Aug 13, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The DOJ’s IG Report, released a few weeks ago, did not mention the place played by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most powerful special interest group in the country, in their now documented coup to oust President Trump from office. It, with its 5,038 highly influential members, teamed up with the DOJ and FBI and, in fact, the whole intelligence community (CIA NSA, DNI, and etc.) in this effort.
Senator Ted Cruz called the CFR “a pit of vipers” and a “pernicious nest of snakes” in the 2016 presidential election. The vipers, slithering–up from the pit to save THEIR empire from Trump, are primarily its members and globalism (world government) is its threatened agenda.
Seemingly the pit of Hell opened and out came every viper. No presidential candidate: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover or even Barry Goldwater, who last threatened the globalists monopoly on national or international power, put together, could measure up to what the vipers, from both parties, gave and are giving Donald Trump.
This should not surprise our readers as we have covered the CFR in numerous previous columns, as have other non-partisan journalists over the last 100 years. Some may recall Woodrow Wilson as the first U.S. President to speak of their power even before they formally organized as the CFR in 1921. In his book, The New Freedom (1913), he wrote of his experience with this hidden force. “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of perpetual war through the “industrial military complex” as he left office. Some say that John F. Kennedy was the first to contend with what we now refer to as globalist. If so, that documentation is locked in CIA files that the intelligence community refuses to declassify—even at the request of President Trump. Certainly his assassination ended opposition. But in election resistance no one, prior to Trump, felt “viper power” more than Barry Goldwater.
Hundreds of books and articles have documented this power to the extent that two conclusions cannot be overstated. The CFR is the lead organization in the U.S. promoting globalism, and they control both mainstream political parties, Democrat and Republican and have done so for most of 100 years. The New American identifies their members as having held, through May 2017, “24 secretaries of state, 20 national security advisors, 20 secretaries of defense, 22 secretaries of the treasury—and thousands of additional Cabinet secretaries, under-secretaries, deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries, etc.” Moreover, the CFR has provided the last 14 CIA directors as well (Deep State & Fake News, May 8, 2017).
They were the government of the United States until President Donald J. Trump; hence all vipers are committed to remove him by any means. This is total war! The most powerful special interest group in US History has teamed with the Deep State—all 16 agencies—to create the Russian Collusion Story with no “real” documentation to drive one man, President Trump, out of office.
Why are so many Americans, perhaps half, still so ignorant of CFR control? They do not read or watch news outside the Establishment Press and the darker the story becomes it is increasingly difficult to believe and to get non-controlled information. They would have to admit that they were duped by some of their favorite politicians and reporters.
Enter the CFR again. The Establishment press is their press. The CFR admits in their 2016 annual report that “334 of its 5,038 members are listed as employed in ‘Media and News Services,’ “ The siren call for what they want, or do not want, is a deafening chorus. Consider the following favorite CFR household reporters, or anchors: “Peter Bergen (CNN), Erin Burnett (CNN), Tom Brokaw (NBC), Ethan Bronner (New York Times) Juju Chang (ABC), Katie Couric (CBS, NBC), Thomas Friedman (New York Times), Charles Krauthammer [recently deceased] (Washington Post, Fox), Paul Krugman (New York Times), Jim Lehrer (PBS), Bill Moyers (PBS, CBS), Heather Nauert (Fox), Kitty Pilgrim (CNN), Dan Rather (CBS), Charlie Rose (PBS, CBS), Diane Sawyer (ABC), Andrew Ross Sorkin (New York Times), Lesley Stahl (CBS), Barbara Walters (ABC), and Paula Zahn (Fox, CNN),” to name but a few (Ibid).
The CFR corporate media conglomerate includes influential members in the following Internet outlets: Twitter, Facebook, and Google, as well as televised news MSNBC CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. Newsweek and Time are their magazines and their newspapers, The New York Times and Washington Post, from which hundreds of outlets copy or paraphrase CFR messaging.
Senator Chuck Schumer apparently knows something about taking on the CFR Deep State and its media outlets when he called Trump dumb for doing so. He said, “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you. So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he is being really dumb to do this.” (Ibid.). Many believe Trump a patriot instead.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Aug 6, 2018 | Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
Everyone knows that internal investigations of wrongdoing are reviewed and filtered by the bosses and subject to the tendency to protect associates. But what if the bosses are the very people accused of being accomplices? Such was the dilemma of inspector General Horowitz in assembling his 568-paged Department of Justice Inspector General’s Report on the FBI and DOJ’s involvement in presumably a plot to alter the results of the 2016 presidential election. (https://www.justice.gov/file/1071991/download).
