If one follows “History.com” (not recommended), one finds the following:
On August 26, 1794, President George Washington writes to Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, Virginia’s governor and a former general, regarding the Whiskey Rebellion, an insurrection that was the first great test of Washington’s authority as president of the United States. In the letter, Washington declared that he had no choice but to act to subdue the “insurgents,” fearing they would otherwise “shake the government to its foundation.”
If one prefers their history to match what you heard all your life, with George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, then the above clip probably sounds good to your ears.
If you prefer the truth, then “Mises.com”, “LewRockwell.com” and Murray Rothbard are better educators, but hang on.
If you are curious about the Whiskey Rebellion, you can start here:
The Official View of the Whiskey Rebellion is that four counties of western Pennsylvania refused to pay an excise tax on whiskey that had been levied by proposal of the Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton in the Spring of 1791, as part of his excise tax proposal for federal assumption of the public debts of the several states.
Western Pennsylvanians failed to pay the tax, this view says, until protests, demonstrations, and some roughing up of tax collectors in western Pennsylvania caused President Washington to call up a 13,000-man army in the summer and fall of 1794 to suppress the insurrection. A localized but dramatic challenge to federal tax-levying authority had been met and defeated. The forces of federal law and order were safe.
Pretty sure this is what you may have been taught, but you were lied to. Murray, who wrote this in the periodical ‘Free Market’ in September 1994:
This Official View turns out to be dead wrong. In the first place, we must realize the depth of hatred of Americans for what was called “internal taxation” (in contrast to an “external tax” such as a tariff). Internal taxes meant that the hated tax man would be in your face and on your property, searching, examining your records and your life, and looting and destroying.
Why was THIS type of tax hated? (a type we are faced with all the time these days in “the land of the free”) Hang on for some history to help understand the mindset of the American people in the 1790s:
Americans .. had inherited hatred of the excise tax from the British opposition; for two centuries, excise taxes in Britain, in particular the hated tax on cider, had provoked riots and demonstrations upholding the slogan, “liberty, property, and no excise!”
The most hated tax imposed by the British had been the Stamp Tax of 1765, on all internal documents and transactions; if the British had kept this detested tax, the American Revolution would have occurred a decade earlier, and enjoyed far greater support than it eventually received.
In summary, “.. To the average American, the federal government’s assumption of the power to impose excise taxes did not look very different from the levies of the British crown…” just 15 years prior!
It seems that this rebellion (as well as the appearance of an “insurrection” from this new president’s view, with borrowed glasses from his associate Alexander Hamilton) was much more wide spread than just some counties in Pennsylvania:
The main distortion of the Official View of the Whiskey Rebellion was its alleged confinement to four counties of western Pennsylvania. From recent research, we now know that no one paid the tax on whiskey throughout the American “back-country”: that is, the frontier areas of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the entire state of Kentucky.
Why Western PA then? Turns out that this was the ONLY region where wealthy officials willingly tried to collect these taxes. Other more southern areas consisted of a more principled and honorable type that refused to enforce an immoral law.
There were two attributes of this tax that really p*ssed the common folk off, and one had to do with the whiskey itself and the other had to do with who really benefited from Alexander Hamilton’s tax:
The whiskey tax was particularly hated in the back-country because whiskey production and distilling were widespread; whiskey was not only a home product for most farmers, it was often used as a money, as a medium of exchange for transactions.
… in keeping with Hamilton’s program, the tax bore more heavily on the smaller distilleries. As a result, many large distilleries supported the tax as a means of crippling their smaller and more numerous competitors.
The truth is, in 99% of the area where this tax was ignored, it was non-violent. Only the 13,000 troops (more troops that were ever assembled in one place in the American Revolution) under George Washington (traveling in his carriage), but actually led by Alexander Hamilton, might start something:
Rather than the whiskey tax rebellion being localized and swiftly put down, the true story turns out to be very different. The entire American back-country was gripped by a non-violent, civil disobedient refusal to pay the hated tax on whiskey. No local juries could be found to convict tax delinquents. The Whiskey Rebellion was actually widespread and successful, for it eventually forced the federal government to repeal the excise tax.
Since the tax rate was $0.06 – 0.18 per gallon or $5 per year from the “producer”:
the retail price of whisky in the West was about half what it was in the East, the effective tax rate in the West was twice as high, computed as a percentage of the price.
