The South Was Right
Page 43
(there follows a recitation of the original ratification resolution of the Fourteenth Amendment which is here omitted)
Be and the same is hereby rescinded, and the consent, on behalf of the State of New Jersey, to ratify the proposed fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, is hereby withdrawn.
2. AND BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of the foregoing preamble and resolution certified to by the president of the Senate and Speaker of the General Assembly, be forwarded to the President of the United States, the Secretary of State of the United States, to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and to the Governors of the respective States.
3. AND BE IT RESOLVED, That these resolutions shall take effect immediately.
(Followed by the appropriate attestation documentation)
ADDENDUM IX
U.S. News and World Report Editorial September 27, 1957, and January 26, 1970
The following is an abstract from an editorial written by David Lawrence, former editor of U.S. News and World Report. Here we see that a major American journal took an editorial stand in support of the claim that the federal government used fraudulent methods to enact the Fourteenth Amendment. Of course, the Yankee myth-makers have done a great job in making sure that these facts are kept out of public sight.
ABSTRACT
U.S. News and World Report
The Worst Scandal in Our History
The fraudulent methods used to enact the Fourteenth Amendment were the subject of a two-page editorial in the September 27, 1957 (re-published January 26, 1970), issue of U.S. News and World Report. David Lawrence, editor, openly admitted that “No such amendment was ever legally ratified.”
The editorial noted that the Fourteenth Amendment was the legal excuse used by the Supreme Court in its various “desegregation decisions.” As we have already noted: It is these Reconstruction acts that have been repeatedly used by the Northern-controlled liberal government to impose and re-impose various forms of Reconstruction upon the Southern people.
David Lawrence noted that to achieve its purpose the Northern Congress:
1. Expelled the South from Congress (an open and flagrant violation of Section V of the U.S. Constitution).
2. Illegally used military forces to occupy peaceful states (remember, the war was over and new civil state governments had been established and their representatives and senators sent to Congress).
3. Disfranchised a large portion of the population (i.e., those who had supported the Confederate government—a violation of the constitutional prohibition against the enactment of ex post facto law).
4. Declared that no Southern state could have its seats back unless such state ratified the Fourteenth Amendment (i.e., yielded to forced ratification).
5. Counted as ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment the states of Ohio and New Jersey, both of which had rescinded their ratifications. In addition, the Oregon legislature rescinded its ratification three months later due to the “illegal and revolutionary” methods used by the proponents of enactment.
According to David Lawrence, the history of the Fourteenth Amendment “… is a disgrace to free government,” but he reminds us, “It is never too late to correct injustice.”
abstracted from
U.S. News and World Report
January 26, 1970
pages 95-96
ADDENDUM X
ABSTRACT
The Georgia Journal of Southern Legal History
SPRING/SUMMER 1991
VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1
Was the Fourteenth Amendment Constitutionally Adopted?
BY FORREST MCDONALD
Dr. Forrest McDonald is a professor of history at the University of Alabama. The above captioned article is one of the latest to demonstrate the illegal methods used by the radical Congress to force a major change in the balance of power between the federal and state governments.
Dr. McDonald reminds his readers that the Southern states were not the exclusive advocates of the concept of State’s Rights and interposition. In the early days of the Constitution it was the New England and Northern states who were the first to advocate these principles. They were also more successful in their efforts to use said principles to protect their vested interests. In 1808 Connecticut and Massachusetts endorsed interposition; the famous New England Secession Convention was held at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814; the House of Representatives of Massachusetts in 1846 declared the war with Mexico to be unconstitutional; and many Northern states successfully nullified the fugitive slave acts, thereby overruling both the federal Congress and the federal Supreme Court.
Dr. McDonald notes that in their “zeal to punish, plunder, and reconstruct the South,” the radical Congress “greatly increased the powers of Congress at the expense of the states” and that the process of adopting the Fourteenth Amendment was “marred by repeated irregularities.” It is here that he gives fresh insight to the old, yet still valid, arguments regarding the legitimacy of this and all Reconstruction era congressional acts. Dr. McDonald notes that in Ex parte Milligan the United States Supreme Court ruled that martial law could not be constitutionally imposed in the absence of war or rebellion and in areas where the civilian courts were functioning. The Reconstruction Act of March 1867 was a brazen and flagrant violation of this decision. He also noted that by declaring that the Southern states were without legal governments, Congress had trapped itself in a contradiction—earlier Congress had accepted the ratifications by the Southern states to the Thirteenth Amendment, but now Congress had declared these same states to be illegal. Dr. McDonald also notes that the act denied civil rights to upwards of nine million Southerners. As such, it violated the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process and was in direct violation of constitutional prohibitions against bills of attainder.*
To make the point of just how absurd it is to contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was legally ratified, Dr. McDonald asks us to make some very interesting assumptions:
First, assume that the amendment had been constitutionally proposed, then;
Assume that the ratifications of Tennessee, Oregon, and West Virginia were proper, then;
Assume that the rescission by New Jersey and Ohio were illegal—then, you are left with the problem that still Congress is six votes short of the number necessary for ratification!