Still, if one will but open the pages of this report and read with an open mind without regard for political party or philosophy, one cannot miss what it says. It reveals a near successful plot to overturn a presidential election by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and its Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) because they did not like the results of the last presidential election, a plot so serious that it may have ended the republic. A scandal many time more grave than Watergate and perhaps all the wrongdoings of previous administrations combined. And this was an internal review.
So what do we actually know about the Obama DOJ/FBI’s involvement in attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump? Their IG report released June 14, 2018 revealed:
1) That the long-standing and required political neutrality of the FBI and DOJ was politicized by the Obama administration. They were not willing to accept the results of an election. That, although there was Russian collusion, as in previous elections, there existed no evidence that such changed a single vote or that the Trump Administration had any part in it.
2) That FBI agents of the previous administration produced an extensive line of anti-Trump hating emails before, during, and after Trump’s election. Five high level agents, notably Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, were identified as political activist for Clinton and against Trump. Three others cited as Agents 1, 2, and 5 were also noted. Kevin Clinesmith is said to be Agent 2 and Sally Moyer Agent 5. Agent 1 remains redacted.
Agent 1 emailed, when asked by another FBI Agent if Trump’s election caused him to rethink his commitment. “Hell no…. Viva le resistance.” In an email exchange between Agent 2 and an unnamed employee, both deeply saddened by Hillary’s rejection, the employee writing, “You promised me this wouldn’t happen. YOU PROMISED…. I’m very upset;” the Agent also admitting his devastation. Agent 2 probably summed up the attitude of these and many more of his FBI colleagues with the following: “Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS [pieces of shit].”
3) Evidence presented suggests that the Hillary Clinton 3,500 Email Scandal on an unapproved and unsecured server was washed over quickly by the FBI (no “real” investigation and no indictments) and in time for her election as president. Thus giving time for their active role in the Trump Russian Collusion story.
Writing for the National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, observed: All this “at the moment the FBI is moving aggressively to turn its counterintelligence powers against the Trump campaign: An informant has already been deployed, intelligence agents are mobilizing, foreign intelligence contacts have been tapped, and the bureau will soon submit to the FISA court an application to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page — an application that breaks every rule in the book: anonymous foreign sources spouting multiple hearsay, no corroboration, no disclosure to the court that it comes from the opposition presidential campaign, no explanation that the foreigner who supplied the unverified allegations has been booted from the investigation for lying, etc.” (The IG’s Report May Be Half-Baked).
4) The Report revealed that Trump-hater Peter Strzok, FBI former No. 2 counterintelligence officer and top investigator in the Clinton investigation whitewash was a signatory of the FISA court application initiating the Trump-Russia Collusion Investigation then, with FBI Agent lover Lisa Page, served on the Robert Mueller Team to investigate, then prosecute Trump, for the crime Strzok helped create.
5) IG Horowitz confirmed a text message from Strzok reassuring Lisa Page that Trump “was not going to become president” because, “We’ll stop it.” The numerous emails between them had referred to Trump as an “idiot,” a “douche,” and a “loathsome human.” It also revealed the existence of an anti-Trump “secret society” within the agency and its plans for and “insurance policy,” presumably the Mueller Team, to remove him from power should he be elected.
6) The IG Report revealed that Comey too, like Hillary, was using an unsecured personal email account for official classified FBI matters while investigating her for the same thing.
7) The Report revealed that Andrew McCabe, 2nd in command of the FBI, lied under oath about leaking sensitive information to a Wall Street journalist.
8) FBI leaks to undermine the Trump candidacy, election and presidency were encouraged and “widely ignored… at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media…. We identified instances where FBI employees received tickets to sporting events from journalists, went on golfing outing with media representatives, were treated to drinks and meals after work by reporters, and were the guests of journalists at nonpublic social events.”
If this is what an internal review discloses one must wonder what an external review might add. This is the job of Congress.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 23, 2018 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
A confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, because he may have once opposed Roe V. Wade on abortion, is not likely to be as threatening as portrayed by our Democratic Party medias.
In the first place justices are only allowed to choose from what is brought before them, cases having survived tedious, time-consuming and expensive lower court scrutiny. So if Justice Kavanaugh wanted to reverse Roe V. Wade he would have to wait for a case that would allow that. Theoretically that could take a lifetime—if at all.