Since the “producer” in the West were farmers who bartered with whiskey as a currency, there was no one to pass these costs on to as the large distilleries could.
The blow-back from this internal tax (verses the external tariff type) would sweep Thomas Jefferson into office who would then repeal this tax.
Not until the War of 1812 would Americans tolerate this tax once more. It was all downhill from there:
Except during the War of 1812, the federal government never again dared to impose an internal excise tax, until the North transformed the American Constitution by centralizing the nation during the War Between the States. One of the evil fruits of this war was the permanent federal “sin” tax on liquor and tobacco, to say nothing of the federal income tax, an abomination and a tyranny even more oppressive than an excise.
One only has to look at the actions of those awesome early Americans to know how far the citizens have come in this country, and yet they call it “progress”.
There is a constant in politics. Smoke and mirrors, nothing is what it says it is or was, and everything comes down to the ability to lie well, “for humanity’s sake”
While I am picking on the GOP today, it would be equally easy to pick on the Democratic or even the so-called Libertarian Party as well.
A Republican today is someone who thinks .. :
*That unemployment compensation for laid-off workers is socialism and multi-billion dollar bailouts for banking and stock swindlers is capitalism.
*That killing women and children with high explosives in remote corners of the earth is defending “our way of life.”
*That the purpose of education is to train good workers.
*That immigration is good because it supplies good cheap workers.
*That the 10th Amendment means that the federal government should tell the States what to do rather than do it itself.
*That criticism of Lincoln is near treason.
*That the President is “Commander-in-Chief” of the country, especially when he is a Republican.
*That freedom is protected by undeclared wars and military tribunals.
*That “right to life” is a good campaign gimmick, but not to be taken seriously.
*That any campaign promise or slogan should gull the saps who are not in the know but is not to be taken seriously.
*That the way to beat the Democrats is to take up whatever they propose and promise to do it better
On that last one, know that Trump-care would follow Obamacare, the same thing only different. But I digress.
I think we can all agree to what these three parties are today, however, I do think we might have some disagreement on what these parties were in years gone past.
Today I will limit myself to the Grand Old Party, since I have limited time …
Here is some popular thoughts accepted by the masses and the people they trust from Paul H. Yarbrough:
[we can] blame the Democrat party for slavery, Jim Crow and most every other popular racial badness. The Republicans supposedly are angels wiping out these evils.
Yes, aligns perfectly with everyone’s history books, so this data must be good, but not so fast. It should be noted that:
Many, if not most, slave traders were Northerners regardless of political party.
Republicans, for the most part, were not opposed to slavery. They just did not want it extended into the western territories. They sided with the abolitionists only in that they wanted slaves freed so as they might be repatriated to Africa.
Republicans sponsored the Corwin Amendment introduced in 1860 by prominent Republicans William H. Seward and Thomas Corwin that would have kept slavery in perpetuity. The amendment was only ratified by two border states, Maryland and Kentucky and three Northern states: Ohio, Rhode Island and Illinois (which had passed laws prohibiting entry by free blacks into the state).
Let’s look at this amendment (would have been the 13th if ratified):
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.””
This does NOT sound like a party that is anti-slavery does it? No, this sounds like a party that changed its mind in 1862 when its invasion of the South was being frustrated, so it changed its mission from “Saving the Union” to “Free the Slaves” (to encourage a general slave revolt in the South to end the War Against Southern Independence faster).
About the Jim Crow laws that today’s Republicans claim is a legacy of the Democrats:
.. the Republicans who controlled the South during the military occupation following the war, forced the Black Codes, nonexistent in the South, on the South in 1866. The Black Codes were a Republican concept. And Northern Republicans were the creators of the later to come Jim Crow Laws.
Surprised? You should never be surprised when your beliefs based on political books like the ones on history are revealed as mere myths.
Now, how “republican” is the Republican party? About as “federalist” as the Federalist party was in the 1790s. Politicians even lie when naming their own parties, it has always been that way!
The Republican party is no more republican then the Democratic party is democratic. Both are oligarchies promoting their namesakes as if those in charge (power) have the interests of the people firmly in their hearts (with their pocketbooks in their hands).
