Confederate Constitution Compared To The United States Constitution

➡ Ron Partain from the Untold History Channel discusses the differences between the Confederate Constitution and the United States Constitution. He explains how the Confederate Constitution was an attempt to find a balance between too much and too little government power, but its decentralized nature ultimately led to its downfall. The discussion also touches on the concept of nullification, where Northern states ignored certain laws, leading to a constitutional crisis. The Southern states felt the North and the federal government weren’t following the Constitution, leading to their decision to secede.
➡ The text discusses the Confederate Constitution, comparing it to the US Constitution. The speakers highlight the differences and similarities between the two, focusing on the preamble of the Confederate Constitution. They discuss the importance of the phrase “each state acting in its sovereign and independent character”, emphasizing the autonomy of each state. The text also mentions the intention to form a permanent federal government, drawing parallels with the Articles of Confederation.
➡ The text discusses the differences between the U.S. Constitution and the Confederate Constitution, focusing on the use of language and capitalization. It highlights how the Confederate Constitution was more explicit in its religious references, and how it omitted certain phrases like “general welfare” due to their perceived misuse. The text also emphasizes the importance of future generations in the Constitution, and how the Confederate Constitution aimed to clarify and prevent potential misinterpretations.
➡ The Confederate Constitution was drafted by key figures like Christopher Meminger and Howell Cobb after seven states seceded from the Union following Lincoln’s election in 1860. The draft was approved and ratified by March 1861, and accepted by the states by April 1861. The document was largely based on the U.S. Constitution and the Articles of Confederation. The article also discusses the complex relationship between the Southern states and their slaves, arguing that while the world was racist at the time, slavery was more about cheap labor than racism.
➡ The text discusses the historical context of slavery, arguing that it was driven more by economic needs than racism. It also delves into the Confederate Constitution, highlighting its similarities and differences with the U.S. Constitution. The speakers emphasize the importance of citizenship for voting rights, aiming to prevent foreign influence in their elections. They also discuss the fear of infiltration and the need for allegiance to the Confederate States.
➡ The text discusses the rules and regulations of the Confederate States, including the requirements for being a representative and how taxes and representation are determined based on population. It also talks about the process of impeachment for federal officers working within a state. The text emphasizes that while slavery was a factor in the secession, it was not the primary reason.
➡ The text discusses the process of impeachment in the context of the Confederate States. It explains that impeachment requires the agreement of two-thirds of both legislative houses and is used to remove a federal officer who is not acting in the state’s best interest. However, impeachment is not the final step; the impeached individual can still face criminal charges. The text also clarifies that a state can only impeach a federal officer who is operating solely within that state.
➡ The text discusses the rules and regulations of holding elections for senators and representatives, as well as the procedures for their meetings. It also touches on the importance of maintaining a journal of proceedings, with some exceptions for secrecy. The text also humorously notes changes in spelling in the constitution over time. Lastly, it delves into the historical context of the Confederate capital’s location and the challenges of travel during that era.
➡ A B29 plane crash, which killed all on board including three civilians, led to the creation of the state secret act due to the Air Force’s reluctance to reveal information about the crash. This act is now used to overclassify information, often misused by individuals to their advantage. The discussion also touched on the similarities between the US and Confederate Constitutions, highlighting the importance of understanding the original context and language used in these documents. The conversation ended with a call for a more straightforward language in constitutional documents to prevent misinterpretation.
➡ In the future, the meaning of this document might change, but it’s meant to capture our current goals. The speaker plans to prepare a graph for next week’s meeting. Also, he’s getting married on George Washington’s birthday, which will be his anniversary. He ends by mentioning his new video about federal spending transparency and looks forward to meeting everyone next week.

Welcome to the Untold History Channel. My name is Ron Partain. It is Friday 28th February and I’m uploading, I’m uploading this. This is actually something that we recorded about a week and a half ago, but I didn’t get the file until today. Anyway, we actually recorded part two earlier today and I’ll have that to upload a little bit later. But I also discovered that part one, the introduction rather not actually so part zero, I guess it would be part zero. The introduction to this did not upload properly. I want to click on it and it was just, it was basically a whole lot of nothing.

So anyway, I deleted that video and I’m re uploading it here that you’re going to see that it was actually from the. The 20th or the 14th, so it was basically two weeks ago today. Anyway, I apologize for that. I. I didn’t double check. I didn’t think I needed to. So I guess I need to start doing that a little bit more frequently. But anyway, this is part one of us going basically kind of comparing the Confederate Constitution with the United States Constitution, you know, as we go through it. And again, earlier today we recorded part two.

I actually thought part two was even much better than part one, but nevertheless, anyway, this is part two. Hope you guys like it. Let me know how you, Let me know how you like it in the description in the comment section rather. And I look forward to look for. I really look forward to going through the remainder of it. Part two again was really good and I’ll be uploading that as soon as I get it. So hope you guys are having a great day and enjoy. Take care. We did the first one where we talked about really the background of, you know, the different constitutional documents, whether it be the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States or the most recent iteration of a founding document in America, which is the Confederate Constitution.

And the reason we did that is not to re litigate the Civil War, the causes or anything like that, although that, that is going to come up. It’s part of the conversation because as you go through this Confederate Constitution. Notice. Yeah. When you, when you look at the differences between this document and the Constitution of the United States, you’re gonna understand, you’re gonna get inside the heads of the people who wrote the Confederate Constitution and it’s gonna give you a, I guess a really good insight into what they were thinking and why they decided to secede.

If I may, if I may, what, what you’ve got is, you know, you have to look inside the heads of the men who wrote the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. And the Articles of Confederation were done kind of as a. As a mechanism to form a government while they were at war. And then when they won the war, then they came back and then did the Constitution and, you know, the Articles of Confederation. Who knows if that. If that form of government would have stood. But that was their attempt to take what they thought was the good parts of both and meld them together.

In my, in my opinion that, you know, that was. Historically, confederations never hold together. You’ve got to have a stronger centralization of government. And, you know, it’s funny because when it comes to the distribution of powers and government, it’s really a kind of a. A very careful dance. You know, it’s. It’s. It’s almost like when you’re seasoning your food, too little is not good enough, Too much is too much, you know, and you’re trying to find that balance. And when it comes to the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, that’s what they thought that they were finding, that the Articles Confederation was not enough.

The Constitution was too much. And so they were kind of tinkering to try to, you know, find that balance. And. But because they moved too, too much towards confederation, it created its issue. So when you have, you know, and it’s interesting because you want sovereignty, you want independence, you want autonomy among the units that are in a union, but at the same time, there’s got to be a cohesiveness, enough of a cohesiveness and enough of the central power for the federal government to take care of certain things and without state interference. So it’s. It’s just a very careful dance.

But under the Articles Confederation, eventually the United States would have been invaded, taken over by different European powers, in my opinion, which is what a lot of the thinking was at the time. So my humble opinion, it was the. I think it was the. I think it was Georgia who threatened to secede from the Confederacy midway through the war, because they. He. He saw that, you know, I, you know, Jefferson Davis had said, hey, look, I need some of the powers that Lincoln has to prosecute this war. And this. And the, this. The. The Confederate states were like, no, we’re not going to give that to you, because that’s the whole.

That’s the whole reason we’re fighting this war is because we don’t want that. And basically, the, the decentralized nature of the Confederate Constitution ultimately led to the ruin of the Confederacy. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s a. Yeah, that’s a point I made last week and I’m glad you followed up on that because it’s really important. What Lincoln did almost immediately was nationalized the government. He became a, basically a dictator in chief, took, you know, suspended all kinds of parts about the Constitution, was able to, you know, print money, the greenback and you know, you know, when you nationalize something, a government, you’re going to have more power than a decentralized version of it.

And that’s one of the main reasons north was able to win. It wasn’t just about population and the more powerful economy. So. Yeah, and central centralized power like that is a very efficient government. Things get done quickly. Yes, but at what cost? Exactly. Yeah. So before we jump in, speaking of books, there’s a book here called the Confederate Constitution of 1861 written by. I have that book. So, you know, Marshall derosa, you need to start telling me the books that you’re going to show in advance so that I can, so that I can like say, look, I have it too.

