What Life was Like under 1776 Constitution
Nita asked me to talk about Life in America under the 1776 Constitution. To help prepare me for this I read a very small book called What America Was Really Like in 1776 by Thomas Fleming. As I read this book I began to realize that the people of that time were not so different from the people of our time.
The makeup of the population was over half English, but also Scotch, Scotch-Irish, German, Dutch, Swedish, French Huguenots, African Americans and miscellaneous.
In reading about the people of that time, their world of hopes and dreams was not much different from ours. Word came to the colonists through magazines, newspapers, word of mouth of the great corruption in Britain. The colonists had very little positive feelings about this. They felt strong about “no taxation without representation.”
There was the middle class, the lower class, and the upper class of people. Industry was thriving, thriving so much that Britain wanted to interfere with it. Some felt that Britain felt threatened by America’s growth and progress.
Mr. Fleming talks about the class-consciousness or tradition of deference in which there was hardly a town that did not have an upper class group that pretty much ran everything.
Why am I talking about this? Because of what the Revolution did for the people of the Colonies. The People became different after the Revolution – even the founding fathers became different. Class consciousness and tradition of deference was not as prevalent. You see, it had taken everything they ALL could do to come through the Revolutionary War. In fact, John Adams had said that one goal of the American Revolution was “a more equal liberty”. Mr. Fleming quotes historian Christopher Brown in calling the revolution a “world transforming event” in the history of slavery. At the end of the war the issue of slavery was being challenged.
Did you know that one in seven men in the Continental Army was African American? By the end of the war, these men had fought together, side by side for a nation to be free, people to be free from tyranny, for equality and liberty for all men, for justice. Even George Washington freed his slaves.
Others as well. By the time of the Civil War there was close to 500,000 freed slaves.
Why is it important that we talk about all of this? Because the Revolutionary War was the crucible the Lord brought the people through to change and give them the mindset and heart they needed to have in order to forge this nation and our Constitution.
Our Lord valued the Constitution that came out of that Revolution, the Constitution that was written from the hearts He had created in both men and women of all classes, of all people groups. Our Lord so valued that Constitution that was written from His heart that He has kept it preserved in heaven. Nita said she has seen it and stood before it – it is written in letters of gold and the glory of God streams from it.
Our Constitution is worth fighting for.
Let’s look at a couple of things: The United States exists in 2 forms.
· The original United States that was in operation until 1871 as a collection of sovereign Republics in the union.
· The original constitution has been usurped by a separate and different UNITED STATES formed in 1871, which is actually a corporation (the UNITED STATES CORPORATION) Kin will talk more about this in a minute.
The American people were never ever told there was a change of constitutions, a change from a constitutional republic to a corporation.
The original constitution, referred to as the 1776 Constitution, has not been removed. It has simply laid dormant since 1871. It is still intact to this day.
We have heard President Trump refer to this in his inaugural address to return the power back to the American People.
Today’s ceremony has a very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.
This fact was also made clear by Supreme Court Justice Marshal Harlan (Downes vs Bidwell, 182, U.S. 244 1901) by giving the following dissenting opinion: “Two national governments exist; one to be maintained under the Constitution, with all its restrictions; the other to be maintained by Congress outside and Independently of that Instrument.”
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 4
According to Chisholm v Georgia 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), the Supreme Court ruled that the American People are the Sovereigns of this country, hereinafter referred to as the “American People”;
“It will be sufficient to observe briefly that the sovereignties in Europe, and particularly in England, exist on feudal principles. The same feudal ideas run through all their jurisprudence, and constantly remind us of the distinction between the Prince and the subject. No such ideas obtain here; at the revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people, and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects… and have none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty. In Europe, the sovereignty is generally ascribed to the Prince; here, it rests with the people; there, the sovereign actually administers the government; here, it rests with the people; there, the sovereign actually administers the government; here in a single instance; our Governors are the agents of the people, and, at most, stand in the same relation to their sovereign [the people] in which regents in Europe stand to their sovereigns. Their Princes have personal powers, dignities, and pre-eminences; our rulers have none but official; nor do they partake in the sovereignty otherwise, or in any other capacity, than as private citizens.”
Under the original constitution the states controlled the federal gov’t; the Federal gov’t did not control the states and it had very little authority.
The original Constitution operated under Common Law (God’s Law) that represents the voice of the people.
In Common Law contracts must be entered into knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally.
Common Law (which sovereigns operate under) is not commercial Law; it is personal and private.
Common Law operates under De Jure terms, meaning existing by right or according to law; original law.
According to the original constitution sovereigns, all gov’t comes from the sovereign individual. Without the sovereign individual, there is no gov’t.
Sovereign = a real person. They can own property while Citizens/Subjects cannot.
Legislation: The Dictionary Act of 1871 lowered the status of mankind to that of a corporation and raised the legal status of corporations to that of mankind. They took advantage of the mayhem following the Civil War to change our form of government from the Republican Form of Government to a Corporation ran by a chosen few, in essence, a technocracy run by an oligarchy. They changed the status of Americans from State Citizens to corporate US citizens. This is what President Washington warned Americans about in his final farewell address.
George Washington, Farewell Address, circa 1796
“…cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be able to subvert the Power of the People and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion…The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism…”
President James Madison described this type of government in Federalist 39: “… a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic…” Federalist 39, President James Madison, circa 1788
In 1798 John Adams said:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
From the book What America Was Really Like in 1776 by Thomas Fleming ©2011 Published by New Word City, Inc. (available on Amazon)
There was scarcely any part of American life that the Revolution did not influence, from religion to education to business enterprise. The spirit of liberty, the thrill of independence, created new ideas, new emotions, new pride.
The Revolutionary generation had sensed the coming reality in their deepest hearts and minds. They saw that the Revolution was a spiritual enterprise that would never really end. There would always be a struggle to realize its ideals of freedom and equal opportunity for each generation of Americans and to export these ideals to other parts of the world. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Pennsylvania signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote that the war was only the first step in the Revolution’s destiny to transform America and the world.
One of the most poignant testimonies to this sense of the Revolution’s power was written by Nathanael Ames, author of a popular almanac of 1776. He predicted that in an independent America, “arts and sciences will change the Face of Nature” from the Appalachian Mountains to the “Western Ocean.” He foresaw “treasures of gold and silver and mountains of iron ore” that would create industries for “millions of hands” in great cities. Finally, Ames spoke directly to us, the Revolution’s heirs.
“O! Ye born inhabitants of America! Should this page escape its destined conflagration at the Year’s End, and these Alphabetical Letters remain legible – when your eyes behold the Sun after he has ruled the seasons round for two Centuries more, you will know that we dream’d of your Times.”
It’s a dream every twenty-first century American should cherish, nourish, and embellish.