True. When one looks at the legacy of the Republican party, one really has to stretch the meaning of the word to apply it even in 1856/1860 (thanks to Laurence M. Vance for his work on these very accurate attributes):
The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln. Republicans who liked to accuse Obama of being dictatorial some years ago have forgotten all about their beloved Lincoln. He issued a proclamation that freed no slaves. He destroyed the country to save the union. He presided over the first income tax. He supported an amendment to the Constitution that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery. He shut down Northern opposition newspapers and imprisoned Northern political dissenters. He oversaw the deaths of 500,000 to 800,000 Americans. He destroyed the system of states’ rights and federalism created by the Founding Fathers.
Dang. Maybe in “peacetime” Republicans are more in line with the founding fathers and this federated republic? You can bet the GOP plans ZERO peace in the near-term. It is just not in their DNA to be anything but like the Democrats, only different.
Other attributes:
The Republican Party is the party of the drug war. Although Republicans say they are the party of the Constitution, they show their contempt for the Constitution by their ardent support of the unconstitutional drug war that has ruined more lives than drugs themselves. Republicans are the greatest advocates of locking up people in cages for possessing substances the government doesn’t approve of.
The Republican Party is the party of the warfare state. Closing a domestic military base is implausible. Scrapping a weapons system is out of the question. Cutting the bloated defense budget is inconceivable. Invading and occupying other countries is viewed as defensive warfare. Bombing, maiming, and killing whomever the government labels as “the enemy” is viewed as defending our freedoms.
The Republican Party is the party of empire. Republicans support the stationing of troops and the maintaining of foreign military bases all over the globe—including in Germany, Italy, and Japan even though World War II ended 70 years ago. Closing an overseas military base is unthinkable. Bringing all of the troops home is unimaginable.
The Republican Party is the party of the welfare state. Republicans are welfare statists just like Democrats. They believe that it is the proper role of government to provide public assistance, have entitlement programs, maintain a safety net, and guarantee income security. They continually support food stamps, WIC, TANF, federal job training programs, rent subsidies, heating assistance, farm programs, SSI, and refundable tax credits that allow some Americans to receive tax refunds when they paid no taxes to begin with. They support the government providing unemployment benefits so that those who work can support those who don’t. They have no philosophical objection to the government fighting poverty by taking money from some Americans and redistributing it to others. When Bush the president and had a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress for over four years, the Republicans could have eliminated or substantially rolled back the welfare state. They did neither.
The Republican Party is the party of Social Security. Although Republicans may criticize FDR and many of his New Deal programs, they love his Social Security program and want to “save” it so future generations of young people can support the elderly via an intergenerational, income-transfer, wealth-redistribution welfare scheme.
The Republican Party is the party of socialized medicine. Although Republicans rail against Obamacare, they are silent about their passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003—the greatest expansion of Medicare since LBJ. Like Social Security, Republicans are some of the greatest champions of “saving” Medicare. And just because they criticize Obamacare doesn’t mean that they favor a real free market in health care, the total separation of medicine from the state, the complete deregulation of the health-insurance industry, or the establishment of medical freedom. Republicans believe that some Americans should pay for the health care of other Americans.
The Republican Party is the part of foreign aid. Republicans have no philosophical objection whatsoever to taking money from American taxpayers and giving it to corrupt foreign regimes, including bribing them with cash and military equipment to get them to obey U.S. dictates. Spending on foreign aid practically doubled during the Bush years.
The Republican Party is the party of federal control of education. The Democrats may have given us Common Core, but the Republicans gave us No Child Left Behind. Republicans support the federal student loan program, Pell Grants, the National School Lunch Program, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and Head Start. And instead of eliminating the federal Department of Education when they had a majority in both Houses of Congress for over four years during the Bush presidency, they practically doubled the department’s budget. Republicans believe that some Americans should pay for the education of the children of other Americans.
The Republican Party is the party of an aggressive, belligerent, and meddling interventionist foreign policy. Republicans believe that the United States should be a busybody who polices the world and tells every other country what it should and shouldn’t do. They fully support CIA covert activities and torture—as long as the American people don’t find out about it.
The Republican Party is the party of taxes. Tax reform is unacceptable unless it is revenue neutral. Tax deductions, credits, and loopholes that allow some Americans to keep more of their money should be eliminated. “The rich” should pay their fair share via a progressive tax system. The government is entitled to a portion of every American’s income.