That way he doesn’t feel like, you know, I don’t feel left out. Into the romper room. I want to share too. I’m just totally, I’m totally teasing. I’m reading one, the opening paragraph by Marshall DeRosa, who does a lot of writing at the Abbeville Institute, which we all like. And this opening paragraph tells, it tells an awful lot. It’s just the introduction. I’m going to read one paragraph from says the Confederate States of America, politically established in 1861 and militarily extirpated in 1865, was neither simply a historic accident initiated by radicals attempting to prolong the life of an anachronism system of labor, nor the product of fire eating political opportunities seeking personal aggrandizement at the expense of their fellow citizens.

These factors had an impact, but in the final analysis of the Confederate States of America was the consequence of a constitutional crisis, the origins of which could be traced back to the U.S. constitution of 1789. It was not a crisis for constitutional government per se, but the consequence of an incrementally changing constitutional arrangement increasingly unacceptable to the southern section of the Union. The Southerners did not abandon constitutional government. To the contrary, they reaffirmed their commitment to constitutional government under the auspices of the Confederate Constitution. I think that’s very well said. They’re basically saying, is the south seated, seceded because the north was trying to impose a different form of government than the South.

Southern states had originally Agreed to. Well, and it’s funny too, because. And we’ve seen this in news recently, one of the blames of the war between the states is nullification. And the thought that is put out there is that the Southern states were nullifying and therefore it was a problem. And you know, this notification is bad. The Southern states weren’t nullifying, the Northern states were, and the Southern states didn’t like it. And the Northern states were nullifying perfectly constitutional law. And when. So when you hear someone say, well, Madison, you know, spoke out against nullification. No, he spoke out against nullification.

When it’s not the nullification of constitutional or unconstitutional. Should I say law. If what. What’s happening. What was happening in the north, for example, is the. Is the future of Slave act, which was supported by Article 4 of the Constitution, was being ignored by the Northern states and they were not sending slaves back to the south if they escaped to the North. And the federal government wasn’t enforcing that constitutional crisis. The Northern states were nullifying, the federal government was doing nothing about it. And the Southern states, you know, felt that among other things, because those things were piling up, that writing was on the wall that the Northern states and the federal government wasn’t willing to follow the Constitution and so they were going to follow their constitutional authorities of being able to succeed because it was a voluntary union.

Right. Well, let’s jump into this Confederate Constitution. We’ve taken a quite a bit of time getting up to, but it’s about time to jump in. Let’s do it. Okay, we are going to start with the preamble. One of the things can be interesting is I have the US Constitution pulled up right next to where we can refer to if we want to. We don’t have to because Doug’s got the whole darn thing memorized word for word. Ron’s not too far behind there. But we want to really point out the differences between the two documents because therein lies the real.

You know, the whole purpose of what we’re doing is to point out the similarities and the differences. So jumping in here, we’re going to use the version we have on the Avalon Project, which is a wonderful website for historical documents that look big enough. I warned you. I warned you when I introduced you the Avalon Project. It is addicting. It is. I. I’ve read almost probably 5% of what’s in there. I just look at. It’s Yale. Yeah, well, yeah, I know it well, you know, even Neil does something right every once in a while. Well, as they Say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

So Ron’s the font big enough? A little small. I’ll zoom one more. Okay, we are going to start with a preamble, and it’s going to sound very similar, but. But different. Says, we the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the Confederate States of America. I’m going to go back and let’s just break down.

Each part of this starts with we the people of the Confederate States, as opposed to punctuation changed. Yes. And we comma, the people of the Confederate States. Why does that matter? And just. It was just updating the changing, you know, but. But it is. It. The punctuation is different. What does matter is something that I’ll point out later on when it comes to something similar, but continue, please. Well, I’d like to say something about this, and maybe you’re going to say the same thing, Doug, and if you are, I apologize for stepping on your toes. But initially, the preamble was going to say we the.

We the States, we the people of the United States of America, or something along those lines. But then they just. They ultimately, they just shortened it to we the People. It still says we’re the people of the United States of America. I would have actually preferred. Or. Or no, I’m sorry, it was going to say we the States. We the states, I believe, is what they were going to ultimately say. Yeah, we’ve talked about that, Ron. That’s. It’s actually a really good point because had they said we the states, it would shoot down a lot of these theories that we’re democracy.

Right. So it’s. It’s important because who ratified the Constitution? Was it the people? No, it was the states. Thank you. And. And the idea of we the people was. It was trying to put. To get. Put forth a image of unity. And we’re not talking unity of the way it’s put out by some of today’s politicians, where you compromise and in order to, you know, be a part of the group, you know, be more inclusive. But we the people, you know, we the people are presenting this together, the understanding that this is going to be it with the same goal, you know, that kind of unity.

And that’s really what was about. But of the Confederate States, and they left off of America, just like the preamble of the United States Constitution. It was, you know, in the, in the. In the documentary and the docudrama, I guess is probably a better way to say it, of John Adams. It was really interesting in there. I remember the. I forgot he was. Oh, the guy. The guy from, from. He. In the. In the show he was portrayed from Pennsylvania, but he was actually from Delaware. And he was more like the. He was the leader of the pacifists guys.

Dickinson. Dickinson. Thank you. Dickinson said, only the people can declare independence. And John Adams rightfully said, no, the people look to us to lead, and that’s why they put us here. And, and so, so the, the. In a way, it was the people, but it was the people through the. Through the. The vassal of the men that were elected to represent them on their behalf. At that time, at that convention, Dickinson was an interesting fellow. And you say Delaware and Pennsylvania. And the reason why there’s a little confusion there is he was indeed from Delaware. Matter of fact, I’m, I’m looking at.

But he was Delaware. He represented Pennsylvania and Delaware, but he was on Pennsylvania’s table. But he lived in Delaware at the time. But the reason why is because Delaware actually used to be considered the south counties of Pennsylvania there. And so they. It’s an interesting Delaware actually. And a lot of people don’t know this. We always say 13 original colonies. And we say that because those 13 original states, if you were to say 12 original colonies, it would confuse people. But actually there was only 12 original colonies. Delaware was never a colony. It was a. The south counties of Pennsylvania and then.

But it was. But it declared it statehood in first. It was the first one because it was the first one to do so. Yeah, because. Because Delaware’s license. Well, they’re also the first to ratify the Constitution too. Yeah, they. And well, their, their license plate says the. The first state. Well, it’s because they’re first assigned constitution. But they did declare statehood first also in 1776. But, but anyway, so Pennsylvania and Delaware has a tight relationship because like I said, Delaware was considered a part of Pennsylvania for the longest time. And so that’s why, you know, he was up Delaware and he was actually I, if I remember properly, he was lived in Delaware, but he was representing Pennsylvania because that was where his ties were or something like that.

But anyway, think about Dickinson. The reason why he was so opposed to a lot of was going on is because he was a Quaker. Quakers. And the Quakers were not happy about the violent part of. Well yeah, but, but it was, I want to say it was July 6th of 1775. He. And was it Thomas Jefferson who penned a letter suggesting why or that. That, that an armed insurrection was, you know, if they took up arms against the British, why it was justified? You know, I, I didn’t know that about Dickinson. I, I, you know, if you only watch John Adams and you see that, and you see Dickinson there, he, he looks like he’s a, you know, he’s a weak, soft individual.

But from what I, you know, from what I have read about him after the fact, he was, he was an amazing author and, and world renowned in many respects. And also as a Quaker, he also surprised everybody because once the Declaration of Independence and went into place and George Washington was commander in chief, he took up arms. Yeah, he went to, he went to war. All right, I’m gonna get us back on track because we are, we are seven words into this Confederate constitution and we’ve already gone down 13 different rabbit trails. So. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

This, this, this stuff is, it’s just, you know, whenever that happens, you ought to have like an image of bunny ears that suddenly appear on the screen or something. Well, I’m gonna go. I, I keep meaning to go get one of those plastic fishing prices. No, no, what, what you need to do is you need to get an Elmer Fudd, I’m gonna hunt wabbits, and then just put it right on the screen. Something. All right, continuing on, if I may. Each state acting in its sovereign and independent character. Now that’s an important little. It lays out autonomy in, in language.

