blacks in the reconstruction period

8/8/2019 Blacks in the Reconstruction Period

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Supreme Law School : E-mail : Box 006 : Msg 00672Time: Wed Jun 18 15:54:13 1997by primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA13196;Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:55:19 -0700 (MST)

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 15:55:05 -0400Originator: [email protected]: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]To: [email protected]

Subject: SLS: "Reconstruction Imprint: How Blacks asserted their Rights"

Objection. The so-called 14th amendment wasnever lawfully ratified, as proven by themassive preponderance of unrebutted evidencerecited in Dyett v. Turner, Utah SupremeCourt (1968). Even if it HAD been ratified,courts after 1868 uniformly held that thereare two classes of citizenship, not one, andany American can be a state Citizen withoutalso being a federal citizen (aka "citizenof the United States"), by Right of Election.

Confer at "Right" and "Election" in Black'sLaw Dictionary, Sixth Edition.

In the final analysis, citizenship, strictlyspeaking, is a term of municipal law. Congresscannot legislate a "national" citizenship intoexistence, because to do so would violate theTenth Amendment. Each Union state has a sovereignright to define who are its own Citizens. And Congresshas a sovereign right to define who are its citizens;Congress did so in the 1866 Civil Rights Act, andthe so-called 14th amendment was a futile attemptto elevate that declaration into constitutional

status (aka "supreme Law").

That attempt failed miserably.

The simple solution is to associate citizenshipwith soil, via the law of the soil (aka "jus soli"in Latin). Confer at "Jus soli" in Black's LawDictionary. The Constitution is the supreme Lawof the Land (read "soil" when you see "Land"). Conferalso at "Right/Constitutional Rights/Political rights"in Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition.

The other thing we need is to repeal the 14thofficially, and replace it with a simple solution,to wit:

"The right of citizenship shall not be deniedor abridged by the United States, or by anyState, on account of race. The 14th amendmentis hereby repealed."

See Fifteenth Amendment in pari materia.

The definition of "Political rights" in Black's leaves outvery little that you need to know.

Since citizenship is a right, and there are two classesof citizenship, then you have the right to join one,


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the other, both, or neither. Congress also recognizesthe Right of expatriation, and enacted this the daybefore the so-called 14th amendment was declared.

It is time to recognize that the 14th amendment has beena colossal failure, because it has not withstood thetest of time.

/s/ Paul Mitchellhttp://www.supremelaw.com

At 11:48 AM 6/18/97 -0400, you wrote:>Reconstruction's Imprint: How Blacks Asserted Their Rights>>By DINITIA SMITH>>

> NEW YORK -- In September 1865, during the Reconstruction period, John>Dennett, a correspondent for The Nation, encountered a black man, newly freed>from slavery in the town of Concord, N.C. Exhausted, his body hurting, the>man said he had walked 600 miles from a plantation in Georgia searching for>his wife and children, who had been taken from him when they were sold.>> Of all the social forces unleashed by Reconstruction, nothing was more>powerful than the former slaves' desperate efforts to find their lost>families, and their rush to marry the partners they had been forbidden to>marry under slavery.>> The mention of John Dennett's encounter with the wandering black man -->neither his name nor whether he ever found his family is known -- is an

>enduring moment in "America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the>Civil War," an exhibition at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black>Culture that is to open Wednesday and run through October.>> The show was organized by Eric Foner, De Witt Clinton Professor of History>at Columbia University, and Olivia Mahoney, curator of industrial and>decorative arts at the Chicago Historical Society. It was commissioned by two>Southern institutions, the Valentine Museum in Richmond and the Virginia>Historical Society.>> The Schomburg exhibition is the first major museum show to be devoted to>Reconstruction, it challenges popular conceptions about the era, above all>that it was a period of corrupt carpetbaggers from the North and "scalawags,">their Southern allies, victimizing ignorant, childlike former slaves.>> The show argues that blacks were actors in their own fate. It demonstrates>how the freed slaves pressed their rights and helped create a new society,>building in part on institutions that had existed in black communities even>before the end of slavery.>> Rather than being a period of chaos and corruption, the show argues,>Reconstruction set the agenda for modern democracy with the passage of the>14th Amendment, which mandates equal rights for all citizens, and the 15th>Amendment, which forbids a state to deny the right to vote because of race.>Out of Reconstruction, too, came the first statewide public school systems in

