Review by Amelia Gora (2017)
Reviewing the Truth of Innocents who are wrongfully, criminally Plundered Upon:
American Indians
Title: A Century of Dishonor
A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with
some of the Indian Tribes
Author: Helen Hunt Jackson
Release Date: November 27, 2015 [EBook #50560]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson (1884)
Introductory
"The question of the honorableness of the United States' dealings with the Indians turns largely on a much disputed and little understood point. What was the nature of the Indians' right to the country in which they were living when the continent of North America was discovered? Between the theory of some sentimentalists that the Indians were the real owners of the soil, and the theory of some politicians that they had no right of ownership whatever in it, there are innumerable grades and confusions of opinion. The only authority on the point must be the view and usage as accepted by the great discovering Powers at the time of discovery, and afterward in their disposition of the lands discovered.
Fortunately, an honest examination of these points leaves no doubt on the matter.
England, France, Spain, little Portugal—all quarrelling fiercely, and fighting with each other for the biggest share in the new continent—each claiming "sovereignty of the soil" by right of priority of discovery—all recognized the Indians' "right of occupancy" as a right; a right alienable in but two ways, either by purchase or by conquest.
All their discussions as to boundaries, from 1603 down to 1776, recognized this right and this principle. They reiterated, firstly, that discoverers had the right of sovereignty—a right in so far absolute that the discoverer was empowered by it not only to take possession of, but to grant, sell, and convey lands still occupied by Indians—and that for any nation to attempt to take possession of, grant, sell, or convey any such Indian-occupied lands while said lands were claimed by other nations under the right of discovery, was an infringement of rights, and just occasion of war; secondly, that all this granting, selling, conveying was to be understood to be "subject to the Indians' right of occupancy," which remained to be extinguished either through further purchase or through conquest by the grantee or purchaser.
Peters, in his preface to the seventh volume of the "United States Statutes at Large," says, "The history of America, from its discovery to the present day, proves the universal recognition of these principles."
Each discovering Power might regulate the relations between herself and the Indians; but as to the existence of the Indians' "right of occupancy," there was absolute unanimity among them. That there should have been unanimity regarding any one thing between them, is remarkable. It is impossible for us to realize what a sudden invitation to greed and discord lay in this fair, beautiful, unclaimed continent—eight millions of square miles of land—more than twice the size of all Europe itself. What a lure to-day would such another new continent prove! The fighting over it would be as fierce now as the fighting was then, and the "right of occupancy" of the natives would stand small chance of such unanimous recognition as the four Great Powers then justly gave it.
Of the fairness of holding that ultimate sovereignty belonged to the civilized discoverer, as against the savage barbarian, there is no manner nor ground of doubt. To question this is feeble sentimentalism. But to affirm and uphold this is not in any wise to overlook the lesser right which remained; as good, of its kind, and to its extent, as was the greater right to which, in the just nature of things, it was bound to give way.
It being clear, then, that the Indians' "right of occupancy" was a right recognized by all the great discovering Powers, acted upon by them in all their dispositions of lands here discovered, it remains next to inquire whether the United States Government, on taking its place among the nations, also recognized or accepted this Indian "right of occupancy" as an actual right. Upon this point, also, there is no doubt.
"By the treaty which concluded the War of our Revolution, Great Britain relinquished all claims not only to the government, but to the proprietary and territorial rights of the United States whose boundaries were fixed in the second Article. By this treaty the powers of the government and the right to soil which had previously been in Great Britain passed definitely to these States. We had before taken possession of them by declaring independence, but neither the declaration of independence nor the treaty confirming it could give us more than that which we before possessed, or to which Great Britain was before entitled. It has never been doubted that either the United States or the several States had a clear title to all the lands within the boundary-lines described in the treaty, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and that the exclusive right to extinguish that right was vested in that government which might constitutionally exercise it."[1]
"Subject to the Indian right of occupancy." It is noticeable how perpetually this phrase reappears. In their desire to define, assert, and enforce the greater right, the "right of sovereignty," the makers, interpreters, and recorders of law did not realize, probably, how clearly and equally they were defining, asserting, and enforcing the lesser right, the "right of occupancy."
Probably they did not so much as dream that a time would come when even this lesser right—this least of all rights, it would seem, which could be claimed by, or conceded to, an aboriginal inhabitant of a country, however savage—would be practically denied to our Indians. But if they had foreseen such a time, they could hardly have left more explicit testimony to meet the exigency.
"The United States have unequivocally acceded to that great and broad rule by which its civilized inhabitants now hold this country. They hold and assert in themselves the title by which it was acquired. They maintain, as all others have maintained, that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or conquest, and gave also a right to such a degree of sovereignty as the circumstances of the people would allow them to exercise.
"The power now possessed by the United States to grant lands resided, while we were colonies, in the Crown or its grantees. The validity of the titles given by either has never been questioned in our courts. It has been exercised uniformly over territories in possession of the Indians. The existence of this power must negative the existence of any right which may conflict with and control it. An absolute title to lands cannot exist at the same time in different persons or in different governments. An absolute must be an exclusive title, or at least a title which excludes all others not compatible with it. All our institutions recognize the absolute title of the Crown, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and recognize the absolute title of the Crown to extinguish the right. This is incompatible with an absolute and complete title in the Indians."[2]
Certainly. But it is also "incompatible with an absolute and perfect title" in the white man! Here again, in their desire to define and enforce the greater right, by making it so clear that it included the lesser one, they equally define and enforce the lesser right as a thing to be included. The word "subject" is a strong participle when it is used legally. Provisions are made in wills, "subject to" a widow's right of dower, for instance, and the provisions cannot be carried out without the consent of the person to whom they are thus declared to be "subject." A title which is pronounced to be "subject to" anything or anybody cannot be said to be absolute till that subjection is removed.
There have been some definitions and limitations by high legal authority of the methods in which this Indian "right of occupancy" might be extinguished even by conquest.
"The title by conquest is acquired and maintained by force. The conqueror prescribes its limits. Humanity, however, acting on public opinion, has established as a general rule that the conquered shall not be wantonly oppressed, and that their condition shall remain as eligible as is compatible with the objects of the conquest. Usually they are incorporated with the victorious nation, and become subjects or citizens of the government with which they are connected. *** When this incorporation is practicable, humanity demands, and a wise policy requires, that the rights of the conquered to property should remain unimpaired; that the new subjects should be governed as equitably as the old. *** When the conquest is complete, and the conquered inhabitants can be blended with the conquerors, or safely governed as a distinct people, public opinion, which not even the conqueror can disregard, imposes these restraints upon him, and he cannot neglect them without injury to his fame, and hazard to his power."[3]
In the sadly famous case of the removal of the Cherokee tribe from Georgia, it is recorded as the opinion of our Supreme Court that "the Indians are acknowledged to have an unquestionable, and heretofore unquestioned, right to the lands they occupy until that right shall be extinguished by a voluntary cession to the Government." *** "The Indian nations have always been considered as distinct independent political communities, retaining their original natural rights as the undisputed possessors of the soil, from time immemorial, with the single exception of that imposed by irresistible power, which excluded them from intercourse with any other European potentate than the first discoverer of the coast of the particular region claimed; and this was a restriction which those European potentates imposed on themselves as well as on the Indians. The very term 'nation,' so generally applied to them, means 'a people distinct from others.' The Constitution, by declaring treaties already made, as well as those to be made, to be the supreme law of the land, has adopted and sanctioned the previous treaties with the Indian nations, and consequently admits their rank among those powers who are capable of making treaties. The words 'treaty' and 'nation' are words of our own language, selected in our diplomatic and legislative proceedings by ourselves, having each a definite and well understood meaning. We have applied them to Indians as we have applied them to other nations of the earth. They are applied to all in the same sense."[4]
In another decision of the Supreme Court we find still greater emphasis put upon the Indian right of occupancy, by stating it as a right, the observance of which was stipulated for in treaties between the United States and other nations.
"When the United States acquired and took possession of the Floridas, the treaties which had been made with the Indian tribes before the acquisition of the territory by Spain and Great Britain remained in force over all the ceded territory, as the law which regulated the relations with all the Indians who were parties to them, and were binding on the United States by the obligation they had assumed by the Louisiana treaty as a supreme law of the land.
"The treaties with Spain and England before the acquisition of Florida by the United States, which guaranteed to the Seminole Indians their lands, according to the right of property with which they possessed them, were adopted by the United States, who thus became the protectors of all the rights they (the Indians) had previously enjoyed, or could of right enjoy, under Great Britain or Spain, as individuals or nations, by any treaty to which the United States thus became parties in 1803. ***
"The Indian right to the lands as property was not merely of possession; that of alienation was concomitant; both were equally secured, protected, and guaranteed by Great Britain and Spain, subject only to ratification and confirmation by the license, charter, or deed from the government representing the king." ***
The laws made it necessary, when the Indians sold their lands, to have the deeds presented to the governor for confirmation. The sales by the Indians transferred the kind of right which they possessed; the ratification of the sale by the governor must be regarded as a relinquishment of the title of the Crown to the purchaser, and no instance is known of refusal of permission to sell, or of the rejection of an Indian sale.[5]
"The colonial charters, a great portion of the individual grants by the proprietary and royal governments, and a still greater portion by the States of the Union after the Revolution, were made for lands within the Indian hunting-grounds. North Carolina and Virginia, to a great extent, paid their officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary War by such grants, and extinguished the arrears due the army by similar means. It was one of the great resources which sustained the war, not only by those States but by other States. The ultimate fee, encumbered with the right of occupancy, was in the Crown previous to the Revolution, and in the States afterward, and subject to grant. This right of occupancy was protected by the political power, and respected by the courts until extinguished." *** "So the Supreme Court and the State courts have uniformly held."[6]
President Adams, in his Message of 1828, thus describes the policy of the United States toward the Indians at that time:
"At the establishment of the Federal Government the principle was adopted of considering them as foreign and independent powers, and also as proprietors of lands. As independent powers, we negotiated with them by treaties; as proprietors, we purchased of them all the land which we could prevail on them to sell; as brethren of the human race, rude and ignorant, we endeavored to bring them to the knowledge of religion and letters."
Kent says: "The European nations which, respectively, established colonies in America, assumed the ultimate dominion to be in themselves, and claimed the exclusive right to grant a title to the soil, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy. The natives were admitted to be the rightful occupants of the soil, with a legal as well as just claim to retain possession of it, and to use it according to their own discretion, though not to dispose of the soil at their own will, except to the government claiming the right of pre-emption." *** "The United States adopted the same principle; and their exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title by purchase or conquest, and to grant the soil and exercise such a degree of sovereignty as circumstances required, has never been judicially questioned."
Kent also says, after giving the Supreme Court decision in the case of Johnson vs. M'Intosh: "The same court has since been repeatedly called upon to discuss and decide great questions concerning Indian rights and title, and the subject has of late become exceedingly grave and momentous, affecting the faith and the character, if not the tranquillity and safety, of the Government of the United States."
In Gardner's "Institutes of International Law" the respective rights to land of the Indians and the whites are thus summed up: "In our Union the aborigines had only a possessory title, and in the original thirteen States each owned in fee, subject to the Indian right, all ungranted lands within their respective limits; and beyond the States the residue of the ungranted lands were vested in fee in the United States, subject to the Indian possessory right, to the extent of the national limits."
Dr. Walker, in his "American Law," makes a still briefer summary: "The American doctrine on the subject of Indian title is briefly this: The Indians have no fee in the lands they occupy. The fee is in the Government. They cannot, of course, aliene them either to nations or individuals, the exclusive right of pre-emption being in the Government. Yet they have a qualified right of occupancy which can only be extinguished by treaty, and upon fair compensation; until which they are entitled to be protected in their possession."
"Abbott's Digest," one of the very latest authorities, reiterates the same principle: "The right of occupancy has been recognized in countless ways, among others by many decisions of courts and opinions of attorney-generals."
It being thus established that the Indian's "right of occupancy" in his lands was a right recognized by all the Great Powers discovering this continent, and accepted by them as a right necessary to be extinguished either by purchase or conquest, and that the United States, as a nation, has also from the beginning recognized, accepted, and acted upon this theory, it is next in order to inquire whether the United States has dealt honorably or dishonorably by the Indians in this matter of their recognized "right of occupancy."
In regard to the actions of individuals there is rarely much room for discussion whether they be honorable or dishonorable, the standard of honor in men's conduct being, among the civilized, uniform, well understood, and undisputed. Stealing, for instance, is everywhere held to be dishonorable, as well as impolitic; lying, also, in all its forms; breaking of promises and betrayals of trust are scorned even among the most ignorant people. But when it comes to the discussion of the acts of nations, there seems to be less clearness of conception, less uniformity of standard of right and wrong, honor and dishonor. It is necessary, therefore, in charging a government or nation with dishonorable conduct, to show that its moral standard ought in nowise to differ from the moral standard of an individual; that what is cowardly, cruel, base in a man, is cowardly, cruel, base in a government or nation. To do this, it is only needful to look into the history of the accepted "Law of Nations," from the days of the Emperor Justinian until now.
The Roman jurisconsults employed as synonymous, says Wheaton, "the two expressions, 'jus gentium,' that law which is found among all the known nations of the earth, and 'jus naturale,' founded on the general nature of mankind; nevertheless, of these two forms of the same idea, the first ought to be considered as predominant, since it as well as the 'jus civile' was a positive law, the origin and development of which must be sought for in history."
Nations being simply, as Vattel defines them, "societies of men united together," it is plain that, if there be such a thing as the "law of nature," which men as individuals are bound to obey, that law is also obligatory on the "societies" made up of men thus "united."
Hobbes divides the law of nature into that of man and that of States, saying, "The maxims of each of these laws are precisely the same; but as States, once established, assume personal properties, that which is termed the natural law when we speak of the duties of individuals is called the law of nations when applied to whole nations or States." The Emperor Justinian said, "The law of nations is common to the whole human race."
Grotius draws the distinction between the law of nature and the law of nations thus: "When several persons at different times and in various places maintain the same thing as certain, such coincidence of sentiment must be attributed to some general cause. Now, in the questions before us, that cause must necessarily be one or the other of these two—either a just consequence drawn from natural principles, or a universal consent; the former discovers to us the law of nature, and the latter the law of nations."
Vattel defines the "necessary law of nations" to be the "application of the law of nature to nations." He says: "It is 'necessary,' because nations are absolutely bound to observe it. This law contains the precepts prescribed by the law of nature to States, on whom that law is not less obligatory than on individuals; since States are composed of men, their resolutions are taken by men, and the law of nations is binding on all men, under whatever relation they act. This is the law which Grotius, and those who follow him, call the Internal Law of Nations, on account of its being obligatory on nations in the point of conscience."
Vattel says again: "Nations being composed of men naturally free and independent, and who before the establishment of civil societies lived together in the state of nature, nations or sovereign States are to be considered as so many free persons living together in the state of nature."
And again: "Since men are naturally equal, and a perfect equality prevails in their right and obligations as equally proceeding from nature, nations composed of men, and considered as so many free persons living together in the state of nature, are naturally equal, and inherit from nature the same obligations and rights. Power or weakness does not in this respect produce any difference. A dwarf is as much a man as a giant; a small republic no less a sovereign State than the most powerful kingdom."
In these two last sentences is touched the key-note of the true law of nations, as well as of the true law for individuals—justice. There is among some of the later writers on jurisprudence a certain fashion of condescending speech in their quotations from Vattel. As years have gone on, and States have grown more powerful, and their relations more complicated by reason of selfishness and riches, less and less has been said about the law of nature as a component and unalterable part of the law of nations. Fine subtleties of definition, of limitation have been attempted. Hundreds of pages are full of apparently learned discriminations between the parts of that law which are based on the law of nature and the parts which are based on the consent and usage of nations. But the two cannot be separated. No amount of legality of phrase can do away with the inalienable truth underlying it. Wheaton and President Woolsey to-day say, in effect, the same thing which Grotius said in 1615, and Vattel in 1758.
Says Wheaton: "International law, as understood among civilized nations, may be defined as consisting of those rules of conduct which reason deduces as consonant to justice from the nature of the society existing among independent nations."
President Woolsey says: "International law, in a wide and abstract sense, would embrace those rules of intercourse between nations which are deduced from their rights and moral claims; or, in other words, it is the expression of the jural and moral relations of States to one another.
"If international law were not made up of rules for which reasons could be given satisfactory to man's intellectual and moral nature, if it were not built on principles of right, it would be even less of a science than is the code which governs the actions of polite society."
It is evident, therefore, that the one fundamental right, of which the "law of nations" is at once the expression and the guardian, is the right of every nation to just treatment from other nations, the right of even the smallest republic equally with "the most powerful kingdom." Just as the one fundamental right, of which civil law is the expression and guardian, is the right of each individual to just treatment from every other individual: a right indefeasible, inalienable, in nowise lessened by weakness or strengthened by power—as majestic in the person of "the dwarf" as in that of "the giant."
Of justice, Vattel says: "Justice is the basis of all society, the sure bond of all commerce. ***
"All nations are under a strict obligation to cultivate justice toward each other, to observe it scrupulously and carefully, to abstain from anything that may violate it. ***
"The right of refusing to submit to injustice, of resisting injustice by force if necessary, is part of the law of nature, and as such recognized by the law of nations.
"In vain would Nature give us a right to refuse submitting to injustice, in vain would she oblige others to be just in their dealings with us, if we could not lawfully make use of force when they refused to discharge this duty. The just would lie at the mercy of avarice and injustice, and all their rights would soon become useless. From the foregoing right arise, as two distinct branches, first, the right of a just defence, which belongs to every nation, or the right of making war against whoever attacks her and her rights; and this is the foundation of defensive war. Secondly, the right to obtain justice by force, if we cannot obtain it otherwise, or to pursue our right by force of arms. This is the foundation of offensive war."
