When a spouse goes full-crazy, initial attempts to resolve differences are attempted, even with the assistance of neutral parties, but many times the only solution is divorce. The God-given positive in this world of having two stand as one against the world to help bring another generation life towards the hope of a better future is fractured by human brokenness.
While myself (SF1) has been as a child through the divorce process, I can see clearly that there are times that a positive future can emerge that would be better than the strife caused by continued struggle. However, scars will remain, not just for years or decades, but for generations as this human failure of two people no longer being able to work together takes its toll on the kids every time.
So just like the option to dabble in the mRNA experimental biological agents, one has to count the cost and compare the risks with the benefits at an individual level.
This all is a metaphorical intro to the ‘marriage’ of 50 states, federated into one republic as designed by the generation alive in the 1780s. There is no way any intelligent founding father thought that this marriage would ever be permanent let alone last over 200 years. From my post two years ago “Pre-Covid” it was very apparent that we (USA) just have to get this separation and divorce underway ASAP. Without secession, the 50 states will all suffer under tyranny and totalitarianism for decades to come, and our kids will suffer the most.
The first of two articles I would like to draw your attention to is one by James Bovard on how the fixation on the “treason” accusation leveled at those who don’t bow to the current political narrative that rips u and re-writes history while violating natural law at almost every step will actually tear up the nation at a much faster pace. One might think that the Left is trying to trigger the so-called Right in this post-Trump fog of war here in America’s fly-over country.
While the founders learned from England in their political struggles of the 1600 and 1700s and defined treason very narrowly .. :
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
These words were written in 1787 and yet within only a decade, John Adams as the second president of the US signed the Alien and Sedition Act that made it a crime to be critical of the US government. How about that! The temptation to accuse betrayal on the other party in a marriage is at the ready as a tool to undermine the character of the real victim in the relationship.
Fast forward to the 1950s where there was a Communist everywhere in the US, it was not until the Vietnam war when the masses revolted against this stupid expedition based on lies (typical off all wars since the American Revolution) that the calls for identifying traitors domestically were silenced.
Fast forward another 50 years and we find the Left attempting to label Trump a traitor with accusations of his alignment with Russia for over three years of his term until the next crisis could be launched, Covid-19. As a final nail in Trump’s political coffin arranged by the Left was the myth around the 06JAN2021 Capitol Building “insurrection” .. accomplished without weapons. Only in 2021 can feelings alone constitute an insurrection against a triggered section of society, but here we are.
To see how clearly this “treason” accusation can rip apart a nation and launch calls for secession would be the success of a propaganda campaign in 1861 to label all the states that seceded from the union as traitors.
.. the Civil War illustrates the catastrophic damage that can result from broad-brush definitions of treason. Northern politicians quickly persuaded their supporters that all Southerners were traitors — a capital offense. In 1864, Gen. William Sherman wired the War Department in Washington, “There is a class of people — men, women, and children — who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” Union armies in Virginia, Georgia, and elsewhere late in the war intentionally devastated civilian populations who were considered collectively guilty of secession and treason.
The Left is channeling William T. Sherman in calls to exterminate a “class” of people here in the USA. The Trump-right in the meantime is calling for the summertime reinstatement of his presidency. So in my metaphor, the whole political bird (with red and blue wings) is the crazy spouse, and the more innocent party is “we the people”.
The only way to get crazy out of the equation is to reduce their sphere of influence by splitting up the USA into 15 republics like the USSR did in 1990 (or “democracies/communist countries” should those regions desire).
The fact is as James Bovard wraps up his thoughts is:
American politics is increasingly becoming toxic because presidents nowadays are elective dictators.
From federated republic to democracy to the totalitarian state, it should be clear to the casual observer that this nation is no longer a place for liberty and freedom.
For decades and possibly for centuries there has been a consistent effort for “new people” to fix all this from the inside. Elect the right people and we can turn this ship around. Sorry, that ship has sailed and the swamp is all encompassing. There is so much corruption that the foundation is gone. Consider the second of two articles in this piece from Jim Quinn:
It has been somewhat baffling to me why the masses have been unable or unwilling to acknowledge the existence of a ruling cabal/invisible government who are the true ruling power in our world. Any impartial assessment of facts, recognition of historical events confirming the observations of Bernays and Quigley, and knowledge of human nature, should unequivocally convince a critical thinking individual what they are told to believe by politicians, media and financiers is entirely false.
