million Europeans, but was preceded by Christian pirates, primarily from Catalonia and Sicily, that dominated the seas, posing a constant threat to merchants in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Back to the Barbary powers of the Ottoman Empire of the 15th century:

During the era of the American colonies, American merchant vessels received protection by virtue of being of being British; the British were among the countries that paid tribute. Then, during the American Revolution, an alliance with France protected American ships. But full independence brought an end to that.

Initially, the United States decided to pay tribute. But American leaders, including Jefferson, seethed at having to do it, saying it would only inspire more and more outrageous financial demands. On July 11, 1786, Jefferson wrote to John Adams, “I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro’ the medium of war.” The following month, he wrote to James Monroe that the Barbary powers “must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them.”

Jefferson truly believed that the sea trade routes should be free. However, during the George Washington and John Adams administrations, the tribute was paid as was done by all the European powers, in fact, the rift was identified as economic in nature and not seen as religious:

As early as 1797, the United States made clear in a treaty with Tripoli that “as the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan (Mohammedan or Muslim) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Once Jefferson became the US President, he decided that enough was enough:

After Jefferson became president in 1801, he rejected Tripoli’s demand for payment. The pasha of Tripoli countered by declaring war on the United States. Jefferson sent forces to the Mediterranean, and after sporadic combat, hostilities ended four years later with a negotiated settlement in which the United States paid a smaller tribute than had initially been demanded.

The era of Barbary corsairs effectively ended a decade later, when, after the U.S. Navy, battle-hardened from the War of 1812, won a quick victory against Algiers, effectively ending all tribute payments.

By 1815, after the US’s war against the British Empire, the US flexed its muscles and used force to protect US shipping going forward. Shortly after this, the US found itself in a war with Mexico in the late 1840s and by 1860, fought an attempt to split the United States into two confederations. By this time there were powerful elites who saw that the economies of scale incentivized a violent end to the effort to have an adjacent federation have in effect a free trade zone.

The trend in hindsight becomes clear as the United States, in its second phase, turns its eyes to the Plains Indians after successfully placing the South in military districts, as this article explains:

In an attempt at peace in 1851, the first Fort Laramie Treaty was signed, which granted the Plain Indians about 150 million acres of land for their own use as the Great Sioux Reservation. Then, 13 years later, the size was greatly reduced to about 60 million acres in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which recreated the Great Sioux Reservation boundaries and proclaimed all of South Dakota west of the Missouri river, including the Black Hills, solely for the Sioux Nation.

As part of the treaty, no unauthorized non-Indian was to come into the reservation and the Sioux were allowed to hunt in unceded Indian territory beyond the reservation that stretched into North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado. If any non-Indian wanted to settle on this unceded land, they could only do it with the permission of the Sioux.

That was until 1874, when gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills. The treaties that were signed between the Native Americans and the U.S. government were ignored as gold rushers invaded Indian Territory and issues arose, such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

As time went on, the American Indians continued to be pushed into smaller territories and their lives began to diminish. In 1889, the U.S. government issued the Dawes Act, which took the Black Hills from the Indians, broke up the Great Sioux Reservation into five separate reservations, and took nine million acres and opened it up for public purchase by non-Indians for homesteading and settlements.

The Native Americans were squeezed into these smaller territories and didn’t have enough game to support them. The bison that had been a staple to their way of life were gone. Their ancestral lands that sustained them were no longer theirs. The resistance was over. They were no longer free people, living amongst themselves, but “Redskins” confined by the “white man” in reservations they had been forced to, many against their will.

At this point, one might logically think that the US is done with its expansion as it now is in total control of all the lands from the east to the west coast of North America. However, there were plenty of elites that were very willing in their agenda for:

… capitalizing on a national tragedy to push through an unrelated agenda. The explosion of the Maine in Havana’s harbor — killing some 260 sailors — was the immediate catalyst for the invasion of Cuba and then the Philippines.