Justice is pledged by men to each other by means of promises or contracts; what promises and contracts are between men, treaties are between nations.
President Woolsey says: "A contract is one of the highest acts of human free-will: it is the will binding itself in regard to the future, and surrendering its right to change a certain expressed intention, so that it becomes, morally and jurally, a wrong to act otherwise.
"National contracts are even more solemn and sacred than private ones, on account of the great interests involved; of the deliberateness with which the obligations are assumed; of the permanence and generality of the obligations, measured by the national life, and including thousands of particular cases; and of each nation's calling, under God, to be a teacher of right to all, within and without its borders."
Vattel says: "It is a settled point in natural law that he who has made a promise to any one has conferred upon him a real right to require the thing promised; and, consequently, that the breach of a perfect promise is a violation of another person's right, and as evidently an act of injustice as it would be to rob a man of his property. ***
"There would no longer be any security, no longer any commerce between mankind, if they did not think themselves obliged to keep faith with each other, and to perform their promises."
It is evident that the whole weight of the recognized and accepted law of nations is thrown on the side of justice between nation and nation, and is the recognized and accepted standard of the obligation involved in compacts between nation and nation.
We must look, then, among the accepted declarations of the law of nations for the just and incontrovertible measure of the shame of breaking national compacts, and of the wickedness of the nations that dare to do it.
We shall go back to the earliest days of the world, and find no dissent from, no qualification of the verdict of the infamy of such acts. Livy says of leagues: "Leagues are such agreements as are made by the command of the supreme power, and whereby the whole nation is made liable to the wrath of God if they infringe it."
Grotius opens his "Admonition," in conclusion of the third book of his famous "Rights of War and Peace," as follows: "'For it is by faith,' saith Cicero, 'that not commonwealths only, but that grand society of nations is maintained.' 'Take away this,' saith Aristotle, 'and all human commerce fails.' It is, therefore, an execrable thing to break faith on which so many lives depend. 'It is,' saith Seneca, 'the best ornament wherewith God hath beautified the rational soul; the strongest support of human society, which ought so much the more inviolably to be kept by sovereign princes by how much they may sin with greater license and impunity than other men. Wherefore take away faith, and men are more fierce and cruel than savage beasts, whose rage all men do horribly dread. Justice, indeed, in all other of her parts hath something that is obscure; but that whereunto we engage our faith is of itself clear and evident; yea, and to this very end do men pawn their faith, that in their negotiations one with another all doubts may be taken away, and every scruple removed. How much more, then, doth it concern kings to keep their faith inviolate, as well for conscience' sake as in regard to their honor and reputation, wherein consists the authority of a kingdom.'"
Vattel says: "Treaties are no better than empty words, if nations do not consider them as respectable engagements, as rules which are to be inviolably observed by sovereigns, and held sacred throughout the whole earth.
"The faith of treaties—that firm and sincere resolution, that invariable constancy in fulfilling our engagements, of which we make profession in a treaty—is therefore to be held sacred and inviolable between the nations of the earth, whose safety and repose it secures; and if mankind be not wilfully deficient in their duty to themselves, infamy must ever be the portion of him who violates his faith. ***
"He who violates his treaties, violates at the same time the law of nations, for he disregards the faith of treaties, that faith which the law of nations declares sacred; and, so far as dependent on him, he renders it vain and ineffectual. Doubly guilty, he does an injury to his ally, and he does an injury to all nations, and inflicts a wound on the great society of mankind. ***
"On the observance and execution of treaties," said a respectable sovereign, "depends all the security which princes and States have with respect to each other, and no dependence could henceforward be placed in future conventions if the existing ones were not to be observed."
It is sometimes said, by those seeking to defend, or at least palliate, the United States Government's repeated disregard of its treaties with the Indians, that no Congress can be held responsible for the acts of the Congress preceding it, or can bind the Congress following it; or, in other words, that each Congress may, if it chooses, undo all that has been done by previous Congresses. However true this may be of some legislative acts, it is clearly not true, according to the principles of international law, of treaties.
On this point Vattel says: "Since public treaties, even those of a personal nature, concluded by a king, or by another sovereign who is invested with sufficient power, are treaties of State, and obligatory on the whole nation, real treaties, which were intended to subsist independently of the person who has concluded them, are undoubtedly binding on his successors; and the obligation which such treaties impose on the State passes successively to all her rulers as soon as they assume the public authority. The case is the same with respect to the rights acquired by those treaties. They are acquired for the State, and successively pass to her conductors."
Von Martens says: "Treaties, properly so called, are either personal or real. They are personal when their continuation in force depends on the person of the sovereign or his family, with whom they have been contracted. They are real when their duration depends on the State, independently of the person who contracts. Consequently, all treaties between republics must be real. All treaties made for a time specified or forever are real. ***
"This division is of the greatest importance, because real treaties never cease to be obligatory, except in cases where all treaties become invalid. Every successor to the sovereignty, in virtue of whatever title he may succeed, is obliged to observe them without their being renewed at his accession."
Wheaton says: "They (treaties) continue to bind the State, whatever intervening changes may take place in its internal constitution or in the persons of its rulers. The State continues the same, notwithstanding such change, and consequently the treaty relating to national objects remains in force so long as the nation exists as an independent State."
There is no disagreement among authorities on this point. It is also said by some, seeking to defend or palliate the United States Government's continuous violations of its treaties with the Indians, that the practice of all nations has been and is to abrogate a treaty whenever it saw good reason for doing so. This is true; but the treaties have been done away with in one of two ways, either by a mutual and peaceful agreement to that effect between the parties who had made it—the treaty being considered in force until the consent of both parties to its abrogation had been given—or by a distinct avowal on the part of one nation of its intention no longer to abide by it, and to take, therefore, its chances of being made war upon in consequence. Neither of these courses has been pursued by the United States Government in its treaty-breaking with the Indians.
Vattel says, on the dissolution of treaties: "Treaties may be dissolved by mutual consent at the free-will of the contracting powers."
Grotius says: "If either party violate the League, the other party is freed; because each Article of the League hath the form and virtue of a condition."
Kent says: "The violation of any one article of a treaty is a violation of the whole treaty. ***
"It is a principle of universal jurisprudence that a compact cannot be rescinded by one party only, if the other party does not consent to rescind it, and does no act to destroy it. ***
"To recommence a war by breach of the articles of peace, is deemed much more odious than to provoke a war by some new demand or aggression; for the latter is simply injustice, but in the former case the party is guilty both of perfidy and injustice."
It is also said, with unanswerable irrelevancy, by some who seek to defend or palliate the United States Government's continuous violation of its treaties with the Indians, that it was, in the first place, absurd to make treaties with them at all, to consider them in any sense as treaty-making powers or nations. The logic of this assertion, made as a justification for the breaking of several hundred treaties, concluded at different times during the last hundred years, and broken as fast as concluded, seems almost equal to that of the celebrated defence in the case of the kettle, which was cracked when it was lent, whole when returned, and, in fact, was never borrowed at all. It would be a waste of words to reason with minds that can see in this position any shelter for the United States Government against the accusation of perfidy in its treaty relations with the Indians.
The statement is undoubtedly a true one, that the Indians, having been placed in the anomalous position as tribes, of "domestic dependent nations," and as individuals, in the still more anomalous position of adult "wards," have not legally possessed the treaty-making power. Our right to put them, or to consider them to be in those anomalous positions, might be successfully disputed; but they, helpless, having accepted such positions, did, no doubt, thereby lose their right to be treated with as nations. Nevertheless, that is neither here nor there now: as soon as our Government was established, it proceeded to treat with them as nations by name and designation, and with precisely the same forms and ratifications that it used in treating with other nations; and it continued to treat with them as nations by name and designation, and with continually increasing solemnity of asseveration of good intent and good faith, for nearly a century. The robbery, the cruelty which were done under the cloak of this hundred years of treaty-making and treaty-breaking, are greater than can be told. Neither mountains nor deserts stayed them; it took two seas to set their bounds.
In 1871, Congress, either ashamed of making treaties only to break them, or grudging the time, money, and paper it wasted, passed an act to the effect that no Indian tribe should hereafter be considered as a foreign nation with whom the United States might contract by treaty. There seems to have been at the time, in the minds of the men who passed this act, a certain shadowy sense of some obligation being involved in treaties; for they added to the act a proviso that it should not be construed as invalidating any treaties already made. But this sense of obligation must have been as short-lived as shadowy, and could have had no element of shame in it, since they forthwith proceeded, unabashed, to negotiate still more treaties with Indians, and break them; for instance, the so-called "Brunot Treaty" with the Ute Indians in Colorado, and one with the Crow Indians in Montana—both made in the summer of 1873. They were called at the time "conventions" or "agreements," and not "treaties;" but the difference is only in name.
They stated, in a succession of numbered articles, promises of payment of moneys, and surrenders and cessions of land, by both parties; were to be ratified by Congress before taking effect; and were understood by the Indians agreeing to them to be as binding as if they had been called treaties. The fact that no man's sense of justice openly revolted against such subterfuges, under the name of agreements, is only to be explained by the deterioration of the sense of honor in the nation. In the days of Grotius there were men who failed to see dishonor in a trick if profit came of it, and of such he wrote in words whose truth might sting to-day as, no doubt, it stung then:
"Whereas there are many that think it superfluous to require that justice from a free people or their governors which they exact daily from private men, the ground of this error is this: because these men respect nothing in the law but the profit that ariseth from it, which in private persons, being single and unable to defend themselves, is plain and evident; but for great cities, that seem to have within themselves all things necessary for their own well-being, it doth not so plainly appear that they have any need of that virtue called justice which respects strangers."
These extracts from unquestioned authorities on international law prove that we may hold nations to standards of justice and good faith as we hold men; that the standards are the same in each case; and that a nation that steals and lies and breaks promises, will no more be respected or unpunished than a man who steals and lies and breaks promises. It is possible to go still farther than this, and to show that a nation habitually guilty of such conduct might properly be dealt with therefore by other nations, by nations in no wise suffering on account of her bad faith, except as all nations suffer when the interests of human society are injured.
"The interest of human society," says Vattel, "would authorize all the other nations to form a confederacy, in order to humble and chastise the delinquent." *** When a nation "regards no right as sacred, the safety of the human race requires that she should be repressed. To form and support an unjust pretension is not only doing an injury to the party whose interests are affected by that pretension; but to despise justice in general is doing an injury to all nations."
The history of the United States Government's repeated violations of faith with the Indians thus convicts us, as a nation, not only of having outraged the principles of justice, which are the basis of international law; and of having laid ourselves open to the accusation of both cruelty and perfidy; but of having made ourselves liable to all punishments which follow upon such sins—to arbitrary punishment at the hands of any civilized nation who might see fit to call us to account, and to that more certain natural punishment which, sooner or later, as surely comes from evil-doing as harvests come from sown seed.
To prove all this it is only necessary to study the history of any one of the Indian tribes. I propose to give in the following chapters merely outline sketches of the history of a few of them, not entering more into details than is necessary to show the repeated broken faith of the United States Government toward them. A full history of the wrongs they have suffered at the hands of the authorities, military and civil, and also of the citizens of this country, it would take years to write and volumes to hold.
There is but one hope of righting this wrong. It lies in appeal to the heart and the conscience of the American people. What the people demand, Congress will do. It has been—to our shame be it spoken—at the demand of part of the people that all these wrongs have been committed, these treaties broken, these robberies done, by the Government.
So long as there remains on our frontier one square mile of land occupied by a weak and helpless owner, there will be a strong and unscrupulous frontiersman ready to seize it, and a weak and unscrupulous politician, who can be hired for a vote or for money, to back him.
The only thing that can stay this is a mighty outspoken sentiment and purpose of the great body of the people. Right sentiment and right purpose in a Senator here and there, and a Representative here and there, are little more than straws which make momentary eddies, but do not obstruct the tide. The precedents of a century's unhindered and profitable robbery have mounted up into a very Gibraltar of defence and shelter to those who care for nothing but safety and gain. That such precedents should be held, and openly avowed as standards, is only one more infamy added to the list. Were such logic employed in the case of an individual man, how quick would all men see its enormity. Suppose that a man had had the misfortune to be born into a family whose name had been blackened by generations of criminals; that his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before them had lived in prisons, and died on scaffolds, should that man say in his soul, "Go to! What is the use? I also will commit robbery and murder, and get the same gain by it which my family must have done?" Or shall he say in his soul, "God help me! I will do what may be within the power of one man, and the compass of one generation, to atone for the wickedness, and to make clean the name of my dishonored house!"
What an opportunity for the Congress of 1880 to cover itself with a lustre of glory, as the first to cut short our nation's record of cruelties and perjuries! the first to attempt to redeem the name of the United States from the stain of a century of dishonor!""
Reference: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/50560/50560-h/50560-h.htm
Preface
Reference: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/50560/50560-h/50560-h.htm
Reference: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/50560/50560-h/50560-h.htm
Preface
"I have been requested to write a preface to this sad story of "A Century of Dishonor." I cannot refuse the request of one whose woman's heart has pleaded so eloquently for the poor Red men. The materials for her book have been taken from official documents. The sad revelation of broken faith, of violated treaties, and of inhuman deeds of violence will bring a flush of shame to the cheeks of those who love their country. They will wonder how our rulers have dared to so trifle with justice, and provoke the anger of God. Many of the stories will be new to the reader. The Indian owns no telegraph, employs no press reporter, and his side of the story is unknown to the people.
Nations, like individuals, reap exactly what they sow; they who sow robbery reap robbery. The seed-sowing of iniquity replies in a harvest of blood. The American people have accepted as truth the teaching that the Indians were a degraded, brutal race of savages, whom it was the will of God should perish at the approach of civilization. If they do not say with our Puritan fathers that these are the Hittites who are to be driven out before the saints of the Lord, they do accept the teaching that manifest destiny will drive the Indians from the earth. The inexorable has no tears or pity at the cries of anguish of the doomed race. Ahab never speaks kindly of Naboth, whom he has robbed of his vineyard. It soothes conscience to cast mud on the character of the one whom we have wronged.
The people have laid the causes of Indian wars at the door of the Indian trader, the people on the border, the Indian agents, the army, and the Department of the Interior. None of these are responsible for the Indian wars, which have cost the United States five hundred millions of dollars and tens of thousands of valuable lives. In the olden time the Indian trader was the Indian's friend. The relation was one of mutual dependence. If the trader oppressed the Indian he was in danger of losing his debt; if the Indian refused to pay his debts, the trader must leave the country. The factors and agents of the old fur companies tell us that their goods were as safe in the unguarded trading-post as in the civilized village. The pioneer settlers have had too much at stake to excite an Indian massacre, which would overwhelm their loved ones in ruin. The army are not responsible for Indian wars; they are "men under authority," who go where they are sent. The men who represent the honor of the nation have a tradition that lying is a disgrace, and that theft forfeits character. General Crook expressed the feeling of the army when he replied to a friend who said, "It is hard to go on such a campaign." "Yes, it is hard; but, sir, the hardest thing is to go and fight those whom you know are in the right." The Indian Bureau is often unable to fulfil the treaties, because Congress has failed to make the appropriations. If its agents are not men of the highest character, it is largely due to the fact that we send a man to execute this difficult trust at a remote agency, and expect him to support himself and family on $1500 a year. The Indian Bureau represents a system which is a blunder and a crime.
The Indian is the only human being within our territory who has no individual right in the soil. He is not amenable to or protected by law. The executive, the legislative, and judicial departments of the Government recognize that he has a possessory right in the soil; but his title is merged in the tribe—the man has no standing before the law. A Chinese or a Hottentot would have, but the native American is left pitiably helpless. This system grew out of our relations at the first settlement of the country. The isolated settlements along the Atlantic coast could not ask the Indians, who outnumbered them ten to one, to accept the position of wards. No wise policy was adopted, with altered circumstances, to train the Indians for citizenship. Treaties were made of the same binding force of the constitution; but these treaties were unfilled. It may be doubted whether one single treaty has ever been fulfilled as it would have been if it had been made with a foreign power. The treaty has been made as between two independent sovereigns. Sometimes each party has been ignorant of the wishes of the other; for the heads of both parties to the treaty have been on the interpreter's shoulders, and he was the owned creature of corrupt men, who desired to use the Indians as a key to unlock the nation's treasury. Pledges, solemnly made, have been shamelessly violated. The Indian has had no redress but war. In these wars ten white men were killed to one Indian, and the Indians who were killed have cost the Government a hundred thousand dollars each. Then came a new treaty, more violated faith, another war, until we have not a hundred miles between the Atlantic and Pacific which has not been the scene of an Indian massacre.
All this while Canada has had no Indian wars. Our Government has expended for the Indians a hundred dollars to their one. They recognize, as we do, that the Indian has a possessory right to the soil. They purchase this right, as we do, by treaty; but their treaties are made with the Indian subjects of Her Majesty. They set apart a permanent reservation for them; they seldom remove Indians; they select agents of high character, who receive their appointments for life; they make fewer promises, but they fulfil them; they give the Indians Christian missions, which have the hearty support of Christian people, and all their efforts are toward self-help and civilization. An incident will illustrate the two systems. The officer of the United States Army who was sent to receive Alaska from the Russian Government stopped in British Columbia. Governor Douglas had heard that an Indian had been murdered by another Indian. He visited the Indian tribe; he explained to them that the murdered man was a subject of Her Majesty; he demanded the culprit. The murderer was surrendered, was tried, was found guilty, and was hanged. On reaching Alaska the officer happened to enter the Greek church, and saw on the altar a beautiful copy of the Gospels in a costly binding studded with jewels. He called upon the Greek bishop, and said, "Your Grace, I called to say you had better remove that copy of the Gospels from the church, for it may be stolen." The bishop replied, "Why should I remove it? It was the gift of the mother of the emperor, and has lain on the altar seventy years." The officer blushed, and said, "There is no law in the Indian country, and I was afraid it might be stolen." The bishop said, "The book is in God's house, and it is His book, and I shall not take it away." The book remained. The country became ours, and the next day the Gospel was stolen.