Yeah, they don’t have that in the preamble to the Constitution. So they are making it crystal clear that each state is sovereign in and of itself. Why is that important? Because this is a confederation of sovereign states, just like the US Constitution was supposed to be. They are re emphasizing the sovereign nature of each state in order to form a permanent federal government. That’s language drawn from the Articles. Confederation. Articles, Confederation, and of the perpetual union. And trying to draw back to that language, what’s interesting, as you talk about the sovereign, independent character of the states, and then the next sentence, you talked about the permanent federal government.

Well, the federal government is permanent because it is not implied that the states are not free to come and go. It’s the federal government. When the South Southern states seceded from the Union, they didn’t say we were going to overthrow, you know, Washington, D.C. we’re saying, no, we’re going to go our own merry way. This implies that, that’s still. Okay. Well, and, and to that point, that is why the. The term Civil War is not a. Is not an accurate representation of what happened. Because a civil war is two entities fighting for control of one thing.

And the south was not fighting for control of D.C. they were fighting for control of their own self determination. Yeah, you’ll never hear me refer to a Civil War. It’s always War between the States or Northern Aggression. But there’s a number of good titles that are better than Civil War. Continuing. We’re going to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Stop right there. Yep, I know you want to get into invoking, which is different. That language is not only exactly as it is in the Constitution, but it’s also not the capitalization of certain words is not there.

Founding Fathers capitalized for emphasis. Now by the time you got to the latter part of the 19th century, that practice had gone by the wayside. Let me just show what Doug’s talking about there real quick. Here’s the preamble of the U.S. constitution. And that section right there. Establish justice with a capital J. Ensure domestic tranquility with a capital T. Provide for the common defense. Promote. Etc. Etc. Blessings of liberty and welfare. Hey, you got welfare that justifies the welfare state, huh? And posterity there it’s capitalized. Yeah, but notice that the promote general welfare is not in the Confederate Constitution because the general welfare clause had been so abused at that point, they didn’t even want general welfare as a part of it.

Well, yeah, it’s just too ambiguous and vague. Anything’s for the general welfare. Okay. Back into the Confederate Constitution, they also did not say here anything about the common defense, which I’m not sure why that was omitted. Because they wanted the militaries to remain like the militias, where they were guided by the states, which is fascinating to me because that was the downfall of. Almost the downfall of the Americans in the revolution was, you know, these voluntary, independent, not subject to the central power of the the government, which as you state earlier, Jefferson Davis going, whoa, there’s a mistake.

I need more authority over our military. For fear of going one direction, they went too far the other. Very good. Continuing on, it’s an important part. Oh, do you want to mention posterity? What is posterity, Doug? Well, posterity is future generations. And as I noted a moment ago, it’s capitalized in the United States Constitution. And as I like to explain to people, the blessings of liberty, that’s natural rights and freedom to Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves, our posterity. Ourselves. In the original preambles, not capitalized posterity is. Which is basically saying, yeah, we’re doing this for ourselves, but we’re especially doing it for future generations.

Right. Which is fascinating because that flies in the face of the idea that. That the Founding Fathers are just a bunch of, you know, rich white guys seeking more power and money for their own pockets. No, in the preamble, they actually say the opposite. We are putting our lives on the line. We’re putting our fortunes on the line for. And our sacred honor for future generations. Once again, the re. Them not capitalizing it does not mean that posterity is not important to these guys just simply because they no longer capitalize for emphasis. That is a great point that I had never considered.

I, I mean, I. That was. If, If I take nothing away today than that statement what you just made, I’m going to be using that quite frequently now because I think that is a. That is. That. That was. That what you said was. Was very powerful to me that I had never considered. Well, two, Two things. Number one, thank you. And number two, Johnny, apparently you weren’t taking notes when you were going through the Constitution class, because I talk about that a lot, but that’s. Okay. Well, no, I’m just. I. Again, it’s one of those things where, you know, it’s just.

It’s timing and when it hits you and you may not have picked up on it before. Exactly. Right, yeah. Okay, continuing on. And here’s the part that’s interesting. I mean, the part just, just, just the part that kills me is when all these freaking Marxists come out and say, oh, these rich white people who own. Who slave owners just didn’t want to pay taxes. You know, the exact opposite right there. Exactly. Invoking the favor and guidance of almighty God. Well, you know, and that. Not. Not only does that. Is that reminiscent of the language at the end of the Declaration of Independence, but it’s actually a repeat of what the Preamble says, which they repeat here.

Do ordain and establish. The reason why it says do ordain and establish. The word ordain is in there to mean invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God ordained. If you look it up in your dictionaries, new and old, what you realize about that word is it means established, but it also has a religious connotation with it to establish, you know, in a religious manner. And so they were not being repetitive when they said ordain and established. They weren’t Saying to establish and establish. They’re saying to establish in the favor of. Of God and his guidance and establish.

And so the. The makers of this constitution, I believe, picked up on that, but they wanted it to be more plainly understood than just saying ordain. If I. If I may, Doug, this is from 1828. Webster’s got it right. I got it on screen. Yeah. Properly. To set. To establish in a particular office or order. Hence to invest with a ministerial function or sacred. Sacredotal power. I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. To introduce and establish or settle in the pastoral office with the customary forms and solemn. Solemnities as to ordain a minister of the gospel. In America, men are ordained over a particular church and congregation or as even an evangelicist, even jealousists.

God, I can’t speak today without the charge of a particular church or as so. And all of the definitions, you’ll notice, are religious in nature, except for number three, right to set, to establish, to institute, to constitute. So, but. And they were really pulling both meanings into it when they put ordained, because once again, they put establishment to ordain, establish. So they didn’t mean just to establish and establish. They were adding that religious connotation. And the confederates said, well, you know what? That’s not clear enough. We’re going to lay it out in plain language. My apologies there, Warhamster.

I didn’t realize I was, I was, I had, I wasn’t watching. Anticipated you, man. Ah, you know what? I guess. I guess I could just chalk that up to great minds. Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you’re married long. What are you trying to say? That I’m married to him? I want a divorce right now. You know, but what I find fascinating about it part is they put it in crystal clear guidance under the guidance, favor and guidance of almighty God. There was no question in their minds that they were founding a Christian nation. And you know, they.

We hear all this talk about, oh, the founding fathers were atheists or what have you, and just, Just stop that. I mean, I don’t want to litigate that right now, but. Doug. Right. You guys both agree with me on this? Well, God. God is throughout the United States Constitution. I’m going to pause my camera because I want to find. I want to find a book in my. In. In my collection here. I want to find something because it’s just a short little passage that I want to read. But, but continue on. I’ll be listening. So God is throughout the United States Constitution, however, The word God isn’t.

So that’s what’s also interesting here is they include the word God. God. In the Declaration of Independence, the word Creator is often used but. But throughout the passages, for example, ordain and secure the blessings of liberty. God is throughout the United States Constitution. I was once talking to a, a pastor about it and he says, well, the word God, God is not in the book of Esther either, but God throughout the book in the Old Testament. And that’s true. But the. Once again, the Confederates feel like the. A lot of what was in the Constitution was good, was not spelled out well enough.

It was being taken advantage of and some of it even needed to be removed like general welfare. And they wanted to make sure that it was crystal clear that it was fully understood that their country, even though ordained, implies invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God. They want to make sure it was spelled out that everybody understood that. There was no questions. They had all these years of looking back and going, huh, this happened. This got forgotten. This was ignored. This was, you know, gamed. Let’s put language in there, make sure that doesn’t happen to us.

You know, I should, I want to take a step back before, oh, when we finish the preamble, which is pretty short and we have Ron jumping and stuff, is do ordained and established this Constitution for the Confederate States of America. Now who wrote this preamble? And that’s, that’s the one thing I want to take a step back and talk about. If you look at the top there, it says the Confederate Constitution, the Confederate States, March 11, 1861. So the quick timeline is Lincoln gets elected in November of 1860. The first states to secede are in order and I’ll give the exact date.