Y’all do know that the USS Maine was NOT sabotaged by the Spanish in Cuba, right?

The result was a third phase in this trend toward empire.

Again, you have a list of critical thinkers that understand the down-side of empire, called the Anti-Imperialist effort in 1898, outlined in this article:

“We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is ‘criminal aggression’ and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government.

“We earnestly condemn the policy of the present National Administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror. We protest against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods…”

.. to your typical statist media b*llshit we still see today:

Today, the medium from which most Americans get their news, television, plays much the same role as the “yellow press” of William Randolph Hearst — cheerleading for war. Then, as now, the argument justifying war started as a matter of self-defense, then morphed into a war for “freedom,” and finally stood naked as a political and economic power grab

So on and on it goes, the US Empire emerges well in advance of WWII, already using shady ways to promote its power on the world’s stage.

The latest chapter is probably not that last, but the character of this empire will be remembered for generations:

U.S.-led wars in the Middle East have killed some four million Muslims since 1990. The recently published Afghanistan papers, provided an insight into the longest war in U.S. history and revealed how U.S. officials continuously lied about the progress being made in Afghanistan, lacked a basic understanding of the country, were hiding evidence that the war was unwinnable, and had wasted as much as $1 trillion in the process.

This parallels a little known previous ‘longest war’ that was initiated a century before:

.. the U.S. waged a war from 1899 to 1913 in the southernmost island of the Philippines. Known as the Moro War, it was the longest sustained military campaign in American history until the war in Afghanistan surpassed it a few years ago. As a result, the U.S. and the Philippine governments are still embroiled in a battle with Islamist insurgents in the southern Philippines, which takes the meaning of “forever war” to a whole new level

.. the U.S. military was not welcome in the Philippines, much as it is not welcomed by Afghanistan or any other Muslim-majority nation which has to duel with the U.S. Empire. After the U.S. defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and annexed the Philippines under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the Moro population were not even consulted. The U.S. then sought to “pacify” them using brute force.

“I want no prisoners,” ordered General Jacob Smith on Samar Island during the war in 1902. “I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me.”

The tactics remain the same, total war from Sherman and Sheridan used in the so-called Civil War, to the war on the American Indians, to the war in the Philippines, to Afghanistan and beyond is somehow construed to be “American Exceptionalism”.

I think I am sick to my stomach.

Enough for now.

Peace out.

-SF1

Bigger is Better? Not So Fast .. Liberty and Freedom Benefits from SMALL

26 Cantons in the Swiss Federation

Two articles (each dated by a year or five) caught my eye this week about small governments serving their people where happiness thrives. The first is Donald Livingston’s Abbeville blog post from JAN2019 that states:

Switzerland is regularly ranked by the UN’s World Happiness Report in the top ten happiest countries in the world. The top ten are usually always small states. The U.S. has yet to make the top ten.

The second one is a five year old Abbeville blog post (recently re-shared) that states:

In his time [Nathaniel] Macon was widely admired by Americans as the perfect model of a republican statesman. By republican I mean republican with a small “r.” I definitely do NOT mean the Republican Party, which, from its very beginning, when it stole the name from better people, right up to this minute, has stood for the exact opposite of what Nathaniel Macon meant by republican government.

It should be noted that the thirteen British colonies that seceded from the British Empire chose to fashion their guiding document, the Articles of Confederation from the Switzerland’s confederation documents. So when on Nov. 15, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, he articles vested the conduct of war and foreign policy in a Federal government, but left everything else to the States.

The Swiss Confederation was chosen in part due to it having been established more than four centuries earlier and was still intact and the federation in 1777 was still thriving. Historically, in 1315, the Swiss defeated the powerful Austrian empire in the Battle of Morgarten, when the men of Schwyz (one of the Swiss cantons / sovereign states) lured the Austrians into the mountains and ambushed them in a pass. The men of Schwyz killed 1,500 Austrian troops, drove hundreds more into Lake Lucerne and put the rest to flight. The country’s inhabitants were so grateful they changed the name of their nation from Helvetia to Switzerland. The country has remained free, independent and faithful to its own Articles of Confederation for nearly 700 years.