>the South, the founding of black institutions of higher learning and the>black church in its modern form.>


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> "The carpetbaggers were not all corrupt, and the blacks were not all>victims," Foner said recently in his office at Columbia University. Foner,>54, is the author of a ground-breaking text, "Reconstruction," published in>1988.>> Perhaps no other period of American history has been as misunderstood as>Reconstruction. In a 1988 poll by the National Assessment Governing Board, a

>federally financed education panel, high school students knew less about it>than any other significant topic in American history, and Foner believes that>little has changed.>> Until recently, the popular notion of Reconstruction was formed through>movies, primarily "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind." But the>Schomburg show -- some 250 objects, including an actual carpetbag, the>suitcase of woven wool favored by Northerners, along with rare photographs,>mementos and artifacts -- represents a search for new images to tell the>story of the era.>> "Most people think Reconstruction begins immediately after the Civil War,"

>Foner said. "But it really began in the middle of the Civil War." On exhibit>at the Schomburg are tintypes of some of the 200,000 black men who served>with Union forces, some of them no more than boys fresh from their mothers'>arms. It was their service in the war that staked out blacks' claim to>citizenship.>> As Southern states fell, the Union was confronted with the problem of what>to do with the freed slaves. Northerners began going south, some to cash in>on the cotton crop, some to help the former slaves. One experiment in>Reconstruction began in the South Carolina Sea Islands as early as 1862.>Plantation owners had fled, leaving behind 100,000 slaves. In the show is a>photograph of Laura Towne, a wealthy Pittsburgh woman, who settled in the Sea>Islands with her friend Ellen Murray and established a school to educate the

>freed slaves.>> In 1865, the South capitulated. A lithograph depicting the burning of the>Confederate capital at Richmond, with flames shooting hundreds of feet into>the sky, captures the extent of the defeat.>> "A quarter million Confederate whites died," Foner said. "That's over>one-fifth of the adult male population, and thousands more were maimed and>injured. It was like the Soviet Union in World War II. And it was a disaster>without parallel in the American experience.">> In the aftermath, a cult of mourning developed. Among the exhibits are a>white Southern woman's moire silk mourning dress, her special mourning>jewelry. Mourning became ritualized, with stages of grief lasting 2 1/2>years.>> At the same time, the myth of the Lost Cause sprang up in reaction to the>profound disruptions faced by white Southerners in the post-Civil War era. On>show is a wood carving from 1875 in Tennessee of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the>crucified Christ side by side. Romanticized images like this helped fuel the>Democratic Party's ascendancy in the South.>> At the war's end, freed slaves immediately set to work creating a>community. Foner emphasized that even before the war, freed blacks had>established a network of institutions, churches, schools and mutual benefit

>societies. Slaves, too, had created networks of secret churches and families.>These institutions provide the basis for a new black sense of community.>


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> Thousands of freed slaves set out across the South in search of loved ones,>advertising in the black press for lost families. An advertisement from "The>Colored Tennessean" on Aug. 5, 1865, says: "Saml. Dove wishes to know of the>whereabouts of his mother, Areno, his sisters Maria, Neziah and Peggy, and>his brother Edmond, who were owned by George Dove of Rockingham Co., Va. Sold>in Richmond, after which Samuel and Edmond were taken to Nashville, Tenn., by>Joe Mick; Areno was left at the Eagle Tavern, Richmond."

>> A drawing by a correspondent from Harper's Weekly, "Marriage of a Colored>Soldier at Vicksburg," shows a black bride in a white lace dress, her husband>in military uniform. The occasion is grand and formal, perhaps idealized,>given the limited means of most freed slaves.>> In 1865, the Republican Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to>protect the rights of former slaves, providing them with education and>medical care, and to oversee labor contracts between blacks and employers.>> Nevertheless, when the government sold off plantation land, little went to>former slaves. And when blacks tried to assert their autonomy, there was

>violence, as is depicted in lithographs from Harper's Weekly of whites>rioting in 1866 in Memphis and New Orleans.>> Most blacks became sharecroppers. A Currier & Ives lithograph from 1884,>"Cotton Plantation on the Mississippi," depicts freed black men working>peacefully as paid laborers in fertile fields. It was an idealized image>popular in the North.>> Out of Reconstruction came the credit system, with blacks buying goods at>country stores and going forever into debt. Many freed slaves invested all>their savings in the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, which had been>chartered by the federal Government to teach the former slaves thrift. But in>1874, it failed, and the government did nothing to bail out the blacks who