The Republican Party is the party of the national security state. Republicans gave us the Department of Homeland Security when we already had a defense department. They gave us the Patriot Act to violate our liberties. They gave us the TSA to grope us when we travel. The current vocal criticism by some Republicans of the NSA would be reduced to a whimper under a Republican administration. Republicans support a CIA that spies on the whole world and works mischief throughout.
The Republican Party is the party of massive government spending and debt. The national debt rose almost a trillion dollars between the Republican Revolution that wasn’t in 1995 and Bush’s first inauguration in 2001. During Bush’s presidency, government spending skyrocketed, the national debt almost doubled, and the federal deficit exceeded $1 trillion for the first time. Republicans in Congress regularly vote to raise the debt limit under Republican presidents. They have no philosophical objection to spending billions of taxpayer dollars on thousands of departments, agencies, grants, and programs that are not warranted by the Constitution.
Now you have a flavor of a political party that in no way reflects the “republican” nature of government that Thomas Jefferson, who formed the Democratic-Republican Party (formally called the Republican Party) around 1792 to oppose the centralizing policies of the new Federalist Party run by Alexander Hamilton, who was Secretary of the Treasury and chief architect of George Washington’s administration.
Words matter. You know, like the “Patriot” Act. As Ron Paul points out:
The Patriot Act waters down the Fourth amendment by expanding the federal government’s ability to use wiretaps without judicial oversight. The requirement of a search warrant and probable cause strikes a balance between effective law enforcement and civil liberties. Any attempt to dilute the warrant requirement threatens innocent citizens with a loss of their liberty. This is particularly true of provisions that allow for issuance of nationwide search warrants that are not specific to any given location, nor subject to any local judicial oversight.
The Act makes it far easier for the government to monitor your internet usage by adopting a lower standard than probable cause for intercepting e-mails and internet communications.
How patriotic is that?
It is a minefield out there. Be careful in your assumptions! The labels are many times very misleading.
Service members pick through the rubble following the bombing of the USMC barracks in Beirut, Lebanon on Oct. 23, 1983. The terror attack resulted in the deaths of 220 Marines. File Photo by USMC/UPI
You can count on one hand the times that the United States of America refrained from its drive for war. While its third president said on 04MAR1801:
… peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none …
… in hindsight, presidents that followed Thomas Jefferson did not have those ideals and/or could not resist the unity that happens when the war path is decided on. War is good for the state as well, which statesmen back in the day and politicians today realize clearly. The state was meant for war.
However, there was a time in the early 1980s when the US backed off from the war path. It was tempting, but at the end of the day, cooler heads prevailed. As Kenny Rogers sang
He said, “If you’re gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
In this article, the details emerge from a time in 1983-1984 when the US Empire acted more like a man of character than that of a bully. Confident that knowing when “to hold them, and knowing when to run” displayed more meekness, power under control, than most Presidential administrations to date.
While Reagan’s administration piled on the debt more than Carter’s, engaged in the drug trafficking trade called the Iran-Contra Affair, and also ratcheted up “gun-control”, this event in Lebanon and the US response is something that needs to be remembered and admired.
Setting the stage:
In October of 1983, a truck filled with explosives leveled the four-story U.S. Marine Barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 American military personnel. The intelligence community laid responsibility for the act at the feet of Tehran’s mullahs, who’d tasked Hezbollah, their proxy in Lebanon, with pushing the U.S. (which had deployed the Marines as part of a multinational peacekeeping mission) out of the region. The incident (the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War Two, as we were told at the time), touched off a legendary internal Reagan Administration dispute over how, and whether, the U.S. should retaliate.
As today, there were members of the administration that were more war-hawk in nature, and others who have been in combat, and acutely know what the unintentional consequences might be in ordering a retaliation.
I do like Caspar Weinberger’s (US Army veteran of some intense Pacific fighting in WWII) angle:
Secretary of Defense [Weinberger] had opposed the deployment of the Marines to begin with, and had the support of the military. Colin Powell, Weinberger’s senior military assistant, spoke for many of the military’s leaders when he described the Lebanon deployment “goofy from the beginning.”
On the other side was Secretary of State George Shultz:
For Shultz, however, revisiting the deployment decision was a waste of time. In a series of knock-down-drag-outs that pitted him against Weinberger, the Secretary of State argued that “American credibility” (that old standby), was being tested and that, therefore, the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines was cause enough for a military escalation.
