Non-partisan (constitutionalist) President Davis signs the Flag Act, adopting the “Stars and Bars” as the flag of the Confederacy.
[added 10/9/2026]
Democratic (constitutionalist) President James Buchanan, of the united States, turns the presidency over to Republican (nationalist) former Representative Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois. Buchanan is giving to Lincoln a federal debt that has expanded from 28,700,000 to 90,600,000 Dollars, going from 1 to 2% of the Gross National Product, and from 1.00 to 2.80 Dollars per person. In his inaugural address, Lincoln threatens war against the Confederate States if they do not co-operate in the collection of the protectionist Morrill Tariff:
The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion—no using of force against or among the people anywhere.
Lincoln also promises not to interfere with slavery where it already exists, and endorses the recently proposed 13th (Corwin) amendment to the Constitution for the united States, that would prohibit Congress from abolishing slavery in the States. … I have no objection to its [slavery] being made express and irrevocable.”
NOTES:
- The Union is still paying for the Panic of 1837 and now the Panic of 1857 through lawful Indirect (tariffs and excise) taxes placed upon manufactured goods.
- While Lincoln felt the Constitution for the united States prohibited him from interfering with “slavery [involuntary servitude] where it already exists,” he had no problem “collect[ing] the duties and imposts” of the odious and onerous Morrill protective tariff, which raised costs on southern agriculture for the benefit of northern industry and internal improvements (corporate, Republican welfare).
- Lincoln claimed credit for the proposed Corwin Amendment (forbidding Congress to pass any legislation (including proposing a constitutional Amendment) concerning slavery in any State).
- Lincoln expressed his sentiment that the power of the federal government is superior to that of the States: “The Union is much older than the Constitution.”
- Lincoln used the word “Union” (which is a union of sovereign States under a federal system, with a central government whose powers are strictly limited by a respected Constitution) 21 times but not once used the word “nation” (in which a central government, with almost limitless power, treats its constituent states as mere enclaves, provinces, or sub-divisions of its greater self).
- Livingston writes, “The Soviet Union had one of the most centralized governments in history, yet was blown to peacefully dissolve itself.”
James Ostrowski describes the “(imaginary) Amendment XI” that Lincoln must have found in the Constitution for the united States for it reflects the actions Lincoln took in his effort to “preserve the Union” (establish a nation):
- Section 1. Notwithstanding the Guarantee Clause and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, no state may ever secede from the Union for any reason, except by an amendment pursuant to Article V.
- Section 2. If any State attempts to secede without authorization, the Federal Government shall invade such State with sufficient military force to suppress the attempted secession.
- Section 3. The Federal Government may require the militias of all states to join in the use of force against the seceding State.
- Section 4. After suppressing said secession, the Federal Government shall rule said State by martial law until such time as said State shall accept permanent federal supremacy and alter its constitution to forbid future secessions.
- Section 5. After suppressing said secession, the Federal Government shall force said State to ratify a new constitutional amendment which gives the Federal Government the right to police the states whenever it believes those states are violating the rights of their citizens.
- Section 6. The President may, of his own authority, suspend the operation of the Bill of Rights and the writ of habeas corpus, in a seceding or loyal state, if in his sole judgement, such is necessary to preserve the Union.
Ostrowski, asks, “Would the Constitution have been rarified if it contained such an amendment? Would that amendment have been ratified at any time between 1788 and 1861?”
[updated 1/25/2025]
Army of the united States Major Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter, South Carolina reports that his command is running out of food and water, and may soon have to be abandoned.
[restored 1/25/2025]
Subsequent Events:
Authority:
unanimous Declaration, Paragraph 6
Article II, Section 1 [Clause 8]
ccc-2point0.com/constitution-for-the-united-states
Article XII of Amendment
ccc-2point0.com/constitution-for-the-united-states
References:
Richard B. Bernstein, Amending America: If We Love the Constitution So Much, Why Do We Keep Trying to Change It?, (New York: Times Books, 1993), 91-92.
