The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

[nic34]

By Thom Hartmann, Truthout

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.

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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.

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.


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."

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."


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.


http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890

[patrickt]

Little did Madison realize that a leftist president who most consider dysfunctional would be insisting that history be rewritten to meet his views.

[The Little Dictator]

So, considering all this history that you've spouted off here, have you got a "gun free zone" sign in front of your house there, nic? If not, are you ready to put one up?

[Mister D]

The brothuz do not approve of this loony theory. Read on. It's funny, nic.

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(The Root) -- Recently Thom Hartmann published an essay on Truthout titled "The Second Amendment Was Ratified to Preserve Slavery." Hartmann, who is described on the Internet as a radio host, author, former psychotherapist and entrepreneur and a progressive political commentator, said the amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended, in part, to protect slave-patrol militias.
If Hartmann's political goal is to argue for reasonable firearms regulations, then he and I are in the same camp. I have long argued that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual's right to own firearms, and that the purpose of the amendment was purely to guarantee that the states could maintain their own militias. I have also written a great deal on how the Constitution protected slavery (see my book Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson), and I am not shy about pointing out how the founders protected slavery. Indeed, my most recent public comment on slavery and the founding was an op-ed in the New York Times on Jefferson and slavery titled "The Monster of Monticello."
Still, however committed one may be to a political outcome, it serves no purpose to make historical arguments that are demonstrably wrong, misleading and inconsistent with what happened. Hartmann does not serve his cause well by purporting to write history when his version of history is mostly wrong, and very misleading.
Hartmann begins by arguing that "the real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says 'State' instead of 'Country' " was that the framers wanted "to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote."

http://www.theroot.com/views/2nd-ame...ect-slavery-no

[Mainecoons]

You're showing us once again what happens when someone like you relies only on really bad sources. Starting with your author:

Hartmann, who is described on the Internet as a radio host, author, former psychotherapist and entrepreneur and a progressive political commentator, said the amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended, in part, to protect slave-patrol militias.

Now here's a rebuttal from someone who is actually qualified as a legal scholar:

Paul Finkelman, Ph.D., is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy at Albany Law School. He is the author of more than 40 books, including Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson and recently published an op-ed in the New York Times on Thomas Jefferson and slavery entitled "The Monster of Monticello."

http://www.theroot.com/views/2nd-ame...ry-no?page=0,3

If Hartmann's political goal is to argue for reasonable firearms regulations, then he and I are in the same camp. I have long argued that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual's right to own firearms, and that the purpose of the amendment was purely to guarantee that the states could maintain their own militias. I have also written a great deal on how the Constitution protected slavery (see my book Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson), and I am not shy about pointing out how the founders protected slavery. Indeed, my most recent public comment on slavery and the founding was an op-ed in the New York Times on Jefferson and slavery titled "The Monster of Monticello."Still, however committed one may be to a political outcome, it serves no purpose to make historical arguments that are demonstrably wrong, misleading and inconsistent with what happened. Hartmann does not serve his cause well by purporting to write history when his version of history is mostly wrong, and very misleading.
Hartmann begins by arguing that "the real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says 'State' instead of 'Country' " was that the framers wanted "to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote."
Hartmann implies that the Second Amendment was adopted (or at least written) to get Virginia's "vote" for ratification of the Constitution, which took place in July 1788. But this is not even remotely true. In 1788 the Second Amendment was not yet written and was not part of the debate over ratification of the Constitution.
As everyone familiar with the ratification of the Constitution knows, Virginia's ratification convention narrowly voted to support the Constitution because of the hard work of James Madison, John Marshall and Gov. Edmund Randolph. George Washington, who had attended the Constitutional Convention but was not at the ratifying convention, lent his great prestige in support of the Constitution. His nephew Bushrod Washington was a delegate and voted to ratify.
Virginia's ratification took place after New Hampshire had ratified -- giving the Constitution the necessary nine states to go into effect. Virginia was the 10th state to ratify. But this had nothing to do with the Second Amendment, which had neither been proposed nor written at this time.
It is possible that Hartmann believes that Virginia only ratified the Constitution because of a promise of future amendments. But this is not the case. The opponents of the Constitution -- led by Patrick Henry -- wanted Virginia to give a conditional ratification that would require future amendments. But Henry lost on this issue. The Virginia convention ratified the Constitution over the strenuous objections -- and absence of votes -- of Henry, George Mason and their ilk. Only after the Virginia convention had ratified the Constitution did the victorious federalists -- led by Madison -- allow the anti-federalists to offer 40 proposed amendments, one of which allowed the states to arm their own militias.

Note that he agrees with the liberal viewpoint that the second amendment did not protect the right of individuals to bear arms.

You're blown up on page one, Nic. Try researching more before you post something as patently silly from some greenhorn like your OP. Start by actually reading something posted by someone other than a flaming leftist for a change. This reference is extremely detailed and makes your pop psychologist and radio announcer look like a fool

Really.

[Mister D]

Jinx!

[GrassrootsConservative]

Great now they're connecting their racebaiting with the second amendment and their gun phobia. Just when I thought Liberalism couldn't get any more ridiculous.

[Mainecoons]

What's funny is that my citation is an obviously liberal legal scholar nuking Nic's really ridiculous OP.

Nicky boy, really, try something a little more mainstream, eh?

[Chris]

Considering the posts above it will be interesting to see nic defend the fiction he posted.

[nic34]

I notice the biggest fools here were the 2 smart asses that rushed to the google to find whatever they could that countered the Hartmann piece.
Stumbling all over each other like a couple of giggling 13 year old girls, they managed to find a hit piece that while criticizing Hartmann's handling of the story, never does quite dispute it. In fact these googler-pros don't even address the the source of the piece: Law professor Carl T. Bogus and the 1998 law-review article based on a close analysis of James Madison’s original writings.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1465114##