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The following
is obviously condensed and intended as merely a refresher designed to prime
the reader's historical and civics knowledge and provide a context for the
political and economic discussions that follow.
A basic understanding of the
principles of our Republic
may be obtained from a
reading of The Declaration of
Independence
, The Federalist Papers
, the Anti-Federalist Papers , and the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments
.
There are prior and
subsequent historical documents which provide additional insight
(e.g., correspondence of the Continental Congress[1774-76], the Declaration of Rights and
Grievances
, the correspondence
related to the Articles of
Confederation [1781-1788], etc.), however, The Federalist Papers and the
Anti-Federalist Papers, as a serial publication
advocating and opposing adoption (ratification) of the U.S.
Constitution, is recognized as the most comprehensive discussion and
elaboration on central or national government issues and political theory
in general.
The
Constitutional Convention was an extended debate
and series of compromises that took place over the first nine months of
1787. Once the final draft of the proposed Constitution was
submitted to Congress in September 1787, the proposed federal government
would "begin" once nine of the thirteen states ratified it. The
first
Anti-Federalist
Paper and Federalist Paper
were published in October 1787. The state
conventions were heated debates and most were very close votes. The
ninth state ratified in June 1788, with two key addional
states, Virginia and New York, to follow.
The Federalist Papers were for the purpose
of justifying the need to have a stronger federal government (stronger
than the existing Articles of Confederation) and to allay the fears of
those who, justifiably, feared the consolidation of power that such a
federal government might eventually allow. In short, the
Federalist Papers
were written in
rebuttal to the "Anti-Federalist Papers," which were a series of
letters critical of the proposed Constitution and published in newspapers
under various pseudonyms such as "Brutus," "Cato," and
"Cincinnatus."
The Framers at the Constitutional Convention had
to devise a Constitution that would limit government sufficiently to
overcome the prevailing distrust of any centralized government---enough so to
persuade state conventions to ratify it. Having endured an eight year
struggle to secede from the British Empire, most Americans wanted
to avoid another supreme ruler in a distant
capitol.
Constitutional scholar Forrest McDonald
describes
the Constitution's text and design as
follows:
"The Constitution was designed to bring
government under the rule of law, as opposed to achieving any specific
purposes....Fully 20 percent of the text is
specification of things the government, state of federal, may
not do . Only 11
percent is concerned with positive grants of power.....The main body of
the Constitution, more than two thirds of it, addresses the task of making government act in accordance
with law."
The Framers of our Constitution were a diverse group in terms of views and backgrounds but
most had an aversion to the abuse of power. These leaders were educated
and well-read men who were only too familiar with the tendencies
of tyrants and oppressive government. Their understanding of human nature
and the corrupting influence of power was demonstrated in all they wrote
and in the blueprint for our Republic. They drew knowledge from
the history of European and Middle-Eastern monarchies and republics and the
Greek experiments in democracy and republics. Read the Quotes
page
for a selection of observations advanced by the
Framers.
The Framers divided primarily into three camps. The Federalists advocated a stronger
central government---stronger than the existing Articles of
Confederation. Among them, there were the "extreme"
federalists (e.g., Alexander Hamilton) who favored a national
government with states as subordinate political subdivisions.
The "moderate" federalists favored a stronger federal goverment to achieve the goals outlined
in the Federalist Papers, but remaining subordinate to the states such
that state and local governments would perform the vast majority of
appropriate domestic governing (see the excerpt from
Federalist Paper No.
45
below).
James Madison
was at first an extreme federalist, but modified his
views during the Convention debates to that of a moderate. George Washington
was a moderate federalist and his views held great
sway. The Anti-Federalists (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, Patrick
Henry, Thomas Paine, George Mason, George Clinton, et al) favored no central government at all,
preferring to retain the existing Articles of Confederation. Once the Constitution
was ratified by sufficient states, most of the
Anti-Federalists became part of the states rights party, known as the "Republicans"
and later the "Democratic-Republicans."
Most of the moderate federalists
and all of the anti-federalists
feared the consolidation of power within a
central government and painstakingly documented their intent within the
Constitution to reserve the rights of the "sovereign and independent" states
based on the principle that
decentralized government ---government closer
to
home---was the best guardian of liberties. They reasoned that by
spreading the power, natural jealousies would give various governments and
branches within those governments incentives to guard against usurpations
or power abuses by others. Keeping most government
activities close to home would ensure, they reasoned, that the
people would best be able to influence government and have
it best represent them to protect their liberties.
Arguing that a national legislature, without limitations,
would rule just as tyrranically as any single king, Thomas Jefferson said,
"The concentrating [of powers] in the same hands is precisely
the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that
these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a
single one."
"It is not by
the consolidation, or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution
that good government is effected."
--Thomas
Jefferson
"I am not a
friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists
argued than any stronger central government would be oppressive.
Jefferson suggested that the Federalists would establish "a single and splendid government
of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and moneyed
incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of
manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the
plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry." It now seems prophetic that Jefferson
predicted exactly what would and
did happen beginning in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln.
George Washington and other moderate federalists believed that the most
serious threat to the republic was sectional factions gaining power
to exploit their fellow states within the republic. Sectional frictions did,
in fact, ensue in very short order.
To counter Jefferson's arguments, Madison and the other Federalists
(Alexander Hamilton, John Jay) argued at length in the Federalist Papers
that essential liberties would be protected and that the federal
government would be constrained by its founding charter, the
Constitution.
"The powers delegated by the
proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those
which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war,
peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the
several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course
of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people,
and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the
State. --James Madison,
author of our Constitution, in
Federalist Paper No.
45
In addition, within the Constitution, they
tried to establish a system of checks and balances [Federalist #51] to prevent any
one branch of the proposed federal government from growing too strong at
the expense of others and at the expense of our liberties in
general.
The 9th and 10th Amendments to the
Constitution spelled out in plain language the intent that states would be
the dominant guardians of liberty and remain
the supreme governments. The first ten Amendments, commonly referred to as the
Bill of Rights, was written to appease
demands by state delegates that the rights of individuals and their general
agents, the state legislatures, would reserve all rights not
specifically delegated to the federal government. Massachussetts withheld its ratification until assured that a
Bill of Rights would be added to address their concerns. George
Mason, a prominent Anti-Federalist, wrote most of the Bill of
Rights as adopted.
The Constitution, by design, did not specifically prohibit secession. Therefore, by virtue
of both the 9th and 10th Amendments, the states reserved the
right to withdraw from the federal union for any reason deemed
appropriate by such state. More on the principle and right of secession
follows in Section 2 and subsequent
sections.
The links below will lead the reader to a reasonably
comprehensive understanding of the Confederate
Cause.
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Government as the Founders
intended
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What does the
Confederate flag represent?
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Conclusions
....under
construction
Copyright © Steve Scroggins - All rights reserved.
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