August 5, 2002

By Jon Christian Ryter www.JonChristianRyter.com 

Copyright 2002 - All Rights Reserved To distribute this article, please post this web address or hyperlink

During the Civil War, Lincoln used the military as a federal police force. Civil rights vanished overnight. Americans were arrested at the whim of politicians, incarcerated without trials, and their property seized without due process. The infringements of Constitutional law were so aggregious that the people enacted Posse Comitatus in 1878 to protect themselves from the federal government.

The debate on whether or not to suspend the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (18 USC 1385) is heating up in Congress with most Congressmen and Senators on both sides of the aisle favoring amending 18 USC 1385 to enable the President of the United States to use National Guard troops to police the streets of America when and if the nation comes under threat from terrorists—either foreign or domestic, and to use the “expertise” of the military to investigate paramilitary operations since the military has a more complete understanding of these things than civilian law enforcement personnel.

Most Americans are not familiar with the Posse Comitatus Act. Surprising as it may sound, The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was the first of several reform laws passed to protect the people of the United States from its government when the power of the Jacobin Republicans in Congress finally began to wane at the end of the scandal-ridden Grant Administration.

Few Americans realize that although he is “remembered” as a caring, compassionate president who was forced to fight a war against kindred spirits to free the slaves, Abraham Lincoln (the first of three successive Jacobin presidents) was the only President to ever successfully suspend the Constitution, declare martial law over the nation for four years (even though the impact of Lincoln’s wartime declaration of martial law was felt in the South until 1879), and assume absolute dictatorial powers over the people of the United States.

Lincoln, who won the White House in 1860 with a “mandate” from 39.6% of the people is treated by historians as a man of unquestionable patriotic integrity who struggled tirelessly to preserve the Union. Lincoln is historically remembered as the joint heir—with George Washington—of expanding liberty and guaranteeing freedom to all Americans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Lincoln actually had no intention of freeing the slaves. His communiques with the political and military leaders of his day confirm that fact. The “ploy” to free the slaves in the Southern States originated not with Lincoln but with his military advisors who believed if Lincoln issued such a proclamation the slaves in the Southern States would rebel against their “masters” and start a second revolution deep within the South, wrecking havoc on the economy of the Confederate States (which, at the moment) was winning what the South believed was a war to protect the sovereignty of the States over the central government—a threat universally feared by all of the Founding Fathers except John Adams, John Jay, John Pickering and Alexander Hamilton when the Constitution was structured.

In point of fact, Abraham Lincoln was the political pawn of the Jacobins who created the Republican Party from the Free Soil Party. During the election cycle of 1860, Salmon Portland Chase, the former Free Soil governor of Ohio and one of the Jacobin leaders of the newly created Republican Party, sought the presidential nomination of the Party but it was denied him by the Jacobin leadership in Congress, Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner who knew that Chase could not beat Stephen Douglas.

The Jacobins desperately wanted one of their own in the White House. They were convinced that only Lincoln could beat Douglas. Chase, who conceded that the goals of the Party were more important than any one man, conceded the nomination to Lincoln but only after Lincoln agreed to grant Chase whatever cabinet post the former Ohio governor wanted.

Stevens, Sumner, Chase and the Jacobin majority had been trying since 1854 to realign the balance of power between the States and the federal government by legislatively imputing the superiority of the federal government over the States in a clear and succinct violation of the Constitution. The Jacobins also attempted to ram legislation through Congress that would create a new privately owned central bank in the United States—and they needed a President who would sign the legislation into law. They thought that man would be Lincoln, but they were wrong.

As the Campaign of 1860 exploded into the nastiest political race since 1834, the Democratic Party splintered into three factional groups, each with a Presidential candidate. The Northern Democrats nominated Douglas and the Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckenridge. A third faction, fearing that several of the Southern States would secede from the Union if the superior federal attitude that was emanating from the Jacobin Congress was not crushed, split off and formed the Union Party in hopes of preserving the nation without conflict. In all, five political parties offered presidential candidates. With 39.6% of the popular vote but enough electoral votes to win the office, Lincoln became president.

Because the Jacobin candidate, Lincoln, won the White House, South Carolina officially adopted Articles of Secession on December 20, 1860 in protest of Lincoln’s election. The Southerners were convinced that with a Jacobin puppet in the White House, nothing would be able to stop the Jacobins from usurping the Constitution and upsetting the balance of power between the States and the federal government. States’ rights, in their opinion, was lost. The Southern delegations knew that with Lincoln, the Jacobin’s candidate, in the White House and with the Jacobin’s control over both the House and Senate, the Jacobins would very quickly control the federal court system, and States’ rights would be subverted by a supra-federal system.

The Ordinance was delivered to Congress and South Carolina withdrew from the Union. The Jacobins denounced the South Carolinian Congressional delegation and threatened to send federal troops into the State to “restore order.” The federal government insisted that South Carolina did not possess supra-sovereignty and had no authority to withdraw from the Union. In protest to the Jacobin edict, between January and May 1861 Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina also withdrew from the Union. Delegates from the first seven States to secede met in Montgomery, Alabama on February 4, 1861 and formed the provisional government of what they called the Confederate States of America.

On March 4, 1861 Lincoln was inaugurated. Within days of Lincoln’s succeeding James Buchanan as the 16th President of the United States, Confederate forces seized all federal funds, property and munitions in the South. Lincoln sent a warning to Jefferson Davis (the newly installed president of the Confederacy) that if the Confederate States did not submit to the lawful edicts of the federal government, Union troops would be forced to restore order and arrest the belligerents for treason. In response, Confederate general Pierre Beauregard laid siege to Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12 and 13 and demanded the withdrawal of all Union forces and the surrender of the Fort to the Confederacy. After a two day siege, Major Robert Anderson, the commander of the arsenal, surrendered Fort Sumter and returned to Washington in disgrace.

On April 15, Lincoln suspended Congress until July 4 and declared that a state of martial law existed. He called for 75 thousand volunteers to enlist for 90 days in order to put down the rebellion. A month later, with very few volunteers willing to take up arms against their neighbors (and many times relatives) in the South, Lincoln renewed his call for volunteers by demanding that 42 thousand men volunteer to serve 3 years (or until the end of the war). When Lincoln’s manpower-needs remained unfilled, Lincoln ordered the forced conscription of troops to fill the ranks of the Union army and the military “draft,” albeit illegal, was born.

When Congress finally met on July 4 the Union was in dire straits. Lincoln’s strongarm tactics not only did not work, seven Southern States had, by that time, seceded from the Union. Thirty thousand Lincoln conscriptees were in uniform but they were largely untrained raw recruits. Under the command of Gen. Winfield Scott, the troops were assigned to protect Washington, DC. Facing Scott’s raw recruits were 25 thousand troops under Beauregard near the Mannassas railroad junction and another force under the command of Gen. Joe Johnson was in the Shenandoah Valley at Harpers Ferry. Seventeen days later, those forces merged and clashed with Union forces commanded by Gens. Robert Patterson and Irvin MacDowell at Mannassas in what history recalls as the First Battle of Bull Run. The Union troops were routed and scurried back to Washington like whipped pups.

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