South Carolina in December 20th of 1860, Mississippi on January 9th, Florida January 10th, Alabama January 11th, Georgia, January 19th, Louisiana, January 26th and Texas February 1st. So these seven states seceded. Then they meet in. Was it Mobile, Alabama, Montgomery. Montgomery. Elevator. Thank you. And they sat there and looked at the Constitution and said, oh well, this will be easy to write a new Constitution because we’ll just take all the parts we like and not the parts we don’t and fix a few things. And it wasn’t a major revision. The people that actually wrote it, the main figures were as a guy by the name of Christopher Meminger from South Carolina, he’s called it, pretty much called the leading drafter.

He was a big lawyer and a secessionist would end up being the Confederate Secretary of the treasury guy by the name of Howell Cobb from Georgia. And no, gentlemen, he is. There’s no relation to him in Ty Cobb. Look for it. And he was a former U. S. House speaker and a Georgia governor. There’s a few other members. You know, none of these names are going to really have really stood out in history. But these were the framers of this document. Of course, you know, again, they had a great cheat sheet to go from. Yeah. And that’s interesting because the Constitution United States was written.

They wrote this like Jefferson wrote the. The Declaration, where there was a primary writer and then there were those around him helping. Constitution wasn’t written that way. Constitution was written in committees. Now, Gouverneur Morris led the committee for the preamble and so on and so forth. And so it’s interesting because they were drawing from something, so it needed to. Need to be in committee. They had a single writer who was going to draw from things, or in this case, mainly from the Articles of Confederation in the Constitution. So how is it that Jefferson did that? Well, he was drawing from things, but his was more original, but he was drawing from the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Rights and other documents.

But it also shows the brilliance of Thomas Jefferson with the decoration because it was more out of here. It was drawn from things. This was, you know, a guy with other people, more people around him and influential than what as it was with Jefferson. But once again, it’s interesting because like I said, they. They wrote this out kind of like Jefferson did. It wasn’t in committee like the Constitution was. Yeah. And the first draft goes out in early February of 1861 and gets approved. They had a convention late February to March 11, 1861, was ratified quickly by the convention on March 11 and went out to the states for approvals and they were unanimously approved by April of 1861.

Now, by that time, April 1861, Virginia was just coming in after the attack on Fort Sumter. So Virginia actually didn’t ratify this. They. It was deemed when they joined it, they just accepted it. Just like Alaska joining the United States Constitution. Alaska didn’t have to ratify it. They just accepted it. I found. I found this. I’m not going to read the. This is a little book called facts. The historians leave out a Confederate primer. It’s a very small book. Chapter five is, were the southern states brutal? Were the southern masters brutal to their slaves? I’m not going to read the entire thing, but it says the final paragraph in this section says one thing more.

Have you ever wondered how it comes about that nearly every member of the colored race is a Christian. Many of them were uncivilized in their African home, but after living for some years in close contact with their Southern owners, they embraced the Christian faith. Do you think that would have. Do you think they would have done that and adopted the religion of masters who were brutal to them? Well, and. And the diary of Mary Chestnut Boykin also gives us a window into what life on a plantation was like. And, you know, one of the things that jumped out at me reading that was that the most common discipline for the slaves whenever they misbehaved was they couldn’t participate in the Friday night dance.

I mean, well, and I, you know, I was that. One of the articles that I was reading the other day about. About this talked about how Stonewall Jackson actually, before. Before the. The War between the States, he actually led. He taught slaves, with their master’s permission, freed black people how to read the Bible or how to read so they could read the Bible for their own salvation. And he got a lot of flack from people in the south who. Who didn’t want that to happen, but he didn’t care. He’s like, that’s. I don’t give. I don’t care if you like it or not.

I’m still gonna do it. I mean, so, you know, the whole thing about him being Stonewall, you know, obviously he got that from. From. From standing, you know, from standing fast in the. In the face of battle, but he. He stood fast in the face of many battles, not just the civil or not just the, you know, the Battle of Manassas. Interesting stuff. Now none of us are being. We’re not making any apologies for slavery winning whatsoever. I mean, it’s. No, not at all. The bottom line, the world we live, that the world, you know, 160 years ago was absolutely racist, both in the north and in the South.

There’s no doubt it was racist, but slavery wasn’t necessarily a racist institution. It was an institution that was bringing cheap slate, slave labor, and the uneducated people that they could use for that were from Africa. I. I don’t know if it was because they’re black as much as it was the convenience of a continent full of people that up. Well, I don’t really. I don’t believe from the South’s point of view it was racist because, you know, And, and, you know, 1860 census showed this is that less than 5% of white. Free whites in the south owned slaves.

27 of free blacks owned slaves. It Was it was basically a cheap labor kind of situation that was on its way out, by the way, because it was becoming cheaper to hire someone that owns somebody. I am from the south, and I can tell you there’s a whole lot of racism. I’m not saying there isn’t white racism. I’m saying that that, that actual institution, while there was racism that developed out of it, the foundation of it, in a sense, wasn’t. I would argue that the racist, the head. The heavy racist tendencies that are in the south today really were an outgrowth of the Union occupation and Reconstruction era.

It had nothing. Because if you look at the, you know, why did they, why did they make the black population 3/5 for. To balance the power? Because 3/5 is more than one half. That means that to balance the power, you. There were more black people in this, in the Confederacy or in the Southern states than there were white. And the, the white people and the black people literally had to work the land together to, to. For survival. And there was, in many respects, they actually grew to where they were. They respected each other and they were, you know, they were.

They. They looked. They looked at each other as human beings. That. It was the, it was the Northern attitudes towards blacks when they came down that, you know, and they just, they basically destroyed all the infrastructure and killed all the men and the women and, and, and essentially turned the blacks into. They had. They had to be criminals for survival. And at that point, this. The surviving, the surviving Confederate soldiers who were. Who were, you know, basically, you know, trying to survive on their own, and they were. And they were outmanned by all the free freed black people.

That was, that was what led to the, to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah. And the number of Confederate soldiers, by the way, that marched home after the war was over was about 25,000. Think about that, folks. Hunt. 800,000 people died in this war. The number of Confederate soldiers left was 25,000. Right. And they were outnumbered overwhelmingly by. By the freed blacks. So. Because they were already outnumbered by the blacks. So. And, well, and, and, and get. And, and to just into this, because I know is. You’re right, there was a lot of the racism.

If there was heavy, heavy racism, it was the North. They feared that once the blacks were emancipated, they’d go north looking for work and they didn’t want them in their neighborhoods, basically. Now that’s not to say there was no racism in the South. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I agree. And I’m not saying that slave owners weren’t that many slave owners weren’t, Were necessarily, were not racist. Racism existed. It was a very racist time period. But the mechanisms of slavery that really got everything going. And what it was really about was not about racism. It was about the need for workers.

They didn’t say, oh, black, let’s just make them slaves. No, it’s like, we need this done. We need it done to be cheaply. There is a pool of people there on that continent. Let’s grab, you know that. Let’s use that pool. And, and, and you also got to remember, when it comes to slavery, and slaves are basically a product there. There is no product movement if there are only buyers. There has to be sellers who were the sellers. So these are important points when we’re going through the, you know, the whole purpose of this going through the Confederate Constitution because it gets into the causality and what these gentlemen were thinking at the time.

It’s not a terrible rabbit trail. It’s just a longer one than it needs to be because you guys both hammer the same point home really hard. But it’s a, it’s an important point. Yeah. Jumping back into the subject matter, if I may, because I’m giving these guys a hard time. I knew when I got Ron and Doug on at the same time, especially on this topic, that they are going to pontificate because we’re passionate about these subjects. It’s gonna happen. You know, I mean, you guys know who, you guys know who kind of like my significant other is.

And she is just absolutely, passionately on the opposite side of my, of my, of my take and complains all the time. Oh, wow. I’m only 3/5 of a person. And it’s just so, I mean, I, I have this, this is a war that I fight in my life on a daily basis. So. But, you know, who knows if I’ll ever make any inroads there? But, but this, you know, the, the point, and, and I’ll end with this. The point of the matter is, is that what she believes is what the vast majority of the country also believes.