Our Indian wars are needless and wicked. The North American Indian is the noblest type of a heathen man on the earth. He recognizes a Great Spirit; he believes in immortality; he has a quick intellect; he is a clear thinker; he is brave and fearless, and, until betrayed, he is true to his plighted faith; he has a passionate love for his children, and counts it joy to die for his people. Our most terrible wars have been with the noblest types of the Indians, and with men who had been the white man's friend. Nicolet said the Sioux were the finest type of wild men he had ever seen. Old traders say that it used to be the boast of the Sioux that they had never taken the life of a white man. Lewis and Clarke, Governor Stevens, and Colonel Steptoe bore testimony to the devoted friendship of the Nez Percés for the white man. Colonel Boone, Colonel Bent, General Harney, and others speak in the highest praise of the Cheyennes. The Navahoes were a semi-civilized people.
Our best friends have suffered more deeply from our neglect and violated faith than our most bitter foes. Peaceable Indians often say, "You leave us to suffer; if we killed your people, then you would take care of us."
Our Indian wars have not come wholly from violated faith. In time of peace it has been our policy to establish "almshouses" to train and educate savage paupers. We have purchased paint, beads, scalping-knives, to deck warriors, and have fed them in idleness at the agency. Around this agency and along the border were gathered influences to degrade the savage, and sink him to a depth his fathers had never known. It has only needed a real or a fancied wrong to have this pauperized savagery break out in deeds of blood. Under President Grant a new departure was taken. The peace policy was little more than a name. No change was made in the Indian system; no rights of property were given; no laws were passed to protect the Indians. The President did take the nomination of Indian agents from politicians, who had made the office a reward for political service. He gave the nomination of Indian agents to the executive committees of the missionary societies of the different churches. Where these Christian bodies established schools and missions, and the Government cast its influence on the side of labor, it was a success. More has been done to civilize the Indians in the past twelve years than in any period of our history. The Indian Ring has fought the new policy at every step; and yet, notwithstanding our Indian wars, our violated treaties, and our wretched system, thousands of Indians, who were poor, degraded savages, are now living as Christian, civilized men. There was a time when it seemed impossible to secure the attention of the Government to any wrongs done to the Indians: it is not so to-day. The Government does listen to the friends of the Indians, and many of the grosser forms of robbery are stopped. No permanent reform can be secured until the heart of the people is touched. In 1862 I visited Washington, to lay before the Administration the causes which had desolated our fair State with the blood of those slain by Indian massacre. After pleading in vain, and finding no redress, Secretary Stanton said to a friend, "What does the Bishop want? If he came here to tell us that our Indian system is a sink of iniquity, tell him we all know it. Tell him the United States never cures a wrong until the people demand it; and when the hearts of the people are reached the Indian will be saved." In this book the reader will find the sad story of a century—no, not the whole story, but the fragmentary story of isolated tribes. The author will have her reward if it shall aid in securing justice to a noble and a wronged race. Even with the sad experiences of the past we have not learned justice. The Cherokees and other tribes received the Indian Territory as a compensation and atonement for one of the darkest crimes ever committed by a Christian nation. That territory was conveyed to them by legislation as strong as the wit of statesmen could devise. The fathers who conveyed this territory to the Cherokees are dead. Greedy eyes covet the land. The plans are laid to wrest it from its rightful owners. If this great iniquity is consummated, these Indians declare that all hope in our justice will die out of their hearts, and that they will defend their country with their lives.
The work of reform is a difficult one; it will cost us time, effort, and money; it will demand the best thoughts of the best men in the country. We shall have to regain the confidence of our Indian wards by honest dealing and the fulfilment of our promises. Now the name of a white man is to the Indians a synonyme for "liar." Red Cloud recently paid a visit to the Black Hills, and was hospitably entertained by his white friends. In bidding them good-bye he expressed the hope that, if they did not meet again on earth, they might meet beyond the grave "in a land where white men ceased to be liars."
Dark as the history is, there is a brighter side. No missions to the heathen have been more blessed than those among the Indians. Thousands, who were once wild, painted savages, finding their greatest joy in deeds of war, are now the disciples of the Prince of Peace. There are Indian churches with Indian congregations, in which Indian clergy are telling the story of God's love in Jesus Christ our Saviour. Where once was only heard the medicine-drum and the song of the scalp-dance, there is now the bell calling Christians to prayer, and songs of praise and words of prayer go up to heaven. The Christian home, though only a log-cabin, has taken the place of the wigwam; and the poor, degraded Indian woman has been changed to the Christian wife and mother. With justice, personal rights, and the protection of law, the Gospel will do for our Red brothers what it has done for other races—give to them homes, manhood and freedom.
H. B. Whipple, Bishop of Minnesota.
New York, November 11th, 1880."
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BLACKS/AFRICAN AMERICANS
Title: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue
Author: Various
Release Date: June 29, 2008 [EBook #206]
Last Updated: January 8, 2013
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
Author: Various
Release Date: June 29, 2008 [EBook #206]
Last Updated: January 8, 2013
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
RECONSTRUCTION by Frederick Douglass
The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction.
Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands statesmanship.
Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,—a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—a strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to liberty or civilization,—an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the merest mockery of a Union,—an effort to bring under Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress. The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea,—no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature.
The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.
Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection.
One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the war.
There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher, though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may be.
Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?
It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,—poured out against slavery during thirty years,—even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.
It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire purification Congress must now address Itself, with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly upas, root and branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed. The country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas for postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the responsibility to be shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power are here commensurate with the duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony.
If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the termination of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that it must go on without his aid, and even against his machinations. The advantage of the present session over the last is immense. Where that investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked by faith, this may walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go forward, and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the country whole measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of saving the elections in a few doubtful districts. That Congress saw what was right, but distrusted the enlightenment of the loyal masses; but what was forborne in distrust of the people must now be done with a full knowledge that the people expect and require it. The members go to Washington fresh from the inspiring presence of the people. In every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power. The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and the Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously, and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed, denounced, and utterly repudiated; while those claimed by Congress have been confirmed.
Of the spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The appeal was to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal. Upon an occasion of his own selection, with the advice and approval of his astute Secretary, soon after the members of the Congress had returned to their constituents, the President quitted the executive mansion, sandwiched himself between two recognized heroes,—men whom the whole country delighted to honor,—and, with all the advantage which such company could give him, stumped the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, advocating everywhere his policy as against that of Congress. It was a strange sight, and perhaps the most disgraceful exhibition ever made by any President; but, as no evil is entirely unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious, unscrupulous, energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a political gladiator, ready for a "set-to" in any crowd,—he is beaten in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could be more complete, no condemnation could be more absolute and humiliating. Unless reopened by the sword, as recklessly threatened in some circles, this question is now closed for all time.
Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat theological question (about which so much has already been said and written), whether once in the Union means always in the Union,—agreeably to the formula, Once in grace always in grace,—it is obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand to-day, in point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten, conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. Their State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.
It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained. They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States,—where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work.
The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.
Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as identical with and inseparable from those of the negro.
The policy that emancipated and armed the negro—now seen to have been wise and proper by the dullest—was not certainly more sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro.
Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal voter in all the States.
But suffrage for the negro, while easily sustained upon abstract principles, demands consideration upon what are recognized as the urgent necessities of the case. It is a measure of relief,—a shield to break the force of a blow already descending with violence, and render it harmless. The work of destruction has already been set in motion all over the South. Peace to the country has literally meant war to the loyal men of the South, white and black; and negro suffrage is the measure to arrest and put an end to that dreadful strife.
Something then, not by way of argument, (for that has been done by Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and other able men,) but rather of statement and appeal.
For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for weal or for woe, here they must remain. Their history is parallel to that of the country; but while the history of the latter has been cheerful and bright with blessings, theirs has been heavy and dark with agonies and curses. What O'Connell said of the history of Ireland may with greater truth be said of the negro's. It may be "traced like a wounded man through a crowd, by the blood." Yet the negroes have marvellously survived all the exterminating forces of slavery, and have emerged at the end of two hundred and fifty years of bondage, not morose, misanthropic, and revengeful, but cheerful, hopeful, and forgiving. They now stand before Congress and the country, not complaining of the past, but simply asking for a better future. The spectacle of these dusky millions thus imploring, not demanding, is touching; and if American statesmen could be moved by a simple appeal to the nobler elements of human nature, if they had not fallen, seemingly, into the incurable habit of weighing and measuring every proposition of reform by some standard of profit and loss, doing wrong from choice, and right only from necessity or some urgent demand of human selfishness, it would be enough to plead for the negroes on the score of past services and sufferings. But no such appeal shall be relied on here. Hardships, services, sufferings, and sacrifices are all waived. It is true that they came to the relief of the country at the hour of its extremest need. It is true that, in many of the rebellious States, they were almost the only reliable friends the nation had throughout the whole tremendous war. It is true that, notwithstanding their alleged ignorance, they were wiser than their masters, and knew enough to be loyal, while those masters only knew enough to be rebels and traitors. It is true that they fought side by side in the loyal cause with our gallant and patriotic white soldiers, and that, but for their help,—divided as the loyal States were,—the Rebels might have succeeded in breaking up the Union, thereby entailing border wars and troubles of unknown duration and incalculable calamity. All this and more is true of these loyal negroes. Many daring exploits will be told to their credit. Impartial history will paint them as men who deserved well of their country. It will tell how they forded and swam rivers, with what consummate address they evaded the sharp-eyed Rebel pickets, how they toiled in the darkness of night through the tangled marshes of briers and thorns, barefooted and weary, running the risk of losing their lives, to warn our generals of Rebel schemes to surprise and destroy our loyal army. It will tell how these poor people, whose rights we still despised, behaved to our wounded soldiers, when found cold, hungry, and bleeding on the deserted battle-field; how they assisted our escaping prisoners from Andersonville, Belle Isle, Castle Thunder, and elsewhere, sharing with them their wretched crusts, and otherwise affording them aid and comfort; how they promptly responded to the trumpet call for their services, fighting against a foe that denied them the rights of civilized warfare, and for a government which was without the courage to assert those rights and avenge their violation in their behalf; with what gallantry they flung themselves upon Rebel fortifications, meeting death as fearlessly as any other troops in the service. But upon none of these things is reliance placed. These facts speak to the better dispositions of the human heart; but they seem of little weight with the opponents of impartial suffrage.
It is true that a strong plea for equal suffrage might be addressed to the national sense of honor. Something, too, might be said of national gratitude. A nation might well hesitate before the temptation to betray its allies. There is something immeasurably mean, to say nothing of the cruelty, in placing the loyal negroes of the South under the political power of their Rebel masters. To make peace with our enemies is all well enough; but to prefer our enemies and sacrifice our friends,—to exalt our enemies and cast down our friends,—to clothe our enemies, who sought the destruction of the government, with all political power, and leave our friends powerless in their hands,—is an act which need not be characterized here. We asked the negroes to espouse our cause, to be our friends, to fight for us, and against their masters; and now, after they have done all that we asked them to do,—helped us to conquer their masters, and thereby directed toward themselves the furious hate of the vanquished,—it is proposed in some quarters to turn them over to the political control of the common enemy of the government and of the negro. But of this let nothing be said in this place. Waiving humanity, national honor, the claims of gratitude, the precious satisfaction arising from deeds of charity and justice to the weak and defenceless,—the appeal for impartial suffrage addresses itself with great pertinency to the darkest, coldest, and flintiest side of the human heart, and would wring righteousness from the unfeeling calculations of human selfishness.
For in respect to this grand measure it is the good fortune of the negro that enlightened selfishness, not less than justice, fights on his side. National interest and national duty, if elsewhere separated, are firmly united here. The American people can, perhaps, afford to brave the censure of surrounding nations for the manifest injustice and meanness of excluding its faithful black soldiers from the ballot-box, but it cannot afford to allow the moral and mental energies of rapidly increasing millions to be consigned to hopeless degradation.
Strong as we are, we need the energy that slumbers in the black man's arm to make us stronger. We want no longer any heavy-footed, melancholy service from the negro. We want the cheerful activity of the quickened manhood of these sable millions. Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom such a class may exist. Exclude the negroes as a class from political rights,—teach them that the high and manly privilege of suffrage is to be enjoyed by white citizens only,—that they may bear the burdens of the state, but that they are to have no part in its direction or its honors,—and you at once deprive them of one of the main incentives to manly character and patriotic devotion to the interests of the government; in a word, you stamp them as a degraded caste,—you teach them to despise themselves, and all others to despise them. Men are so constituted that they largely derive their ideas of their abilities and their possibilities from the settled judgments of their fellow-men, and especially from such as they read in the institutions under which they live. If these bless them, they are blest indeed; but if these blast them, they are blasted indeed. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you give him at once a powerful motive for all noble exertion, and make him a man among men. A character is demanded of him, and here as elsewhere demand favors supply. It is nothing against this reasoning that all men who vote are not good men or good citizens. It is enough that the possession and exercise of the elective franchise is in itself an appeal to the nobler elements of manhood, and imposes education as essential to the safety of society.
To appreciate the full force of this argument, it must be observed, that disfranchisement in a republican government based upon the idea of human equality and universal suffrage, is a very different thing from disfranchisement in governments based upon the idea of the divine right of kings, or the entire subjugation of the masses. Masses of men can take care of themselves. Besides, the disabilities imposed upon all are necessarily without that bitter and stinging element of invidiousness which attaches to disfranchisement in a republic. What is common to all works no special sense of degradation to any. But in a country like ours, where men of all nations, kindred, and tongues are freely enfranchised, and allowed to vote, to say to the negro, You shall not vote, is to deal his manhood a staggering blow, and to burn into his soul a bitter and goading sense of wrong, or else work in him a stupid indifference to all the elements of a manly character. As a nation, we cannot afford to have amongst us either this indifference and stupidity, or that burning sense of wrong. These sable millions are too powerful to be allowed to remain either indifferent or discontented. Enfranchise them, and they become self-respecting and country-loving citizens. Disfranchise them, and the mark of Cain is set upon them less mercifully than upon the first murderer, for no man was to hurt him. But this mark of inferiority—all the more palpable because of a difference of color—not only dooms the negro to be a vagabond, but makes him the prey of insult and outrage everywhere. While nothing may be urged here as to the past services of the negro, it is quite within the line of this appeal to remind the nation of the possibility that a time may come when the services of the negro may be a second time required. History is said to repeat itself, and, if so, having wanted the negro once, we may want him again. Can that statesmanship be wise which would leave the negro good ground to hesitate, when the exigencies of the country required his prompt assistance? Can that be sound statesmanship which leaves millions of men in gloomy discontent, and possibly in a state of alienation in the day of national trouble? Was not the nation stronger when two hundred thousand sable soldiers were hurled against the Rebel fortifications, than it would have been without them? Arming the negro was an urgent military necessity three years ago,—are we sure that another quite as pressing may not await us? Casting aside all thought of justice and magnanimity, is it wise to impose upon the negro all the burdens involved in sustaining government against foes within and foes without, to make him equal sharer in all sacrifices for the public good, to tax him in peace and conscript him in war, and then coldly exclude him from the ballot-box?
Look across the sea. Is Ireland, in her present condition, fretful, discontented, compelled to support an establishment in which she does not believe, and which the vast majority of her people abhor, a source of power or of weakness to Great Britain? Is not Austria wise in removing all ground of complaint against her on the part of Hungary? And does not the Emperor of Russia act wisely, as well as generously, when he not only breaks up the bondage of the serf, but extends him all the advantages of Russian citizenship? Is the present movement in England in favor of manhood suffrage—for the purpose of bringing four millions of British subjects into full sympathy and co-operation with the British government—a wise and humane movement, or otherwise? Is the existence of a rebellious element in our borders—which New Orleans, Memphis, and Texas show to be only disarmed, but at heart as malignant as ever, only waiting for an opportunity to reassert itself with fire and sword—a reason for leaving four millions of the nation's truest friends with just cause of complaint against the Federal government? If the doctrine that taxation should go hand in hand with representation can be appealed to in behalf of recent traitors and rebels, may it not properly be asserted in behalf of a people who have ever been loyal and faithful to the government? The answers to these questions are too obvious to require statement. Disguise it as we may, we are still a divided nation. The Rebel States have still an anti-national policy. Massachusetts and South Carolina may draw tears from the eyes of our tender-hearted President by walking arm in arm into his Philadelphia Convention, but a citizen of Massachusetts is still an alien in the Palmetto State. There is that, all over the South, which frightens Yankee industry, capital, and skill from its borders. We have crushed the Rebellion, but not its hopes or its malign purposes. The South fought for perfect and permanent control over the Southern laborer. It was a war of the rich against the poor. They who waged it had no objection to the government, while they could use it as a means of confirming their power over the laborer. They fought the government, not because they hated the government as such, but because they found it, as they thought, in the way between them and their one grand purpose of rendering permanent and indestructible their authority and power over the Southern laborer. Though the battle is for the present lost, the hope of gaining this object still exists, and pervades the whole South with a feverish excitement. We have thus far only gained a Union without unity, marriage without love, victory without peace. The hope of gaining by politics what they lost by the sword, is the secret of all this Southern unrest; and that hope must be extinguished before national ideas and objects can take full possession of the Southern mind. There is but one safe and constitutional way to banish that mischievous hope from the South, and that is by lifting the laborer beyond the unfriendly political designs of his former master. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you at once destroy the purely sectional policy, and wheel the Southern States into line with national interests and national objects. The last and shrewdest turn of Southern politics is a recognition of the necessity of getting into Congress immediately, and at any price. The South will comply with any conditions but suffrage for the negro. It will swallow all the unconstitutional test oaths, repeal all the ordinances of Secession, repudiate the Rebel debt, promise to pay the debt incurred in conquering its people, pass all the constitutional amendments, if only it can have the negro left under its political control. The proposition is as modest as that made on the mountain: "All these things will I give unto thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me."