Now comes the interesting part: to obtain the remaining states, Congress required the Southern states to ratify in order to get back into the Union. But remember, states can vote on ratification of a constitutional amendment “only if they were duly recognized as governments at the time they acted on the amendment.” But Congress had already declared these “states” to be illegal governments and not a part of the Union—therefore their ratifications, according to constitutional principle, cannot be counted toward final ratification. Thus we are left with an amendment that was never ratified!
After learning that the South had rejected the Fourteenth Amendment, Senator James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin declared that the North would “march upon them and force them to adopt it at the point of the bayonet.”
In his concluding remarks, Dr. McDonald states, “Clearly, then, the Fourteenth Amendment was never constitutionally ratified, even if it had been constitutionally proposed.”
*Bill of Attainder: A legislative act, no matter what its form, that applies either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial.
ADDENDUM XI
I Am Condemned to Be Shot
Asey V. Ladd, Private, C.S.A.
OCTOBER 29, 1864
The following previously unpublished letters have been transcribed from photocopies of the originals. Asey V. Ladd was a POW held by the Yankee government. He had served three years in the Confederate army. He enlisted on March 10, 1861, and was serving with Company A, Fourth Missouri Calvary when taken prisoner. His official record states that he “died while prisoner of war.” Th
e truth is that he was murdered by officials of the United States government in retaliation for local Confederate military activities. The family stressed that Asey was a POW at the time and had nothing to do with the raid that resulted in the death of several Yankee soldiers.
It should be noted that these letters were dated well after Gen. John McNeil had received his promotion from Abraham Lincoln, a promotion given as a reward for an earlier and similar execution of innocent Southern POWs (see Chapter 4, “Yankee Atrocities”). Perhaps the commander of this Yankee POW camp was trying for a promotion from President Lincoln!
St. Louis, Mo.
Oct. 29, 1864
Dear Wife and Children:
I take my pen with trembling hand to inform you that I have to be shot between 2 & 4 o’clock this evening. I have but few hours to remain in this unfriendly world. There is 6 of us sentenced to die in [retaliation] of 6 union soldiers that was shot by Reeves men. My dear wife don’t grieve after me. I want you to meet me in Heaven. I want you to teach the children piety, so that they may meet me at the right hand of God. I can’t tell you my feelings but you can form some idea of my feeling when you hear of my fate.
I don’t want you to let this bear on your mind anymore than you can help, for you are now left to take care of my dear children. Tell them to remember their dear father. I want you to go back to the old place and try to make a support for you and the children.
I want you to tell all my friends that I have gone home to rest. I want you to go to Mr. Conner and tell him to assist you in winding up your business. If he is not there get Mr. Cleveland. If you don’t get this letter before St. Francis River gets up you had better stay there until you can make a crop, and you can go in the dry season.
It is now half past 4 AM. I must bring my letter to a close, leaving you in the hands of God. I send you my best love and respect in the hour of death. Kiss all the children for me. You need have no uneasiness about my future state, for my faith is well founded and I fear no evil. God is my refuge and hiding place.
Good-by Amy.
Asey Ladd
Gratiot Street Prison
St. Louis, Mo.
Oct. 29th, 1864
My Dear Father,
I am condemned to be shot today between the hours of two and four o’clock P.M. in retaliation for some men shot by Reeves (Major Wilson and six men). I am an innocent man and it is hard to die for anothers sins. You can imagine my feelings when I think of you, my wife and children. I want my family to come back to my old place. If you live till peace is made I want you to settle up and pay off all my debts. You need have no uneasiness as to my future state for my faith is well founded and I fear no evil, God is my refuge and hiding place. Meet me in Haven.
Good bye
Asey Ladd
ADDENDUM XII
A Former Slave’s Letter Home
According to Yankee mythology, pre-war Southerners were cruel slave masters, and black Southerners were awaiting any opportunity to rise up and destroy both the system of slavery and their cruel masters.
In the booklet Bill Yopp: Narrative of a Slave the author tells about the wife of a Connecticut minister who arrived in the South prior to the war. This poor misguided lady imagined herself to be a missionary to a foreign land where an enslaved people were oppressed and suffering daily the cruelties of barbaric masters. She was astonished to find that, generally speaking, white Southerners were generous and kind and regarded black Southerners not as slaves but as servants. Added to this was her surprise to find that black Southerners were generally contented and happy.
