The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery
1/17/13 11:57 PM
The Second Amendment was Ratified to
Preserve Slavery
Tuesday, 15 January 2013 09:35
By Thom Hartmann, Truthout | News Analysis
The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it
says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the
difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave
patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get
Virginia's vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and
James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be
too.
In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were
also called the "slave patrols," and they were regulated by the
states.
In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American
Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all
plantation owners or their male white employees to be members
of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to
make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the
state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias
and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out
for slaves who may be planning uprisings.
As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law
Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the
direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every
plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro (Photo: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery)
Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to
apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks,
"Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical
question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: Well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains.
Sally E. Haden, in her book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, notes that, "Although
eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a
slave patroller." There were exemptions so "men in critical professions" like judges, legislators and students could stay
at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45 - including physicians
and ministers - had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.
And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.
By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks
outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As
Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was
the explicit job of the militias.
If the anti-slavery folks in the North had figured out a way to disband - or even move out of the state - those southern
militias, the police state of the South would collapse. And, similarly, if the North were to invite into military service the
slaves of the South, then they could be emancipated, which would collapse the institution of slavery, and the southern
economic and social systems, altogether.
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These two possibilities worried southerners like James Monroe, George Mason (who owned over 300 slaves) and the
southern Christian evangelical, Patrick Henry (who opposed slavery on principle, but also opposed freeing slaves).
Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government
the power to raise and supervise a militia, could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and
change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free the slaves.
This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord
Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces. "Liberty to Slaves" was stitched onto their
jacket pocket flaps. During the War, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed
slaves served in General Washington's army.
Thus, southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that
their slaves could be emancipated through military service.
At the ratifying convention in Virginia in 1788, Henry laid it out:
"Let me here call your attention to that part [Article 1, Section 8 of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress
power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be
employed in the service of the United States. . . .
"By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline
or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither . . . this power being exclusively given to Congress. The
power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of
power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory."
George Mason expressed a similar fear:
"The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is,
by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming
and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them
[under this proposed Constitution] . . . "
Henry then bluntly laid it out:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new
Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot,
therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new
Constitution], can call forth the militia."
And why was that such a concern for Patrick Henry?
"In this state," he said, "there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other
states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. . . . May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did
we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly
passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free."
Patrick Henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given the federal government in the new
Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave-patrol militias. He knew the majority attitude in the
North opposed slavery, and he worried they'd use the Constitution to free the South's slaves (a process then called
"Manumission").
The abolitionists would, he was certain, use that power (and, ironically, this is pretty much what Abraham Lincoln
ended up doing):
"[T]hey will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission," said Henry. "And have
they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for
the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power?
"This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear,
unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it."
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He added: "This is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress."
James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" and a slaveholder himself, basically called Patrick Henry paranoid.
"I was struck with surprise," Madison said, "when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the
emancipation of slaves. . . . There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not."
But the southern fears wouldn't go away.
Patrick Henry even argued that southerner's "property" (slaves) would be lost under the new Constitution, and the
resulting slave uprising would be less than peaceful or tranquil:
"In this situation," Henry said to Madison, "I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and
their peace and tranquility gone."
So Madison, who had (at Jefferson's insistence) already begun to prepare proposed amendments to the Constitution,
changed his first draft of one that addressed the militia issue to make sure it was unambiguous that the southern states
could maintain their slave patrol militias.
His first draft for what became the Second Amendment had said: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country [emphasis mine]: but
no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
But Henry, Mason and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal
government. So Madison changed the word "country" to the word "state," and redrafted the Second Amendment into
today's form:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State [emphasis mine], the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Little did Madison realize that one day in the future weapons-manufacturing corporations, newly defined as "persons"
by a Supreme Court some have called dysfunctional, would use his slave patrol militia amendment to protect their
"right" to manufacture and sell assault weapons used to murder schoolchildren.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission of the author.
THOM HARTMANN
Thom Hartmann is a New York Times bestselling Project Censored Award winning author and host of a nationally syndicated
progressive radio talk show. You can learn more about Thom Hartmann at his website and find out what stations broadcast his radio
program. He also now has a daily independent television program, The Big Picture, syndicated by FreeSpeech TV, RT TV, and
2oo community TV stations. You can also listen or watch Thom over the Internet.
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The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery
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Page 4 of 4
Regulating the Militia | Free-Eco.org
1/9/13 11:19 AM
Regulating the Militia (/insights/article/regulating-militia)
BY: KEVIN WILLIAMSON (/INSIGHTS/AUTHORS/KEVIN-WILLIAMSON)
POSTED ON JANUARY 09, 2013
NATIONAL REVIEW
TOPICS: Liberty (/insights/topics/liberty) Private Property (/insights/topics/privateproperty) Resiliency (/insights/topics/resiliency) Free Market Capitalism
(/insights/topics/free-market-capitalism) Taxation (/insights/topics/taxation) Government
(/insights/topics/government) Constitution (/insights/topics/constitution) Regulation
(/insights/topics/regulation) Law and Policy (/insights/topics/law-and-policy)
Introduction by Dr. John Baden, Chairman, FREE
Most contentious issues of public policy are nuanced and highly complex while carrying heavy emotional
baggage. These ingredients foster error and acrimony. Intelligent people of good will, even those
sharing similar values, can strongly disagree on policy prescriptions. This situation produces strong
temptations to discredit and denigrate policy opponents.