And it’s. I, I believe that it’s, it’s, it’s incumbent upon us to spread this knowledge as best we can to try to, to try to, to, to correct the, you know, the, the, the lies that have perpetuated this racism and prejudice. All right, moving on. Article one. Now you’re gonna find that this Confederate Constitution is laid out almost identical to the U.S. constitution. They, they were cheating. They didn’t write it from scratch. They had a really good draft to start with and they just made the adjustments they thought were necessary. So just as in the US Constitution Article 1, Section 1, all legislates about the legislative branch.

All legislative powers herein designated shall be vested in a Congress. Delegated. What’s that? Delegated? You said designated. They’re delegated. Thank you. I get so old I can’t even read. In a Congress of the Confederate States which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Now it’s interesting. All legislative powers herein delegated. The word in the Constitution is granted. And granted meaning going from the states to this new federal government. These powers are not being going from the states to this new government. It’s being delegated by, by this document and by those dates. So they actually changed that word appropriately.

They also did another big word there is the word vested. And that’s very important. We’re not going to talk about that during this stuff. But when you we talk about vested powers are ones you cannot give away. And that just leads us right in. Well vest vested is a key word when it comes to separation of powers. And, and it means exclusionary and irrevocable and granted. So in other words, the Federal Reserve is not legal. Yeah, that’s a different conversation now. Now that’s. That’s another rabbit hole. We’re not going that. We’re not going there. It’s my fault.

Yeah, well, Article one, Section eight, Coining money is vested in Congress but they gave it away with piece of legislation. Can’t save it. Save it. We’re going to get this life section short. Okay. All right. Section 2. House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year, just like the US Constitution, by the people of the several states. And the electors in each state shall be citizens of the Confederate states. I’ll stop there. That’s two points being made. The first is just like the U.S. constitution, every two years for the House of Representatives. Second part is interesting.

And the electors of each state shall be citizens of the Confederate States. Couple topics are hitting on there, Doug. You want to address that the electors or do you want to do the citizens? Well, it’s going out of its way to make sure that the people electing these people are citizens. You can only be a citizen of this country in order to vote. Now while that is said in the Constitution and in its various amendments regarding voting that you have to be a citizen to vote, there was already an issue going on where non citizens were being snuck in to vote.

For cheating in, in elections. And so, so they wanted to spell it out here. They wanted to make sure it was clear. Once again, it’s going back what we were saying earlier in the. And the preamble when it came to invoking the favor of the guidance of Almighty. They wanted to spell out, they want to make sure it was fully understood you have to be a citizen to vote for a member of the House. And well, and when you get to the, the Senate and all that it, it’s also there. But so that, that’s interesting. And have, and they repeat it again by the way, in this section.

Yep. And have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature. Now that that’s, that is a complete mirror of the Constitution is basically saying whatever the state’s requirements are for you to vote in the state for its state House Representatives, those requirements for you as a voter need to be met also to vote for the House of Representatives. And here’s the big one, because we’ve been litigating this quite a bit. But no person, born, birth, not a citizen of the Confederate States shall be allowed to vote for any officer, civil or political, state or federal, and state or federal.

That’s huge because the states are saying, okay, fine, you won’t want illegal aliens vote federally, but nothing. Constitution says that they can’t do that at the state level. And so we are actually seeing that now where a lot of states are allowing local elections to be voted by illegal immigrants or illegal aliens. And they wanted to make sure that there was no foreign influence, that the north wasn’t influencing their elections. So yeah, the illegal aliens in the, in the Confederate States wasn’t from Mexico, they were from the North. But I make the argument there is no such thing as a federal or national election.

All elections are local. President of the United States, you’re voting for your members of the electoral College. That’s a statewide issue. Senate, that’s in state. Congress, that’s in state. There are no federal elections, therefore. Well, that’s for federal offices. So that’s what they’re talking about. Yeah, but. And that’s, that’s a word. That’s wordplay. And I think we’re letting them get away with something there. But differentiating between. I know what they’re trying to do. That’s what they do. They, they hijack language and they play with language. And when I say they, I’m talking components of the Constitution.

But when it comes to this right here, once again, it, this is the Confederate States had the same concerns that the early American states had because they were worried about foreign influence. It’s the reason why natural born citizen and, and all these other mechanisms to protect that the people who are going to be involved in the system are. Have allegiance to the United States because they were worried about the Tories. For example, when it came to the revolutionaries, the Confederate states had the exact same concerns but rather than. But they had not only their own version of Tories but also they were now neighboring the country who wanted to kill them and they wanted to do everything they could to keep that foreign influence out of their system.

And so they took the language of the Constitution and they spelled out even more so for that protection for, for that you’ve got to show allegiance, you’ve got to be a part of this. Otherwise you’re not going to be involved in this. And there was a real fear of infiltration and things like that. Very good. All right, continuing on to section three. I was going to say that the only. The, the reason that they did that it’s. It’s basically neuro linguistic programming. So they say one thing like, like Patriot Act. Oh, that’s not. Yeah. So section section 2 clause 2 I think is what you’re going to next.

Right? Yeah, we’ll get. Yeah. Just last, last little thing on the highlighted part about the, you know, foreign birth citizenship. This isn’t quite totally defining natural born citizenship, but it’s sure hinting that that’s what they meant. Okay. Article one, section two clause two. No person shall be a representative should have not attained the age of 25 years and be a citizen of the Confederate States and who shall not when elected be inhabitant of that state. That’s verbatim word for word. Makes perfect sense. Except that it left out residency. That you need to be a minimum seven years residency.

That was left out only an inhabitant at the time. Okay, that’s good. Cat stuck. That’s why we have you here. So I don’t have to go back and forth between the documents all day. All right. § § 2, part 3. Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states. Interesting. Interesting. Their taxation, it was to be the same as the way it was constitutionally and which was at the states were paying part of the. The taxes part of the federal budget based on their population. That’s where the apportion comes from. What’s even more interesting than that is while the Confederate states are trying to stay as true to the Constitution on taxes as possible, it was the Lincoln administration Introduced an individual income tax, which violated the Constitution.

Yeah. The apportionment’s very important. It’s just a. For the umpteenth time, to understand the balance. When you’re founding both the United States and the Confederate states, you get your representatives based on the population. If you’re a bigger state, you’re going to get more people in the House and more electoral votes. The trade off for that is with more people, you’re also going to pay more in taxes. Right. So it’s really the balance. The smaller and poorer states don’t have to get paid, don’t have to get charged more, and they also get less representation. And that’s a.

That was a pretty workable balance. It was natural among the several states which may be included within this Confederacy according to their respective numbers. Talking about apportionment, which shall be determined by adding the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years. So indentured. Yeah, voluntary and indentured service. And excluding Indians, not. Not taxed because they are not citizens. And 3/5 of all slaves. There’s. They use the word slaves. The Founding fathers would not use the word slaves. In fact, in the US Constitution, the word slave does not appear until the.

Until the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Three fifths of all slaves. They still saw a need to count slave population as a part of apportionment. Well, that’s it, you know, because it’s a big contributor to your GDP and therefore impacts the taxes. Right. I want to make the point that, you know, we are not arguing that slavery had nothing to do with a reason for secession. It did. It was a part of it. And you’re going to see it in this document. It was an ingredient, but it wasn’t the primary ingredient. Yeah, there’s probably four main ingredients.

I would say of those four, slavery was probably the fourth of the four main four. But that’s important that, you know, you can see that in the language. We’re not dismissing that slavery was an issue. It was continuing. Yeah. They knew it was on its way out, too, though. Well, you know, it’s interesting, since you’re going to bring that up right now, I read an interesting, interesting piece just last week about how they actually thought that the court system was going to eventually be. What did end slavery would have been done via court decisions. And it makes us.

I. I didn’t bring the argument with me, but I’ll do. I’ll do that next week. It’s an interesting argument. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress and within every. And within every subsequent term. Every ten years. Census. That’s a ten year census, right? Yep. In such manner as they shall, but by law direct. This is. They’re talking about how they count populations. The number of representatives shall not. Shall not exceed. Here it comes. One for every 50,000. Now why is that important? Well, because the real original first amendment had that exact language of the Bill of Rights, the one.