For decades, calling anyone who questioned the approved and sanctioned narrative about how our “democracy” supposedly operates has been called a conspiracy theorist. Of course, this term gained widespread use after the CIA used the term about anyone questioning the JFK assassination. CIA Director William Casey could not have been any clearer about the true nature of our government than his statement in 1981.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
We have arrived. Everything the media says is indeed false, just 40 years after the CIA director predicted.
Your government and the financial interests who operate the puppet strings of their politician, media and central banker puppets do constitute a malevolent Deep State, designed to enrich themselves, while subjugating, controlling, and manipulating the masses. If anyone was in doubt about this fact, what has transpired in the last fifteen months should have convinced them of their error. The criminal ruling cabal have virtually perfected Bernays’ propaganda techniques through collusion with Big Tech and the traitorous surveillance state apparatus.
They have consciously and intelligently manipulated the ignorant masses regarding a non-lethal – to healthy people under 80 years old – annual flu, in order to test how far they could push their authoritarian un-Constitutional masking and lockdown measures upon us before we pushed back. To their delight and astonishment, the vast majority of Americans proved to be cowardly, easily manipulated, fearful, and begging to be enslaved by their superiors. It has truly been a depressing display of spinelessness, supplication, and subservience.
In addition to full out lies, the expansion of the national debt secures in my mind that the evil elite desire to enslave the next generations of Americans as the political structure collapses on itself:
How can anyone believe there are reasonable methods of solving the problems of this country through democratic means, when the entire system is captured, corrupt, and concealed from visibility by a criminal cabal of sociopathic billionaires and their highly compensated lackeys? The Deep State, or whatever you want to call the ruling oligarchy controlling the levers of society, have been able to deflect responsibility for the current state of affairs by having their captured media mouthpieces deny their existence and classify those of us who call out their misdeeds as conspiracy theorists.
As this denial of reality loses credibility, and every conspiracy theory is proven to be true, these Deep State co-conspirators have stepped out of the shadows and showed their cards during this fake pandemic crisis. I am not sure whether this change in tactics is an act of hubris or desperation.
The empire’s legs can’t sustain this direction, and those in control do hope that they can capitalize on this with a world totalitarian government that US large corps (Tech, Medical, Finance, etc.) all what to be a part of.
Since I am old, I will repeat myself and use Robert E. Lee’s quote a second time in a week:
The ruin has arrived only 150 years after this honorable man’s prophecy.
Time to think local and act local to keep our sanity in these days, hug your kids and your parents and partner with the like minded in your communities.
Crisis events does tend to make one a bit reflective, at least for me. As I reflect on a couple of my previous “crisis events”, it was evident that my resulting worldview change took years and then took a crisis for me to make the final step into my own new land and new worldview.
I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.
I have wrote about this just last month when I said:
May a new generation and a new remnant of Americans see though the infectious nature of government and decide for the future that they will take responsibility for themselves, their livelihood and the education of the next generation and never trust any government again.
However, I do not think that the masses ever achieve this kind of mind shift, for I think there are limits for the typical broken person to make that transition well. What I mean by that is, that in time, to be “well” on the other side means to actually be grateful for the process. That the new land is much more freeing than the old. I call this being gratefully disillusioned.
The fact that the masses typically can’t or won’t make this transition is why in my quote above I used the word “remnant”. That word came to me over five years ago on one of my journeys through the political path that included people like Ron Paul and Jeffrey Tucker. Jeffrey had a libertarian hub that I was a member of for a few years that allowed me to purchase books at either free or $X levels. One of these was Albert Nock’s books written during the Great Depression that acknowledged that the masses were not to be prioritized in expending energy towards opening their eyes to a new worldview. Here is a quote from Gary North in his 2002 article about the remnant:
Nock warned against deliberately appealing to the mass-man. There is no audience there, he said, for any developer or defender of ideas on liberty. Individualism does not appeal to the mass-man. This is why he is a mass-man. Any attempt to whoop up the troops will fail to attract the Remnant. Indeed, it will alienate them. They will go elsewhere.