Should Congress pass a law that all nine justices personally believed to be unconstitutional they possess no power collectively or individually to themselves bring it before the high court for review. There exists in the Constitution no judicial general review or oversight of the legislative branch; only in laws contested by a litigant proving damaged by it, or treaties. The Constitutional Convention nixed this notion because it would give the court too much power. Nor were they allowed an advisory position with respect to legal issues, each branch could do this for itself. They were to be an independent branch existing solely to adjudicate cases brought to the court by others.
Should no one oppose a law or treaty outside the Constitution because opposition to it is too expensive, time-consuming, and tedious it becomes constitutional by default becoming, in time, the bases for additional law that should be equally unconstitutional. Still, it remains a lesser problem than had the court oversight of all legislation.
In the second place justices are limited to just nine classes of cases in which they can adjudicate, as was the Legislative Branch to just 18 areas where they were empowered to write law (Article I, Section 8), and the Executive branch to just eleven listed areas of performance (Article II, Sections 2-3). Remember the purpose of the Constitution was to limit government from ruling everybody and everything.
Article III, Section 2 begins: “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.” The Supreme Court is limited to nine case types. These are: “- to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; – to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; – to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; – to Controversies between two or more States; – [between a State and Citizens of another State;-] between Citizens of different States, – between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, [and between a State, or the Citizens thereof;- and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.]” Constitutionally every case before the Court had to first meet one of these or the Court must decline adjudication.
Why the list of case types? Should not the Supreme Court adjudicate everything? Because they could adjudicate only conflicts in federal law and treaties as decided in the Constitutional Convention and as per congress’s list of areas for approved law (Art. I, Sec. 8). Because when the Constitution was created two co-equal existing governments were recognized called federalism with the states governing domestic and the federal branch governing national and foreign. Because state courts were to adjudicate everything else not listed as federal power in the Constitution and as noted in Amendment 10.
Then the Founders divided this list into original and appellate jurisdictions—one total the other only partial. “In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.” Why? Because the first deals entirely with matters of foreign consequence and the second, the state, is the head of the other co-equal governments under federalism.
The Constitution continues, “In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” Now Congress is in charge and clearly can participate should it choose to. “You may not take up this case at this time’” or “you may do so given the following regulations.” This is an essential part of the “check and balances” of the Constitution which has unfortunately never been used.
Unfortunate is Congress’s failure to provide this balance, worse is the failure of many justices to pay any attention to the list provided, which has been the case for most of the past century. Far worse is the tendency of so many justices to just make up an interpretation based on no law.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said. “Let me put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution—try to discern as best we can what the framers intended, or make it up.” On making it up, he added: “No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores.”(Wall Street Journal Opinion, Oct. 20, 2008).
Today the Court is evenly divided between those who make it up and those who follow what the Founders wrote. At least a Justice Kavanaugh has shown that he will not make it up.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 16, 2018 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
Are you qualified to be the next Supreme Court justice? Perhaps. The only statement in the Constitution with respect to the existence of the Supreme Court lists no qualifications. It reads, “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.”
Technically anyone can be a justice and that might be the point. If you suddenly found yourself newly appointed with a case pending next month, what would you first read outside the case summary? Not voluminous law books. Probably the Constitution as written without deviation from it! Today law schools are filled with courses that read what the Constitution has become—case law—but not necessarily the document. Over time the two may even be at variance with each other.
To stay with original intent perhaps we would be better served with a historian who knows the history of why parts were placed in the Constitution and reads the actual writings of the Founding Fathers, most notably the Federalist Papers and the minutes of the Constitutional Convention, and understands that this group of statesmen were the most unusual of any previously assembled.
Nor do law schools place a high enough priority on human nature or natural law (law that does not change) as does the Constitution, and as do philosophers, so perhaps a philosopher might be a better selection. Common sense is often close to natural law and no profession has to be more in harmony with “nature’s law” to survive than a farmer; so perhaps a farmer.
Legal precedent is good but if a decision with little or no constitutional basis is not immediately challenged it has power to influence future decisions which are then infected. It costs a plaintiff perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars to contest and go through the court system with a case that might result in reversal.
The problem with precedent, which is the primary base of law school instruction, is that one small perversion from original intent justifies another leading to a continuum of distortion. When distortions get large enough they may also invite or allow “jurisdiction jumps” to areas not even mentioned or inferred in the Constitution such as abortion, nationalized healthcare, or marriage. When this happens they become a threat to federalism, a pillar of the Constitution. Federalism is the shared and equal division of power between federal and state governments, neither the master nor servant of the other, each supreme in its area of jurisdiction, as the 10th Amendment, if followed, mandates.