>lost everything.>> Before Reconstruction, there were no statewide tax-supported education>systems in the South, except in Tennessee. Freedmen's academies set up by>Northern philanthropists to educate the former slaves provided the framework>for future state education systems. In the Schomburg show are freedmen's>readers, including one with a picture of Phillis Wheatley, believed to be the>first published black poet. There are also mementos from black colleges>founded during Reconstruction, the Hampton Institute, Howard University and>Fiske University.>> Most slaves had been forbidden to form their own religious congregations,>and the few that existed were by law overseen by whites. With Reconstruction,>freed slaves began to form their own churches. One broadside reads, "Rev.>Thomas H. Jones who was a slave 43 years in North Carolina will preach in>this place.">> A theme running through the show is the struggle between President Andrew>Johnson, who sympathized with the Southern yeomanry, and his fellow>Republicans in Congress. Johnson permitted the establishment in 1865 of>all-white state governments that passed Black Codes limiting the rights of>blacks and forcing them to work on plantations.>> The Republican Congress saw the results of the war being undermined by>Johnson's local governments. The struggle culminated in Johnson's impeachment

>trial. There is a ticket in the show admitting the bearer to the impeachment>trial in the Senate. The president survived the impeachment measure by a>margin of one.


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>> The Reconstruction Act of 1867 gave black men in the South the right to>vote three years before ratification of the 15th Amendment. An 1867 engraving>shows a group of black men lined up to vote for the first time: an artisan, a>soldier and a figure representing the black middle class. With the vote came>representation. Freedmen served in the state legislatures.>

> An oil painting shows Hiram Revels, the first black man to sit in the U.S.>Senate. It is one of a number of images depicting blacks as well-dressed,>dignified people of means. A quotation from Frederick Douglass under Revels'>portrait says that blacks so often see themselves "described and painted as>monkeys" that they "think it a great piece of fortune to find an exception to>this general rule.">> As blacks gained the vote, the Democratic Party's resistance to change>stiffened, attested to by the visual iconography of Democratic party protests>and political pamphlets, including one titled "The Black Vomit," a broadside>issued in Virginia in 1870. The Democrats turned to violence to overthrow the>state governments. The most chilling object in the show is a Ku Klux Klan

>robe, brown rather than the more familiar white of a later period.>> "We didn't want to create a shrine to the Klan," said Ms. Mahoney, the>co-curator of the exhibit, "but it was important to include it." A Klan flag>in the show bears a motto in Latin referring to the black race: "Because it>always is, because it is everywhere, because it is abominable." Klan members>were not just poor whites, but also judges, lawyers and clergymen.>> Eventually, Northern Republicans grew indifferent to the plight of the>South. Thomas Nast, an early supporter of black civil rights, had produced>many hard-hitting political cartoons. But a drawing for Harper's Weekly from>1874, with crude-looking, unruly blacks arguing in the South Carolina>legislature, showed Nast's disenchantment with Reconstruction.

>> By 1877, Reconstruction, and the freely elected governments of the Southern>states, came to an end as federal troops were withdrawn under the Compromise>of 1877. Slowly, the newly gained rights of blacks were abrogated until, by>the end of the century, blacks could no longer vote in the South. Not until>passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did blacks in the South regain the>vote. That was the height of the second reconstruction period, in which the>nation took up the failed agenda of the first.>>>Copyright 1997 The New York Times>>Deo Vindice,>Craig Cole>Heritage Preservation Association>Preserving Our Heritage>Sons of Confederate Veterans>>

========================================================================Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witnessB.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine

tel: (520) 320-1514: machine; fax: (520) 320-1256: 24-hour/day-night

email: [address in tool bar] : using Eudora Pro 3.0.2 on 586 CPUwebsite: http://www.supremelaw.com : visit the Supreme Law Library nowship to: c/o 2509 N. Campbell, #1776 : this is free speech, at its best


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Tucson, Arizona state : state zone, not the federal zonePostal Zone 85719/tdc : USPS delays first class w/o this

As agents of the Most High, we came here to establish justice. We shallnot leave, until our mission is accomplished and justice reigns eternal.========================================================================[This text formatted on-screen in Courier 11, non-proportional spacing.]

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