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U.S. Constitution Title: States' Rights1 ntro. States' rights are the antidote to federal tyranny. Without states' rights we are nothing less that feudal servants (slaves) working on the federal plantation. In order to illustrate this point allow me to relate an incident. During the first week in August, 1999, I heard a U.S. Attorney from California say: "Federal law is superior to state law." If that is true, then the states have fallen from being masters to servants and there is no way that a state may protect its citizens. If the U.S. attorney is correct, no state can fight unfunded mandates or any mandates, it cannot make laws for itself that would protect its citizens from federal tyranny, nor can it legislate any laws except those that are in agreement with federal laws. In simple language, each state must listen when its master speaks! The only conclusion that I can reach based upon the U.S. attorney's statement is that he is ignorant of history, the constitution, and the Bible. He does not understand why the Revolutionary War or the Second War for Southern Independence was fought. If his statement is true, it is true only because we have been transformed from a Constitutional Republic into a federal empire and we have progressed further down the road of subjection and slavery than we are aware. In order to gain a clear understanding of states' rights, we must consider the subject historically and biblically. The Articles of Confederation written in 1781 state in Article 2: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled." The Treaty of Paris in 1783 concluded the Revolutionary war. The treaty opens with these words in Article 1: "His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof." The King of England made peace with 13 sovereign, independent states. When the Constitutional convention met, the Georgia delegation carried commissions which opened with these words: "The State of Georgia, by the grace of God, free, sovereign, and independent." When the Constitution was written, the states by a common agreement united to form and create the federal government and give to it limited power and authority. Please understand, the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government – and it was to be federal – not national. The federal government created and authorized by the states was to act as the agent of the states, who were the real sovereigns and do only those things that were expressly delegated to it by the states. The right to decide whether the federal government did or did not act according to the terms of the compact belonged to the states alone who were the true sovereigns. The federal government was not to determine its own limitations. Leaving such an important power in the hands of the federal government was to vest it with unlimited and tyrannical powers. When the state of New York voted to accede to the Constitution on 7/26/1788 it also added these words: "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness." Likewise, Virginia acceded to the Constitution on 6/25/1788, it added: "The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them, whensover the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them at their will." If you really want to understand the independence and sovereignty of each state consider the fact that when the Constitution was ratified in 1787, only 11 of the original 13 states ratified it before it went into operation. North Carolina and Rhode Island did not ratify the Constitution immediately. The Constitution was not forced upon them; it was not considered majority rules and therefore they were in whether they liked it or not. No! They were treated as free, sovereign, and independent states. There was no coercion. The act of ratifying required the assent of each state not a majority of the states. Whatever one state did was not binding upon the other states. Incidentally, there was no war to coerce North Carolina and Rhode Island into the union. When over a year later, North Carolina and Rhode Island did accede to the Constitution, Rhode Island did so with this proviso: "We, the delegates of the people of Rhode Island and Plantations, duly elected, do declare and make known…(III) that the powers of government may be resumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness." A number of the original states delineated their right to secession and to reassume any power or authority delegated to the federal government. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that gave the classic statement of states' rights. They said basically that: The Union is a voluntary association of states and if the central government goes too far, each state has the right to nullify that law. As Jefferson said in the Kentucky Resolutions: Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party....each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." South Carolina applied the principles of these resolutions in response to the "tariffs of abomination." In response to the tariffs of abomination, the tariffs of 1828 and 1832, the people of South Carolina nullified the unconstitutional acts of Congress in that state. The second paragraph of the Ordinance of Nullification reads: We, therefore, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... [That these acts] ... are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers, or citizens; and all promises, contracts, and obligations, made or entered into, or to be made or entered into, with purpose to secure the duties imposed by the said acts, and all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void. The concluding paragraph of the Ordinance reads: "And we, the People of South Carolina, to the end that it may be fully understood by the Government of the United States, and the people of the co-States, that we are determined to maintain this, our Ordinance and Declaration, at every hazard, Do further Declare that we will not submit to the application of force, on the part of the Federal Government, to reduce this State to obedience ; but that we will consider the passage, by Congress, of any act ... to coerce the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass her commerce, or to enforce the acts hereby declared to be null and void, otherwise than through the civil tribunals of the country, as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union: and that the people of this State will thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States, and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right to do." Did South Carolina misinterpret the Constitution? The answer is No! James Madison, who is called the "father of the Constitution" since he was secretary at the Constitutional convention said in Federalist Paper 45: The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The 9th and 10th Amendments in the Bill of Rights cannot be misunderstood: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. Jefferson Davis used the following argument in favor of the equal rights of states, as opposed to the declaration that all men are created equal: Resolved, That the union of these States rests on the equality of rights and privileges among its members, and that it is especially the duty of the Senate, which represents the States in their sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to discriminate either in relation to person or property, so as, in the Territories -- which are the common possession of the United States -- to give advantages to the citizens of one State which are not equally secured to those of every other State. James Henly Thornwell, Presbyterian pastor, author, and theologian, who died in 1862 said i n a tract entitled 'Our Danger and Our Duty' in regard to the consequences of a Northern victory, 'If they prevail, the whole character of the Government will be changed, and, instead of a federal republic, the common agent of sovereign and independent States, we shall have a central despotism, with the notion of States for ever abolished, deriving its powers from the will, and shaping its policy according to the wishes, of a numerical majority of the people; we shall have, in other words, a supreme, irresponsible democracy. . . The avowed end of the present War is, to make the Government a government of force.' Those in other countries understood our confederation and unhappily understood it better than our politicians. When a foreigner understands the compact of the states, it was undoubtedly made very clear. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the states were sovereign and they had given the federal government its limited powers. State sovereignty was so ingrained in Southern men that when the South seceded, she wrote her own constitution. Fittingly, the Preamble to the Confederate Constitution begins: "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character..." Many politicians have given lip-service to states' rights without really understanding or applying the principle. For example: In 1980, at the opening day of Ronald Regan's presidential campaign he said that he stood for "states' rights." At the same event, the now deceased Senator Strom Thurmond from South Carolina declared: "We want that federal government to keep their filthy hands off the rights of the states." Wikipedia online under States' Rights. Words fitly spoken but without application are totally useless. May will parade and speak of States' Rights but have no idea the meaning or the application of the principle. In his Fort Hill address on July 26, 1831, John C. Calhoun, that iron-clad Southerner, succinctly pointed out the error that has occurred in modern day thinking. He said: The error is in the assumption that the General Government is a party to the constitutional compact. The States, as has been shown, formed the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities. He went on to say in the same address: The great and leading principle is, that the General Government emanated from the people of the several States, forming distinct political communities, and acting in their separate and sovereign capacity, and not from all of the people forming one aggregate political community; that the Constitution of the United States is, in fact, a compact, to which each State is a party, in the character already described; and that the several States, or parties, have a right to judge of its infractions; and in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of power not delegated, they have the right, in the last resort, to use the language of the Virginia Resolutions, " to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them. " This right of interposition, thus solemnly asserted by the State of Virginia, be it called what it may,--State-right, veto, nullification, or by any other name,--I conceive to be the fundamental principle of our system, resting on facts historically as certain as our revolution itself, and deductions as simple and demonstrative as that of any political or moral truth whatever; and I firmly believe that on its recognition depend the stability and safety of our political institutions. In the same address, he nailed it down with these words: Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or a consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting ultimately on the solid basis of the sovereignty of the States or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, and violence, and force must finally prevail. Let it never be forgotten that, where the majority rules without restriction, the minority is the subject ; and that, if we should absurdly attribute to the former the exclusive right of construing the Constitution, there would be, in fact, between the sovereign and subject, under such a government, no Constitution, or, at least, nothing deserving the name, or serving the legitimate object of so sacred an instrument. How the States are to exercise this high power of interposition, which constitutes so essential a portion of their reserved rights that it cannot be delegated without an entire surrender of their sovereignty, and converting our system from a federal into a consolidated Government, is a question that the States only are competent to determine. The arguments which prove that they possess the power, equally prove that they are, in the language of Jefferson, "the rightful judges of the mode and measure of redress." But the spirit of forbearance, as well as the nature of the right itself, forbids a recourse to it, except in cases of dangerous infractions of the Constitution; and then only in the last resort, when all reasonable hope of relief from the ordinary action of the Government has failed; when, if the right to interpose did not exist, the alternative would be submission and oppression