Nock took as his starting point God’s call to the prophet Elijah after Elijah’s public confrontation with King Ahab, when Elijah’s temporary victory in front of the assembled representatives of the nation backfired. Elijah was now on the run from the king. He despaired. God told him this:
Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him (1 Kings 19:18).
His ministry was to them, not to the masses, God reminded him. He had failed to persuade the masses. He did not need to persuade the Remnant, which already agreed with him. He merely had to speak the truth in the name of God before the Remnant.
So as you may see, a prophet in these days (not foretelling but forth-telling) is one who sees things differently than most, and yet to them, it is crystal clear.
I have done this truth-journey thing two or three times in my six decades of life here on this planet. The beauty of this is that there were overlaps to these journeys chronologically, which in a way helped with the process for me in hindsight.
My first worldview change journeys started for me as a 5 or 6 year old. I was not totally aware yet, but my parents were going through a huge change in their marriage complete with lies and distrust. For me, at this naive age, all I knew was that I had a new baby sister, but beyond that I was pretty clueless as my world was small and included just a few compartments.
Faith (is God real, what is this church service thing, what is this mid-week catechism thing and Sunday school thing)
School (what is this friends thing, why do some of the richer kids talk to me sometimes and not other times, playground unwritten rules all at a Christian school)
Home-life (parents who facilitated “home” but were not on the same page offset by an awesome 1960s freedom to play outside ALL DAY long on weekends and after school on weekdays).
In my youth then there was church and school, and what to believe about these two areas which was mandatory for me verses my free-range suburban neighborhood freedom which came naturally.
In today’s post I only offer one of these journeys and will cover the other two more major ones in subsequent posts.
My formal day school journey was probably the quickest one to unfold. Like I said before, my K-4th grade experience was at a Christian school which had an underlying caste system in place that separated at times the more wealthy middle-upper class kids from the ones whose parents struggled to pay the school tuition. My whole demeanor during those years was one of hiding in the shadows, hoping that the day passed quickly so I could get home to my neighborhood for my daily dose of free-range freedom. Besides my 2nd grade teacher who on the 1st day told the class to look at the ceiling and notice the holes in the tiles followed by “that is where I pinned the ears of the kids last year who misbehaved”. These were 10 foot ceilings!!! Other than that, most teachers were fine except when it came to reciting Bible verses in front of class, graded on the exact word for word repeating of various combinations of these verses every week. I guess I would have appreciated some context for each of these verses but rote memorization apparently is what this religion wanted. Most all complied and thought nothing of it, I myself thought that the exercise was misguided, but who would listen to a 6 year old?
The crisis that would finally diffuse my own distaste for much of the school environment would be the decision of my parents to separate, with my mom, sister and myself moving to another state (California) for the school year. To underscore my distaste of my K-4th grade experience, my first question to my parents when they broke that news on that August Sunday afternoon just a few weeks before school was to start was NOT .. “Can I see my school friends before we go?” BUT “Do I have to go to Christian schools in California?”.
The answer was “no” and with that I had no more questions actually. I felt so free and ready for a cross-country trip to arrive in a totally new neighborhood and a totally new school. This “re-start” allowed me to be who I was in this new environment. This fresh start overnight changed my personality so much that I did not really care for what others thought of me or my ideas. As Popeye would say “I yam what I yam”
This is a remnant characteristic, as Albert J. Nock would admit later in his life:
“And so it was that at the age of thirty-five or so I dismissed all interest in public affairs, and have regarded them ever since as a mere spectacle, mostly a comedy, rather squalid, rather hackneyed, whereof I already knew the plot from beginning to end. I have written a little about them now and then,”
― Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man
The journey out to California in a 1963 Chevrolet Impala towing a U-Haul trailer was eventful in itself, as my mom was not too good with directions, so my role as a co-pilot was great for my self esteem. I was needed.
I always love maps, and so this was an epic drive:
As a 5th grader, being ten years old, I then experienced my best grade in school to date. I met new friends from all over the spectrum (red, yellow black and white as well as Christian and non-Christian) and I was fine with all that. I walked home from school past strawberry fields, cow pastures and a golf course to our apartment and then proceeded to pick up my 5 year old sister from her babysitters, feed her a late lunch and then go to the apartment complex pool for a few hours of swimming. Livin’ the dream!
At the end of that school year my sister and myself would fly back to the Midwest on a TWA 707 to be with my father that summer.