The kicker comes here where Weinberger’s wisdom is revealed:
Weinberger disagreed: “retaliation against who?” he asked. Slow-rolling the president, he argued that the U.S. needed better intelligence before deciding who to punish. Weinberger was adamant: the U.S. had just left one unwinnable conflict (in Vietnam), and shouldn’t be so quick to start another. He dug in.
I do wish that this effort could be made today. Instead of lashing out like a bully swinging wildly to and fro, connecting here, connecting there mainly with innocent people and missing the real culprits, can’t today’s US government ever take time and wisely ascertain what is really happening? No more “WMD’s in Iraq”, no more Colin Powell holding some “chemical weapon” in his fingers at the UN, no more stories of babies in incubators left to die. The CIA/MI6/Mossad deep state “evidence” needs to be compared to truly independent science, if one can every practically get there.
Maybe, just maybe today’s announcement that Sen. Rand Paul has been chosen to be a point of dialog with the regime in Iran, is a rare piece of good news that I myself have been waiting years if not decades for.
Back to 1983.
It seems that the Vietnam War was not too far in the rear-view mirror as men with war experience from WWII in the South Pacific, who started as PRIVATES, who have seen the elephant, could wisely speak into:
NOTE: “Weinberger was a Harvard-educated lawyer, his formative experience came in World War II, where he served as an infantry officer during the 1942 Battle of Buna—a fetid, leech-infested Japanese base on the rim of northern New Guinea. For those who survived, including Weinberger, the swamp-slogging battle was an unrelenting nightmare: at its end, the Japanese resorted to cannibalism and used the bodies of the dead to reinforce their defenses. ”
Staying strong:
The Shultz-Weinberger tilt dragged on until February of 1984, when Reagan decided to “redeploy” the Marines to U.S. ships on station in the Mediterranean. The “redeployment” was seen by Shultz as an ignominious retreat, a sign of American weakness. But, as capably rendered by Marine Colonel and historian David Crist in The Twilight War, that’s not the way the Pentagon viewed it.
Only the insecure thinks this is a loss. The mature and secure person can see better the big picture and risk the possibility of this reaction to be seen as week.
Then the truth is unearthed, something that the US Empire struggles with to this very day:
The problem with American policy in the Middle East, Koch implied, was American hypocrisy—and our selective use of the word terrorism: when our friends plant bombs we say it’s because they’re defending our values, but when our enemies do it, it’s terrorism.
The entangling alliances will always cause hypocrisy. We had been warned from over 200 years ago and we (especially our leaders) still don’t get it.
Over reaction to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, or to anything we might see in the Persian Gulf in the coming weeks and months is a recipe for a disaster that will over-shadow Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Things were very different even 5, 10, 15 and even 20 years ago. The world has changed, Russia and China have not only survived US sanctions and tariff wars, but they also have allies in other countries that have been bullied by the US Empire especially since the end of WWII.
.. striking back, killing who you can because you can (and simply to assuage your own anger) is not only “beneath our dignity”—it’s a signpost on the road to unwinnable wars.
Don’t we know it. The US Empire legacy lives on, and it ain’t a pretty sight.
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.
The benefit of knowing history is knowing when you are about to be scammed. In the past week we have heard that President Trump suddenly, without the blessing of his neo-con staff personnel, decided to exit Syria in the near-term. What happened next was typical to this empire’s entertainment aspects, people that were against war at some point in their life all of a sudden WANT war in Syria. I mean it was normal to hear most of Congress (who have been lobbied by the Military Industrial Complex – $$$) get upset that we can’t keep our “covert” war there intact since we have invested 7 years there with various rebel groups including ISIS.
It is all indeed a show, and having watched Home Alone over the Christmas break seeing Donald Trump giving advice to Kevin, we can’t be surprised in 2019 to understand that Donald Trump is still acting. All empires need good actors when they approach end of life status, it keeps the masses entertained while what is happening behind the scenes gets more and more desperate.
During the Revolutionary War, the British Empire used 30,000 Hessian mercenaries (30% of the total British force in the American Colonies) towards their attempt to hang on to their empire. Also deployed was their Green Dragoon Legions and the tactics that had local innocent citizens and their property in the cross-hairs of these forces.