But why are the Southerners so willing to make these sacrifices? The answer plainly is, they see in this policy the only hope of saving something of their old sectional peculiarities and power. Once firmly seated in Congress, their alliance with Northern Democrats re-established, their States restored to their former position inside the Union, they can easily find means of keeping the Federal government entirely too busy with other important matters to pay much attention to the local affairs of the Southern States. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. Does any sane man doubt for a moment that the men who followed Jefferson Davis through the late terrible Rebellion, often marching barefooted and hungry, naked and penniless, and who now only profess an enforced loyalty, would plunge this country into a foreign war to-day, if they could thereby gain their coveted independence, and their still more coveted mastery over the negroes? Plainly enough, the peace not less than the prosperity of this country is involved in the great measure of impartial suffrage. King Cotton is deposed, but only deposed, and is ready to-day to reassert all his ancient pretensions upon the first favorable opportunity. Foreign countries abound with his agents. They are able, vigilant, devoted. The young men of the South burn with the desire to regain what they call the lost cause; the women are noisily malignant towards the Federal government. In fact, all the elements of treason and rebellion are there under the thinnest disguise which necessity can impose.
What, then, is the work before Congress? It is to save the people of the South from themselves, and the nation from detriment on their account. Congress must supplant the evident sectional tendencies of the South by national dispositions and tendencies. It must cause national ideas and objects to take the lead and control the politics of those States. It must cease to recognize the old slave-masters as the only competent persons to rule the South. In a word, it must enfranchise the negro, and by means of the loyal negroes and the loyal white men of the South build up a national party there, and in time bridge the chasm between North and South, so that our country may have a common liberty and a common civilization. The new wine must be put into new bottles. The lamb may not be trusted with the wolf. Loyalty is hardly safe with traitors.
Statesmen of America! beware what you do. The ploughshare of rebellion has gone through the land beam-deep. The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder to-day at the harvest of blood sown in the spring-time of the Republic by your patriot fathers. The principle of slavery, which they tolerated under the erroneous impression that it would soon die out, became at last the dominant principle and power at the South. It early mastered the Constitution, became superior to the Union, and enthroned itself above the law.
Freedom of speech and of the press it slowly but successfully banished from the South, dictated its own code of honor and manners to the nation, brandished the bludgeon and the bowie-knife over Congressional debate, sapped the foundations of loyalty, dried up the springs of patriotism, blotted out the testimonies of the fathers against oppression, padlocked the pulpit, expelled liberty from its literature, invented nonsensical theories about master-races and slave-races of men, and in due season produced a Rebellion fierce, foul, and bloody.
This evil principle again seeks admission into our body politic. It comes now in shape of a denial of political rights to four million loyal colored people. The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights. This ends the case. Statesmen, beware what you do. The destiny of unborn and unnumbered generations is in your hands. Will you repeat the mistake of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? or will you profit by the blood-bought wisdom all round you, and forever expel every vestige of the old abomination from our national borders? As you members of the Thirty-ninth Congress decide, will the country be peaceful, united, and happy, or troubled, divided, and miserable.
The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction.
Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands statesmanship.
Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,—a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—a strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to liberty or civilization,—an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the merest mockery of a Union,—an effort to bring under Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress. The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea,—no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature.
The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.
Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection.
One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the war.
There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher, though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may be.
Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?
It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,—poured out against slavery during thirty years,—even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.
It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire purification Congress must now address Itself, with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly upas, root and branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed. The country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas for postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the responsibility to be shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power are here commensurate with the duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony.
If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the termination of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that it must go on without his aid, and even against his machinations. The advantage of the present session over the last is immense. Where that investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked by faith, this may walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go forward, and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the country whole measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of saving the elections in a few doubtful districts. That Congress saw what was right, but distrusted the enlightenment of the loyal masses; but what was forborne in distrust of the people must now be done with a full knowledge that the people expect and require it. The members go to Washington fresh from the inspiring presence of the people. In every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power. The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and the Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously, and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed, denounced, and utterly repudiated; while those claimed by Congress have been confirmed.
Of the spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The appeal was to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal. Upon an occasion of his own selection, with the advice and approval of his astute Secretary, soon after the members of the Congress had returned to their constituents, the President quitted the executive mansion, sandwiched himself between two recognized heroes,—men whom the whole country delighted to honor,—and, with all the advantage which such company could give him, stumped the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, advocating everywhere his policy as against that of Congress. It was a strange sight, and perhaps the most disgraceful exhibition ever made by any President; but, as no evil is entirely unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious, unscrupulous, energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a political gladiator, ready for a "set-to" in any crowd,—he is beaten in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could be more complete, no condemnation could be more absolute and humiliating. Unless reopened by the sword, as recklessly threatened in some circles, this question is now closed for all time.
Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat theological question (about which so much has already been said and written), whether once in the Union means always in the Union,—agreeably to the formula, Once in grace always in grace,—it is obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand to-day, in point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten, conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. Their State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.
It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained. They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States,—where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work.
The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.
Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as identical with and inseparable from those of the negro.
The policy that emancipated and armed the negro—now seen to have been wise and proper by the dullest—was not certainly more sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro.
Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal voter in all the States.
AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE by Frederick Douglas
A very limited statement of the argument for impartial suffrage, and for including the negro in the body politic, would require more space than can be reasonably asked here. It is supported by reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous as the wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal in the world. His right to a participation in the production and operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education. It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he shall not share in the making and directing of the government under which he lives, than to say that he shall not acquire property and education. The fundamental and unanswerable argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the negro is found in the undisputed fact of his manhood. He is a man, and by every fact and argument by which any man can sustain his right to vote, the negro can sustain his right equally. It is plain that, if the right belongs to any, it belongs to all. The doctrine that some men have no rights that others are bound to respect, is a doctrine which we must banish as we have banished slavery, from which it emanated. If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The result is a war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human relations.But suffrage for the negro, while easily sustained upon abstract principles, demands consideration upon what are recognized as the urgent necessities of the case. It is a measure of relief,—a shield to break the force of a blow already descending with violence, and render it harmless. The work of destruction has already been set in motion all over the South. Peace to the country has literally meant war to the loyal men of the South, white and black; and negro suffrage is the measure to arrest and put an end to that dreadful strife.
Something then, not by way of argument, (for that has been done by Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and other able men,) but rather of statement and appeal.
For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for weal or for woe, here they must remain. Their history is parallel to that of the country; but while the history of the latter has been cheerful and bright with blessings, theirs has been heavy and dark with agonies and curses. What O'Connell said of the history of Ireland may with greater truth be said of the negro's. It may be "traced like a wounded man through a crowd, by the blood." Yet the negroes have marvellously survived all the exterminating forces of slavery, and have emerged at the end of two hundred and fifty years of bondage, not morose, misanthropic, and revengeful, but cheerful, hopeful, and forgiving. They now stand before Congress and the country, not complaining of the past, but simply asking for a better future. The spectacle of these dusky millions thus imploring, not demanding, is touching; and if American statesmen could be moved by a simple appeal to the nobler elements of human nature, if they had not fallen, seemingly, into the incurable habit of weighing and measuring every proposition of reform by some standard of profit and loss, doing wrong from choice, and right only from necessity or some urgent demand of human selfishness, it would be enough to plead for the negroes on the score of past services and sufferings. But no such appeal shall be relied on here. Hardships, services, sufferings, and sacrifices are all waived. It is true that they came to the relief of the country at the hour of its extremest need. It is true that, in many of the rebellious States, they were almost the only reliable friends the nation had throughout the whole tremendous war. It is true that, notwithstanding their alleged ignorance, they were wiser than their masters, and knew enough to be loyal, while those masters only knew enough to be rebels and traitors. It is true that they fought side by side in the loyal cause with our gallant and patriotic white soldiers, and that, but for their help,—divided as the loyal States were,—the Rebels might have succeeded in breaking up the Union, thereby entailing border wars and troubles of unknown duration and incalculable calamity. All this and more is true of these loyal negroes. Many daring exploits will be told to their credit. Impartial history will paint them as men who deserved well of their country. It will tell how they forded and swam rivers, with what consummate address they evaded the sharp-eyed Rebel pickets, how they toiled in the darkness of night through the tangled marshes of briers and thorns, barefooted and weary, running the risk of losing their lives, to warn our generals of Rebel schemes to surprise and destroy our loyal army. It will tell how these poor people, whose rights we still despised, behaved to our wounded soldiers, when found cold, hungry, and bleeding on the deserted battle-field; how they assisted our escaping prisoners from Andersonville, Belle Isle, Castle Thunder, and elsewhere, sharing with them their wretched crusts, and otherwise affording them aid and comfort; how they promptly responded to the trumpet call for their services, fighting against a foe that denied them the rights of civilized warfare, and for a government which was without the courage to assert those rights and avenge their violation in their behalf; with what gallantry they flung themselves upon Rebel fortifications, meeting death as fearlessly as any other troops in the service. But upon none of these things is reliance placed. These facts speak to the better dispositions of the human heart; but they seem of little weight with the opponents of impartial suffrage.
It is true that a strong plea for equal suffrage might be addressed to the national sense of honor. Something, too, might be said of national gratitude. A nation might well hesitate before the temptation to betray its allies. There is something immeasurably mean, to say nothing of the cruelty, in placing the loyal negroes of the South under the political power of their Rebel masters. To make peace with our enemies is all well enough; but to prefer our enemies and sacrifice our friends,—to exalt our enemies and cast down our friends,—to clothe our enemies, who sought the destruction of the government, with all political power, and leave our friends powerless in their hands,—is an act which need not be characterized here. We asked the negroes to espouse our cause, to be our friends, to fight for us, and against their masters; and now, after they have done all that we asked them to do,—helped us to conquer their masters, and thereby directed toward themselves the furious hate of the vanquished,—it is proposed in some quarters to turn them over to the political control of the common enemy of the government and of the negro. But of this let nothing be said in this place. Waiving humanity, national honor, the claims of gratitude, the precious satisfaction arising from deeds of charity and justice to the weak and defenceless,—the appeal for impartial suffrage addresses itself with great pertinency to the darkest, coldest, and flintiest side of the human heart, and would wring righteousness from the unfeeling calculations of human selfishness.
For in respect to this grand measure it is the good fortune of the negro that enlightened selfishness, not less than justice, fights on his side. National interest and national duty, if elsewhere separated, are firmly united here. The American people can, perhaps, afford to brave the censure of surrounding nations for the manifest injustice and meanness of excluding its faithful black soldiers from the ballot-box, but it cannot afford to allow the moral and mental energies of rapidly increasing millions to be consigned to hopeless degradation.
Strong as we are, we need the energy that slumbers in the black man's arm to make us stronger. We want no longer any heavy-footed, melancholy service from the negro. We want the cheerful activity of the quickened manhood of these sable millions. Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom such a class may exist. Exclude the negroes as a class from political rights,—teach them that the high and manly privilege of suffrage is to be enjoyed by white citizens only,—that they may bear the burdens of the state, but that they are to have no part in its direction or its honors,—and you at once deprive them of one of the main incentives to manly character and patriotic devotion to the interests of the government; in a word, you stamp them as a degraded caste,—you teach them to despise themselves, and all others to despise them. Men are so constituted that they largely derive their ideas of their abilities and their possibilities from the settled judgments of their fellow-men, and especially from such as they read in the institutions under which they live. If these bless them, they are blest indeed; but if these blast them, they are blasted indeed. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you give him at once a powerful motive for all noble exertion, and make him a man among men. A character is demanded of him, and here as elsewhere demand favors supply. It is nothing against this reasoning that all men who vote are not good men or good citizens. It is enough that the possession and exercise of the elective franchise is in itself an appeal to the nobler elements of manhood, and imposes education as essential to the safety of society.
To appreciate the full force of this argument, it must be observed, that disfranchisement in a republican government based upon the idea of human equality and universal suffrage, is a very different thing from disfranchisement in governments based upon the idea of the divine right of kings, or the entire subjugation of the masses. Masses of men can take care of themselves. Besides, the disabilities imposed upon all are necessarily without that bitter and stinging element of invidiousness which attaches to disfranchisement in a republic. What is common to all works no special sense of degradation to any. But in a country like ours, where men of all nations, kindred, and tongues are freely enfranchised, and allowed to vote, to say to the negro, You shall not vote, is to deal his manhood a staggering blow, and to burn into his soul a bitter and goading sense of wrong, or else work in him a stupid indifference to all the elements of a manly character. As a nation, we cannot afford to have amongst us either this indifference and stupidity, or that burning sense of wrong. These sable millions are too powerful to be allowed to remain either indifferent or discontented. Enfranchise them, and they become self-respecting and country-loving citizens. Disfranchise them, and the mark of Cain is set upon them less mercifully than upon the first murderer, for no man was to hurt him. But this mark of inferiority—all the more palpable because of a difference of color—not only dooms the negro to be a vagabond, but makes him the prey of insult and outrage everywhere. While nothing may be urged here as to the past services of the negro, it is quite within the line of this appeal to remind the nation of the possibility that a time may come when the services of the negro may be a second time required. History is said to repeat itself, and, if so, having wanted the negro once, we may want him again. Can that statesmanship be wise which would leave the negro good ground to hesitate, when the exigencies of the country required his prompt assistance? Can that be sound statesmanship which leaves millions of men in gloomy discontent, and possibly in a state of alienation in the day of national trouble? Was not the nation stronger when two hundred thousand sable soldiers were hurled against the Rebel fortifications, than it would have been without them? Arming the negro was an urgent military necessity three years ago,—are we sure that another quite as pressing may not await us? Casting aside all thought of justice and magnanimity, is it wise to impose upon the negro all the burdens involved in sustaining government against foes within and foes without, to make him equal sharer in all sacrifices for the public good, to tax him in peace and conscript him in war, and then coldly exclude him from the ballot-box?
Look across the sea. Is Ireland, in her present condition, fretful, discontented, compelled to support an establishment in which she does not believe, and which the vast majority of her people abhor, a source of power or of weakness to Great Britain? Is not Austria wise in removing all ground of complaint against her on the part of Hungary? And does not the Emperor of Russia act wisely, as well as generously, when he not only breaks up the bondage of the serf, but extends him all the advantages of Russian citizenship? Is the present movement in England in favor of manhood suffrage—for the purpose of bringing four millions of British subjects into full sympathy and co-operation with the British government—a wise and humane movement, or otherwise? Is the existence of a rebellious element in our borders—which New Orleans, Memphis, and Texas show to be only disarmed, but at heart as malignant as ever, only waiting for an opportunity to reassert itself with fire and sword—a reason for leaving four millions of the nation's truest friends with just cause of complaint against the Federal government? If the doctrine that taxation should go hand in hand with representation can be appealed to in behalf of recent traitors and rebels, may it not properly be asserted in behalf of a people who have ever been loyal and faithful to the government? The answers to these questions are too obvious to require statement. Disguise it as we may, we are still a divided nation. The Rebel States have still an anti-national policy. Massachusetts and South Carolina may draw tears from the eyes of our tender-hearted President by walking arm in arm into his Philadelphia Convention, but a citizen of Massachusetts is still an alien in the Palmetto State. There is that, all over the South, which frightens Yankee industry, capital, and skill from its borders. We have crushed the Rebellion, but not its hopes or its malign purposes. The South fought for perfect and permanent control over the Southern laborer. It was a war of the rich against the poor. They who waged it had no objection to the government, while they could use it as a means of confirming their power over the laborer. They fought the government, not because they hated the government as such, but because they found it, as they thought, in the way between them and their one grand purpose of rendering permanent and indestructible their authority and power over the Southern laborer. Though the battle is for the present lost, the hope of gaining this object still exists, and pervades the whole South with a feverish excitement. We have thus far only gained a Union without unity, marriage without love, victory without peace. The hope of gaining by politics what they lost by the sword, is the secret of all this Southern unrest; and that hope must be extinguished before national ideas and objects can take full possession of the Southern mind. There is but one safe and constitutional way to banish that mischievous hope from the South, and that is by lifting the laborer beyond the unfriendly political designs of his former master. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you at once destroy the purely sectional policy, and wheel the Southern States into line with national interests and national objects. The last and shrewdest turn of Southern politics is a recognition of the necessity of getting into Congress immediately, and at any price. The South will comply with any conditions but suffrage for the negro. It will swallow all the unconstitutional test oaths, repeal all the ordinances of Secession, repudiate the Rebel debt, promise to pay the debt incurred in conquering its people, pass all the constitutional amendments, if only it can have the negro left under its political control. The proposition is as modest as that made on the mountain: "All these things will I give unto thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me."
But why are the Southerners so willing to make these sacrifices? The answer plainly is, they see in this policy the only hope of saving something of their old sectional peculiarities and power. Once firmly seated in Congress, their alliance with Northern Democrats re-established, their States restored to their former position inside the Union, they can easily find means of keeping the Federal government entirely too busy with other important matters to pay much attention to the local affairs of the Southern States. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. Does any sane man doubt for a moment that the men who followed Jefferson Davis through the late terrible Rebellion, often marching barefooted and hungry, naked and penniless, and who now only profess an enforced loyalty, would plunge this country into a foreign war to-day, if they could thereby gain their coveted independence, and their still more coveted mastery over the negroes? Plainly enough, the peace not less than the prosperity of this country is involved in the great measure of impartial suffrage. King Cotton is deposed, but only deposed, and is ready to-day to reassert all his ancient pretensions upon the first favorable opportunity. Foreign countries abound with his agents. They are able, vigilant, devoted. The young men of the South burn with the desire to regain what they call the lost cause; the women are noisily malignant towards the Federal government. In fact, all the elements of treason and rebellion are there under the thinnest disguise which necessity can impose.