Such also permits the undermining of time-tested principles such as Thomas Jefferson’s old adage, “The best government is the least government.” Precedent does not necessarily inhibit bigger government, which becomes an enemy to the Constitution intentionally designed to limit government. In time advocates of big government inevitably see the Constitution as outdated and its enemy. This is precisely where we are today.
The lack of listed qualifications for a Supreme Court Justice is indeed very curious given the detail for those serving as President and House and Senate members. So omission of listed qualifications for the Supreme Court is by design, not mere oversight.
The President is limited to a four-year term of office and is selected by the states through the Electoral College. Because we are a republic, not a democracy, the Constitution purposely identifies no popular vote for this office. He also must be “a natural born Citizen” and at least 35 years of age and “been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
A member of the House of Representatives is elected every two years, must be at least 25-years of age, a citizen of the US for at least seven years, and “an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.” A member of the U.S. Senate is elected for a six-year term, must be at least 30-years of age, nine years a citizen and an “Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”
The assumption that a jurist must be a law school graduate, has practiced law, and then been a judge is not necessarily bad of itself, but the assumption that jurists can only come from this limited privileged group is. To know the law is certainly an advantage to a jurist but when law conflicts with, or undermines, original intent or natural law, it is not. Legal is not always constitutional and this may be more easily discerned by one less trained to solve problems with more laws.
The President “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the supreme Court.” These people serve for life but he is under no obligation to appoint a law school graduate. His primary concern is to select nominees that will follow the Constitution as so many have not, hopefully a Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the traditional law school graduate, will. Still, we have been conditioned to believe that only those in the law profession are qualified to serve. A tough Senate confirmation lies ahead.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 9, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
Four years ago I awoke on a Sunday morning where I was visiting family, a ray of light coming through the window. The window view showed side-by-side symbols; one of liberty, as represented by a small community of multi-colored and multi-shaped living structures with residents going about their business oblivious to the second symbol, represented by large, gray, ugly, windowless government buildings spying on and recording everyone’s communication. The contrast of liberty and totalitarian intent was startling and breathtaking. I was in Bluffdale, Utah viewing the NSA’s top spy facility in the world called the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center.
To the far left of the window view was a new housing development intruding into largely undeveloped land, like an extending finger, with brown hills above it and a large hay farm in front and below stretching far forward and to the right of my view. Here residents made choices that enhanced the quality and comfort of their lives largely free from total government spying and restriction—or so they thought.
The number of churches to the population seemed unusually high, five church steeples reaching skyward, as if begging for the influence of God in their community, in what looked to be no more than 300 structures, mostly apartments, as seen from my window—all within a mile of where I was. I attended one of the churches and was greeted with the opening song “America the Beautiful,” the classic patriotic tune words written by Katherine Lee Bates and music by Samuel A. Ward. It housed the favorite words “America! America!” followed by four phrases in four verses “God shed his grace on thee,” and, “God mend thine every flaw,” and, “May God thy gold refine,” and again, “God shed his grace on thee.” Obviously, these Christians loved their liberty. A similar tune representing a relationship between God, country and liberty could have been found throughout most of the country this Sunday before the 4th of July.
In stark contrast off in the distance about two miles, but still clearly visible from the left side of the same window, was the most profound symbol of big government ever—the new NSA spy center, the largest in the world, capable of holding a yottabyte of information collected from every person on earth, with space enough for generations to come. These enormous, ugly, gray, windowless, buildings perched on a hill with intimidating guard-houses restricting entrance, represented potential total control of the actions and thoughts of every human.
Much was published on NSA government spying of its own people including LibertyUnderFire.org columns, so nothing new is found in this one. A project began under George W. Bush and accelerated under Barack Obama, Bluffdale “is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade and a half. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks… Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter” (“The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center. Watch What You Say.”) The project was code named “Stellar Wind.”
Fortunately the public has known about their government spying on them for over five years. Even the less informed made government surveillance jokes, but still the collection continues although limited somewhat by the 2015 USA Freedom Act with respect to telephone conversations requiring telephone companies to collect the metadata instead and store it at their expense. Then silence. Even the Democratic Party, once the great defender of civil liberties, is largely silent posed now as the defenders of the Deep State. It is as though everyone is in denial, as though these revelations could not really be that bad.
No one is being arrested or punished for his or her thoughts. Yet! The noose is not tight. And what is a yottabyte of information anyway? The size is incomprehensible adding to brain overload. A yottabyte is 1,000 zettabytes (the number 1 followed by 24 zeros — 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). That “318 scientists, computer engineers, and other staff work in secret on the cryptanalytic applications of high-speed computing and other classified projects” (Cryptome, March 16, 2012, “NSA Decryption Multipurpose Research Facility”), making what is now happening possible, merely adds to the incomprehensiveness of the subject.