Well, actually, actually, no, no, this is different language than what you think it is. It says the number of representatives should not exceed one for every 50,000. In other words, you cannot have more than one representative for any population. 50,000 or less. It was 30,000, I believe in article one. It’s just saying that. It’s not saying though it has to be 1 per 50. It’s just saying that you cannot have more than one representative for 50,000 or less. The language you’re referring to is the original first Amendment. And in that amendment it’s saying it has to be one per.

This is just saying that you cannot have more than one representative for that amount of people. But it is not saying that that one person can’t represent 100,000 or 200,000 or whatever. This language is once again very similar to the Constitution as it was written, except for that rather than 50,000, was 30,000. Very good. And the smallest state, the next part says each state shall have at least one representative. The smallest state in terms of population ever granted to the Union was Nevada. And it happened during the Civil War specifically because Nevada had a silver rush going on and Lincoln wanted the silver to help pay for his war.

But every other state has had more population. But each state shall have at least one representative. And until such enumeration shall be made the state. Okay, here it goes. The state of South Carolina shall have 6. Georgia 10. State of Alabama 9. Blah, blah, blah. What’s interesting about this is Virginia would join about weeks after this was ratified. And it was the largest state by population, so they had to reapportion very quickly. Another thing that’s fascinating here too is Georgia before Virginia joint had the largest population. But when the 13 original colonies were put into place, Georgia was in the lower half.

It was one of the less populated states. What’s also interesting is the state of Florida was the smallest time, and now it’s the second biggest of the southern states. Well, it only recently joined the Union. It had been a territory for over 20 years, but it only recently had joined the Union. I mean, right before was like 1856 or something like that. Yeah, something like that. It was like right before secession. Continuing on. When vacancies happen in the representation from any state, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies. The writs of election being a special election, executive authority being the governor.

Yeah. And that’s what’s interesting is they’re dictating that in the US Exact same language. Yeah. Isn’t that left up to the states when there’s a vacancy in the House? Yes. Once again, the governor would issue writs of election, special election to replace that person. Right. Yeah, I know there’s some games. They’re not going to wait the two years or whatever. They’re going to do a special election and that person serves out the remainder of whatever the term was. Playing games right now in New York trying to leave at least. At least to fanx seat open for like another nine months.

I don’t think. I don’t think that’s going to pass. But it’s interesting. All right. Clause 5. The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers and shall have the sole power of impeachment. Very. That’s identical except that any judicial or other federal officer resident and acting solely within the limits of any state may be impeached by a. Votes of two thirds of both branches of the legislature thereof. And that’s. And that’s a change. Yes, let’s go through that. What are they saying? If. If a federal officer is working with inside of a state, that legislature can impeach him.

Said we do not want this tax collector here. He is not, you know, following what we’d like to see. Any thoughts? I’m rereading it to make sure I’ve got it, but go ahead. Do you have anything? No, I just think it’s a really good idea. You know, let’s say you’re in. You know, it’s. This goes back to the founding days. The British would have their governors and you know, other officials in the colonies, you know, and the colonies that couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t get rid of the person, the authority. And this goes. But this traces back to that kind of same residual.

So the. So the. So it’s saying the House of Representatives has a sole power of impeachment. Unless that impeachment is of a judicial, federal officer or resident acting solely within limits of any state. Then it takes both. Both bodies, legislative bodies of that state. We’re talking about the state. So a state can Impeach a federal officer if that officer is only working within the limits of that state. But it. But. But. It’s a. But. But the impeachment isn’t by one house. It takes both houses, Takes two thirds. In other words, it better be pretty egregious. Now, now, the impeachment conviction, I’m going to assume would still belong to the u.

S. Senate. Well, the idea of the impeachment is to remove it. Let’s say you’ve got a bad. You get a bad federal judge. Right. But impeachment is not the removal. That’s just the indictment. Yep. All right, moving on. Unless you’re saying that a state can indict a federal officer. But. But it requires two thirds of both of their legislative houses. Yes, and it’s just removal. You know, it’s funny because I’ve read that before and I didn’t pick up on that before. And so. So a state, like. Well, let’s just say use examples. So Alabama can’t. Alabama can impeach a representative at the federal level in the confederacy if they’re.

If they’re like, they. They can impeach a senator that’s representing Alabama and the. In the. And the confederate senate. That’s not what I’m saying. You got. Well, you got to remember it’s understood in the u. S. Constitution that the federal government cannot encroach on a state which. Without a state’s permission. No, I. I’m. Okay. I’m trying to clarify. There is no. But there is no mechanism for the state in the constitution to take care of that. If a federal officer refuses to abide by that and encroaches anyway or acts in a manner which a state doesn’t want.

This is giving the state the ability to. Yep. So they’re talking about right here in highlighted a judicial or other federal officer. They’re not talking about elected official. You can’t remove some. Okay. All right. All right. And it’s only. Only if that person is resident and acting solely within the limits of any state. So if you’ve got a federal judge, you know, in alabama, and he’s, you know, giving terrible rulings, Alabama’s legislature can get rid of them. That’s it. Got it. Okay. There we go. So it didn’t apply. I’m. I just. I guess I just. When you say, yeah, that’s a good mechanism, I like it.

Yeah, I agree. It isn’t. I. I think it’s an improvement on the constitution. Well, it could be unless you and it. That. That Would be a horrible thing to do in California if you’ve got like pro. Everything’s horrible in California if you’ve got. If you’ve got a pro two. A judge and the state. And the state. The state government didn’t like all the, the, the, the reg. Surrenderings or the, the judgments that were coming out of his bench and because they, they violated what they believed in terms of, you know, from a. From a tyrannical standpoint.

But that’s the state’s problem. That happens within the state, acting solely within the limits of any state. So you talk about the ninth circuit. That’s not just California. So this would not apply. Well, if, but if, but if he was. But if he was operating in, at the, at the ninth circuit in San. And he was doing. He was. So I’ll, I’ll be specific and talk about Benitez. Benitez has been the, the primary. He’s a district judge, not a circuit judge. But he’s still a federal judge. Yeah, but district. District would be operating solely within the state.

Circus. Judge will not. Okay, I get your book. All right. Remove a district. You couldn’t remove a circuit. Okay. All right, all right, all right, that’s good. I’m glad. I’m glad. I’m just trying to clarify because if I have. Good. Because I’m sure other people are asking the same questions. Right. Exactly. Why we’re here is to have these conversations. So no good questions. Moving on. Okay, we’re at. We’re just past the hour mark. Let’s get through a few more sections here since it’s going pretty good. The senate of the confederate states shall be composed of two senators from each state.

Where’d they get that from? Chosen for six years by the legislature thereof. What a good idea. Yeah, well, this was pre 17th amendment. Even the United States hadn’t screwed it up yet. Yet. At the regular session next immediately preceding the commencement of the term of service and each cell senator shall have one vote basically identical to how the US Senate as was set up originally. Probably nothing to add there. Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three classes. The seats of the senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year.

Second class expiration of the fourth year and the third class the expiration of the sixth year. Every two years you get a third of the senate re elected. Just like in the U. S. Constitution. Yeah. This was to make sure that there was a. A third of The Senate was up for reelection every two years. Yep. Which is basically what says in the next sentence. But it is the. The legislature. The. The. Like that. Like the legislative body for the people gets to vote for one senator and the legislative body for the state or the counties gets to vote.

Vote. No, it’s chosen by the. They were chosen by the legislature. You’re thinking electors. I thought in the US Constitution, I thought that the. The senators were voted on like one senator was voted on by. So I’ll use California as the example. One legislation, one senator was voted on by the assembly and the other one was voted on by the state senate. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That. That’s correct. And that’s what they’re doing here. I thought you said by the people, meaning democratically. Right. Now it doesn’t necessarily have to be there that way, Ron. It’s just the legislatures can determine how they do it.

And I think if we repeal the 17th amendment, you’d find. Well, all kinds of bickering. It’d be. There’d be some kind of compromise, but. Right. If vacancies happen by resignation or otherwise during the recess of the legislature of any state, the executive thereof may make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall then fill such vacancies. Not the same language of the Constitution. Yeah. No special saying that if a. If. If a senatorial position is vacated because it’s up to the legislature to pick senators. But what if they’re out of session? Then the governor can make it a temporary appointment.