What this means is that the small republics, cantons, allow the people in a federation to tolerate differences across these unique cultures and lands. Smaller is better, but bigger can allow for protection from external forces, the problem is when there are internal forces that attempt to use the larger body for their own agenda.

The republics themselves have the following guiding principles modeled by the Greeks:

There are four principles to this republican tradition: First, republican government is one in which the people make the laws they live under. But, second, they cannot make just any law. The laws they make must be in accord with a more fundamental law which they do not make but is known by tradition. Third, the task of the republic is to preserve and perfect the character of that inherited tradition. And finally, the republic must be small. It must be small because self-government and rule of law is not possible unless citizens know the character of their rulers directly or through those they trust.

The Greeks created a brilliant civilization that was entirely decentralized. It was composed of 1,500 tiny independent republics strung out from Naples to the Black Sea. Most were under 10,000. One of the largest was Athens with around 200 thousand people. For over two thousand years, up to the French Revolution, republics seldom went beyond 200-300 thousand people, and the great majority were considerably smaller.

Having only 300,000 people to a republic, is small enough to personally kick the *ss of a politician who has done the people wrong. Large states have whole groups of people that live above the law and not under the laws they themselves get to create. Large states are also known for killing large amounts of their own people as in the case of Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China. It was not that long ago that the USSR disintegrated into 15 republics proving that they too found the downside of the large centralized state.

So we have the options of small republics and large nations, but it was a German Calvinist Johannes Althusius (1563-1638) that proposed a federation of small polities in a state larger than the classical republic, but smaller than a European monarchy. He called it a federation! In this structure, to prevent the central government from consolidating the smaller polities into a unitary modern state, Althusius introduces a constitutional right of secession from the federation. If a federation grew too large, it could always be brought back to a republican scale by secession.

This was why the founders, BEFORE the full force of the British Empire was on their shores, thought that this arrangement like the Swiss had (see below) would work across the cultures from New England to the Southern colonies:

Switzerland is so decentralized that its central government has no original taxing power. Its power to tax requires a constitutional amendment approved by a majority of the cantons, each of which has one vote, and a majority of individuals.

Switzerland (including all 26 cantons) would fit in South Carolina

After the revolutionary war, many founders abandoned the Swiss model as being too week and opted again towards the large-state model which is why we are in the mess we are in today!

It was at this point as the Revolutionary War ended that a reluctant Nathaniel Macon appeared on the scene:

Macon was born in 1758 on a plantation in Warren County, where he lived his entire life. He was a student at what is now Princeton when the War of Independence broke out in 1775. He left school and joined the New Jersey militia on active service, and then went home and joined the North Carolina troops. He was offered but refused a commission and he refused also the bounty that was paid for enlisting. He served in the Southern campaigns until he was elected to the General Assembly near the end of the war while he was still in his 20s. In the next few years he was offered a place in the North Carolina delegation to the Continental Congress which he declined.

You can see Macon’s character here, refused a commission (G. Washington would never do that), declined a place on the North Carolina delegation to the Continental Congress, but when the wheels started coming off the liberty and freedom wagon, he showed up!

As soon as the U.S. government went into operation, Hamilton and his Yankee friends, claiming that they were acting in behalf of “good government,” began to turn the government into a centralised power and a money-making machine for themselves by banks, tariffs, government bonds, and other paper swindles that would be paid for out of the pockets of the farmers, who produced the tangible wealth of the country. To oppose this Macon accepted election to the U.S. House of Representatives for the Second Congress. He served in the House 24 years and the Senate 13 years—representing North Carolina in congress from 1791 to 1828, from the age of 33 to the age of 70 when he retired voluntarily.

