by Old Jarhead
In the year 1776, the Colonies on the American continent declared themselves a free and sovereign
nation, with the publication of the Declaration of Independence. One of the finest and most cherished
documents of the period, it was very clear that the colonists were tired of not having the Rights they felt
were a gift from God, not government. So to explore this properly, let us examine the reasons the
Colonists decided to rebel against the established government, a government which had at the time the
strongest and most robust empire in the world.
The start of the War occurred long before July 4, 1776, with royal decrees which harmed the Colonists
by taxing them unjustly for waging other campaigns in the New World. The Stamp Act of 1765, the
Townsend Act of 1767, and the Tea Act of 1773 were all considered as excessive and detrimental to the
Rights of the Colonists in America. This was followed by the Intolerable Acts, also known as the
Coercive Acts, designed to punish and bring back to the control of the Crown, the Colony of
Massachusetts, in 1774, following the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773. The DOI was a
statement of all the acts of the Crown which these men considered a violation of the Rights of
Englishmen.
From the DOI: “…The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless
suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has
utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those
people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them
and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the
depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his
measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions
on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the
Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise;
the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and
convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the
Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither,
and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing
Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and
payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people,
and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and
unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit
on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an
Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit
instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the
Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for
us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against
us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our
people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death,
desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled
in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their
Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their
Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the
inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
So, even before the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Colonists believed they had Rights
endowed by their God. So, the basis of the future Constitution and Bill of Rights had a genesis on
this continent in that document. And these gentlemen were ready to fight a WAR against what
they deemed to be tyranny.
The Revolutionary War was effectively over at the Battle of Yorktown, Oct. 19, 1781.
Unfortunately, Cornwallis refused to recognize the defeat, and continued to wage war until 1783,
when Cornwallis was also defeated at Yorktown. Then, it was time to get down to setting up a
Nation.
Confederation of the States, the first governing document of the US
The Confederation of States was adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777.
Because of the War for Independence, the Articles of Confederation were not put into effect until
March 1, 1781. The Confederation was the governing document until the Constitution was
ratified on September 17, 1787, when the current Constitution was ratified.
The Confederation of the States was the first government of this nation. From the start, it
was known to be inadequate for the proper function of governing the Colonies. But an
interesting side note is that the Confederation actually came up with the name, “United
States of America”. The government had almost no power, and had no taxation powers
ceded them by the states. It took only a short time before several of the founders started to
plan a stronger central government, while protecting the rights of the citizens of those
states. It was shown that having 13 different sovereign governments was dangerous to the
preservation of a strong nation. So, these men started to plan how to properly devise a
government which can govern as well as protect the rights of ALL citizens.
The Drafting and adoption of the Constitution
The drafting of the Constitution of the United States began on May 25, 1787, when the
Constitutional Convention met for the first time with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State
House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to revise the Articles of
Confederation. It ended on September 17, 1787, the day the Frame of Government drafted
by the convention's delegates to replace the Articles was adopted and signed. The
ratification process for the Constitution began that day, and ended when the final state,
Rhode Island, ratified it on May 29, 1790.
During the ratification process, there was a profound debate over the Rights of the People,
which the Constitution did not mention. So, the first “Parties” were sort of formed. First
were the Federalists, a group which supported a strong centralized government, with limited
powers being that if it was not ceded by the states, the Feds had no power over such
Rights, and those rights belonged to the States or the People. At least, that was the theory.
Federalism is a form of political organization that seeks to distinguish states and unites
them, assigning different types of decision-making power at different levels to allow a
degree of political independence in an overarching structure.[1] Federalism was a political
solution to the problems with the Articles of Confederation which gave little practical
authority to the confederal government. For example, the Articles allowed the Congress of
the Confederation the power to sign treaties and declare war, but it could not raise taxes to
pay for an army and all major decisions required an unanimous vote.
The Anti-Federalists were a late-18th-century group in the United States advancing a
political movement that opposed the creation of a stronger federal government and which
later opposed the ratification of the 1787 Constitution. The previous constitution, called the
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, gave state governments more authority. Led
by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried, among other things, that the position
of president, then a novelty, might evolve into a monarchy. Though the Constitution was
ratified and supplanted the Articles of Confederation, Anti-Federalist influence helped lead
to the enactment of the Bill of Rights.