During the follow-up of the Iraq invasion in 2003, the US Empire also used mercenaries in their attempt to hang on to the territory in Iraq as part of the US Empire. By 2007 there had been a huge number of incidents where these mercenaries were guilt of massacres throughout Iraq. In fact, trials are still ongoing here in 2019!
A more in depth article is this one by Chuck Baldwin who has been following closely the Trump promises before his election compared to the Trump realities to date. One of the most startling statistics is in the quote that follows:
.. the first two years of Trump’s presidency was a flagrant disavowal of that campaign promise. Not only did Trump not disengage our forces from these illegal and immoral wars, but, as I have documented, he dramatically INCREASED America’s involvement in these wars. In fact, President Trump has dropped more bombs on more people in his first two years of office than President Obama did in his entire last term in office. Plus, he sent thousands of additional ground troops to Afghanistan and Syria and several other countries.
So that leads us to Trump’s latest claim, that the US is “leaving” Syria and also drawing down troops in Afghanistan. Well, it all depends on who is doing the counting and what is being counted. Knowing full well that none of these numbers include deep state CIA operatives throughout the region, if we are talking “official military” personnel in Syria, the US claims that only 2000 are there currently. I highly doubt that. But what is really going on? Chuck says:
This month, in the January/February print issue of the gun and hunting magazine “Recoil,” the former contractor security firm Blackwater USA published a full-page ad, in all black with a simple message: “We are coming.”
Is the war in Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere ― about to be privatized?
If Blackwater returns, it would be the return of a private security contractor that was banned from Iraq, but re-branded and never really went away.
21st century Hessians! This Empire is outsourcing the dirty work left behind by the 17 year Afghanistan conflict and the 7 year illegal intrusion into the sovereign nation of Syria that Obama pulled the trigger on.
The legacy is trillions spent, that we have a debt for, just to _______? You fill in the blank, is this to keep military contractors employed? Is this to keep the petro-dollar in placed globally? Is this to help Israel out .. perpetually?
And what of the US Empire’s legacy?
Here’s the horrifying part: These “private contractors,” i.e., mercenaries, operate in a manner that is totally unaccountable to the rule of law. Totally! They operate outside the Constitution, outside the Rules of Engagement, outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), outside the Law of Nations, outside law period—and also outside public scrutiny. There is virtually no accountability for whatever murders, rapes, plunderings or criminalities of any sort that these mercenaries commit.
More terrorists are home-grown the more the empire’s atrocities are known. This is “job-security” as the US Empire’s last gasp around the globe. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
In summary, Chuck Baldwin concludes:
Combining Special Forces units that are already plagued with rampant abuses of power with mercenaries who are virtually unaccountable to any human authority is a recipe for the worst kind of barbarity and atrocity. This is what the Roman Empire did during its last days of power and what Great Britain did in its failed war against the American colonies. And this is exactly what Donald Trump is preparing to do. In fact, Trump is already setting the table for an unaccountable military force by shutting down military watchdog groups, thus turning off the light of public knowledge and ensuring military unaccountability.
The “swamp” is still intact. The cynic in me points to the root of this nation’s poisonous government. Many, including Chuck claim that if we would just get back to the Constitution … yeah, it was never meant to be “got back to”. As Lysander Spooner said in the 19th century:
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
My thinking, thanks to Ben Stone’s efforts and his manual , has evolved to this:
When I first read this a year ago I just laughed. About six months ago I read this and still thought that maybe Thomas Jefferson was blindsided by this whole Constitution coup d’tat that happened while he was Ambassador to France. I understood that George Washington was a Federalist at heart and wanted a mini-British nation on this continent, and that Benjamin Franklin was getting old and nodded his consent. But the likes of George Mason and Patrick Henry saw through all this and rightfully noted the slippery slope that this document created a path for going forward.
I now think that Thomas Jefferson really thought that there would be another revolution inside a generation as what was created was just an “experiment”, a beta-test version 1.0 of a federated republic that would have checks and balances like nullification and secession options that could keep it grounded until another version could be tried.
I do think that the pioneer spirit of that founding generation did not even last a decade before this country fell back into its old ways. Before you know it you have George Washington taking thousands of troops into Pennsylvania to enforce a 25% Whiskey Tax to fund his government. You can not possibly make this stuff up!
Happy 2019 y’all .. I will try to stay more positive in my future posts this year, if the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.
-SF1
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothingnewunderthesun – Ecclesiastes 1:9