He was in this fight to the end as his own philosophy did not change at all from his farm in Warren County, North Carolina to the swamp (which it literally was in those days) called District of Columbia.

During all this time Macon was admired because he never changed from the principles with which he began. What were these principles? The federal government should be tightly bound by the Constitution. It should not tax the people and spend money any more than was absolutely necessary for the things it was entitled to do, nor go into debt, which was just a way to make the taxpayers pay interest to the rich. Eternal vigilance was the price of liberty. Power was always stealing from the many to the few. Office-holders were to be watched closely and kept as directly responsible to the citizens as possible.

Nathaniel Macon

His priority at all times was the people, not himself, not his agenda. He was a learned man who know the history of other peoples in different times and learned from their mistakes:

It might be nice to pay for everybody to go to college, or to build a fancy temple for the Supreme Court, or to issue bonds for rich people to invest in, or overturn a dictator 5,000 miles away. But the politicians had no right to take away the citizens’ earnings for whatever they thought was good. ..

History showed that the stronger and more centralised a government became the less free were the people. And the richer the government and its politicians and beneficiaries became, the poorer were the people. That was what had always happened, but America, with governments created by the people, had a chance to avoid the bad tendencies of government of the past.

It had a chance but even Nathaniel know the momentum was against those who saw the eternal vigilance against state powers was needed but was found wanting toward the end of his life:

By the end of his life Macon had realised that the cause of republicanism was lost at the federal level, and also that the North was determined to exploit and rule the South. South Carolina tried in 1832 to use “nullification,” state interposition, to force the federal government back within the limits of the Constitution. After he read Andrew Jackson’s proclamation against South Carolina, Macon told friends that it was too late for nullification. The Constitution was dead. The only recourse was secession—there was nothing left but for the South to get out from under the “Union” and govern itself.

Patrick Henry saw the American Republic die with the 1787 US Constitution when he said “I smell a rat”. Nathaniel Macon tried fighting the good fight until 1832 before he admitted that the Constitution was dead.  Lysander Spooner saw this all real clear by 1867 when he said:

It was over before any of us were even born. The American Empire is what is rolling on now to its eventual grave, which those in command trying to take as many tax slaves with us to potential early graves.

-SF1

Fall 1781: Momentum of the Revolutionary War Shifts, So Does “The Cause”

There is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is movement afoot that takes place mainly north of the Potomac River that I contend is normal in this broken world. When freedom breaks out, there are those that instill fear in the people that politics, bigger and more centralized, is needed to secure our future.

While this article is a bit dated (I believe I was still in the US Navy at the time), it does point out a few things that I have been saying off and on in my blog over the past year or so. I bring it up now since my ongoing coverage of Francis Marion’s activities in South Carolina, which actually saved the colonies in their efforts to exit the British Empire, is entering the post-Yorktown phase where military conflicts and such give way back to the political.

The standard American myth celebrates the Constitution as the triumphant culmination of the American Revolution. This is largely untrue and misleading.

Everyone in government schools has heard, the Articles of Confederation was weak and ill equipped to govern the thirteen colonies, let alone all the additional lands that the Treaty of Paris granted in 1783:

The facts, and not that era’s fake news, paints a much different scene:

The alleged “critical period” between the end of the Revolution and the Constitution’s adoption was not dominated by economic depression, political turmoil, and international peril, jeopardizing the independent survival of the American experiment in liberty.

There was no actual threat, but a threat was thought up in the minds of those politicians whose political descendants include the politicians that orchestrated the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the so-called Civil War and so on. In each of these instances, there was a fear introduced into the population that without a war, catastrophe was imminent.

In context, backing up to the period of time before even the Declaration of Independence was penned (raw thoughts by Thomas Paine and edited by Thomas Jefferson), there was a joining of efforts from people in the thirteen colonies across a political and philosophical spectrum. On one hand, we have the RADICALS:

The American Revolution, like all great social upheavals, was brought off by a disparate coalition of competing viewpoints and conflicting interests. At one end of the Revolutionary coalition stood the American radicals—men such as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson.