on one side, or resistance by force on the other. Thus, the states are the rightful masters and the federal government is the rightful servant. When one forgets this simple truth we have what we presently endure - a federal government completely out of control with usurped, unlimited power and demanding a usurped and unlimited submission by it citizens to its every whim, rule and regulation. In 1855, Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, a notorious hater of the South, said in a speech delivered before the United States Senate: "Who is the judge of last resort of the violation of the Constitution of the U.S. by the enactment of a law? Who is the final arbiter, the general government or the states in their sovereignty? Why sir, to yield that point is to yield up all the rights of the states to protect their own citizens, and to consolidate this government into a miserable despotism!" The Constitution was not intended nor devised to establish a centralized government. The Constitution ordained by the States was not intended to abolish, replace, or destroy the states and their fundamental rights. Moreover, it was not designed to create a legal system which would enable the federal government to gradually usurp the powers of the states and centralize power in Washington! Thomas Jefferson in 1821 noted that "when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." Jefferson in his first inaugural address asked a rhetorical question – "what it was the country needed?" He answered that we need a wise and frugal government which restrains men from injuring one another and otherwise leaves them free to regulate their own pursuits. He stated that this was the sum of good government. He then asked, "How was this to be achieved?" He answered that we must avoid entangling alliances, preserve the right of election, freedom of religion, speech, and the right to trial by jury and most importantly, he added: "we need to support the state governments in all their rights as the most competent administration for our domestic concerns and surest bulwark of our liberties." Jefferson said it plainly: states' rights are the bulwark of our liberties. The loss of states' rights equals the loss of liberty! Our founding fathers were patriots who loved their country – not nationalists who loved their government! In an 1811 letter to Destutt de Tracey, Jefferson said again: "the true bulwarks of our liberty in this country are our state governments." Samuel Adams wrote in a letter to Richard Henry Lee that "he feared misinterpretation of the Constitution would bring about fully centralized (consolidated) power in the federal government at the expense of the states, and sink both into despotism." States' rights are indeed the bulwark of liberty. The reason we have lost so much of our liberty and freedom is because our state legislatures do not have the knowledge, backbone, constitution, and conviction to stand and tell its servant, the federal government where to go! The wise man made an astute observation in Eccl. 10:7, he said: I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth. The problem is that we the princes, that is the people, have been turned into servants, while our servant the federal government rides rough shod over us on the horse that we provide! Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 33 on January 3, 1788, "If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify." The people did exactly that in 1793 when the Supreme Court in Chisolm v. Georgia ruled that the court had jurisdiction over the states. The Supreme Court found that it had jurisdiction over a suit by citizens of South Carolina to collect a debt from the State of Georgia. When the Supreme Court demanded that Georgia appear for litigation, Georgia basically told the Supreme Court to kiss our foot! The states were the masters and the federal government was the servant. The Supreme Court said that if Georgia did not appear, they would rule on the case without her being present. The Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill making it a felony punishable by hanging for a person to carry out the Supreme Court's decision. Anyone who entered into the State of Georgia to carry out the ruling of the Supreme Court would be hanged without the benefit of clergy. Ultimately the clamor and controversy resulted in passage of the Eleventh Amendment which states as follows: The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against any one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. What has happened in our country? The servant has become the master and the master has become the servant. How did that come to be? Ignorance, apathy, subterfuge, deceit, fraud, and manipulation are part of the answer. However, I believe Alexis de Tocqueville hit the nail on the head when he said: The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. We have become so indolent, lazy, selfish, and irresponsible in our lives; we want to live off the labor and discipline of others. We have forgotten that the government can only give to some what it takes from others. We have become so dependent upon governmental subsidies and handouts that we do not want to change. We are fearful of change because we do not want to take upon ourselves individual and family responsibilities. We therefore, are willing and ready to accept "bad government" in order that we may have that which we want from the labor of others. We need to learn that there is no such thing as a "free lunch." Someone somewhere pays! We object and say that we are fearful. If we try to change now, we will destroy our system of government. Richard Henry Lee said: To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying." We need to go back to the "old paths" and the "old ways" of constitutionalism, Biblicism, and righteousness. Unless the federal government is "reigned in" and held tight by the cords of the Constitution, we will have more and more tyranny, despotism, executive orders, signing papers, and any and every conceivable way to destroy our liberty, freedom, and way of life and we will become more and more enslaved. As Steve Wilkins has aptly stated, that when the North won the war, they did not destroy slavery, they simply enlarged the plantation. Now, we are all slaves. States' Rights are one of the keys to restoring our republic.
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