What, then, is the work before Congress? It is to save the people of the South from themselves, and the nation from detriment on their account. Congress must supplant the evident sectional tendencies of the South by national dispositions and tendencies. It must cause national ideas and objects to take the lead and control the politics of those States. It must cease to recognize the old slave-masters as the only competent persons to rule the South. In a word, it must enfranchise the negro, and by means of the loyal negroes and the loyal white men of the South build up a national party there, and in time bridge the chasm between North and South, so that our country may have a common liberty and a common civilization. The new wine must be put into new bottles. The lamb may not be trusted with the wolf. Loyalty is hardly safe with traitors.
Statesmen of America! beware what you do. The ploughshare of rebellion has gone through the land beam-deep. The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder to-day at the harvest of blood sown in the spring-time of the Republic by your patriot fathers. The principle of slavery, which they tolerated under the erroneous impression that it would soon die out, became at last the dominant principle and power at the South. It early mastered the Constitution, became superior to the Union, and enthroned itself above the law.
Freedom of speech and of the press it slowly but successfully banished from the South, dictated its own code of honor and manners to the nation, brandished the bludgeon and the bowie-knife over Congressional debate, sapped the foundations of loyalty, dried up the springs of patriotism, blotted out the testimonies of the fathers against oppression, padlocked the pulpit, expelled liberty from its literature, invented nonsensical theories about master-races and slave-races of men, and in due season produced a Rebellion fierce, foul, and bloody.
This evil principle again seeks admission into our body politic. It comes now in shape of a denial of political rights to four million loyal colored people. The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights. This ends the case. Statesmen, beware what you do. The destiny of unborn and unnumbered generations is in your hands. Will you repeat the mistake of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? or will you profit by the blood-bought wisdom all round you, and forever expel every vestige of the old abomination from our national borders? As you members of the Thirty-ninth Congress decide, will the country be peaceful, united, and happy, or troubled, divided, and miserable.
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HAWAIIANS/KANAKA MAOLI
Darkness over Hawaii: The Annexation Myth Is the Greatest Obstacle to Progress
Williamson Chang*
I. INTRODUCTION: THE MYTH THAT HAWAI I WAS ANNEXED BY THE UNITED STATES ................................................................................... 71 II. THE GREAT DEBATE TO SAVE THE OLDER AMERICA—THE ATTEMPT TO BLOCK ANNEXATION ..................................................................... 75 A. Justice Scalia on the Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands ......... 76 B. Senators who Opposed Annexation: The Great Debate of 1898 78 C. The 1988 Legal Opinion of the Department of Justice: Constitutionality ......................................................................... 83 III. NO LEGISLATIVE HISTORY SUPPORTING THE CAPACITY OF THE JOINT RESOLUTION ....................................................................................... 85 IV. EVIDENCE OF THE FAILURE OF THE MYTH OF ANNEXATION-THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING THE BOUNDARIES OF THE STATE OF HAWAII .. 90 A. The Trail of Deception .............................................................. 102 B. The Failure of State and Federal Courts to examine Subject Matter Jurisdiction: The Triumph of the Myth ......................... 106 C. Testing Subject Matter Jurisdiction .......................................... 108 D. The New History: No to Federal Recognition ........................... 110 V. CONCLUSION .....................................................................................112
ABSTRACT
To: Delegates to the Hawaiian Convention to Establish a Governing Entity
Before moving ahead, Native Hawaiians must study and learn about the various forms of government throughout the world. Others around us know little about our real history. We, too, may not know our full history. We must gather more knowledge before making the momentous decisions which are the ostensible objectives of this convention. Justice Scalia, an extremely educated and esteemed constitutional scholar is an example of how little the world knows about the history of Hawai i. Recent remarks by Justice Scalia reveal the extent and
*Professor of Law, University of Hawaii at M noa, William S. Richardson School of Law. The author wishes to thank Anthony Makana Paris, Class of 2016 and Ty Aki, College of Education for their work and support in the development of this article.”
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consequences of the campaign of deception asserting that Hawai i was acquired by a joint resolution. This claim is not only false. It is impossible. The inability of the Joint Resolution to acquire the territory of the sovereign nation of Hawai i was emphatically pointed out during the Senate debate on the Joint Resolution in the summer of 1898. Justice Scalia is not the only one deceived. The Hawai i Supreme Court, in a 2013 ruling on the effects of annexation, blithely ignored the most basic of all state laws—those describing the boundaries of Hawai i. Truth-telling through re-education of Native Hawaiians—and the rest of the world—is just beginning. One must not underestimate the tremendous need for knowledge that must precede such an enormous task as nationbuilding Whether one supports restoration of the Kingdom or Tribal recognition, what Hawaiians need now is more scholarship about the world—particularly as to the world of newly emerging sovereign states and the history of decolonization. We should not let the current United States administration in Washington push us into tribal status. The path we take must be fully informed. Native Hawaiians must fully comprehend all the advantages and disadvantages of Federal Recognition as a Tribe. I. INTRODUCTION: THE MYTH THAT HAWAI I WAS ANNEXED BY THE UNITED STATES
The world, particularly the United States of America, is deeply ignorant about the history of Hawai i. In 1897, the U.S. failed to ratify a treaty to acquire Hawai i.1 A year later, the U.S. turned to legislation, a Joint Resolution of Congress, to annex Hawai i.2 There is a pervasive belief among Americans that Hawai i was acquired by this joint resolution of Congress in 1898, and thus is presently the territory [and a State] of the U.S. This is the official view of the U.S. with respect to the status of Hawai i.3 Based on this claim, the U.S. exercises sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Hawaiian Islands as American territory.
1 WILLIAM ADAM RUSS, JR., THE HAWAIIAN REPUBLIC (1894-98) AND ITS STRUGGLE TO WIN ANNEXATION 178-227 (1961). 2 See Joint Resolution to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (1898), available at www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=54. 3 The United States Department of State, Office of the Historian states the following about the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands: [“officially declares that Hawaii was acquired by a joint resolution.”] [replace starting with the word “states”][delete colon]
The McKinley Administration also used the war as a pretext to annex the independent state of Hawaii. In 1893, a group of Hawaii-based planters and businessmen led a coup against Queen Liliuokalani and established a new government. They promptly sought annexation by the United States, but President Grover Cleveland rejected their
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This paper will show that these claims are false. Since 1898, the governments of the U.S. and the State of Hawai i have deliberately misled the people of Hawai i, the U.S., and the world. Current scholarship in Hawai i, is proving these claims false.4 Yet, the grip of a century of deception, denationalization, and deliberate ignorance of the obvious reaches far and deep into American and Hawaiian society. The destruction of this falsehood is the most important next step for Native Hawaiians. Whether they seek restoration of the Kingdom of Hawai i or Recognition as a Federal Indian Tribe, Native Hawaiians must learn the truth about Annexation. Annexation was strongly opposed in 1898 during the Senate debate.5 That debate came to be known as the
requests. In 1898, however, President McKinley and the American public were more favorably disposed toward acquiring the islands. Supporters of annexation argued that Hawaii was vital to the U.S. economy, that it would serve as a strategic base that could help protect U.S. interests in Asia, and that other nations were intent on taking over the islands if the United States did not. At McKinley’s request, a joint resolution of Congress made Hawaii a U.S. territory on August 12, 1898.
See United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones, Milestones: 1866–1898 The Spanish-American War, 1898, http://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/spanish-american-war [Last Visited February 22, 2015 1:30 PM HST]. It should be noted that the website describing the Annexation of Hawaii was taken down in the fall of 2014 and replaced with the following notice to the public. This need for a revision of the history of Hawaii by the Official Historian parallels the emerging scholarship as presented by this article.
Notice to readers: This article has been removed pending review to ensure it meets our standards for accuracy and clarity. The revised article will be posted as soon as it is ready. In the meantime, we apologize for any inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience.
United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones, Milestones: 1866–1898 Annexation of Hawaii, 1898, http://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/hawaii. [Last Visited February 22, 2015 1:25 PM HST] 4 See, e.g., THOMAS J. OSBORNE, ANNEXATION HAWAII: FIGHTING AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, (1998); HAUNANI-KAY TRASK, FROM A NATIVE DAUGHTER: COLONIALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY IN HAWAI I (1999); HAUNANI-KAY TRASK: WE ARE NOT HAPPY NATIVES (2001); KAMANAMAIKALANI BEAMER, NO MAKOU KA MANA: LIBERATING THE NATION (2014); Williamson B.C. Chang, Federal Jurisdiction, 16 GOLDEN GATE U. L. REV. (1986); KEANU SAI, UA MAU KE EA-SOVEREIGNTY ENDURES: AN OVERVIEW OF THE POLITICAL AND LEGAL HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS (2011); Keanu Sai, American Occupation of the Hawaiian State: A Century Unchecked, HAW. J. OF LAW AND POL. (2004). 5 The best source showing American opposition to annexation can be found in the Senate Debates themselves. See 31 Congressional Record pages 6141 to 6710 55th Cong. 2nd Sess. which would include citations to newspapers as well as the speeches of Senators. See the following as generally examining the debate over Hawaii and the global expansion of the United States in 1898: BARBARA W. TUCHMAN, THE PROUD TOWER: A
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“Great Debate to Save the Older America.”6 Yet, those American voices of opposition in 1898 have long been forgotten. Despite being such a major event, the debate over annexation, and the views of those who stood in opposition, have virtually disappeared from American history.7
PORTRAIT OF THE WORLD BEFORE THE WAR, 1890-1914 (1966); ROBERT L. BEISNER, TWELVE AGAINST EMPIRE: THE ANTI-IMPERIALISTS, 1898-1900 (1968); WALTER LAFEBER, THE NEW EMPIRE: AN INTERPRETATION OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 1860-1898, (1998); DAVID TRAXEL, 1898: THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY (1999); WHITNEY T. PERKINS, DENIAL OF EMPIRE: THE UNITED STATES AND ITS DEPENDENCIES (1962); THOMAS J. OSBORNE, ANNEXATION HAWAII: FIGHTING AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, (1998); STANLEY KARNOW, IN OUR IMAGE: AMERICA’S EMPIRE IN THE PHILIPPINES (1989); HENRY GRAFFE, ED., AMERICAN IMPERIALISM AND THE PHILIPPINE INSURRECTION (1969); MARGARET LEECH, IN THE DAYS OF MCKINLEY (1959); H. WAYNE MORGAN, WILLIAM MCKINLEY AND HIS AMERICA (1963); HOWARD BEALE, THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE RISE OF AMERICA TO WORLD POWER (1956); ERNEST MAY, IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY: THE EMERGENCE OF AMERICA AS A GREAT POWER (1961); FREDERICK MERCK, MANIFEST DESTINY AND MISSION IN AMERICAN HISTORY: A NEW INTERPRETATION (1963); RICHARD HOFSTADTER, MANIFEST DESTINY AND THE PHILIPPINES, in AMERICA IN CRISIS (Daniel Aron, ed., 1952); FRANK FRIEDEL, THE SPLENDID LITTLE WAR (1958); WILLIAM A. RUSS, JR., THE HAWAIIAN REPUBLIC (1894-98): AND ITS STRUGGLE TO WIN ANNEXATION (1961); AND RICHARD FRANKLIN PETTIGREW, THE COURSE OF EMPIRE: AN OFFICIAL RECORD (1920). 6 “The debate in Congress over the joint resolution was, says Dennett, ‘One of the greatest . . . in American congressional history.” RUSS, supra note 1, at 299. The “Older America” was the America of the values of the founders of the Constitution: America should not become an imperial nation with colonies. The strict letter of the Constitution should be followed. The United States should be limited to the 48 contiguous states. The United States should not acquire any territory or nation without the consent of the people of that territory or nation. Id. 7 Historians, even those who have concentrated solely on the annexation, almost universally conclude that the Joint Resolution constituted a successful annexation of Hawaii. Only recently have authors been successful in challenging the myth of annexation. Compare THOMAS J. OSBORNE, ANNEXATION HAWAII: FIGHTING AMERICAN IMPERIALISM (1998) (
“After Hawaii was brought into the Union, it was easier to acquire other dependencies even though the difficult process of treaty ratification was involved. This point is illustrated by the fact that the Hawaiian debate of the 1890s lasted more than five years and was terminated by the approval of a joint resolution because a treaty would not pass the Senate. However, within approximately seven months of the passage of the Newlands measure the United States acquired Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Wake Island.”);
WILLIAM A. RUSS, JR., THE HAWAIIAN REPUBLIC (1894-98) AND ITS STRUGGLES TO WIN ANNEXATION (1961) (“Hawaii was annexed at last, but the people of the islands could not know that fact for a week Secretary Day hastened to inform Minister Sewall and the Hawaiian Government that the islands were at last American ” “With this major difficulty solved, preparations were made for the formal transfer of the islands to the United States.”); BARBARA W. TUCHMAN, THE PROUD TOWER: A PORTRAIT OF THE WORLD BEFORE THE WAR 1890 TO 1914 (1963) (“Annexation of Hawaii was formally ratified on July 7, four days after the war in Cuba was brought to an end by a naval battle
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Ignorance about the Great Debate is also pervasive in Hawai‘i. Many Native Hawaiians do not bother to educate themselves. They assume that restoration of a Native Hawaiian government is so slim a possibility that seeking the truth is an exercise in futility. As such, many Native Hawaiians are willing to accept the status quo; while some favor the alternative: U.S. recognition of a limited number of Native Hawaiians as a Native American Indian Tribe. Such status as a federally recognized tribe offers Native Hawaiians few lands and few new benefits. Perhaps it might offer some legal protection against constitutional challenges—but that is not a sure thing. Recognition as a Tribe is far less than what Hawaiians deserve and far less than what the history of U.S.-Native Hawaiian relations demands in terms of reparations, restitution, or sovereignty.8 Yet, Native Hawaiians are just now learning the true status of the Hawaiian Islands. At the Department of Interior hearings on proposed tribal recognition during the summer of 2014, Native Hawaiians who sought to block tribal recognition virtually echoed the words of those Senators who sought to block annexation in 1898. During those summer hearings, Native Hawaiians rejected the Department of Interior’s proposals to promulgate rules by which Native Hawaiians would be administratively recognized as a Federally Recognized Tribe, because:
“The Joint Resolution was incapable of acquiring Hawai i. Only a Treaty could annex Hawai i. The Treaty of 1897 was never ratified by the United States. Annexation by resolution was unconstitutional. It would destroy the integrity of the Constitution and undermine the basis of the American Republic.”9
off Santiago.”); GAVAN DAWS: SHOALS OF TIME: A HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, 290-91 (1968) (“President McKinley signed the resolution on July 7, and a week later to the day the news arrived at Honolulu. The annexationist press was delirious with excitement. The native Hawaiians were desperately gloomy. Liliuokalani, who had been on the American Mainland, came home sadly on August 2, ten days before the transfer of sovereignty was to take place With this out of the way, the ceremony of transferring sovereignty could be held”); and LAWRENCE FUCHS, HAWAII PONO: AN ETHNIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY 36 (1961); with COFFMAN, NATION WITHIN: THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF HAWAI I (2009); NOENOE DE SILVA, ALOHA BETRAYED: NATIVE HAWAIIAN RESISTANCE TO AMERICAN COLONIALISM, 160 (2004); and Umi Perkins, Is Hawai’i an Occupied State?, THE NATION (January 16, 2015), http://www.thenation.com/article/194745/hawaii-occupied-state#. 8 See, e.g., Lisa Kubota, Federal panel hears opposition to Native Hawaiian recognition plan, HAW. NEWS NOW, June 23, 2014, at www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/25849763/native-hawaiians-express-anger-at-federalgovt. 9 Similarity between the 1898 opposition in the United States Senate and the opposition of Native Hawaiians to the Department of Interior hearings in the summer of 2014 can be seem in the videotaped DOI hearings, 15 in all, starting with the recording of
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Native Hawaiians today should recognize that many Americans in 1898, particularly the Senators opposed to annexation during the debate on the Joint Resolution, stood by the Hawaiian people. The history of the 1898 debate and the history of the opposition to annexation have been forgotten today. The alliance between Native Hawaiians and Americans opposed to annexation is now part of the distant past. Thus, a new Hawaiian-American alliance seeking acknowledgment, reparations, or restoration of the sovereign status of Hawai i must now begin anew by reexamining the debate of 1898. This article has three main parts. In Part II, I describe the “Great Debate to Save the Older” America, where Senators opposed to annexation filibustered, hoping to stave off the annexation of Hawai i. In Part III, I show that only two senators came forth to present arguments that the joint resolution had the capacity to acquire the Hawaiian Islands. Both Senators’ attempts failed because their arguments were rejected by the Senate as either nonsensical or illogical. In Part IV, I show that the most significant proof that Hawai i was acquired by a joint resolution is a myth, leaving a trail of subsequent problems. This most compelling proof of the joint resolution’s failure to annex Hawai i is found in the laws of the United States that define the territorial boundaries of the Territory of Hawai i in 1900 and the State of Hawai i in 1959. The Joint Resolution is not a Treaty and has no capacity to acquire the dominion or territory of a foreign, sovereign nation. Rather, the Organic Act of 1900,10 which defined the boundaries of the Territory of Hawai i, and the plain language of the 1959 Act of Admission,11 which defined the boundaries of Hawai i and admitted it as a State of the Union, explicitly and intentionally excluded the Hawaiian Islands from the dominion of the Territory and the State. II. THE GREAT DEBATE TO SAVE THE OLDER AMERICA—THE ATTEMPT TO BLOCK ANNEXATION
The speeches of U.S. Senators opposed to the acquisition of Hawai i as territory of the U.S. in 1898 constitute proof that America in 1898 was well aware that a Joint Resolution, a mere act of Congress, had no capacity to acquire the dominion of a foreign nation. The speeches of the first hearing and proceeding from there: “DOI Meetings on Native Hawaiian Recognition #1” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkHoVjIcu0w [last visited May 10, 2015]; see also e.g., “Department of Interior vs. Hawaiian Nationals Testimony, Keaukaha, HI July 2, 2014” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDNsTiyl6d4 [last visited May 10. 2015]. More of these hearings can be accessed on YouTube by searching: “DOI hearings Hawaiians.” 10 An Act to Provide a Government for the Territory of Hawaii, Act of April 30, 1900, 31 Stat 141. 11 An Act to Provide for the Admission of the State of Hawaii into the Union, Act of March 18, 1959, Pub. L. 86-3, 73 Stat 4.