Although by no means in unanimous agreement, the radicals objected to excessive state power in general and not simply to British rule in particular. Spearheading the Revolution’s opening stages, they were responsible for the truly revolutionary alterations in the internal status quo: the abolition of slavery in the northern states, the separation of church and state in the southern states, the rooting out of remaining feudal privileges everywhere, and the adoption of new, republican state constitutions containing written bills of rights that severely hemmed in government power.

These were change agents, those daring visionaries that can see life lived differently, and at the same time knew that this would not be a utopia, but in reality would be a struggle, but a rewarding one.

On the other hand, was a class of people that we might consider to be nationalists or those whose major agenda was that of mercantilism:

At the other end of the Revolutionary coalition were the American nationalists; an array of mercantile, creditor, and landed interests. The nationalists went along with independence but opposed the Revolution’s libertarian thrust. They sought a strong American state with the hierarchical features of the 18th-century British state, only without the British.

So by the fall of 1781 as the British catastrophe at Yorktown reverberated throughout the British Empire, there were nationalist forces that were already parting ways with the radicals, and even the militias that brought them to this day.  By 1783, Francis Marion saw the writing on the wall. The NOV1782 election meant that Marion had to leave Pond Bluff yet again for the 06JAN1783 legislative session. Writing from there on January 18th he shared the inequalities that tainted his excitement about the future of the colony as well of the federation of states. It seems that the Rhode Islander Continental Nathaniel Greene was awarded 10,000 guineas from SC toward the purchase of a SC plantation and quoted an old saying “that kissed goes by favor”.  Georgia had also given Greene 24,000 acres as well. Marion eventually was awarded 300 acres in 1785.

It should be noted that the correspondence Marion had with Greene stopped abruptly as the hostilities stopped in DEC1782. Marion had hoped that Congress would follow through on the promise of a lifetime of half-pay for officers but it would be 50 years before that practice would finally start. Marion lamented that “idle spectators of war” were in charge now.

So too were the more nationalistic military leaders that benefited from a larger government:

Military conservatives such as George Washington induced Congress to focus the Revolutionary effort on a costly conventional force, the Continental Army, rather than the militias. By the 1781 Yorktown campaign, popular disgust at the army’s continuing hand-to-mouth existence gave the nationalists uncontested control of Congress. They proceeded to implement a financial program that gave the central government much more power.

While the nationalists attempted to strengthen the Articles of Confederation, their attempts through 1784 were met with resistance from the Radicals after the Treaty of Paris. The economic state of the states were generally fine economically except for two groups that put out a very public fuss:

In reality, American merchants were after uniform navigation laws, because they wanted some coercive means of monopolizing the American carrying trade. And American artisans wanted uniform protective tariffs to stop their customers from buying the cheap foreign goods flooding American markets at the end of the war. The unique economic fortunes of these two groups and their quest for special privileges contributed much to the exaggerated impression of postwar depression.

As we see today, coercive means to monopolize as well as protective tariffs are tools used yet today in 2019. Capitalism will always look to enhance their position by government if it will let them. Corporatism is the curse of politics gone too far.

So the Coup d’etat of the cause for the freedoms gained by the American Revolution would come at a convention in Philadelphia in 1787 whose purpose was to rework the Articles of Confederation, however:

Its official function was to propose revisions to the Articles. But the delegates, meeting in secret, quickly decided to draft a totally new document. Of the 55 delegates, only 8 had signed the Declaration of Independence. Most of the leading radicals, including Sam Adams, Henry, Paine,Lee, and Jefferson, were absent. In contrast, 21 delegates belonged to the militarist Society of the Cincinnati. Overall, the convention was dominated by the array of nationalist interests that the prior war had brought together: land speculators, ex-army officers, public creditors, and privileged merchants.

