DR WILLIAM MOUNT

U.S. News & World Report

There have been no legal amendments to 
the Constitution since the Thirteenth and even that was bastardized and 
re-written.   It is not the original 13th.  If we went by the original 
13th, there would be NO attorneys in Congress today.  The 13th prevented
 attorneys from holding office.  It is a conflict of interest to 
legislate laws that they would be defending and creating more business 
for themselves.  It is a tragedy that the People are not interested 
enough to be more informed about these matters.  Most of the lack of 
education started taking place when good ol' Jimmy Carter brought in the
 US Dept of Education.  The dumbing down of the students accelerated 
rapidly like it was on steroids.  Pitiful!!!!!  Now you may understand 
why the government is always attacking the homeschoolers.  M

http://www.constitution.org/14ll/no14th.htm

There is No "Fourteenth Amendment"!
By
David Lawrence
U.S. News & World Report
September 27, 1957
A MISTAKEN BELIEF — that there is a valid article in the Constitution
 known as the "Fourteenth Amendment" — is responsible for the Supreme 
Court decision of 1954 and the ensuing controversy over desegregation in
 the public schools of America. No such amendment was ever legally 
ratified by three fourths of the States of the Union as required by the 
Constitution itself. The so-called "Fourteenth Amendment" was dubiously 
proclaimed by the Secretary of State on July 20, 1868. The President 
shared that doubt. There were 37 States in the Union at the time, so 
ratification by at least 28 was necessary to make the amendment an 
integral part of the Constitution. Actually, only 21 States legally 
ratified it. So it failed of ratification.

The undisputed record, attested by official journals and the 
unanimous writings of historians, establishes these events as occurring 
in 1867 and 1868:

Outside the South, six States — New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, 
California, Delaware and Maryland — failed to ratify the proposed 
amendment. 
In the South, ten States — Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and 
Louisiana — by formal action of their legislatures, rejected it under 
the normal processes of civil law. 
A total of 16 legislatures out of 37 failed legally to ratify the "Fourteenth Amendment." 
Congress — which had deprived the Southern States of their seats in 
the Senate — did not lawfully pass the resolution of submission in the 
first instance. 
The Southern States which had rejected the amendment were coerced by
 a federal statute passed in 1867 that took away the right to vote or 
hold office from all citizens who had served in the Confederate Army. 
Military governors were appointed and instructed to prepare the roll of 
voters. All this happened in spite of the presidential proclamation of 
amnesty previously issued by the President. New legislatures were 
thereupon chosen and forced to "ratify" under penalty of continued exile
 from the Union. In Louisiana, a General sent down from the North 
presided over the State legislature. 
Abraham Lincoln had declared many times that the Union was 
"inseparable" and "indivisible." After his death, and when the war was 
over, the ratification by the Southern States of the Thirteenth 
Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been accepted as legal. But Congress 
in the 1867 law imposed the specific conditions under which the Southern
 States would be "entitled to representation in Congress." 
Congress, in passing the 1867 law that declared the Southern States 
could not have their seats in either the Senate or House in the next 
session unless they ratified the "Fourteenth Amendment," took an 
unprecedented step. No such right — to compel a State by an act of 
Congress to ratify a constitutional amendment — is to be found anywhere 
in the Constitution. Nor has this procedure ever been sanctioned by the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 
President Andrew Johnson publicly denounced this law as unconstitutional. But it was passed over his veto. 
Secretary of State Seward was on the spot in July 1868 when the 
various "ratifications" of a spurious nature were placed before him. The
 legislatures of Ohio and New Jersey had notified him that they 
rescinded their earlier action of ratification. He said in his official 
proclamation that he was not authorized as Secretary of State "to 
determine and decide doubtful questions as to the authenticity of the 
organization of State legislatures or as to the power of any State 
legislature to recall a previous act or resolution of ratification." He 
added that the amendment was valid "if the resolutions of the 
legislatures of Ohio and New Jersey, ratifying the aforesaid amendment, 
are to be deemed as remaining of full force and effect, notwithstanding 
the subsequent resolutions of the legislatures of these States." This 
was a very big "if." It will be noted that the real issue, therefore, is
 not only whether the forced "ratification" by the ten Southern States 
was lawful, but whether the withdrawal by the legislatures of Ohio and 
New Jersey — two Northern States — was legal. The right of a State, by 
action of its legislature, to change its mind at any time before the 
final proclamation of ratification is issued by the Secretary of State 
has been confirmed in connection with other constitutional amendments. 
The Oregon Legislature in October 1868 — three months after the 
Secretary's proclamation was issued — passed a rescinding resolution, 
which argued that the "Fourteenth Amendment" had not been ratified by 
three fourths of the States and that the "ratifications" in the Southern
 States were "usurpations, unconstitutional, revolutionary and void" and
 that, "until such ratification is completed, any State has a right to 
withdraw its assent to any proposed amendment." 