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those Senators also prophesied the harms that enactment of the Joint Resolution would cause both the constitution and the country. The Joint Resolution was not only incapable of acquiring Hawai i; it was also unconstitutional in its avoidance of the power over foreign affairs directly delegated to the President. Moreover, the annexation of Hawai i without a plebiscite of the people of Hawai i violated the fundamental tenet that the legitimacy of government is derived from the consent of the governed. How would an eminent constitutional scholar such as Justice Scalia, a man who has, perhaps, unconsciously, accepted the “myth of annexation,” respond to the logical speeches of Senators who persistently pointed out the obvious: the joint resolution, an act of Congress, had no power to acquire the dominion of a foreign nation? To take this further, what would the consequences be, legal and otherwise, if all of the modern U.S. Senate, indeed all of America, were to hear the debate on the capacity of the Joint Resolution as it was argued during the summer of 1898? A. Justice Scalia on the Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands
Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court recently aired his opinions on both the constitutionality and ability of the Joint Resolution of 1898 to annex the Hawaiian Islands. His statements to a Native Hawaiian student at George Washington University were recently published on February 11, 2015, in “Civil Beat,” a daily, on-line newspaper in Honolulu.12 One wonders what Justice Scalia would say in response if he were thrust back in time into the middle of the Senate Annexation debate in 1898. He would have heard the voices of Senators Allen of Nebraska, White of California, and Bacon of Georgia. These men were prominent and respected American leaders. These Senators defied the Administration’s rush to annex Hawai i. They defended the independence of Hawai i. They were heroes to the Hawaiian people then, as they should be today. Equally important, these United States Senators were American patriots as well, defending the United States Constitution and the values of the “Older America.” Let us start with the recent remarks of Associate Justice Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. As much as any single person in the U.S. today, Justice Scalia’s opinions are critical to the future of Native Hawaiians. His legal position in Rice v. Cayetano13 and Hawai i v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs14 changed forever the lives of Native Hawaiians. 12 Jacob Bryan Aki, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Hawaii and Annexation, CIVIL BEAT, Feb. 24, 2015, at www.civilbeat.com/2015/02/supreme-courtjustice-antonin-scalia-hawaii-and-annexation/. 13 Rice v. Cayetano 528 U.S. 495 (2000) (Scalia was part of the opinion of the Court) Rice v. Cayetano held unconstitutional the voting system electing trustees to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. By that system, only Native Hawaiians, defined as persons with any Hawaiian ancestry could vote for trustees. 14 Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 556 U.S. 163, 129 S. Ct. 1436 (2009).
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On February 11, 2015, Jacob Aki, a Hawaiian student at George Washington University, asked Justice Scalia, who was speaking at George Washington, the following question:15
“Does the Constitution provide Congress the power to annex a foreign nation through a Joint Resolution rather than a Treaty?”
Scalia turned the question back at Aki: “Why would a treaty be needed?” He continued:
“There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits Congress from annexing a foreign state through the means of a joint resolution. If the joint resolution is passed through both the U.S. House and Senate, then signed by the president, it went through a “process.”
Scalia proceeded to the history of Hawai i. He implied that Hawai i was just another colony of Spain, taken in the Spanish-American War, like the Philippines and Puerto Rico.16 Justice Scalia was clearly wrong on all points. First, aside from conquest and acquisition by prescription17 it is only by treaty that one sovereign nation can acquire the territory of another sovereign nation under the international legal doctrine of equal sovereignty of nations. Second, the Joint Resolution, as an act of Congress, had no power to acquire another sovereign and independent nation under the U.S. Constitution. Third, Hawai i was not a colony of Spain, thus Hawai i
15 Aki, supra note 11. 16 Id. “Justice Scalia then proceeded to talk about how that same process was used to acquire the Philippines—which he points out, “we gave back”---and Puerto Rico.
I asked him. “What happened in the case of Hawaii when it was annexed in 1898?”
His answer: “It’s the same thing.” He ended his response by commenting that in terms of international law, “well, there have been hundreds of years’ worth of problems there.” 17 In a subsequent article, I will present arguments that the United States did not acquire Hawaii by the doctrine of conquest or the doctrine of acquisitive prescription. First, the United States has never claimed its acquired Hawaii by either principle. Second, even if the doctrine of conquest is applicable, as of the critical date of 1898, the later admissions of the United States, as described herein, undermine such a claim. Third, the doctrine of acquisition by prescription requires consistent acts of the claimant, namely, acts of sovereignty, or titre de souverain, by which the claimant acts consistently as to] its claims of sovereignty. Again, the United States’ own admissions that it has never acquired the Hawaiian Islands, as contained in Part II, undermine any claim of acquisition by prescription. See, e.g., Seokwoo Lee, Continuing Relevance of Traditional Modes of Territorial Acquisition in International Law and A Modest Proposal, 16 CONN. J. INT'L L. 1, 13 (2000).
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could not have been acquired by the U.S. as a result of the Spanish American War.18 B. Senators who Opposed Annexation: The Great Debate of 1898
Let us pretend that Justice Scalia was on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the summer of 1898. These are the words he would have heard: First, Senator William Allen of Nebraska and other Senators would have reminded Justice Scalia that a joint resolution is merely an act of Congress and has no power to reach out and acquire foreign territory or a foreign country. As Senator Allen said:
A Joint Resolution if passed becomes a statute law. It has no other or greater force. It is the same as if it would be if it were entitled “an act” instead of “A Joint Resolution.” That is its legal classification. It is therefore impossible for the Government of the United States to reach across its boundary into the dominion of another government and annex that government or persons or property therein. But the United States may do so under the treaty making power, which I shall hereafter consider.19
Mr. President, how can a joint resolution such as this be operative? What is the legislative jurisdiction of Congress? Does it extend over Hawaii? May we in this anticipatory manner reach out beyond the sea and assert our authority under a resolution of Congress within the confines of that independent nation? Where is our right, our grant of power, to do this? Where do we find it? Some assume to discover it in the supposition that there has been a cession, which has in truth never been made. Hawai i is foreign to us. We
18 Hawaii was not a colony of Spain. See Treaty of Paris of 1898, Dec. 10, 1898, 30 Stat. 1754. In that treaty, Spain directly ceded the sovereignty and territory of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico to the United States. See generally Benjamin R. Beede, The War of 1898 and U.S. Interventions 1898-1934 (2013). The Treaty of Paris contained precise descriptions of the lands ceded, measured in longitude and latitude, metes and bounds and natural monuments. There was no treaty as to the annexation of Hawaii. Consequently, there was no description, in a similar manner, using metes and bounds, natural monuments, names of islands or lines of longitude and latitude as to the lands and waters that constituted the Hawaiian Islands. Lacking such treaty, the United States could not specifically describe what land and waters it received from the Republic of Hawaii, the government of the Nation of Hawaii. As pointed out in this article lack of such description followed from the lack of a treaty of annexation. This lack of a description arising from the lack of a treaty would be hidden by carefully drafted, deceptive statutory language of the boundaries of Hawaii. That language would continue to deceive until today. 19 Statement of Senator Allen, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6636 July 4, 1898. 55th Cong. 2d Sess.
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base our jurisdiction upon a falsehood desired to be made conclusive in a resolution the verity of which is said cannot be attacked, however groundless it may be.20
Senator Turley of Tennessee also weighed in, adding:
Mr. President, I wish to illustrate this by just the condition of affairs which is before the Senate now. It is admitted that if the Joint Resolution is adopted the Republic of Hawai i can determine whether or not it will accept the provisions contained in the joint resolution. In other words, the adoption of the resolution does not consummate the transaction. The Republic of Hawai i does not become a part or the territory of the United States by the adoption of the joint resolution, but after its adoption and signature by the President and after it becomes the law of the land the Republic of Hawai i may refuse to accept the terms contained in it and remain an independent and sovereign state.21
Senator John Coit Spooner of Wisconsin, perhaps the greatest constitutional lawyer of his time,22 also spoke, saying, “Of course, our power would not be extraterritorial.”23 A host of other Senators reaffirmed the same point:24
The Joint Resolution itself, it is admitted, amounts to 20 Statement of Senator Allen, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6636 July 4, 1898. 55th Cong. 2d Sess. 21 See remarks of Senator Turley, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6336, June 25, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess. 22 “He is concededly the greatest parliamentary debater of his day,” William Howard Taft said of him, “and really deserves the title, so much misapplied, of a great constitutional lawyer.” See DOROTHY GANFIELD FOWLER, JOHN COIT SPOONER: DEFENDER OF PRESIDENTS 394 (1961) (quoting from the Washington Post, March 4, 1907). 23 Statement of Senator Spooner, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6636, July 4, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess. 24 Mr. Spooner. “It is not a question of degree. It is a question of possibility.” Statement of Senator Spooner 31 Cong. Rec. at 6485, June 30, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess.
Mr. Turley. “The Joint Resolution itself, it is admitted, amounts to nothing so far as carrying any effective force is concerned. It does not bring that country within our boundaries. It does not consummate itself.” Statement of Senator Turley 31 Cong. Rec. at 6339, June 25, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess.
Mr. Allen. “Whenever it becomes necessary to enter into any sort of a compact or agreement with a foreign power, we cannot proceed by legislation to make that contract.” Statement of Senator Allen 31 Cong. Rec. at 6636, July 4, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess.
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nothing so far as carrying any effective force is concerned. It does not bring that country within our boundaries. It does not consummate itself.25
Senator Augustus O. Bacon stated that if the U.S. could annex Hawai i by a Joint Resolution, and evade the enumerated separation of powers in the Constitution as to foreign affairs, it could do the same to any foreign nation. Senator Bacon noted that under the principle of the equal sovereignty of nations, no nation, can, with only its lawmaking power, acquire the territory of another sovereign nation:
If the President of the United States can do it in the case of Hawai i, he can with equal propriety and legality do it in the case of Jamaica.26 Congress was not given the power to annex a foreign state, except in the admission of that nation as a state. Under the law of the equal sovereignty of states, one independent and sovereign nation such as the United States cannot take another nation, such as Hawai i by means or its own legislative act.
Senator Stephen Mallory White of California made an eloquent plea to stop the Joint Resolution. Senator White noted that under Article IV of the Constitution, Congress could admit a new State by legislation or Joint Resolution, but where the U.S. merely acquires territory from another sovereign, such acquisition must take the form of a treaty. Thus, the acquisition of Hawai i as a territory, not a state, could only be achieved under the powers over foreign affairs—which are delegated solely to the President:
Whatever may be said of the past history of this country or of the records to which senators have adverted; there is one proposition, which cannot be contested, mainly, that there is no precedent for this proposed action. States have been admitted into the Union, territory has been acquired and has been annexed by treaty stipulation, but there is no instance where by a joint resolution it has been attempted not only to annex a foreign land far remote from our shores, but also to annihilate a nation, to withdraw it from the sovereign societies of the world as a government. . .27
Senator Allen of Nebraska also added: 25 Statement of Senator Turley, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6339, June 25, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess. 26 Statement of Senator Augustus Bacon at 31 Cong. Rec. 6148 to 6152 June 20, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d. Sess. 27 Statement of Senator Stephen M. White at 31 Cong. Rec. Appendixes 591 to 595 June 21 1898, 55th Cong. 2d. Sess.
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Mr. President, the Constitution must begin and end with the territorial jurisdiction of the United States: It cannot reach beyond the boundaries of our Government. It would be as lifeless and impotent as a piece of blank paper in Canada or in the Hawaiian Islands; and so with a statute or joint resolution.28
Senators opposed to annexation stood fast not only on the proposition that the Joint Resolution had no power to acquire Hawai i, but also on the fact that the use of a Joint Resolution in place of a Treaty was unconstitutional. Senator Augustus O. Bacon of Georgia was particularly vocal as to the unconstitutionality of the Joint Resolution. If Hawai i could be acquired by a joint resolution,29 then the legislature of Hawai i “could acquire the United States by a Joint resolution of its own.” The only means by which one nation can acquire the sovereignty and jurisdiction of another nation is by a treaty indicative of mutual consent. Justice Scalia’s belief in the constitutionality of annexation by joint resolution would have encountered stiff opposition in the Senate in 1898:
Two propositions are plain: First, that territory can only be annexed or acquired by treaty, second, that the president under the Constitution may occupy the Hawaiian Islands under the war power and by virtue of his office as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy.30
It is unconstitutional to acquire a foreign nation by a joint resolution of the U.S. House and Senate. Such a process amounts to an “end run” around the foreign affairs powers delegated solely to the President.31 A legislative act such as a Joint Resolution undermines the
28 Statement of Senator Allen, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6636 July 4, 1898. 55th Cong. 2d Sess. 29 See Bacon, supra note 26. 30 Statement of Senator Allen, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6635 July 4, 1898. 55th Cong. 2d Sess. Cong. 31 “When that power is expressly conferred on the President and on two thirds of the Senate, can it be exercised by the other House? Statement of Senator Allen, 31 Cong. Rec. 6586, June30, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess. See also Statement of Senator Allen 31 Cong. Rec. at 6335 June 25, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess.:
I cannot myself conceive of any instance where we can deal with another nation involving the question of jurisdiction over or [delete] territory independent of the methods of a treaty… Mr. President, when we reflect as to the lines which demark the jurisdiction of the legislature, we must confine that department to our nation. We cannot as I said before extend our legislative right to act without until there has been some authority by which that which is without is brought within.
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Constitution’s careful allocation of powers by which the House was deliberately prohibited from having any power over foreign affairs. The Federal Government is a government of enumerated powers. Unless a power is specifically delegated to a certain branch or branches of government, other parts of the Federal government are denied such a power. Justice Scalia knows this. He is a firm believer in strict construction of the constitutional limitation on federal powers.32 As Senator Bacon later added:
The proposition which I propose to discuss is that a measure which provides for the annexation of foreign territory is necessarily, essentially, the subject matter of a treaty, and that the assumption of the House of Representatives in the passage of the bill and the preposition on the part of the Foreign Relations Committee that the Senate shall pass the bill, is utterly without warrant in the Constitution.33
Enacting a joint resolution requires a mere majority of the Senate and House.34 The use of a joint resolution to create a treaty with a foreign sovereign nation undermines the explicit delegation of the treaty making power to the President and the Senate. As opposed to passing a mere act or joint resolution, the Senate must ratify a treaty by super-majority of twothirds of those Senators present.35 It was precisely because of this super-majority requirement that the McKinley Administration turned from the Treaty of 1897, which had failed to gain a super-majority, to the use of a Joint Resolution. A Joint Resolution requires only a majority of both Houses to pass. Senator Bacon protested, saying, “If Hawai i is to be annexed it ought certainly to be annexed by a constitutional method; and if by a constitutional method, it cannot be annexed, no Senator ought to desire its annexation.”36 Moreover, Senator Allen of Nebraska added:
But as respects the treaty-making power, the President is authorized to open negotiations with foreign countries and
32 “Justice Scalia has been a strong proponent of constitutional federalism. See Bradford Clark, The Constitutional Structure and the Jurisprudence of Justice Scalia, 47 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 753 (2003). 33 Statement of Senator Bacon, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6145, June 20, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess. 34 “The House has no jurisdiction over the subject matter whatever.” Statement of Senator Allen, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6634, July 4, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess. 35 U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 2. 36 Statement of Senator Bacon, 31 Cong. Rec. at 6152, June 20, 1898, 55th Cong. 2d Sess.
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continue at:
Honolulu star-bulletin. (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii) 1912-current, August 30, 1916, 3:30 Edition, SPORTS CLASSIFIED AND SHIPPING SECTION, Page NINE, Image 9
Image provided by University of Hawaii at Manoa; Honolulu, HI
Persistent link: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014682/1916-08-30/ed-2/seq-9/
The following Legal Notices/articles are pending action:
Note: articles compiled/researched/reviewed by Amelia Gora
SUMMARY
The American Indians, Blacks/African Americans, and the Hawaiians/Kanaka Maoli have all been Plundered Upon by the United States Government for our lands, assets, minerals, water, status, etc.
The American Indians have been Plundered Upon, suffering losses because they are under the Americans with the Southern/Confederate mindset.
The Blacks/African Americans also suffered losses at the hands of the Southern/Confederate mindset.
The Hawaiians/kanaka maoli has also suffered losses because of the Southern/Confederate mindset.
Who is responsible?
George Washington and his wife Martha.
She owned stocks in the Bank of England.
George Washington was a descendant of the Royal Families of England.
One of His heirs was Robert E. Lee, a Confederate General
Who was Robert E. Lee?
"In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln offered General Lee the opportunity to command the entire Union Army. Lee, however, chose to follow his heart which was with his home state of Virginia. When Virginia seceded from the Union, Lee went with her.A year later General Lee was the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia and soon established himself as the greatest tactician and leader of the war. One has to wonder how different the war may have gone had Lee accepted Lincoln's offer.
One of the more interesting and ironic aspects about General Lee's ancestry is his relationship to President George Washington. It is commonly known that Robert E. Lee married Mary Custis, great-granddaughter to Martha Washington and step-great-granddaughter to George Washington.
What isn't so well known is that Robert E. Lee and George Washington were 3rd cousins, 2 times removed through their common ancestor of Augustine Warner. It is ironic how one fought so hard to create the Union while the other fought to split it in two."
