Lets discuss the Patrick Henry quotes and how the 2nd amendment was really a way to maintain slavery.
I re-read the article (written by Thom Hartmann) that was given as a cite for this claim. Now, I have NEVER heard this claim, and I am fairly well read on the subject of American History. I thought it sounded a big contrived, as I have already stated, by someone looking to twist the past into something that would make the 2nd amendment tied to slavery and therefore something that MUST be abolished. Since the regular arguments for gun control and 2nd amendment abolishing haven’t worked, why not connect it to slavery, one of the darkest (no pun intended) chapters in our history?
So I read the article. Didn’t see any smoking gun (haha) that made me think that the 2nd amendment was a hidden way to create slave wranglers… Basically, the idea proposed by Elvisl1ves and others is that the militia was not to defend the state in which it was organized, but it was to defend the human property (slaves) that were a big part of the population and economy in the southern US.
OK. I’m open minded. So I read it again, since there seems to be a real belief in this as the genesis of the 2nd amendment.
According to the article, (the only reference to an academic is some guy named Dr. Bogus… Seriously, who wrote something in the California Law Review in 1998), the concern by Patrick Henry, James Madison and George Mason was Article 1, Section 8…
I quote from the article:
“Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia, could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free the slaves.”
What? OK, lets look at Article 1, Section 8.
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;–And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
There it is, in all of its colonial glory. Where in Article 1, section 8 does it state that the State militias would be used by the federal government to usurp the state militias and use them to free the slaves? Did you miss it? You are not alone.
No less than James Madison, upon hearing Patrick Henry’s concern states (quoted again from the article:)
“James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and a slaveholder himself, basically called Patrick Henry paranoid. “I was struck with surprise,” Madison said, “when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. . . . There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not.””
So, no less than James Madison, a Virginian AND a slave owner, said Henry was paranoid, and reading something into article 1 section 8 that simply wasn’t there. By the way, the author forgot that he listed the same James Madison as one of the three guys at the beginning of this article that were concerned about the article in the first place! Maybe he forgot what he wrote. But that’s some sloppy work.
The author of this article then goes on to discuss the evolution of the 2nd amendment. He offers no cites, no actual proof. He just says what he wants to make the story work for his point of view. He states that Madison, at Jeffersons request, began writing amendments to the constitution, and re-wrote the 2nd to make sure the southern states would be able to maintain their “slave-patrol militias”. Where in the world is the proof of this?
Hartmann claims that the 2nd amendment was written to make sure that Henry would understand that militias (state slave-controlling organizations) would remain under the direction of the individual states.
James Madison, by the words of this author, basically re-wrote the 2nd amendment to appease one person, Patrick Henry, who Madison himself labeled as “paranoid.” Madison was a bright man. There would have been a debate on the subject of “slave-patrol militias” in the continental congress before an amendment would be re-written to make one guy happy. Especially a Virginian, (Henry), who was from the same state as Madison and Jefferson. The author of this article seems to be making this up out of thin air and wishful thinking. He bases it on the changing of one word “country” to “state” to make his case.
I’ll leave it to you to read the article and make up your own minds. Bear in mind, he offers no actual proof of this, no cites. He states it as fact. Maybe Madison DID change the wording on the amendment, and maybe he didn’t. And maybe if he did, he did it for the reason implied, or maybe he didn’t. Clearly, it only works if the authors opinion is taken as gospel.
If there is any doubt as to the author’s POV, the last paragraph should clear it up. It’s this type of hyperbole that turns people like me off. I’m someone that has no trouble with limiting some of the various types of arms available to the public, but I have real trouble with eliminating the right. And if the only way gun control and anti-2nd amendment advocates can get anyone to listen to them is to make the following statement, it lessens their credibility (to me, at least):
From the article:
“Little did Madison realize that one day in the future weapons-manufacturing corporations, newly defined as “persons” by a Supreme Court some have called dysfunctional, would use his slave patrol militia amendment to protect their “right” to manufacture and sell assault weapons used to murder schoolchildren.”
Yeah… That’s not an agenda-driven, anti-gun crusader using his “pulpit” to completely stretch the limits of logic and history to try and make his “point.”
