"Before and After the Civil War"

 

                          by

 

                 Paul Andrew Mitchell

               Private Attorney General

 

                   June 29, 2004 A.D.

 

                  All Rights Reserved

 

 

As a direct result of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford,

blacks were officially considered property and not Citizens,

due to apartheid proven to exist in the U.S. Constitution

and in many other laws at that time.

 

The holding in that decision was that a black slave was not

a Citizen of Missouri and, therefore, he had no standing

to petition for Habeas Corpus relief.

 

The decision was correct, but luminaries like Abraham Lincoln,

a practicing lawyer at the time, chose to criticize the decision,

rather than to work for the solution which C.J. Taney expressed

so clearly (paraphrasing):

 

"If you find this apartheid result offensive, then the procedure

for amending the Constitution is available to you in Article V.

But, don't look to the Supreme Court to amend that Constitution,

because we have no authority whatsoever to do so."

 

Now, the solution that is obvious, using 20/20 hindsight,

was a proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution as follows:

 

"The status of Citizen of the United States of America

shall not be denied or abridged by the United States,

or by any State, on account of race."

 

It is quite possible that, if such an amendment had been

proposed immediately after the Dred Scott decision in 1856,

the Southern States would have seen the writing on the wall,

and might have worked out a peaceful solution to Emancipation

of all black slaves, perhaps over some transition period.

 

But, this simple solution escaped the lawyers of that era,

like Lincoln, and a horribly bloody Civil War intervened.

 

Immediately after that Civil War, all States, including also

the Southern States, voted to ratify an Amendment prohibiting

all slavery and involuntary servitude.


 

The lawyers then huddled and convinced the rest of the world

that this Thirteenth Amendment may have freed the black slaves,

but it did NOT grant them any kind of citizenship;  and that

additional legislation would be required in order for them to

acquire any rights of citizens, like the right to enter contracts.

 

Instead of using the simple language we present above,

a group of Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens

decided that a second class of citizens would solve the

problem, as long as that second class were legally defined

as subjects of the District of Columbia -- thus placing all

newly defined "federal" citizens under federal jurisdiction

first and foremost (or "primary and paramount" as the

courts have ruled).

 

Thus was born the 1866 Civil Rights Act -- a federal municipal

law which could and should have used the term "federal citizen",

instead of trying to steal the terminology already found in

the Qualifications Clauses of the U.S. Constitution --

but with one small yet terribly significant change

that was hardly noticed:

 

        "Citizen" was changed to "citizen"

 

Anyone who bothers to read the Dred Scott decision will

find quite a few references to "municipal" law, and this

is the key to understanding the 1866 Civil Rights Act.

 

Insofar as Lincoln failed to read and understand the

entire decision (and it remains one of the longest in

the history of American constitutional jurisprudence),

he was deprived of these pivotally important lessons in

federal municipal law.

 

And, it should have been clear to everyone who joined this

debate at that time, that the Congress cannot amend the

U.S. Constitution either.  Accordingly, the Qualifications

Clauses were NOT being amended by that Act, because Congress

cannot amend the U.S. Constitution, period!  These Clauses

are immensely significant, because they define who is

eligible to become voting members of the House and Senate,

and who is eligible to occupy the Office of the President.

And, they have never been amended.

 

Not long after that Act, Congress then proposed the infamous

Fourteenth amendment:  at best, that proposal was merely

declaratory of existing law and, even if it had been properly

ratified, it never could have "created" federal citizenship,

because that second class of citizens had already been

created by the 1866 Civil Rights Act (the existing law),

two years earlier.


 

If you know where to look, courts have already ruled that

the so-called Fourteenth amendment did not "create"

federal citizenship.  It could never have "created" it,

because federal citizenship already existed, beginning

in 1866.

 

Another subtlety here is that, being federal municipal law

which created a second class of citizens domiciled in D.C.,

the 1866 Civil Rights Act could never have extended

State Citizenship to blacks, because D.C. has never

joined the Union, and it can not join the Union as long

as the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction

there.  Again, a constitutional amendment would be

required to allow D.C. to join the Union as another

Union State on an equal footing with all other States.

 

Another way of proving that this Act created a second

class of citizens is to confirm a second privileges

and immunities clause in the so-called 14th amendment

(lower-case "p" and lower-case "i").

 

If blacks had been given State Citizenship, first and

foremost, they would automatically have acquired protection

under the organic Privileges and Immunities Clause at 4:2:1

(UPPER-CASE "P" and UPPER-CASE "I"), which had already

protected all State Citizens beginning on June 21, 1788 A.D.

-- the day the U.S. Constitution first became Law --

and continuing right up to the present time.

 

 

In summary, then, Congress chose to create a second class of

citizens for newly freed blacks, rather than to propose

a simpler amendment.  A simpler amendment would have solved

the problem created by the Dred Scott decision, i.e.

by extending State Citizenship to blacks as well as whites

without all the extra baggage that was later introduced

by the so-called 14th amendment, and without foisting

on America legislation which has generated an immense

amount of litigation due to its lack of clarity and now

obvious ambiguities (e.g. "United States" has 3 meanings

in law, all different).

 

Unfortunately, the language which Congress did choose has

also created an immense amount of confusion and controversy,

because the term "citizens of the United States" sounds

exactly the same as the first class of State Citizens,

who are identified in the Qualifications Clauses as

"Citizens of the United States".  The ONLY textual difference

between these two terms is the capitalization, or lack thereof,

in the third letter of the English alphabet.


 

Finally, on authority of the Utah Supreme Court in

Dyett v. Turner, decided in 1968, we now know that the

so-called 14th amendment was never properly ratified.

It is perhaps no coincidence that this court decision was

issued exactly 100 years after the so-called 14th amendment

was merely "declared" into Law in 1868 A.D.

 

Accordingly, it is now correct to say that there is

no constitutional authority for the proposition that

federal citizens are also Citizens of the State

in which they may "reside".  Given the utter frequency

with which Congress has re-defined the term "State" --

over a very long period of time after Eisner v. Macomber --

it should come as no surprise that the "State residency"

to which that failed amendment refers is more accurately

described as another feature of the giant ruse it originally

intended.

 

Why?  Because the Supreme Court has officially

recognized a "state within a State", as if this

were a perfectly acceptable fiction that would be

understandable to the entire population;  but,

more confusion and deception were the inevitable

result of such deliberately devious language.

 

Thus, the original proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution

with the so-called 14th amendment should be declared

null and void, ab initio, for deliberate vagueness,

pursuant to the Void for Vagueness Doctrine that is

founded on the Sixth Amendment.  Remember, now,

as of 1871, the U.S. Constitution was expressly

extended into D.C.  That had the intended effect of

applying the Nature and Cause Clause of that Amendment

to all federal municipal laws, and even proposals to

amend the Constitution.

 

However, deliberate vagueness is fraud, and it is

high time America slapped the hands of corrupt lawmakers

in Congress who continue to sustain such frauds,

long after they have been thoroughly exposed.

 

 

Sincerely yours,

/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell

Private Attorney General

http://www.supremelaw.org/