Monday morning the same light flooded the room. The same symbols of liberty and oppression lay in stark contrast below. The same five church steeples reach for the sky as though to appeal to God for His influence. The same residents drive by, perhaps the greatest symbol of totalitarianism of all time, on their way to work, as though it does not exist. Some may even work at this place to help give the government details on their neighbor. Everything about these ugly, windowless, gray structures violates the Constitution. Chances are those of the community next door that sing of freedom will reelect the same Democrats and Republicans that authorized and funded their surveillance. I closed the window. If I too ignore what it shows, it will go away. Right?
Jul 2, 2018 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The Second Continental Congress, having been convened for six months, had been engaged in the wrestle for or against independence, the vast majority of delegates being decidedly against such drastic action most of this time. Surely there should be a way of reconciling their differences with Great Britain instead.
This was so, even after the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker (Breeds) Hill and the British occupation of Boston. We were at war. King George III had already rejected the Colonists’ Declaration of Rights and Grievances, arguing the violation of their rights under British law, and the pacifist Olive Branch Petition, which reaffirmed colonial loyalty to the king and blamed their problems upon Parliament alone. Moreover, he had declared the Colonists in open rebellion. A full six months prior to the signing a declaration of independence, Parliament had removed the colonies from the protection of the British military, ended all British trade with them, and authorized the confiscation of any American vessel on the seas. Still, delegates could not bring themselves to separate from their “mother,” the British Empire.
On July 1, 1776, the Patriots finally risked “putting the question” to a tentative count but were numbingly shocked by the result. Four colonies New York, South Carolina, Delaware and Pennsylvania did not support declaring independence from Great Britain. The Patriots needed to show solidarity. A vote of only nine colonies would show disunity.
This is where the brilliance of John Adams, from Massachusetts, and Richard Henry Lee, from Virginia, came into play. They got Edward Rutledge to use his influence to persuade South Carolina, for the sake of unity, to join those supporting independence, if Pennsylvania and Delaware could be persuaded to do likewise. Convinced that that could never happen, Rutledge agreed. Next, Adams and Lee worked on Delaware which had three representatives, one for and another against independence and a third, Caesar Rodney, who was pro declaration, was recuperating from health problems at his farm 80 miles away and probably would not be able to be there to vote the next day. Apparently he had skin cancer and a sore on his face the “size of a large apple.” The Delaware delegate favoring independence sent a messenger to Rodney to try to get him to the Convention for the vote. This necessitated an 80-mile all night ride by the sick delegate.
Now they needed to change the vote of Pennsylvania with seven delegates, four of who were against independence. Amazingly Adams and Lee convinced two of these to be absent for voting the next day. This would place Pennsylvania in the camp of the Patriots three to two. New York, without instructions to vote for independence, remained neutral refusing to vote at all. The gamble was that in these agreements in South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Delaware there existed too many ifs, and would everyone do as promised? They needed a “little miracle,” perhaps three.
Sometime after lunch the next day July 2, 1776, Caesar Rodney, “caked with mud from head to foot,” having ridden though a severe thunderstorm and torrential rain “entered the assembly room, and when his name was called for Delaware he rose with difficulty but in a clear voice stated: ‘As I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of Independence and my own judgment concurs with them, I vote for Independence’ ” (Declaration of Independence: The Keepsake Album of its Creation, by Joseph P. Cullen, American History Illustrated p. 34).
This “little miracle” made Delaware the 10th colony for a declaration that these colonies were free and independent states. The two lesser “miracles” followed. Pennsylvania followed as planned when the two con-delegates did not show to vote as promised, leaving a simple majority for independence, and Rutledge kept his word and persuaded South Carolina to become the 12th colony for the sake of unity. With New York abstaining the Patriots could announce to the world that the vote had carried without an opposing vote. All this happened within 26 hours, when the day before, at 10:00 a. m., only nine colonies supported independence.
A draft of The Declaration of Independence had been written, reviewed by committee, and tabled on June 28, until after an affirmative vote for independence. This achieved, its finalization by the whole house followed on July 4, 1776, passing 12 to 0, again with New York abstaining. But could all this be vindicated on the battlefield, as war with Great Britain was certain to follow as a result, that seemed just as improbable perhaps needing additional “little miracles,” or would these men merit only the gallows, but that is a story for another day?
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