Things had definitely changed in one decade’s time, and not for the better! Look how far we have come since then.

Not cool!

We are much “safer” today as a result of the this early course change in this nation’s history, safe as slaves.

-SF1

Amexit: Post War of Independence from British Empire – Politically Hijacked

[A] large group of soldiers who saw the goal of the Revolution as getting rid of the power of a centralised government to rule over Americans. They had a fellow American feeling with comrades in other states for shared sacrifices and they were willing to entertain a federal (not national) government to handle some of the joint affairs of the States, but insisted that such a government must be kept within a strictly circumscribed role.

Yes, even Francis Marion, as you shall see, was himself marginalized at the end of the War for Independence from the British Empire. There were efforts already in the works politically to turn this “win” into something of their own choosing that was much different than what the soldiers and militias were fighting for.

The above quote is from a 2014 article about James Jackson who immigrated to the Georgia colony as a 15 year old. My guess is that you never heard of him. Maybe some of these names you will recognize from your academic experiences:

Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire, John Lansing of New York, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, John Francis Mercer of Maryland, Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, Thomas Sumter of South Carolina, and James Monroe, St. George Tucker, and John Taylor of Virginia.

Well maybe you have heard of Thomas Sumter and possibly John Taylor, but the others have been obscured by the academic history books for some time. The likes of these people had the following qualities:

A patriot did not seek public fame and fortune. His task was alertness to preserve the principles of free government against all comers. He did not seek power, but if called to public office he took it as a duty to his society, not as an opportunity for self-advancement. His ambition was for his country, not himself. The example here was the Roman hero Cincinnatus, who was called from his farm to lead an army and having won the victory went home and resumed his plowing.

This type of person was one that could see quickly into an existing situation and rightly identify the bad actors behind the scenes. These men, with their prophetic ability, typically would see the red flags much sooner than someone like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison as explained here:

[James] Jackson was nearly alone in 1790 in discerning and exposing the implications of what was afoot; joined only by William Maclay of Pennsylvania in the Senate. As one historian has put it:

The astonishing thing is that the comparatively crude Maclay from the wilds of Pennsylvania and the leather-lunged James Jackson from sparsely settled Georgia should have caught the full significance of it all before it dawned on Jefferson and Madison.

So even three years after the coup d’etat at Philadelphia where the “perpetual” Articles of Confederation was shredded in favor of a NEW document formed in secret called a constitution, there were two yet in the government who saw this new direction for the union for what it was. Patrick Henry had rightly said “I smell a rat” in 1787 as he was the most prophetic of all.

So what helps to form such an honest sort of individual. A mixture of nature and nurture no doubt, as can be seen in a quick biographical sketch here below:

James Jackson was born in 1757 in Devonshire, England. At the age of fifteen he sailed the Atlantic unaccompanied and landed in 1772 at Savannah, Georgia, where some family friends were living. Despite his youth and his recent arrival from the mother country, Jackson enthusiastically joined the cause of American independence. Throughout the war he was active in military service. After the British capture of Savannah, Jackson escaped, reportedly swam the Savannah River, and arrived barefoot and in tatters to join the South Carolina patriot forces as a private, serving 17 months with Thomas Sumter’s partisans. He took part in most of the fighting in the Southern colonies and in expeditions into Florida and to the Indian frontier. He was wounded at least once and repeatedly cited for gallantry and enterprise. Jackson ended the war as a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant colonel in command of his own battalion and was selected to receive the official surrender of Savannah from the departing British, July 11, 1782.