These characteristics are obvious in the discussions following the recent shooting and killing
of 26 children, teachers, and administrators in a Newtown, Connecticut school, a "gun free" zone.
We expect politicians to seize this opportunity to signal their compassion, resolve, and good intentions.
Politicians work in an evolutionary context that selects for opportunism more than honest analysis. Here
we try to offer some.
Clearly the young killer was deranged and such individuals should be constrained. Public pressures to
control guns will be immense, no question of this. How to accomplish this important task remains
unclear. We present two opposing views below.
We know that staying within politically correct boundaries limits policy proposals. To control violence in
public gun free places we must profile and discriminate against the deranged. But profiling and
discrimination tactics are tricky to apply. The danger of false positives and negatives are high. If we
falsely identify someone as a potential murderer, he’s branded for life. Conversely, if a potential killer is
missed, lives are at risk.
It is human nature to focus on the proximate cause of the harm -- the guns and ammo – when the focus
should be on the motivation and opportunities of murderers. Below are two opposing arguments
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focused on guns and ammo.
The first author, David Ross, sent this letter to the Washington Post. David, an old college friend, uses the
economic way of thinking, increasing prices, to control assault weapons. I admire his creative use of
prices to motivate behavior. David uses the social analogue of the law of gravity, demand falls when
prices rise, to formulate a policy proposal.
The second author, Kevin Williamson, argues there is an extremely high cost, fascism in brief, to
reducing civilian assault weapons.
Now to David Ross’ letter to the Washington Post:
Proposal for a Federal Ammunition Lethality Tax
The list of possible actions in response to the Sandy Hook massacre may be long, but there has not been
much discussion about ammunition. The availability of affordable, highly lethal ammunition makes such
outrages possible. We can increase the cost and reduce demand for such ammunition with legislation.
Congress should create a Federal Ammunition Lethality Tax (FALT). The tax should be sharply
progressive based on assessments of lethality as determined by medical examiners and surgeons.
Keeping Sandy Hook in mind, assessments of lethality should be made with respect to six-year old
children.
The amount of the tax should be high enough to significantly reduce demand for high-lethality rounds of
ammunition and for the weapons that use them. Subsonic .22 LR and .410 birdshot might be taxed at a
penny per round. Ten dollars per round might be appropriate for the more powerful handguns and the
.223 caliber weapons so popular today. For these weapons and at this tax rate it would cost more than
$300 to fill a 30-round magazine. FALT-free ammunition should be available only to military and lawenforcement personnel.
Good people who in times past have done little but shrug and change the conversation to The Problem of
Evil should now be seriously considering action beyond the wringing of hands or suggesting that nearly
every adult be armed. We can act rationally. We can change the culture over time. And we can begin by
severely constraining the use of highly lethal ammunition.
---end of Ross’ unpublished letter to the editor-----
++++ John Baden’s continuing Introduction++++
Now consider the opposing view on assault weapons by Kevin Williamson. His article is from National
Review. Essentially, he argues the second Amendment isn't about hunting or hobbies but rather about
citizens protecting themselves from oppressive governments. To quote him, “The purpose of having
citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions."
This is the key to his argument. A person opposed to assault weapons in private hands
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"...either does not understand the purpose of the Second Amendment or refuses to address it, writing,
“Gun advocates will be hard-pressed to explain why the average American citizen needs an assault
weapon with a high-capacity magazine other than for recreational purposes.” The answer to this question
is straightforward: The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to
engage in paramilitary actions. The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a
well-regulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any
educated person — let alone a Harvard Law graduate — believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights
is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity...."
Regulating the Militia (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336529/regulating-militia-kevin-dwilliamson)
By Kevin D. Williamson (http://www.nationalreview.com/author/14040)
My friend Brett Joshpe has published an uncharacteristically soft-headed piece
(http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Republicans-in-need-of-sensible-gun-laws4147638.php) in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook,
conservatives and Republicans should support what he calls “sensible” gun-control laws. It begins with a
subtext of self-congratulation (“As a conservative and a Republican, I can no longer remain
silent . . . Some will consider it heresy,” etc.), casts aspersions of intellectual dishonesty (arguments for
preserving our traditional rights are “disingenuous”), advances into ex homine (noting he has family in
Sandy Hook, as though that confers special status on his preferences), fundamentally misunderstands the
argument for the right to keep and bear arms, deputizes the electorate, and cites the presence of teddy
bears as evidence for his case.