So not a whole lot of changes. Not a whole lot of changes from the original Constitution so far. But the ones we have seen, they’ve been subtle but important. No person shall be a sinner who’s not been 30 years old. That’s the same as citizen of the Confederate States. And. And it’s all the same except for at least out nine years of resident. Exactly. Being inhabitant of the state. The vice president of the Confederate states shall be the president of the Senate, but shall have no vote unless they be equally divided. The same. Same. The Senate shall choose their other officers and also a president pro tempore in the absence of the VP or when he shall exercise the office of the president of the Confederate States.

Same except for the word Confederate. We don’t have to point that out every time. I think. Yeah. If you. If you don’t mind. I think it’s right. Yeah. I was. I was being funny. Sorry. I know. Yeah. We are. Yeah. I think this is the Confederate constitution. Yes. Good God. We have Captain Obvious Here today, people. Hey, that’s how I roll, baby. The senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose they shall. They shall be an oath on oath or affirmation. Now. No says it shall have so power to try all impeachment.

So if an impeachment was put in play by the state legislature as we’re talking about earlier, it would still have to go to the. To the Senate, the Confederate Senate, in order to be. In order to reach conviction. Got it. Clarification on the earlier part. They shall be on oath or affirmation. When the president of the Confederate states is tried, the chief justice shall preside. Yeah. Because if the vice president who’s president, senate presided, there’d be a conflict. Very good. And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of 2/3 of the members present. And the highlighted is pretty much the same as the Constitution.

Very good. Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than the route than to removal from office and disqualification to hold any office of honor, trust or profit under the Confederate states. But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment according to law. Now that’s the same language as the United States Constitution. Clarification. What it’s saying is that if a person is impeached and then convicted of that impeachment, then they are also subject to criminal court. Now, when it comes to the president, since the president has certain immunities, that what that means is the president, unless convicted of something but through impeachment, will not face criminal court after his presidency.

This is a. What they did to our current president is actually a violation of that. You can’t. You can’t go after a president criminally for what he did in office unless he was impeached for it and convicted of it. And supreme court agreed with you for the most part. They didn’t. The opinion didn’t stay exactly the same, but they didn’t state it quite as clearly and concisely as you just did. But that’s kind of what they meant. They left a little bit of ambiguity be crib. Because there are some hypothetical cases that aren’t quite addressed. But we digress.

Section four, important language. The time, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed by each state, by the legislature thereof, subject to the provision of the constitution. But the congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the time and places of choosing senators. Now the biggest difference between this and the original Constitution is in those 80 years they learned how to spell the word choosing. Come on, Doug. You know, that’s hilarious. I don’t pay attention. Well, that. Because there’s language also there that’s not in the Constitution.

I was just checking to make sure I was right in my mind to the provisions of this constitution. That language is not in the original Constitution. They decided to add it for clarification and so. But otherwise the language is exactly the same. And. Yeah, you’re funny. And now they know how to spell choose. Guys, the reason that’s a joke, people is if you read the original Constitution, they spelled choosing C H U S I N G. And we joked that. No, that was not a typo. They were not. Well, they learned how to spell defense also.

Yeah, there’s a few. I think there’s three. Those changes on the actual spelling. That’s an important clause. Well, hey, they, they changed how to spell your. It’s. It’s no longer Y O U R E or Y O U r. It’s just. You are. Well, now that’s got me thinking. Go ahead. Because I gotta look at something. That was. That was a joke. I’m just. No, no, no, no, no. I just got the brevity of texting, you know, I mean, you know, people don’t know how to write these days because I was just wondering if insure. And the preamble was changed.

But no, it’s the same insure. Never mind. Okay. Spelling101. Assemble at least once in every year. Darn it. And such a meeting shall be on the first Monday in December unless they shall by law appoint a different day. This goes back to. So they can’t. They can’t. It’s kind of like Texas where they have a part time legislature. They can only come. Well, and as I tell it, when I teach my classes and the original constitution says Congress shall assemble at least once in every year. And I tell people it’s one of my favorite, my favorite lines of constitution because there were actually those who argued.

That was too often. Yeah. Each house. Section 5. How are we doing on time? Yeah, we got time to delve into section five a little bit. Each house shall be judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. And a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business. Same. Well, you know, it’s interesting. I was watching about 5, 10 minutes of you guys show on Ron’s channel last night, the regular constitution and you’re talking about quorum. And Doug stated the quorums at least 50. Actually, no, I did not say that. It said it’s more than 50.

Yeah, okay, but even that’s not true. For example, different organizations can say. Now, I explained that in my classes. I was saying, for this purpose, a quorum is the number required to do business. I. I had a friend of mine who was member of a company, and all they needed was 10% to have a quorum, which is ridiculously stupid. But, yeah, quorum means the number needed. We have an HOA with four households and the actual bylaws. Some idiot wrote in that a quorum required all four people. I go, what’s the point of having a quorum if you need all four? Say, unanimous.

But that’s. It’s a sticky point now. But anyway, for the purposes of the Constitution and the Confederate Constitution, a quorum is 50 plus one. Yes. And that matters sometimes. It did back then because it was a little harder to assemble everybody all at once because they did not have airlines. No, they didn’t. And it was the. And there was no paved roads. It was all either horse and. Or horse and buggy or whatever. But it was. Travel at that time was very difficult. Well, I can’t wait until we get Scotty in our teleporter. Amen. But a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and maybe that is a pro forma session.

Thank you. And do we have that in the U.S. constitution? Yes. And may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members. Is that there? In such a manner and under such penalties as each house may provide. Yeah. Section 5, clause 1 is literally worded exactly as it is in the Constitution. May I ask a question here? You know, considering the travel restrictions of, you know, of everybody at that moment, you know, in that time period, I think it’s. It’s. It’s a rather. You know, Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia were kind of central in the colonies, so, you know, from all the way from the north to the South.

Why would they have chosen Richmond, Virginia? Well, because it was closer to the war. Originally. It was Montgomery, Alabama, which is more centralized. Okay. That’s why I didn’t know that. Yeah. Remember, Virginia was not one of the original Confederate states. They did not join until after Fort Sumter. Right. So the capital. So. So the original Confederate capital or was. Was going to be Montgomery, Alabama? Well, it was. It was in Montgomery. They moved it as the war proceeded. They needed the powers to dictate and. And, you know, for military movement closer to the military front. And.

Well, Virginia was. Here’s here’s some. Here’s a little trivia for you. Where. Where did the Capitol move after it. After Richmond was. Was taken over? Trying to remember. Where did Lee surrender? Appomattox, but it wasn’t enough. Yeah, Appomattox was. That’s a good question, Mom. What’s the answer? Danville, Virginia. Okay. Only reason I know that is because I live. Because when I lived in South Boston, that was. Danville was like a 30 minute drive. And that’s what they were known for. Was the. The second Confederate capital. But, but, but. Yeah, but miraculously it’d be the third. Very good.

I cheated. I cheated. Sorry. That’s allowed. Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and with a concurrence of 2/3 of the whole number, expel a member. Exact same language. I said. This whole section, I think, is going to be verbatim. Yeah. Each House shall keep. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings and from time to time publish the same. Accepting such parts as may, in their judgment, require secrecy. You know, transparency. Huh. Except they get to judge what they want to keep secret.

Well, who else would judge it? Nobody. People. Well, yeah, but if you’re not supposed to know secret, how are you going to know to. It has to be them. I, I understand. I. I understand that the danger. But nonetheless, it has to be them. Why not have. Why have secrets at all? Because we have. Well, you don’t want everybody to know how to make a nuclear bomb. Well, that’s not. That’s not a congressional issue now, is it? Actually, it is, yeah. I would say it is. Yeah. There’s a lot of rock. There’s a lot of nuclear physicists in Congress these days.

Touche. And the yeas and nays of the members of either House on any question shall at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal. And that’s just calling for a roll call vote, right? Well, and that’s also saying that, that if there is something that if there is a time when the votes need to be kept secret, one it takes 4/5 of them to say that needs remain secret. Only a fifth needs to say, hey, yes. And A’s need to be public info. Excellent. Neither House during the session of Congress shall, without the consent of the other adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two houses shall be sitting.