One of the major complaints of the anti-Federalists was that without a written Bill of Rights, a
new Federal government could infringe on the Rights of the citizens. They were so adamant that
the Federalist agreed to writing a Bill of Rights if the Constitution were to be ratified, even though
the Federalist felt that if the Constitution didn't mention something, the new government would
have no power to abridge a Right. Without that agreement between the Parties, there is a chance
that the original Confederation of States would have lasted many decades more until being
amended or replaced.
Bill of Rights Drafting and Ratification
Few members of the First Congress wanted to make amending the new Constitution a priority.
But James Madison, once the most vocal opponent of the Bill of Rights, introduced a list of
amendments to the Constitution on June 8, 1789, and “hounded his colleagues relentlessly” to
secure its passage. Madison had come to appreciate the importance voters attached to these
protections, the role that enshrining them in the Constitution could have in educating people
about their rights, and the chance that adding them might prevent its opponents from making
more drastic changes to it.
The House passed a joint resolution containing 17 amendments based on Madison’s proposal.
The Senate changed the joint resolution to consist of 12 amendments. A joint House and Senate
Conference Committee settled remaining disagreements in September. On October 2, 1789,
President Washington sent copies of the 12 amendments adopted by Congress to the states. By
December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified 10 of these, now known as the “Bill of
Rights.”.
On Whom Does a Right Operate?
Many people seem to believe that Rights are a gift from some government entity. But that is a
fallacy, as a Right cannot be granted to a citizen. The rights—as drafted in our Constitution—are
restrictions on the power of the newly formed government. Each and every Right of the original
10 spells out those powers over which the newly formed Federal government had (and
supposedly still has) NO POWER TO INTERFERE WITH! That means that the government has no
power to interfere with the speech of those who may disagree with the government. Likewise, it
means that the citizens are not to be interfered with by the Federal government when they decide
to purchase or carry firearms. Government is forbidden from forcing a person accused of a crime
to testify against himself, and the government is likewise barred from taking property,
documents, or any information of an accused without a warrant, which clearly states for what the
government is searching, as well as this document must be sworn to by an appropriate official.
All of the Rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are restrictions on the power of government.
This is easily seen if one simply looks at the Preamble of the Bill of Rights.
“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution,
expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further
declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public
confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.”
Now, lets look at the operative statement in the Preamble which describes exactly how this
document is supposed to work.
“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the
Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its
powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added;…”
So, the clauses are “declaratory AND restrictive clauses”. But to whom are these clauses
directed? Quite evident, if you actually look at the document as a whole. First, this
document is an adjunct statement to the Constitution. And the Constitution created the new
Federal government. So, these clauses are addressing the power of the new Federal
government, and denying the newly created government any power over the following
clauses. What does this mean? It states, unequivocally, that this document is a restriction
on the power of the Federal government.
Court Cases Defining the Meaning of the Bill of Rights
The first court case I can find where the manner in which Rights operate, and on whom they
operate, is was the Dredd Scott case. There were several quotes in the decision that could
be cited, but this one is clear and succinct. An absolutely detestable case, but never
overturned. It WAS mooted by the the 14 th Amendment.
"Nor can Congress deny to the people the right to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial
by jury, nor compel any one to be a witness against himself in a criminal proceeding…. The
POWERS OVER PERSON AND PROPERTY OF WHICH WE SPEAK ARE NOT ONLY
NOT GRANTED TO CONGRESS, BUT ARE IN EXPRESS TERMS DENIED, AND THEY
ARE FORBIDDEN TO EXERCISE THEM." Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 417, 450-
451 (1857).
This was further looked at by the Cruikshank Decision, again detestable, yet never
overturned!
"The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose." This is not a right
granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for
its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has
been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress." U.S. v.
Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875).
Now, though the quote was shortened by the Heller Court, their shortening is NOT and
does not change the meaning as decided by Cruickshank.
And another great quote from the 1943 case of West Virginia State Board of Education v.
Barnette.
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes
of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to
establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and
property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other
fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no
elections." West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
So, in summary and conclusion, Rights operate on GOVERNMENT, not on the people.
Yes, we have rights, and we can exercise those rights without government interference. In
theory, unfortunately. States governments are now also bound by the same Bill of Rights,
with the ratification of the 14 th Amendment. My rights are not up for discussion or
compromise. It is government which must restrain their innate desire to rule over me, and I
will fight to the best of my ability, in a court or debate to preserve those rights for all Americans for all-time.
Sources for this article.
Constitution.congress.gov
american-history.net
teachnthrive.com
guncite.com
archives.gov