What do the historians say about all this? The Encyclopedia Americana states:

"Reconstruction added humiliation to suffering.... Eight years of 
crime, fraud, and corruption followed and it was State legislatures 
composed of Negroes, carpetbaggers and scalawags who obeyed the orders 
of the generals and ratified the amendment."
W. E. Woodward, in his famous work, "A New American History?" published in 1936, says:

"To get a clear idea of the succession of events let us review 
[President Andrew] Johnson's actions in respect to the ex-Confederate 
States.

"In May, 1865, he issued a Proclamation of Amnesty to former rebels. 
Then he established provisional governments in all the Southern States. 
They were instructed to call Constitutional Conventions. They did. New 
State governments were elected. White men only had the suffrage the 
Fifteenth Amendment establishing equal voting rights had not yet been 
passed]. Senators and Representatives were chosen, but when they 
appeared at the opening of Congress they were refused admission. The 
State governments, however, continued to function during 1866.

"Now we are in 1867. In the early days of that year [Thaddeus] 
Stevens brought in, as chairman of the House Reconstruction Committee, a
 bill that proposed to sweep all the Southern State governments into the
 wastebasket. The South was to be put under military rule.

"The bill passed. It was vetoed by Johnson and passed again over his 
veto. In the Senate it was amended in such fashion that any State could 
escape from military rule and be restored to its full rights by 
ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment and admitting black as well as white 
men to the polls."
In challenging its constitutionality, President Andrew Johnson said in his veto message:

"I submit to Congress whether this measure is not in its whole 
character, scope and object without precedent and without authority, in 
palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, and 
utterly destructive of those great principles of liberty and humanity 
for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much 
blood and expended so much treasure."
Many historians have applauded Johnson's words. Samuel Eliot Morison 
and Henry Steele Commager, known today as "liberals," wrote in their 
book, "The Growth of the American Republic":

"Johnson returned the bill with a scorching message arguing the 
unconstitutionality of the whole thing, and most impartial students have
 agreed with his reasoning."
James Truslow Adams, another noted historian, writes in his "History of the United States":

"The Supreme Court had decided three months earlier, in the Milligan 
case, ... that military courts were unconstitutional except under such 
war conditions as might make the operation of civil courts impossible, 
but the President pointed out in vain that practically the whole of the 
new legislation was unconstitutional. ... There was even talk in 
Congress of impeaching the Supreme Court for its decisions! The 
legislature had run amok and was threatening both the Executive and the 
Judiciary."
Actually, President Johnson was impeached, but the move failed by one vote in the Senate.

The Supreme Court, in case after case, refused to pass on the illegal
 activities involved in "ratification." It said simply that they were 
acts of the "political departments of the Government." This, of course, 
was a convenient device of avoidance. The Court has adhered to that 
position ever since Reconstruction Days.

Andrew C. McLaughlin, whose "Constitutional History of the United States" is a standard work, writes:

"Can a State which is not a State and not recognized as such by 
Congress, perform the supreme duty of ratifying an amendment to the 
fundamental law? Or does a State — by congressional thinking — cease to 
be a State for some purposes but not for others?"
This is the tragic history of the so-called "Fourteenth Amendment" — a
 record that is a disgrace to free government and a "government of law."

Isn't the use of military force to override local government what we deplored in Hungary?

It is never too late to correct injustice. The people of America 
should have an opportunity to pass on an amendment to the Constitution 
that sets forth the right of the Federal Government to control education
 and regulate attendance at public schools either with federal power 
alone or concurrently with the States.

That's the honest way, the just way to deal with the problem of 
segregation or integration in the schools. Until such an amendment is 
adopted, the "Fourteenth Amendment" should be considered as null and 
void.

There is only one supreme tribunal — it is the people themselves. 
Their sovereign will is expressed through the procedures set forth in 
the Constitution itself.

[END]
[OCR'd text from U.S. News & World Report, September 27, 1957, page 140 et seq.]

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DR WILLIAM MOUNT

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