A pioneer, a survivor, a fighter .. “.. a tough, independent citizen ready to defend his society against foreign threats. Equally important, it was characterized by the wisdom to discern and the courage to oppose threats to liberty from inside. History furnished many examples of the undermining of free governments by plausible, designing men ambitious for power and profit. This is why Thomas Jefferson said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and that the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots. A virtuous republican had the makings of such a patriot.” – Clyde Wilson & Brion McClanahan

In 1782, with the War for Independence almost over, James goes back to the plow:

After the war Jackson established himself as a successful lawyer and planter. Georgia was the smallest of the States in population and settled territory (though already filling fast with new settlers) and had an exposed frontier. It quickly ratified the proposed Constitution for the United States without the reservations that concerned many and kept North Carolina out of the Union for several more years. In 1788 the George legislature elected Jackson Governor. He declined on grounds that he was too inexperienced for the august position. The next year he was elected as one of Georgia’s two Representatives to the First Congress. Shipwrecked on his way to New York, he arrived too late for the inaugural day but was soon an outspoken member of the House.

Notice the humble nature of this man, declined his election as governor of Georgia because he felt himself too inexperience! More of this please!

What he found a year later in New York, NY, the first capital of the united States drove him toward using “straight” language:

Jackson found the House discussing the proper way to address the President, with proposals like “His Excellency,” “His Grace,” and “His Serene Highness” being offered by those who wanted to endow the new government with dignity and awe.

He lamented that the probably source of this trend toward having a god in government on earth to displace the God in Heaven was most likely Boston, where as he rightly explains:

.. a town which, fifteen years ago, would have acknowledged no Lord but the Lord of hosts ..

Cutting, but so very true. In fact, after a miraculous win by 13 united colonies against a world power like the British Empire, one can only see that as the Israelites of old, they still could not trust a God that delivered them and proceeded to form a central government that would guarantee this independence for years to come. The downside was that liberty itself would be sacrificed for this perceived safety.

Typical of the pioneer reluctant hero and patriot of the day, his opponents ridiculed his character and speech:

.. some opponents hinted that the Representative from Georgia was too loud and crude. “I have accustomed myself to a blunt integrity of speech,” Jackson told the House, “which I hope the goodness of my intentions will excuse.” The more serious criticisms of the Representative from Georgia were uttered in private. It was known that Jackson had more than once taken his stand on the Savannah dueling ground and had always walked away.

But the disgust for the words to be used in this new republic was pale compared to Alexander Hamilton’s intentions that made the rich richer and the poor/soldier poorer:

The first move came in Hamilton’s proposal to pay off the Continental debt of the Revolution. Everyone agreed that the debt had to be retired, but the devil was in the details. Hamilton’s plan was to pay the holders of the debt in interest-bearing government bonds, thus to create a permanent public debt, which would in turn require tax revenue.

There was an even more serious kicker. The debt was to be funded at face value. The debt, aside from loans from European allies, consisted of paper that had been issued by the Continental Congress for soldiers’ pay and bounties and army supplies. Almost all of it was now in the hands of Northern and European capitalists who had acquired it at cents on the dollar when it was “not worth a Continental.” Jackson pointed out that there were not twenty of the original receivers of Continental paper left in Georgia and that soldiers had invariably been forced by necessity to sell their paper at a large discount.

.. and, there’s more!

Hamilton’s proposal was soon followed by another—the government should assume the remaining debts of the States, now also in the hands of speculators, and fund them in the same way. A proposal in the House to pay some of the proceeds to the original holders was roughly quashed by what was beginning to look like an organized party. Not only that, but, Jackson pointed out, certain money men who obviously had advanced knowledge of Hamilton’s plans had been in Georgia very recently buying up debt certificates.

Yes, by this time the ’cause’ had been fully hijacked by a new political machine that would give Lincoln everything he needed to permanently change this nation into something so much different. The balance of this article show the emergence of government scandals that have unfortunately continued to this day, sucking the life out of taxpayers at every revolution of the sun.

Here in 2019 we can see the fruits of the labors of Hamilton and Lincoln that were seasoned by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Nixon, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and even Trump today. The American Empire is the “same thing only different” from the British one that the American colonies sought to remove themselves from. Now we (US government/empire) are the global and domestic oppressors that operate above the law.

Not cool.

-SF1