Who else related to Robert E. Lee?
Famous Kin of General
Robert E. Lee
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3rd Wife of King Henry VIII6th cousin 9 times removed via Ralph de Neville
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7th cousin 3 times removed via John Stewart
Major John Pitcairn
British Commander at Battle of Lexington7th cousin 3 times removed via John Stewart
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7th cousin 5 times removed via Francis Bernard
Sir Winston Churchill
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom7th cousin 5 times removed via Francis Bernard
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8th cousin 2 times removed via William Pyle
Susan B. Anthony
Women's Rights Advocate8th cousin 2 times removed via William Pyle
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8th cousin 2 times removed via William Pyle
Hetty Green
“The Witch of Wall Street”8th cousin 2 times removed via William Pyle
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8th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Charlton
John Hancock
Signer of the Declaration of Independence8th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Charlton
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8th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Andrews de Windsor
Olivia De Havilland
Movie Actress8th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Andrews de Windsor
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8th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Andrews de Windsor
Joan Fontaine
Movie Actress8th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Andrews de Windsor
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8th cousin 4 times removed via William Pyle
Marilyn Monroe
Actress, Model, and Singer8th cousin 4 times removed via William Pyle
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8th cousin 6 times removed via Sir John Howard
Rev. George Burroughs
Executed for Witchcraft, Salem 16928th cousin 6 times removed via Sir John Howard
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8th cousin 6 times removed via William Pyle
Kate Upton
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover Model8th cousin 6 times removed via William Pyle
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9th cousin via Sir James Harington
Samuel Prescott
Completed Paul Revere's Midnight Ride9th cousin via Sir James Harington
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9th cousin via John Fowke
General James Longstreet
Confederate Army - U.S. Civil War9th cousin via John Fowke
Sir Arthur Wellesley
Duke of Wellington and Victor at Waterloo9th cousin 1 time removed via William Gerard
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9th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Walter Lindsay
Johnny Mercer
Songwriter and Co-Founder of Capitol Records9th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Walter Lindsay
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9th cousin 4 times removed via Sir James Harington
Robert Frost
Poet and Playwright9th cousin 4 times removed via Sir James Harington
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9th cousin 5 times removed via John Fowke
Paris Hilton
Socialite and TV Personality9th cousin 5 times removed via John Fowke
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9th cousin 6 times removed via Sir James Harington
George H. W. Bush
41st U.S. President9th cousin 6 times removed via Sir James Harington
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9th cousin 6 times removed via Sir William de Roos
Robert Catesby
Leader of Gunpowder Plot9th cousin 6 times removed via Sir William de Roos
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9th cousin 7 times removed via Sir James Harington
George W. Bush
43rd U.S. President9th cousin 7 times removed via Sir James Harington
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9th cousin 7 times removed via Sir James Harington
Jeb Bush
43rd Governor of Florida9th cousin 7 times removed via Sir James Harington
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9th cousin 7 times removed via Sir James Harington
Rikki Bates
Musician (Member of The Incredible Casuals)9th cousin 7 times removed via Sir James Harington
Elizabeth Smart
Founder of Elizabeth Smart Foundation9th cousin 9 times removed via Sir James Harington
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10th cousin via Richard Cave
Joseph Wharton
Founder of the Wharton School of Business10th cousin via Richard Cave
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10th cousin via Richard Cave
Lt. Gen. James Brudenell
Leader of the “Charge of the Light Brigade”10th cousin via Richard Cave
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10th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Poet10th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
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10th cousin 1 time removed via Joan Beaufort
Patrick Henry
“Give me liberty, or give me death!”10th cousin 1 time removed via Joan Beaufort
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10th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
Jay Gould
American Railroad “Robber Baron”10th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
Roger Sherman
Signer of the Declaration of Independence10th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
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10th cousin 2 times removed via John le Scrope
Robert Treat Paine
Signer of the Declaration of Independence10th cousin 2 times removed via John le Scrope
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10th cousin 2 times removed via John Stewart
Lytton Strachey
Author and Co-Founder of Bloomsbury Group10th cousin 2 times removed via John Stewart
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10th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
George Clinton
4th U.S. Vice President10th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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10th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Cave
John McCain
U.S. Senator from Arizona10th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Cave
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10th cousin 4 times removed via Sir David Lindsay
Philip Livingston
Signer of the Declaration of Independence10th cousin 4 times removed via Sir David Lindsay
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11th cousin via Sir Thomas Stanley
Abigail (Smith) Adams
First Lady of President John Adams11th cousin via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin via Sir Thomas Blount
Nicholas Gilman
Signer of the U.S. Constitution11th cousin via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Lucretia (Rudolph) Garfield
First Lady of President James Garfield11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
John Quincy Adams
6th U.S. President11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Joan Beaufort
Alexander Hamilton
1st U.S. Secretary of the Treasury11th cousin 1 time removed via Joan Beaufort
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Blount
J. A. Folger
Founder of Folger Coffee Company11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir James Stewart
Noel Coward
Playwright, Actor, and Songwriter11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir James Stewart
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Hugh Luttrell
General William Whipple
Signer of the Declaration of Independence11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Hugh Luttrell
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
Principal character of film Glory portrayed by Matthew Broderick11th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
James Sherman
27th U.S. Vice-President11th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 1 time removed via William Mainwaring
C. W. Post
Founder of Post Cereals11th cousin 1 time removed via William Mainwaring
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11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
American “Fireside” Poet11th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
Calvin Coolidge
30th U.S. President11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir William Harington
Capt. William Lewis Herndon
Captain of the ill fated S.S. Central America11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir William Harington
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Henry Clay Folger
Founder of Folger Shakespeare Library and Chairman of Standard Oil11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
Alice (Lee) Roosevelt
First Wife of President Theodore Roosevelt11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Stephen A. Douglas
Participated in Lincoln-Douglas Debates11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
Katharine Hepburn
Movie Actress11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
Richard Warren Sears
Co-Founder of Sears, Roebuck, & Co.11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Bathsheba (Ruggles) Spooner
First woman executed for murder in U.S. by non-British government11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
John Langdon
Signer of the U.S. Constitution11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Shanghai Pierce
Texas Cattleman11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
Alan Shepard
Mercury and Apollo Astronaut11th cousin 2 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
DeWitt Clinton
6th Governor of New York11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice11th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin 3 times removed via Sir William Harington
Ellen (Herndon) Arthur
Wife of President Chester A. Arthur11th cousin 3 times removed via Sir William Harington
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11th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
Franklin D. Roosevelt
32nd U.S. President11th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin 3 times removed via Eleanor Fitzhugh
Fletcher Christian
Leader of the mutiny on the Bounty11th cousin 3 times removed via Eleanor Fitzhugh
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11th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Charlton
John Kerry
68th U.S. Secretary of State11th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Charlton
Sarah Palin
9th Governor of Alaska11th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
George Romney
43rd Governor of Michigan11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Abigail Folger
Charles Manson Murder Victim and Folger Coffee Heiress11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Amelia Earhart
Aviation Pioneer11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 4 times removed via Richard Charlton
Harry Chapin
Singer and Songwriter11th cousin 4 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 4 times removed via Richard Charlton
Endicott Peabody
62nd Governor of Massachusetts11th cousin 4 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Willis Carrier
Inventor of Air Conditioning11th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 4 times removed via Joan Beaufort
Alan Turing
WWII Codebreaker of Nazi Enigma Machine11th cousin 4 times removed via Joan Beaufort
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11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Mitt Romney
70th Governor of Massachusetts11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 5 times removed via Richard Charlton
Kyra Sedgwick
TV and Movie Actress11th cousin 5 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir James Stewart
Howard Dean
79th Governor of Vermont11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir James Stewart
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11th cousin 5 times removed via Richard Charlton
Linda Hamilton
TV and Movie Actress11th cousin 5 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Erskine Childers
4th President of Ireland11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 5 times removed via Richard Charlton
Mizuo Peck
TV and Movie Actress11th cousin 5 times removed via Richard Charlton
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11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
Benedict Cumberbatch
Movie, Television and Stage Actor11th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin 6 times removed via Joan Beaufort
Camilla Parker Bowles
Duchess of Cornwall11th cousin 6 times removed via Joan Beaufort
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11th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Ted Danson
TV Actor - “Cheers”, “CSI”11th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 6 times removed via Joan Beaufort
Wernher von Braun
Rocket Scientist11th cousin 6 times removed via Joan Beaufort
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11th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
John Adams Morgan
1952 Olympic Sailing Gold Medalist11th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Thomas Stanley
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11th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Elisabeth Shue
TV and Movie Actress11th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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11th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
Kit Harington
TV Actor - “Game of Thrones”11th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Thomas Blount
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12th cousin via William Mainwaring
Grover Cleveland
22nd and 24th U.S. President12th cousin via William Mainwaring
Shubael D. Childs
Founder of S.D. Childs & Company12th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Robert Goushill
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12th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Harriet Martineau
Author of The Hour and the Man12th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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12th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Jane (Appleton) Pierce
First Lady of President Franklin Pierce12th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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12th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Sherburne
Rutherford B. Hayes
19th U.S. President12th cousin 1 time removed via Richard Sherburne
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12th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Hugh Luttrell
James Russell Lowell
American “Fireside” Poet12th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Hugh Luttrell
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12th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Samuel Howard
Boston Tea Party Participant12th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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12th cousin 2 times removed via William Mainwaring
Lizzie Borden
Accused Murderess12th cousin 2 times removed via William Mainwaring
General Hugh Mercer
American Revolutionary War Hero12th cousin 2 times removed via Sir David Lindsay
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12th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
Gloria Vanderbilt
Fashion Designer12th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
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12th cousin 2 times removed via William Mainwaring
Allen Dulles
5th Director of the C.I.A.12th cousin 2 times removed via William Mainwaring
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12th cousin 2 times removed via William Mainwaring
John Foster Dulles
52nd U.S. Secretary of State12th cousin 2 times removed via William Mainwaring
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12th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
William Marsh Rice
Founder of Rice University12th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
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12th cousin 3 times removed via William Mainwaring
Elizabeth Montgomery
TV Actress - “Bewitched”12th cousin 3 times removed via William Mainwaring
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12th cousin 3 times removed via Sir John Beaufort
John D. Rockefeller
Founder of the Standard Oil Company12th cousin 3 times removed via Sir John Beaufort
Anthony West
Novelist and writer for the New Yorker12th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Edward Neville
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12th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Sherburne
Bing Crosby
Singer and Movie Actor12th cousin 3 times removed via Richard Sherburne
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12th cousin 3 times removed via Ralph de Neville
Caesar Rodney
Signer of the Declaration of Independence12th cousin 3 times removed via Ralph de Neville
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12th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
Anderson Cooper
Television Journalist12th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
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12th cousin 3 times removed via Edmund FitzAlan
Jonathan Swift
Author of Gulliver's Travels12th cousin 3 times removed via Edmund FitzAlan
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12th cousin 3 times removed via William Mainwaring
Illeana Douglas
TV and Movie Actress12th cousin 3 times removed via William Mainwaring
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12th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Hugh Luttrell
Tennessee Williams
Author of A Streetcar Named Desire12th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Hugh Luttrell
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12th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
General Douglas MacArthur
U.S. Army - World War II12th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Robert Goushill
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12th cousin 5 times removed via Sir John Savage
Barbara (Pierce) Bush
First Lady of President George H.W. Bush12th cousin 5 times removed via Sir John Savage
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12th cousin 5 times removed via Sir John Beaufort
Nelson Rockefeller
41st U.S. Vice-President12th cousin 5 times removed via Sir John Beaufort
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12th cousin 5 times removed via Sir John Savage
Christian Herter
59th Governor of Massachusetts12th cousin 5 times removed via Sir John Savage
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12th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Roger de Somery
Elihu Yale
Benefactor and Namesake of Yale College12th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Roger de Somery
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12th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Walter Blount
Gerald Ford
38th U.S. President12th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Walter Blount
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12th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Walter Blount
Chevy Chase
Comedian, Actor and Writer12th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Walter Blount
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12th cousin 7 times removed via Sir John Beaufort
John Cena
Movie Actor and Pro Wrestler12th cousin 7 times removed via Sir John Beaufort
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13th cousin via Sir Robert Howard
Francis Scott Key
Author of “The Star Spangled Banner”13th cousin via Sir Robert Howard
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13th cousin via Sir Richard FitzAlan
William Floyd
Signer of the Declaration of Independence13th cousin via Sir Richard FitzAlan
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13th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Ralph Neville
John Brown
American Abolitionist13th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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13th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Dr. H. H. Holmes
Serial Killer aka “Devil in the White City”13th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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13th cousin 2 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
William Ellery
Signer of the Declaration of Independence13th cousin 2 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
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13th cousin 2 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
William Greene
2nd Governor of Rhode Island13th cousin 2 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
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13th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Robert Corbet
Orson Welles
Radio, Stage, and Movie Actor13th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Robert Corbet
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13th cousin 2 times removed via Joan Beaufort
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Author, “Sherlock Holmes”13th cousin 2 times removed via Joan Beaufort
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13th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Herbert Hoover
31st U.S. President13th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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13th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Frank Lloyd Wright
American Architect13th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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13th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
George Hamilton
TV and Movie Actor13th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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13th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Catherine Middleton
Duchess of Cambridge13th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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13th cousin 5 times removed via John of Gaunt
Harper Lee
Author of To Kill a Mockingbird13th cousin 5 times removed via John of Gaunt
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13th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
Keri Russell
TV and Movie Actress13th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Ralph Neville
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13th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Robert Howard
Carly Fiorina
CEO of Hewlett-Packard13th cousin 5 times removed via Sir Robert Howard
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13th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard FitzAlan
Mamie (Doud) Eisenhower
First Lady of President Dwight Eisenhower13th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard FitzAlan
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13th cousin 8 times removed via Sir Richard FitzAlan
Sydney Biddle Barrows
Mayflower Madam13th cousin 8 times removed via Sir Richard FitzAlan
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14th cousin 1 time removed via Henry FitzHugh
Charles A. Pillsbury
Co-Founder of C.A. Pillsbury Co.14th cousin 1 time removed via Henry FitzHugh
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14th cousin 1 time removed via Ralph de Stafford
Robert Townsend
Member of the Culper Spy Ring during the American Revolution14th cousin 1 time removed via Ralph de Stafford
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14th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Mowbray
Jack London
Author of “The Call of the Wild”14th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Thomas Mowbray
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14th cousin 1 time removed via John de Welles
Ichabod Goodwin
27th Governor of New Hampshire14th cousin 1 time removed via John de Welles
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14th cousin 2 times removed via Sir John Howard
Walt Disney
Co-Founder of The Walt Disney Company14th cousin 2 times removed via Sir John Howard
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14th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Ellen Louise (Axson) Wilson
First Lady of President Woodrow Wilson14th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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14th cousin 2 times removed via Eleanor Fitzhugh
Sandra Day O'Connor
First Female U.S. Supreme Court Justice14th cousin 2 times removed via Eleanor Fitzhugh
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14th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Lou (Henry) Hoover
First Lady of President Herbert Hoover14th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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14th cousin 3 times removed via Eleanor Plantagenet
Sir Charles Tupper
6th Prime Minister of Canada14th cousin 3 times removed via Eleanor Plantagenet
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14th cousin 4 times removed via John de Welles
Ray Bradbury
Author of The Martian Chronicles14th cousin 4 times removed via John de Welles
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14th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Mowbray
Warren Buffett
Chairman & CEO, Berkshire Hathaway14th cousin 4 times removed via Sir Thomas Mowbray
Robert Louis Stevenson
Author of Treasure Island14th cousin 4 times removed via Robert II, King of Scotland
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14th cousin 4 times removed via Hugh de Stafford
Roy Rogers
Cowboy movie actor and singer14th cousin 4 times removed via Hugh de Stafford
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14th cousin 4 times removed via James Touchet
Sally Ride
1st American Woman in Space14th cousin 4 times removed via James Touchet
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14th cousin 5 times removed via John de Welles
Lucille Ball
TV Actress - “I Love Lucy”14th cousin 5 times removed via John de Welles
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14th cousin 5 times removed via Eleanor Fitzhugh
Ellen DeGeneres
Comedienne and TV Personality14th cousin 5 times removed via Eleanor Fitzhugh
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14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Brian Wilson
Co-Founder of The Beach Boys14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Dennis Wilson
Co-Founder of The Beach Boys14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Carl Wilson
Co-Founder of The Beach Boys14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Mike Love
Co-Founder of The Beach Boys14th cousin 6 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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14th cousin 6 times removed via Hugh de Stafford
Meghan Markle
TV Actress - “Suits”14th cousin 6 times removed via Hugh de Stafford
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14th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
Kevin Love
NBA All-Star Player14th cousin 7 times removed via Sir Richard Sergeaux
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15th cousin via Ralph de Stafford
Samuel Ward King
15th Governor of Rhode Island15th cousin via Ralph de Stafford
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15th cousin 1 time removed via Henry FitzHugh
Judy Garland
Singer and Movie Actress15th cousin 1 time removed via Henry FitzHugh
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15th cousin 1 time removed via Ralph de Stafford
Julia (Ward) Howe
Author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”15th cousin 1 time removed via Ralph de Stafford
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15th cousin 4 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
Richard Nixon
37th U.S. President15th cousin 4 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
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15th cousin 4 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
Warren G. Harding
29th U.S. President15th cousin 4 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
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15th cousin 5 times removed via Maud of Angus
Lyman Hall
Signer of the Declaration of Independence15th cousin 5 times removed via Maud of Angus
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15th cousin 5 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
Charlie Munger
Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway15th cousin 5 times removed via Ralph de Stafford
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16th cousin 1 time removed via Sir John Howard
Helen (Herron) Taft
First Lady of President William H. Taft16th cousin 1 time removed via Sir John Howard
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16th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Edmund Mortimer
Button Gwinnett
Signer of the Declaration of Independence16th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Edmund Mortimer
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17th cousin 1 time removed via William de Beauchamp
William C. C. Claiborne
1st Governor of Louisiana17th cousin 1 time removed via William de Beauchamp
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18th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Humphrey de Bohun
J.P. Morgan
American Banker and Art Collector18th cousin 1 time removed via Sir Humphrey de Bohun
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18th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Humphrey de Bohun
J.P. Morgan, Jr.
