War Dept. document from 1825 reveals critical clue to missing 13th Amendment (tin foil hat alert)

Idaho Observer ^ | 12/14/2002 | Idaho Oberver

[Poohbah]

Just wanted everyone to know that I checked under my bed and the missing amendment isn't there.

I checked behind the sofa and under my desk. Even looked in the pantry. No luck.

[harpseal]

Having done some original research in the State Library of the State of New Hampshire during the 1970's I can definitely state that as of several books published in the 1850's, 1840's and 1830's there were only twelve ammendments listed in those publications. Since the amendment was supposedly ratified in the 1819 prior to the Missouri Comprimise it should be relatively easy based upon the Congressional record and the records of the several state legislatures and what exists in the Library of Congress to prove or disprove this claim.

I await definitive proof.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - yorktown

[sharktrager]

I like these guys. All I have to do to ammend the constitution is print a book with the amendments I want!

Stand by for the "everybody send John $10,000 each year" amendment, and the "Charlize Theron will be married to John wethere she likes it or not" amendment.

[Poohbah]

The problem was that when the amendment was proposed, 13 states were needed. (17 states vs. 16--you forgot one.)

During the period that the amendment was under active consideration, several states were added, and the threshold went up to 16.

Nowadays, you'd need 38 states. There are 12 Yeas, 3 Nays, one state that took no action (South Carolina, not Virginia, as you said), and one that never responded to a query from the Secretary of State (Virginia).

[mgstarr]

"Another weird thing: I was taught in school (NYS) that there WAS such an article in the Constitution."

Did they ever mention what happened to it?

[Cicero]

I remember being taught the same thing in school--that it was unconstitutional for an American to accept a foreign title of nobility or kingship. It was connected with George Washington's refusal of the title of king. Aristocratic titles certainly go against the American grain.

[Poohbah]

You're probably thinking of Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Basically, Congress may permit acceptance of a foreign title, which they would view as being purely honorary. This was done with some of the senior commanders of World War II (Eisenhower and Nimitz come to mind).

[mgstarr]

Actually Article I, Section 9 prohibits receiving titles, etc, without the consent of Congress. Sounds to me that by not rejecting these honorary titles, Congress has given their implicit consent. Then again, since these are honorary to begin with, it's a non issue.

[pabianice]

That's disappointing. I guess I can't run for selectman as long as I retain the title of Grand Most Powerful Master of All Galactic Rhelms...

[DonQ]

The TONA was never adopted into the Constitution. It was proposed in 1810 without any commentary, but it believed to have been directly aimed at Betsy Patterson, a Baltimore socialite who apparently married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the French emperor; she was called (possibly by herself) "the Duchess of Baltimore", and was decidedly clawing her way to the top of the social ladder. But by 1813 the marriage was dissolved (or denied by Bonaparte, depending on who tells the story), so the motivation for the TONA evaporated.

However, in 1815 Congress arranged for a Philadelphia publisher to churn out what was supposed to be a more-or-less official edition of all the federal laws. The intro of that 1815 edition clearly says that, as the set goes to press, the TONA has not yet been adopted but it is printed in the volume in anticipation of its adoption; it then appears about 70 pages later (labelled "Amendment XIII") without any attached comment on its status. Nobody seems to have notice this at the time. In 1818 the Congress authorized another publisher to print up a lot of pocket editions of the Constitution for distribution, and that publisher must have relied on the 1815 compilation - without noticing the caveat in the intro - because he included the TONA as if it had been adopted. When this was spotted in the House of Representatives, the House immediately adopted a resolution calling on the President to verify the status of the TONA. This led to two reports by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to the effect that the TONA had NOT yet received enough state ratifications to be adopted. After that, the TONA never again appears in a Congressionally-authorized edition of the Constitution. However a great many other books made the same mistake of relying on the 1815 volumes without noticing the statement in the introduction.

In 1845 Congress authorized a different publisher, in Boston, to work up a whole new compilation of federal laws. This 1845 set, titled Statutes at Large, contained a Constitution that stops at 12 amendments, with TONA among a collection of Congressional resolutions five volumes away. Once this 1845 edition caught on, the occurrence of TONA appearances in printed editions of the Constitution drops off markedly.

I might add that the Supreme Court has Repeatedly made it clear that the TONA was not adopted.

[Jason_b]

11 "This missing amemdment stuff is BS. Promoted by people who think it would make all lawyers outlaws."


32 "I might add that the Supreme Court has Repeatedly made it clear that the TONA was not adopted."


I have two books ca. 1850 that have the TONA amendment as the 13th and last amendment.

It does make me wonder, if it was not ratified as the SCOTUS was so sure, and every naysayer is so sure today, then why was it so easy for me to find it in books sold in your average antique book store? I'm not saying they are still easy to find, just that I with relative ease found two books containing them.

Did a whole bunch of printers and bookbinders at that time just guess that it would be passed, set type for it, ran the copies, and oops! darn! Virginia didn't pass it after all. Oh well, what's done is done, we'll just sell the books and rely on word of mouth to get the message around to ignore that 13th. That does not make sense. I don't believe the printers are that sloppy. They had good reason to think it had passed. That is why it wound up in books.

I find it more odd that it stopped being printed for no apparent reason. Was it suppressed? Why?