Shortly thereafter my parents would divorce and I would complete my schooling in the Midwest, but I always treasured my school year out in California in the late 1960s! I was now part of the “remnant”, even if I did not know it yet.
Below at the end of this post are the words of Albert Jay Nock (available in MP3 from the Mises Institute) explaining the role of a prophet verses that of a promoter. The financial rewards of being a prophet are few, however, being true to one’s own soul is priceless!
Just be you! You have been made for a unique imprint on this earth for a time.
-SF1
Nock’s wisdom on display:
Here is what Nock wrote about the prophet’s job. He used Isaiah as his example. The prophet’s job is not the job of the promoter.
Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses’ attention and interest. . . .
The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one’s doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message. . . .
Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.
If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. . . .
We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great reknown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.
Sometimes only a nugget of truth can cause one’s mind and heart to seek out the deeper meanings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
From Clyde Wilson comes this gem:
“there has not been a real opposition party in U.S. politics since Mr. Jefferson sent Colonel Hamilton and His Excellency John Adams heading back north.”
Source: “Annals of the Stupid Party: Republicans Before Trump” by Clyde Wilson
Think about it for a minute. I am sure going back ten or fifteen years almost everyone will lament (maybe only privately) that no matter what party or what president is elected after promising the moon, one always seems to get the same “nothing-burger”.
Well, let’s just say the further you go back in the history of the United States of America, the more you see the two or three parties bringing more of the same to this country, sometime the red team is more “progressive”, sometimes the blue team is, but at the end of the day, the politicians will just politic this nation to its eventual death. There is no major difference in the political parties of 2019, same has been the case since the early 1800s. The two parties are the wings of the same bird!
Another quote I came across that had me thinking:
“A civil war, by denotative or connotative definition, occurs when a faction wishes to overthrow or control an existing government in order to impose its own ideology upon the governed. The Southern states that seceded from the Union had neither the desire nor the plans to take command of the country. They simply wanted to withdraw from it, and arguably, according to even some modern constitutionalists and historians, had a right to do so, based upon the nation’s origins. Virginia, New York and Rhode Island demanded that the right of secession be reserved before they would even agree to the Constitution, thereby implying that secession was indeed a right reserved by individual states.”
Source: “Slavery and The Civil War: What Your History Teacher Didn’t Tell You” by Garry Bowers
It is true, and yet 99% of all Americans think, really do think, that the 1861-1865 conflict was a “civil” war. It is a myth, plain and simple.
So what was it? Well, to be honest, if someone files for divorce, is that ever a reason to be an aggressor on individual as in doing personal harm to him or her? Only psychos will “take out” the other person so “no one else can have him/her”.
To break it down properly, you have to know that EACH state acted independently to weigh the pros and cons of secession. Some state representatives said that exiting the federation was too early, others said it was past time. In the end, from December 1860 until early February 1861, seven sovereign states left the federation and others like North Carolina and Virginia decided to stay in the federation of states.
The very act of leaving verses trying to force seven state’s priorities, beliefs and convictions on the remaining 20+ states, means that they were ready to live and let live. There was zero aggression on the part of the exiting states. Even when these states came together in Montgomery, AL in February 1861, there was never the thought of pushing their agenda on the more northern states or the “union” as a whole.
This was not a civil war. People need to know that. It will become important someday, soon I hope.
Another quote from the same source as above might help convince you of a truth, as you consider whether or not to accept it as such:
“In U.S. official government records, it is known as “The War of the Rebellion.” This title, too, is incorrect. In 1867, none other than U.S. Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase noted, in his declaration that Jefferson Davis (or any other Confederate) could not be tried for treason, that “Secession is not rebellion.”
There you have it. The action in 1860/1861 was the same thing as in 1775, when a year later, in 1776 it was stated:
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and 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 separation.
Please notice that the word “united” is not capitalized. Words and capitalization matters. These were thirteen sovereign states that decided to separate and divorce the British Empire.
Please notice too that the dissolution of the political bands is something that happens in this broken world, and that separate and equal can be better than together and miserable and abused!
This discussion is needed today, in the USA!
If the USSR can do it (break apart into smaller republics), one would think the US, which was born of secession, could do the same. Right?
Just think about it. Research it. Consider it. You don’t have to accept it as truth you know.
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.