American Banker and Philanthropist18th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Humphrey de Bohun
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18th cousin 2 times removed via Maud of Angus
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin18th cousin 2 times removed via Maud of Angus
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18th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Humphrey de Bohun
Henry Sturgis Morgan
Co-Founder of Morgan Stanley18th cousin 3 times removed via Sir Humphrey de Bohun
Liz Claiborne
Fashion Designer and Founder of Liz Claiborne Inc.18th cousin 3 times removed via William de Beauchamp
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19th cousin 1 time removed via Maud of Angus
Wilbur Wright
Wright Brothers - Aviation Pioneer19th cousin 1 time removed via Maud of Angus
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19th cousin 1 time removed via Maud of Angus
Orville Wright
Wright Brothers - Aviation Pioneer19th cousin 1 time removed via Maud of Angus
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19th cousin 1 time removed via Maud of Angus
Samuel Colt
Inventor of the Colt Revolver19th cousin 1 time removed via Maud of Angus
Edith (Carow) Roosevelt
First Lady of President Theodore Roosevelt19th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Geoffrey FitzPiers
Frank Nelson Doubleday
Founder of Doubleday & Co.19th cousin 2 times removed via Sir Geoffrey FitzPiers
Dr. Benjamin Spock
American Pediatrician and Author on Child Care20th cousin 1 time removed via Maud of Angus
The following article shows the Americans with the Southern/Confederate mindset:
American Civil War Losers and their Effects on Society Today or Historical and Inbred Anger Influencing Southern U.S. Presidents and Hawaii Since
American Civil War Losers and their Effects on Society Today
or
Historical and Inbred Anger Influencing Southern U.S. Presidents
and Hawaii Since 1863
Review by Amelia Gora (2017)
Have you noticed how the Southerner's attitude plays a role in Society today and the moves to Plunder Upon Innocents in the U.S., Hawaii, and Abroad?
The following excerpts about the Northern and Southern perspectives from a book REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS written by Edwin Lawrence Godkin (1877) under the Chapter: The South After the War, brought on curiosities leading to the idea that war losers in this case the American Civil War has been influential in Southern born U.S. Presidents attitudes when interacting with "People of Color":
Godkin wrote: "as one Southerner expressed it to me on my mentioning the change, "Yes, sir, we have been brought into intellectual and moral relations with the rest of the civilized world." All subjects are now open at the South in conversation.
In confessing this, they would, they think, be confessing that their sons and brothers and fathers had perished miserably in a causeless struggle on which they ought never to have entered, and this, of course, would look like a slur on their memory, and their memory is still, after the lapse of twelve years, very sacred and very dear.
I doubt if many people at the North have an adequate notion of the intensity of the emotions with which Southerners look back on the war; and I mean tender and not revengeful or malignant emotions. The losses of the battle-field were deeply felt at the North—in many households down to the very roots of life; but on the whole they fell on a large and prosperous population, on a community which in the very thick of the fray seemed to be rolling up wealth, which revelled as it fought, and came out of the battle triumphant, exultant, and powerful.
At the South they swept through a scanty population with the most searching destructiveness, and when all was over they had to be wept over in ruined homes and in the midst of a society which was wrecked from top to bottom, and in which all relatives and friends had sunk together to common perdition. There has been no other such cataclysm in history.
Great states have been conquered before now, but conquest did not mean a sudden and desolating social revolution; so that to a Southerner the loss of relatives on the battle-field or in the hospital is associated with the loss of everything else.
A gentleman told me of his going, at the close of the war, into a little church in South Carolina on Sunday, and finding it filled with women, who were all in black, and who cried during the singing. It reminded one of the scene in the cathedral at Leyden, when the people got together to chant a Te Deum on hearing that the besieging army was gone; but, the music suddenly dying out, the air was filled with the sounds of sobbing.
The Leydeners, however, were weak and half-starved people, weeping over a great deliverance; these South Carolinians were weeping before endless bereavement and hopeless poverty. I doubt much if any community in the modern world was ever so ruthlessly brought face to face with what is sternest and hardest in human life; and those of them who have looked at it without flinching have something which any of us may envy them.
What Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Blaine would have us believe is that Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago.
With them the war is history—tender, touching, and heroic history if you will, but having no sort of connection with the practical life of to-day. Some of us at the North think their minds are occupied with schemes for the assassination and spoliation of negroes, and for a "new rebellion." Their minds are really occupied with making money, and the farms show it, and their designs on the negro are confined to getting him to work for low wages. His wages are low—forty cents a day and rations, which cost ten cents—but he is content with it. I saw negroes seeking employment at this rate, and glad to get it; and in the making of the bargain nothing could be more commercial, apparently, than the relations of the parties. They were evidently laborer and employer to each other, and nothing more."
Reference:
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7257/pg7257-images.html
Highlighted Information or the Dynamics of Southern Attitudes
"Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago."
or
Historical and Inbred Anger Influencing Southern U.S. Presidents
and Hawaii Since 1863
Review by Amelia Gora (2017)
Have you noticed how the Southerner's attitude plays a role in Society today and the moves to Plunder Upon Innocents in the U.S., Hawaii, and Abroad?
The following excerpts about the Northern and Southern perspectives from a book REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS written by Edwin Lawrence Godkin (1877) under the Chapter: The South After the War, brought on curiosities leading to the idea that war losers in this case the American Civil War has been influential in Southern born U.S. Presidents attitudes when interacting with "People of Color":
Godkin wrote: "as one Southerner expressed it to me on my mentioning the change, "Yes, sir, we have been brought into intellectual and moral relations with the rest of the civilized world." All subjects are now open at the South in conversation.
Is this true? it will probably be asked, with regard to the late war. Can you talk freely about that? Not exactly; but then the limitations on your discourse on this point are not peculiar to the South; they are such as would be put upon the discourse of two parties to a bloody contest in any civilized country among well-bred men or women. The events of the war you can discuss freely, but you are hardly at liberty to denounce Southern soldiers or officers, or accuse them of "rebellion," or to assume that they fought for base or wicked motives. Moreover, in a certain sense, all Southerners are still "unrepentant rebels." Doubtless, in view of the result, they will acknowledge that the war was a gigantic mistake; but I found that if I sought for an admission that, if it was all to do over again, they would not fight, I was touching on a very tender point, and I was gently but firmly repelled. The reason is plain enough.
In confessing this, they would, they think, be confessing that their sons and brothers and fathers had perished miserably in a causeless struggle on which they ought never to have entered, and this, of course, would look like a slur on their memory, and their memory is still, after the lapse of twelve years, very sacred and very dear.
I doubt if many people at the North have an adequate notion of the intensity of the emotions with which Southerners look back on the war; and I mean tender and not revengeful or malignant emotions. The losses of the battle-field were deeply felt at the North—in many households down to the very roots of life; but on the whole they fell on a large and prosperous population, on a community which in the very thick of the fray seemed to be rolling up wealth, which revelled as it fought, and came out of the battle triumphant, exultant, and powerful.
At the South they swept through a scanty population with the most searching destructiveness, and when all was over they had to be wept over in ruined homes and in the midst of a society which was wrecked from top to bottom, and in which all relatives and friends had sunk together to common perdition. There has been no other such cataclysm in history.
Great states have been conquered before now, but conquest did not mean a sudden and desolating social revolution; so that to a Southerner the loss of relatives on the battle-field or in the hospital is associated with the loss of everything else.
A gentleman told me of his going, at the close of the war, into a little church in South Carolina on Sunday, and finding it filled with women, who were all in black, and who cried during the singing. It reminded one of the scene in the cathedral at Leyden, when the people got together to chant a Te Deum on hearing that the besieging army was gone; but, the music suddenly dying out, the air was filled with the sounds of sobbing.
The Leydeners, however, were weak and half-starved people, weeping over a great deliverance; these South Carolinians were weeping before endless bereavement and hopeless poverty. I doubt much if any community in the modern world was ever so ruthlessly brought face to face with what is sternest and hardest in human life; and those of them who have looked at it without flinching have something which any of us may envy them.
But then I think it would be a mistake to suppose that Southerners came out of the war simply sorrowful. At the close, and for some time afterward, they undoubtedly felt fiercely and bitterly, and hated while they wept; and this was the primal difficulty of reconstruction. Frequently in conversation I heard some violent speech or act occurring soon after the war mentioned with the parenthetical explanation, "You know, I felt very bitterly at that time." But, then, I have always heard it from persons who are to day good-tempered, conciliatory, and hopeful, and desirous of cultivating good relations with Northerners; from which the inference, which so many Northern politicians find it so hard to swallow, is easy—viz., that time produces on Southerners its usual effects.
What Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Blaine would have us believe is that Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago.
The fact is, however, that they are in this respect like the rest of the human race. Time has done for their hearts and heads what it has done for the old Virginia battle-fields. There was not in 1865 a fence standing between the Potomac and Gordonsville, and but few, if any, undamaged houses. When I passed Manassas Junction the other day there was a hospitable-looking tavern and several houses at the station; the flowers were blooming in the yard, and crowds of young men and women in their Sunday clothes were gathered from the country around to see a base-ball match, and a well-tilled and well-fenced and smiling farming country stretched before my eyes in every direction. The only trace of the old fights was a rude graveyard filled, as a large sign informed us, with "the Confederate dead." All the rest of the way down to the springs the road ran through farms which looked as prosperous and peaceful as if the tide of war had not rolled over them inside a hundred years, and it is impossible to talk with the farmers ten minutes without seeing how thoroughly human and Anglo-Saxon they are.
With them the war is history—tender, touching, and heroic history if you will, but having no sort of connection with the practical life of to-day. Some of us at the North think their minds are occupied with schemes for the assassination and spoliation of negroes, and for a "new rebellion." Their minds are really occupied with making money, and the farms show it, and their designs on the negro are confined to getting him to work for low wages. His wages are low—forty cents a day and rations, which cost ten cents—but he is content with it. I saw negroes seeking employment at this rate, and glad to get it; and in the making of the bargain nothing could be more commercial, apparently, than the relations of the parties. They were evidently laborer and employer to each other, and nothing more."
Reference:
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7257/pg7257-images.html
Highlighted Information or the Dynamics of Southern Attitudes
"Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago."
"Some of us at the North think their minds are occupied with schemes for the assassination and spoliation of negroes, and for a "new rebellion." Their minds are really occupied with making money, and the farms show it, and their designs on the negro are confined to getting him to work for low wages."
"They were evidently laborer and employer to each other, and nothing more."
Add the Southern States:
"Eleven states left the United States in the following order and formed the Confederate States of America: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee."
Add the U.S. Presidents Since 1861 (Confederate States of America formed) through 2017:
Name of President State Born In
15. James Buchanan Pennsylvania
16. Abraham Lincoln Kentucky
17. Andrew Johnson North Carolina Confederate State
18. Ulysses S. Grant Ohio
19. Rutherford B. Hayes Ohio
20. James Garfield Ohio
21. Chester A. Arthur Vermont
22. Grover Cleveland New Jersey
23. Benjamin Harrison Ohio
24. Grover Cleveland New Jersey
25. William McKinley Ohio 20th Century
26. Theodore Roosevelt New York - banking influence
27. William Howard Taft Ohio
28. Woodrow Wilson Virginia Confederate State
29. Warren G. Harding Ohio
30. Calvin Coolidge Vermont
31. Herbert Hoover Iowa
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt New York - banking influence
33. Harry S. Truman Missouri
34. Dwight D. Eisenhower Texas Confederate State
35. John F. Kennedy Massachusetts
36. Lyndon B. Johnson Texas Confederate State
37. Richard M. Nixon California
38. Gerald R. Ford Nebraska
39. James Carter Georgia Confederate State
40. Ronald Reagan Illinois
41. George H. W. Bush Massachusetts-lived in Texas Confederate State
42. William J. Clinton Arkansas Confederate State
21st Century
43. George W. Bush Connecticut -lived in Texas Confederate State
44. Barack Obama Kenya or Kingdom of Hawaii
45. Donald J. Trump New York
16. Abraham Lincoln Kentucky
17. Andrew Johnson North Carolina Confederate State
18. Ulysses S. Grant Ohio
19. Rutherford B. Hayes Ohio
20. James Garfield Ohio
21. Chester A. Arthur Vermont
22. Grover Cleveland New Jersey
23. Benjamin Harrison Ohio
24. Grover Cleveland New Jersey
25. William McKinley Ohio 20th Century
26. Theodore Roosevelt New York - banking influence
27. William Howard Taft Ohio
28. Woodrow Wilson Virginia Confederate State
29. Warren G. Harding Ohio
30. Calvin Coolidge Vermont
31. Herbert Hoover Iowa
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt New York - banking influence
33. Harry S. Truman Missouri
34. Dwight D. Eisenhower Texas Confederate State
35. John F. Kennedy Massachusetts
36. Lyndon B. Johnson Texas Confederate State
37. Richard M. Nixon California
38. Gerald R. Ford Nebraska
39. James Carter Georgia Confederate State
40. Ronald Reagan Illinois
41. George H. W. Bush Massachusetts-lived in Texas Confederate State
42. William J. Clinton Arkansas Confederate State
21st Century
43. George W. Bush Connecticut -lived in Texas Confederate State
44. Barack Obama Kenya or Kingdom of Hawaii
45. Donald J. Trump New York
References:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/Presidents
bing.com
other researches by Amelia Gora
Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii/Hawaiian Kingdom/Hawaiian archipelago
Pirates
Charles Reed Bishop Born In: New York - banking influence
William Little Lee Born In: New York - banking influence
Governors Appointed by the U.S. President
Sanford B. Dole Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii Status: Usurper
George R. Carter Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii Status: Usurper
Walter F. Frear Born In: California
Lucius E. Pinkham Born In: Massachusetts
Charles J. McCarthy Born In: Massachusetts
Wallace R. Farrington Born In: Maine
Lawrence M. Judd Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii Status: Usurper
Joseph Poindexter Born In: Oregon
Ingram Stainback Born In: Tennessee Confederate State
Oren E. Long Born In: Kansas
Samuel Wilder King Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii Status: Usurper
William F. Quinn Born In: New York
Elected by the People
William F. Quinn Born In: New York
John A. Burns Born In: Montana
George Ariyoshi Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii
John D. Waihee III Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii
William F. Quinn Born In: New York
John A. Burns Born In: Montana
George Ariyoshi Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii
John D. Waihee III Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii
Ben Cayetano Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii
Linda Lingle Born In: Missouri
Neil Abercrombie Born In: New York
David Ige Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii
Note: U.S. President Cleveland Gave Hawaii Back to Queen Liliuokalani Twice: In 1894 and 1897
See: http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/2017/11/overview-of-us-president-cleveland-gave.html
U.S. President McKinley had the Army, Navy, and Federal personnel "develop" the Territory.
U.S. President McKinley "Proclaimed" Hawaii to be a Territory of the U.S.
In 1912, the Territory's Attorney General documented that 'the Territory is the successor of the Kingdom of Hawaii'.
See: Updating the ILLEGAL U.S. Documented in Hawaii -A Review- by Amelia Gora (2016)
SUMMARY
Hawaii became infiltrated with People of Color haters.
Kamehameha III passed the anti-slavery law in 1852.
The U.S. passed their anti-slavery law in 1865 or 13 years later.
There were only a few word changes.
The philosophies of the Confederate States were taken on by those arriving in Hawaii.
It was the sugar planters of Hawaii who moved over to the Mexican's territory, then had the U.S. assist in claiming lands of the Mexicans.
The territory was renamed Texas and they were part of the Confederate States who fought the Union Army.
The attitudes taken on in the Hawaiian Islands and the U.S.:
"Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago."
Linda Lingle Born In: Missouri
Neil Abercrombie Born In: New York
David Ige Born In: Hawaii/Kingdom of Hawaii
Note: U.S. President Cleveland Gave Hawaii Back to Queen Liliuokalani Twice: In 1894 and 1897
See: http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/2017/11/overview-of-us-president-cleveland-gave.html
U.S. President McKinley had the Army, Navy, and Federal personnel "develop" the Territory.
U.S. President McKinley "Proclaimed" Hawaii to be a Territory of the U.S.
In 1912, the Territory's Attorney General documented that 'the Territory is the successor of the Kingdom of Hawaii'.
See: Updating the ILLEGAL U.S. Documented in Hawaii -A Review- by Amelia Gora (2016)
SUMMARY
Hawaii became infiltrated with People of Color haters.
Kamehameha III passed the anti-slavery law in 1852.
The U.S. passed their anti-slavery law in 1865 or 13 years later.
There were only a few word changes.
The philosophies of the Confederate States were taken on by those arriving in Hawaii.
It was the sugar planters of Hawaii who moved over to the Mexican's territory, then had the U.S. assist in claiming lands of the Mexicans.
The territory was renamed Texas and they were part of the Confederate States who fought the Union Army.
The attitudes taken on in the Hawaiian Islands and the U.S.:
"Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago."
"Some of us at the North think their minds are occupied with schemes for the assassination and spoliation of negroes, and for a "new rebellion." Their minds are really occupied with making money, and the farms show it, and their designs on the negro are confined to getting him to work for low wages."
"They were evidently laborer and employer to each other, and nothing more."
Several Examples are shown below of some of the U.S. Presidents with animosities towards People of Color:
Several Examples are shown below of some of the U.S. Presidents with animosities towards People of Color:
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