Some folks believe Bill Bensen author of the law that never was. He says that the 16th amendment did not receive all the ratifying votes from the states. But that Sec. State Knox verbally told everyone that it had passed and that his word was accepted. Bensen claims to have visited every state and reviewed the original sealed and bound document that signifies its ratification, and there just were not enough states to pass the 16th. Yet based on the 16th, the Federal Government asserts the right to tax incomes from whatever source derived and send the IRS (sometimes armed and agressive) to look at your papers.

And you know our 2nd is under attack. Plain language as it is, the ACLU makes all sorts of wild claims about it being outdated, inappropriate for modern society, meant only to have armed State National Guard, yada, yada, yada. If they had their way, do you think 2003 or 2004 editions would have the 2nd amendment printed?

Why do you naysayers deny, and dismiss as tinfoil, the possibility that similar intrigue could have occurred in the 19th century---a struggle between those with divided loyalties, and undivided loyalties to this country---and that the "missing 13th" could be the artifact of that struggle?

Finally, freedom of the press violations have happened before and may have happened with the 13th amendment. Congressman Charles Lindbergh, father of the aviator, was a strong opponent of the Federal Reserve Act. He wrote books such as "Why your country is at war" and another earlier book about the banks and how by expanding credit then withholding it wreck the economy. The government visited his printer on a couple of occasions and smashed the plates and confiscated most of the printed books. I have a surviving copy of "Why your country is at war" too (few pages missing unfortunately).

I admire the researchers who are pursuing this, trying to put together the pieces. They are like archaeologists except instead of finding bits of bone and pottery out of which to construct a picture of an ancient civilization, they are finding documentary evidence and trying to construct a picture of a movement to amend the Constitution to protect the nation from the malevolent actions of individuals who wanted to see the United States fail.

[Nephi]

Thank you for your posts. This is one of the most interesting threads I've seen in a long time.

I look forward to learning more about this alleged conspiracy.

[martian_22]

Even lawyers have been investigating this strange history.

The "tin foil" stuff starts here and continues to lots of info.

Enjoy.

[DonQ]

The TONA business is an example of one bad edition leading to many errors. The 1815 compilation of the Laws of the United States, published by Bioren & Duane, provided a caveat in the introduction but about 70 pages later printed the proposed TONA as if it had been adopted, without any note on that page to the contrary. As Bioren & Duane was otherwise a very influential edition, other publishers and editors planning on reprinting the text of the Constitution relied on it (without paying attention to the explanation in the intro). This error kept recurring - but usually if the TONA was included in the first edition of something, it was omitted in the second edition - until after the appearance of the Statutes at Large in 1845.

It is not only worth noting that Congress was satisfied with JQA's reports that the TONA had not been adopted, but the TONA (if adopted) would have required some enabling legislation to make it effective - but Congress NEVER even considered such legislation, much less enacted any. We find no President, no Member of Congress, no Judge, ever speaking of the TONA as if it had been adopted.

In 1861, Congress again proposed an Amendment and again called it the Thirteenth (it was for states' rights and it was never adopted either) ... nobody in Congress quibbled that there already was a 13th Amendment; again in 1865 another proposed Amendment was called the Thirteenth (this was the one that was adopted, ending slavery) and again nobody quibbled about the number.

[mgstarr]

Participants in Freedom Drive 2002?

[Jason_b]

Thanks for that great reply---with references.

[DonQ]

Among the references: Curt E. Conklin, The Case of the Phantom Thirteenth Amendment: A Historical & Bibliographic Nightmare, 88 Law Library Journal 121 (winter 1996), and Jol A. Silversmith, The "Missing Thirteenth Amendment": Constitutional Nonsense & Titles of Nobility, 8 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 577 (spring 1999) - the Silversmith article is also on the internet in a couple of places.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story, in 1833, published his Commentaries on the Constitution, in which he reprinted the full Constitution - with only twelve amendments, and said explicitly (in sec. 1346) that the TONA had not been adopted. Assoc. Justice Levi Woodbury wrote in 1847 that there were "only twelve amendments ever made to" the Constitution; Waring v. Clarke (1847) 46 U.S. (5 How.) 441 at 493, 12 L.Ed. 226 at 251 (dissenting op.). The US Supreme Court, in a majority opinion in 1921, explicitly described the TONA as unadopted; Dillon v. Gloss (1921) 256 U.S. 368 at 375. Likewise in dissenting opinions in Coleman v. Miller (1939) 307 U.S. 433 at 472 and in Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) 387 U.S. 253 at 277-278.

On May 20, 1992, when Congress received word that the 27th Amendment (Congressional pay raises) had finally been adopted by a sufficient number of state ratifications, the Senate adopted a resolution that the TONA not only had never been adopted but was, at this late date, entirely lapsed and incapable of being adopted; Cong. Record, perm. edition, 5/20/92 p. 11870 column 3.

I might add that, in English law, knighthood - and lower levels such as esquires - are not considered titles of nobility but of commonality, the lowest level of nobility being the baron or (more recently) baronet; even before the recent change, knighthood couldn't possibly qualify you for the House of Lords. The kind of "honorary" knighthoods handed out by the British to certain US celebrities doesn't count, even in England, as full-fledged knighthoods -- for example, the English would not address Kissinger as "Sir Henry" -- and there is absolutely no legal advantage attached to a knighthood.

[Nephi]

What an impressive case! Thank you!

For those who prefer a well laid case to sophomoric name calling check it out:

http://www.us-fca.com/missing13thamendment.html