The following letter has been transcribed from the original.* It was written on November 17, 1929, by Jim Holliman, a former slave. He was writing back to his “white folks” to find out what had happened since his moving from Tennessee to Texas. He was eighty-nine years old at the time of this writing. This letter shines through the darkness of lies espoused by the Yankee myth-makers and illuminates a time when people, even though different in skin color and station of life, possessed a sense of mutual respect and admiration that is the very essence of human love. No wonder the Yankee myth-makers are so determined to suffocate such truth!
Henderson, Texas
November 17, 1929
Mr. Henry Holleman, Dear sir,
I received a letter from you some few months ago which I was very proud of. But being very much crowded in business I have failed to answer at once as I should have done. But I hope you will not think hard of me etc. I am in a condition now to reply to your letters at any returning mail. I still wants to hear from my old home state and white and colored friends and if you will be so kind as to correspond with [me] I will make it [a] history for you and for me also. My father was born in the Holleman family and was never owned by any other until old man Mark Holliman died. Mark’s father raised him and he was treated as one of the white children and at the old man’s death he fell to Mark who also treated [him] as a white man. He was allowed to carry his gun which was strictly against the Slave rule. Grandma was the cook for white and black. The table was set 3 times a day for black as well as for the white.
I must not tell you too much now if I do I want leave enough for history. But I will say that the Hollemans were good white people.
I am a native of Tenn. the best state in the union. But I been in Texas the best part of my life. I want to hear from you and all the rest of the Hollimanfs], is any of Joel Hollimans folks living? Bill, whom they call scrap when he was a boy, he use to run business. Please write me a few lines and I may have something good to answer.
Jim Holliman
(P.S.) I want you to give me the date of Mark Holliman’s Sale [the sale of Mark Holleman’s estate] for I was, at the time of the Sale, a boy of 10 or 12 years old, all of the property was sold and my papa, Abe, and Sue were Sold to new masters. Dr. Shelby bought papa, next I want you to get on your horse or on some way and go to the Smith cemetery and give me the dates of old master and mistress deaths and I will pay you and if you think it will be too big a job write me first and let me know what it will cost me and we will make a trade. Let me hear from you at once.
Jim Holliman
*The original is held by James K. Turner of Nashville, Tennessee, the great-grandson of Henry Samuel Holleman, to whom the letter is addressed.
ADDENDUM XIII
Recommended Reading for the Southern Nationalist
1. A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, William Rawle, H. C. Carey and Lea, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1825. One of the first texts on the United States Constitution. Judge Rawle, a Northern Abolitionist, unequivocally stated in this work that the states have a right to secede from the Union.
2. Abandoned, The Betrayal of the American Middle Class Since World War II, William Quirk and Randall Bridwell, Madison Books, New York, New York, 1992. The authors demonstrate how liberalism’s experiment with non-democratic government created a fatal schism between the government and the majority of Americans. “Now, a failed government has led this rich country into bankruptcy.”
3. A Defense of Virginia and the South, Professor Robert L. Dabney, D.D., Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1977. The author explains how slavery was forced upon the South first by England and later by New England.
4. A Fool’s Errand, Albion W. Tourgee, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1961. A Carpetbagger’s story of the failure of Reconstruction. The Fool is not friendly toward the South, but it is instructive as to the thinking of the Northern people at the time.
5. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, Grady McWhiney, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1988. An excellent attempt to explain North/South differences in terms of antagonistic cultures.
6. The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana, edited by David Edmonds, The Acadiana Press, Lafayette, Louisiana, 1988. Sworn testimony from eyewitnesses to the outrages committed by the Yankee invaders of Louisiana.
; 7. Free to Choose, Milton Friedman, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, New York, 1980. Friedman explains why it is necessary to protect individual freedom and its importance to economic prosperity. Though he is not a Southerner, his views on economics and civil liberties are worthy of study.
8. I’ll Take My Stand, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1983. Twelve Southerners in 1930 warn us about the dangers of abandoning our Southern folkways while seeking after the Yankee god of progress.
9. Memoirs of Service Afloat, Admiral Raphael Semmes, The Blue and Gray Press, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1987. The author uses the first six chapters to explain why the South found it necessary to establish an independent nation.
10. Plain Folk of the Old South, Frank L. Owsley, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouse, Louisiana, 1949. A study of the non-plantation white South.
11. Southern by the Grace of God, Michael A. Grissom, Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, Louisiana, 1988. The author celebrates being a Southerner. This book cannot be read while hiding in a closet!
12. Southern History of the War, Edward A. Pollard, The Fairfax Press, New York, New York, 1978. The title reveals the author’s viewpoint—an excellent work, originally published in 1866.
13. The Confederate States Constitution of 1861, Marshall L. DeRosa, University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London, 1991. The author explains that the Confederate States Constitution was a natural extension of the original United States Constitution.