Brett, like practically every other person seeking to diminish our constitutional rights, either does not
understand the purpose of the Second Amendment or refuses to address it, writing, “Gun advocates will
be hard-pressed to explain why the average American citizen needs an assault weapon with a highcapacity magazine other than for recreational purposes.” The answer to this question is straightforward:
The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in
paramilitary actions. The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a wellregulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any
educated person — let alone a Harvard Law graduate — believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights
is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity.
There is no legitimate exception to the Second Amendment for military-style weapons, because militarystyle weapons are precisely what the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear. The
purpose of the Second Amendment is to secure our ability to oppose enemies foreign and domestic, a
guarantee against disorder and tyranny. Consider the words of Supreme Court justice Joseph Story —
who was, it bears noting, appointed to the Court by the guy who wrote the Constitution:
The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the
subject. The militia is the natural defense of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic
insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to
keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous
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expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and
unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the
citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;
since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will
generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over
them.
“Usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers” — not Bambi, not burglars. While your granddad’s .30-06
is a good deal more powerful than the .223 rifles that give blue-state types the howling fantods, that is
not what we have a constitutional provision to protect. Liberals are forever asking: “Why would anybody
need a gun like that?” And the answer is: because we are not serfs. We are a free people living under a
republic of our own construction. We may consent to be governed, but we will not be ruled.
The right to keep and bear arms is a civil right. If you doubt that, consider the history of arms control in
England, where members of the Catholic minority (and non-Protestants generally) were prohibited from
bearing arms as part of the campaign of general political oppression against them. The Act of
Disenfranchisement was still in effect when our Constitution was being written, a fact that surely was on
the mind of such Founding Fathers as Daniel Carroll, to say nothing of his brother, Archbishop John
Carroll.
The Second Amendment speaks to the nature of the relationship between citizen and state. Brett may
think that such a notion is an antiquated relic of the 18th century, but then he should be arguing for
wholesale repeal of the Second Amendment rather than presenting — what’s the word? — disingenuous
arguments about what it means and the purpose behind it.
If we want to reduce the level of criminal violence in our society, we should start by demanding that the
police and criminal-justice bureaucracies do their job. Massacres such as Sandy Hook catch our attention
because they are so unusual. But a great deal of the commonplace violence in our society is preventable.
Brett here might look to his hometown: There were 1,662 murders in New York City from 2003 to 2005,
and a New York Times analysis of the data found that in 90 percent of the cases, the killer had a prior
criminal record. (About half the victims did, too.) Events such as Sandy Hook may come out of nowhere,
but the great majority of murders do not. The police function in essence as a janitorial service, cleaning
up the mess created in part by our dysfunctional criminal-justice system.
We probably would get more out of our criminal-justice system if it were not so heavily populated by
criminals. As I note in my upcoming book, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome
(http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=0062220683), it can be hard to tell the good guys
from the bad guys:
For more than twenty years, NYPD detectives worked as enforcers and assassins for the Gambino crime
family; in 2006 two detectives were convicted not only of murder and conspiracy to commit murder but
also on charges related to such traditional mob activity as labor racketeering, running illegal gambling
rings, extortion, narcotics trafficking, obstruction of justice, and the like. This was hardly an isolated
incident; only a few years prior to the NYPD convictions more than 70 LAPD officers associated with the
city’s anti-gang unit were found to have been deeply involved in gang-affiliated criminal enterprises
connected to the Bloods street gang. Their crimes ranged from the familiar police transgressions of
falsifying evidence, obstructing justice, and selling drugs seized in arrests to such traditional outlaw fare
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as bank robbery — they were cops and robbers. More than 100 criminal convictions were overturned
because of evidence planted or falsified by officers of the LAPD. One scholarly account of the scandal
concluded that such activity is not atypical but rather systemic — and largely immune to attempts at
reform: “The current institution of law enforcement in America does appear to reproduce itself according
[to] counter-legal norms . . . attempts to counteract this reproduction via the training one receives in
police academies, the imposition of citizen review boards, departments of Internal Affairs, etc. do not
appear to mitigate against this structural continuity between law enforcement and crime.”
The Department of Homeland Security has existed for only a few years but it already has been partly
transformed into an organized-crime syndicate. According to a federal report, in 2011 alone more than
300 DHS employees and contractors were charged with crimes ranging from smuggling drugs and child
pornography to selling sensitive intelligence to drug cartels. That’s not a few bad apples — that’s an
arrest every weekday and many weekends. Given the usual low ratio of arrests to crimes committed, it is
probable that DHS employees are responsible for not hundreds but thousands of crimes. And these are
not minor infractions: Agents in the department’s immigration division were caught selling forged
immigrant documents, and DHS vehicles have been used to transport hundreds (and possibly thousands)
of pounds of illegal drugs. A “standover” crew — that is, a criminal enterprise that specializes in robbing
other criminals — was found being run by a DHS agent in Arizona, who was apprehended while hijacking
a truckload of cocaine.
Power corrupts. Madison knew that, and the other Founders did, too, which is why we have a Second
Amendment.
— Kevin D. Williamson is a roving correspondent for National Review.
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