Posted by shaberon
(here)
Posted by ozmirage
(here)
Citizenship was, is and ever shall be voluntary in these united States under the promised republican form of government.
Voluntary in the sense that Jefferson's "consent of the governed" was the Revolutionary Oath.
In the Constitution, considering its date, it says the President must have been a "resident" for fourteen years, since there was nothing to have been a "citizen" of in 1773--and that changes for the shorter requirements of the other offices.
This matter was settled in the first election to the House of Representatives of
Smith 1789:
...I must own that I feel myself at liberty to decide, that Mr. Smith was a citizen at the declaration of independence, a citizen at the time of his election, and consequently entitled to a seat in this legislature.
Cong. Register description begins Thomas Lloyd, comp., The Congressional Register; or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the First House of Representatives … (2 vols.; New York, 1789; Evans 22203–4). description ends , I, 391–95. The House decided overwhelmingly in favor of Smith. Many years later JM recalled this contested election when composing his essay on sovereignty (“Sovereignty,” [1835], Madison, Writings [Hunt ed.] description begins Gaillard Hunt., ed., The Writings of James Madison (9 vols.; New York, 1900–1910). description ends , IX, 570).
He was challenged because of not having taken an oath, and was determined (overwhelmingly) to be a citizen simply by living.
Having received this form of rebuke, the accuser wrote an apologetic tract on the current views in
Ramsay 1789:
...citizens possess
in their own right original sovereignty.
There is also a great difference between citizens, and
inhabitants or residents.
Any person living within a country or state, is an
inhabitant of it, or resident in it.
Negroes are inhabitants, but not citizens. Citizenship
confers a right of voting at elections, and many other privileges not enjoyed by those who are no more than inhabitants...
That is exactly how it started. There is no second "republican form of government", a phrase without meaning.
Find any examples of a period-appropriate person or group who realized Jefferson was secretly protecting some special group who were wise enough to not "give consent".
It's not possible because they were all removed from the physical space.
One argument against the Articles is that the phrase you quoted effectively means a slave--inhabitant (sovereign American national in your words) in one state could cross a border and be treated as a citizen in the next.
Other state documents at the time interchange "subject" for "citizen"--same thing.
One has to voluntarily surrender something in order to not be in the "state of nature", meaning without government.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of citizenship by birthright in 1830. In 1853, it was noted that an Austrian refugee who had been living and working in the United States for a number of years was a national, but not a citizen.
Here are some relevant
Decisions:
a. The decision in Murray v. The Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. 64 (1804), demonstrates the Court's early understanding that
all persons born in the United States were U.S. citizens, despite the fact that the individual at issue in the case had lived most of his life outside the country.
b. In the case of Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor's Snug Harbor, 28 U.S. 99 (1830), the Court faced the question of whether a man born in New York State in 1776 was a U.S. citizen and therefore able to inherit real property. In doing so, the Court resolved complicated questions of how citizenship had been acquired during the Revolutionary War. The court found that those present on U.S. soil at the Declaration of Independence or born thereafter were presumed to be citizens, but the presumption of citizenship was rebutted upon a showing of intent to remain a British subject.
Those are not turns of phrase construed out-of-context from some speech, it is Congress and the Supreme Court in some of their very first actions.
In general terms, Jefferson was a devotee of "agrarian economy", a platform continued by Andrew Jackson, against national banking.
Hamilton was a devotee of Wall Street, a platform continued by Whigs/Republicans such as Lincoln, who let in a national bank and for the first time began loading it with Treasury Bonds, a practice that has remained in place ever since.
I have searched for the first instance of anyone using the "revoke consent" argument, and it was 1953, and not very pretty.
Washington, Jefferson, and the revolutionaries were not risking their lives so that some unknown group could celebrate the mystery of being wise enough not to consent. That is specious.
None of them were fighting "for" the Constitution, which already has such bad issues that Rhode Island resisted it with 1,000 armed men. It is too risky about moving power to the federal level in a way that favors the Wall Street faction. All of its early debates were filled with "states' rights" issues, which continued to come up through the 1800s, until Lincoln answered that too, by having one goal, preserving the union.
If "perpetual" Articles can be repealed and replaced by a "non-perpetual" Constitution, obviously that body of law can meet the same fate. It must be "the Beast", as many of its early challengers described. Unfortunately, most of the historical review guides us to the ten Amendments called the Bill of Rights, neglecting the fact that there were about thirty other proposed amendments on the subject of limiting federal power.
The main justification for the Articles would be that, for example, the state militia of Georgia would not travel and take action in New Jersey, and so by having the first Congress, agreements were reached so that those such as Washington could muster new forces that were highly mobile. The Constitution is such that state militias were slowly depleted and we were given a large standing federal army, which would have been abhorrent to Jefferson, and was one of the main arguments against ratifying the thing.
As I see it, the serious issues are against, question the benefit of, and would "alter or abolish" the Constitution.
I suppose many others see it as a "defining source of freedom" and "that which is to be preserved at all costs". Seems to me that this operates under the "threat" mentality; I need to be under the same government as someone in Idaho, because we are both about to be invaded by Swaziland. If Idaho disagrees, it does not really matter, since the Constitution provides ways for some states to oppress others.
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