Again, verbatim. Very good. That’s probably A good place to start. Yeah, I was gonna say we’re, we’re right about your 75 minute mark right now. Yeah, it doesn’t feel like that much time has passed. But then again folks, you know, so much fun with Warhammer and rot. Right? Yeah, exactly. We just time flies. I’m worn out. Population decreased as we got moving. All right, I, I, I wanted to ask you both and this, this kind of about the state secrets thing. You know, you, you know, I think it was like 1946 or 47 when there was a, a B29 was they were testing some sort of like navigation equipment or whatever on this B29 and the, I, from what I understand the pilots were kind of hot dogging it and there were civilians, there was three, three civilians on board that, that were the, you know, the contractors working on the equipment.

And although the plane ultimately crashed, killing everybody on board and the Air Force didn’t want to reveal the, because of the sensitive nature of the equipment that they were testing, they didn’t want to reveal any information about the crash to the family members of the, of the, the civilian contractors. Ultimately what that led to was the state secret act which is what is used now across the board in terms of they over classify everything today. Right. But that’s what happens whenever anything is in place. You’re always going to have characters, actors that are going to game the system.

That, that’s just reality of human nature. Right. So you know that, that state secret act to me is, is a, is a horrible thing. And of course that happened right at the time of, you know, just post World War II and when things were really starting to go off and it really wasn’t necessary because it says right there in the Constitution that Congress can choose what is going to be secretive and what it’s not. Well, what it came, what it came down to is like I said, the Air Force just didn’t want to admit that their pilots were being, you know, reckless and so, but that, that, that all being said, that is the, that was the court case that has been used essentially ever since to keep almost everything secret at the military level.

Well, I think we’re actually looking, I think we’re actually looking at two different subjects. There’s, you know, what Congress wants to keep secret from the people and what the, the, I guess the executive branch in this case, the military wants to keep secret from everyone, including Congress. And those are, those are two different topics. And you’re that Valid, valid, valid point. But it just, it just, it just, it, it kind of brought that up and just it made me think about what you were talking about there because in terms of who wants to keep secrets from who and what more why we can dive into that more dive into that more later.

Let’s give closing thoughts on what we went over today and wrap up. Okay, Ron, Doug. Well, the similarities between the US Constitution and the Confederate Constitution are striking. But as we’ve pointed out a few times, a lot of the additional language was basically to make sure certain things were clarified better. Right. They also sought to make sure it was understood that the states had autonomy and man, I and I think that was necessary for what they were trying to do. Ron, you want to add anything? I, I, well, I, I was everything I was going to say, Doug just basically said so I just echo echo what he said.

He’s, I mean, you know, just, just, you know, it’s amazing, you know, how a word can change, you know, you change one word and it completely transforms the entire passage, you know, meaning something significantly different. You know, like what was it the first one up in Article 1, Section 1, when it so talked about here and delegated shall be vested. You know, it’s, you know, what was the, what was the the original one. It wasn’t delegated. It was in the in ranch and granted. Right. So it’s, you know, it’s similar but different. And it’s so yeah, I mean, just, just that that as a, as a specific example of of how the, you know, these men knew the the problems that they were dealing with primarily because they were the ones that were the, that were on the brunt end of the of the neck of how the the, the, the Constitution had been bastardized.

So not entirely the, you know, the Buchanan presidency, which is just get out of that was a Southern Democrat presidency and they were about as corrupt as any any administration ever seen. So it went both ways. But your point’s valid, right? They had seen, they had 80 years of firsthand experience of the Constitution where the Constitution needed tweaking, and they had seen how the Constitution and it was as long as the men who were in office were virtuous, it got upheld. And then once you got past say, Monroe, Quincy, John Quincy Adams, then you started seeing the deterioration really fast.

About the only president between Jackson and Buchanan that was worth a dang was probably William Benjamin Harrison, which didn’t get a chance to do anything. And John Tyler, Tyler’s our guy, if you guys don’t know. Doug and I did a show. I’ve got him about six, nine months ago basically said, is John Tyler the most constitutional president in history? And he might have been. There’s an argument to be made. You know, it’s funny, you, you guys will be, you guys will appreciate this, but whenever you’re driving on the 91 freeway and you. One of main, one of the main roads that you exit is Tyler and it’s.

And the Tyler Mall is right there. Right, exactly. So it’s like, you know, and it is named after that president. Right, exactly. So it’s kind of funny because now every time I drive by that or, or which isn’t that often, but anytime I do, it’s like, that’s what I think of now. So let’s see. Was he president when California joined the Union? Is that why he got the. All that props there? No, no. They named a bunch of streets Adams and, and, and Van Buren, which is a major thoroughfare and. Right. Tyler and Adams, Washington, Jackson.

Yeah, all that. The. All the. A Pierce Buchanan. I mean, all the. There’s, there’s a whole slew of streets that are, you know, I’m up here in colonial New England and like, for example, when I go to the store later today, I’m going to be on Lafayette Road most of the time. But a lot of these streets are named after, well, all kinds of things, understandably. So Lafayette was the, I mean, Lafayette. The name Lafayette is all over the United States just because of what, you know, how, what they did for the, for the American. He was such a youngster when he came to the United States, but he was probably the.

Among the best generals. Yeah. All right, let’s give it a wrap. This is pretty good. We’ve, like I said, we’ve pointed out the similarities of the US Constitution. One thing I was going to say is, you know, three of us been talking about the Constitution for three, four years all the time. And the one thing I, you know, coming back at when I first met Doug is, God, I wish they’d clarified a few of these things in the original Constitution just a little bit. And because they were pretty clear, the language has changed. And these guys writing the Confederate Constitution are also recognizing the language is slightly changed, but you wouldn’t.

How the, how it was being gamed and how, you know, people, like, were taking advantage of the general welfare clause, stuff like that. So then they wanted to make sure they fixed that. And to your point there, I think I, I think that in, in the year 2025, you know, we, we fall victim to applying the language that’s in the Constitution to our Understanding of the words of today as opposed to how they were written, when they were written. So, you know, just like in biblical hermeneutics, when you talk about audience relevance, you have to take into consideration who the audience was that it.

They were being. That the words were being written to so that you can gain a proper understanding of what they were trying to say. And that’s one way that they. That the, the people who are trying to manipulate things in their favor, twist and contort, and they, they, they. They use words that have maybe different meanings. You know, it’s like, you know, something that’s bad. That’s exactly my point, Ron, is that, you know, you get to look at Supreme Court justice, you have these textualists who read the words carefully and reinterpret it how they want. And then you’ve got the originalists with the ones I favor who actually look at what they meant when they wrote it right times.

And the audience. Absolutely. When I talk about clarifying the original Constitution, I’d like to write it in very simple language. This is the enumeration doctrine. If it’s not in here, you can’t do it. That kind of stuff. So that can never. Wait a second. I thought I was living, breathing and twisting and bending and molding, and it is. It’s called the amendment process. It’s slow and methodical. If we were ever to do a. If we were ever to do a. Another Constitution or, Or, you know, God forbid, something like this, I would. The one thing that I would propose is that to understand the language in this document, use this particular dictionary of this time to understand what we meant.

And then, therefore, in the future, 200 years from now, if these words mean something different, you’ll know what we were trying to accomplish by using this particular document. That would be a. That. That would be something that I would, you know, like to say. Let’s go ahead and graph that for us and have it ready next week to present. Hey, I will. All right, I’ll work on that. I’ll. I’ll stop everything I’m doing and do it today. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. We will see you next week when I. When you see me next Wednesday, I will be a legally married man.

Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. This Saturday, George. No time soon. George Washington’s birthday will be my. Will be my anniversary. That’s interesting. So. So does that mean you can never tell a lie then? Right. I never could anyway. Just like Honest Dave. Doug. Yeah. All right, I’m out of here on that. I am out of here. Talk about neuro linguistic programming. So check out ron@ untoldhistory tv, me@douglasvgibbs.com I got a new video out, by the way. I finally got it to render last night and so I take a look at federal spending transparency. Good to see you gentlemen.

Enjoy your day and we’ll look forward to seeing you guys next week if we don’t talk before. Cheers.
[tr:tra].