Bruce Catton, The Civil War, (New York: American Heritage, 1960; Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987), 283.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, “The Great Centralizer: Abraham Lincoln and the War between the States,” Cato Journal, 3 (Fall 1998): 257-58.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked: What you are not supposed to know about dishonest Abe, (New York: Crown-Forum, 2006), 24, 54, 82, 126.
David H. Donald, Lincoln, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 150, 154.
Maury Klein, Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession and the Coming of the Civil War, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 321.
Calvin D. Linton, ed. The Bicentennial Almanac: 200 Years of America, 1776-1976, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1975), 164.
James Ostrowski, “Was the Union Army’s Invasion of the Confederate States a Lawful Act? An Analysis of President Lincoln’s Legal Arguments Against Secession,” Secession, State and Liberty, David Gordon, ed., (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Transaction, 1988), 158, 173, 178-79.
Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address
avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp
Livingston – A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy
mises.org/library/moral-accounting-union-and-confederacy
Government – Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual 1850 – 1899
www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo2.htm
List of Presidents of the United states – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States
Measuring Worth – GDP result.
www.measuringworth.com/datasets/usgdp/result.php
Bureau of Economic Analysis is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
www.bea.gov/national/index.html#gdp
Leviathan on the Right (How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution) | Strike-The-Root: A Journal Of Liberty
www.strike-the-root.com/71/lfb/lfb1.html
Current U.s. National Debt:
Democratic (constitutionalist) President Jackson, delivers his farewell address to the Union:
[T]here is a tendency on the part of this [g]overnment to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes for which it was created, and its powers being expressly enumerated, there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them. Every attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and firmly opposed, for one evil example will lead to other measures still more mischievous; and if the principle of constructive powers or supposed advantages or temporary circumstances shall ever be permitted to justify the assumption of a power not given by the Constitution, the [g]eneral [g]overnment will before long absorb all the powers of legislation, and you will have in effect but one consolidated government.
. . . . . . .
Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find there is a constant effort to induce the General Government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. Many powerful interests are continually at work to procure heavy duties on commerce and to swell the revenue beyond the real necessities of the public service, and the country has already felt the injurious effects of their combined influence. They succeeded in obtaining a tariff of duties bearing most oppressively on the agricultural and laboring classes of society and producing a revenue that could not be usefully employed within the range of the powers conferred upon Congress, and in order to fasten upon the people this unjust and unequal system of taxation extravagant schemes of internal improvement were got up in various quarters to squander the money and to purchase support.
. . . . . . .
The Constitution of the United States unquestionably intended to secure to the people a circulating medium of gold and silver. But the establishment of a national bank by Congress, with the privilege of issuing paper money receivable in the payment of the public dues, and the unfortunate course of legislation in the several States upon the same subject, drove from general circulation the constitutional currency and substituted one of paper in its place.
. . . . . . .
The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations[sic] which create the paper money can not [sic] be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day to day, until public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given, suddenly curtail their issues, and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium, which is felt by the whole community. … Some of the evils[sic] which arise from this system of paper press with peculiar hardship upon the class of society least able to bear it. A portion of this currency frequently becomes depreciated or worthless, and all of it is easily counterfeited in such a manner as to require peculiar skill and much experience to distinguish the counterfeit from the genuine note.
. . . . . . .
Recent events have proved that the paper-money system of this country may be used as an engine to undermine your free institutions, and that those who desire to engross all power in the hands of the few and to govern by corruption or force are aware of its power and prepared to employ it. Your banks now furnish your only circulating medium, and money is plenty or scarce according to the quantity of notes issued by them. While they have capitals not greatly disproportioned to each other, they are competitors in business, and no one of them can exercise dominion over the rest; and although in the present state of the currency these banks may and do operate injuriously upon the habits of business, the pecuniary concerns, and the moral tone of society, yet, from their number and dispersed situation, they can not [sic] combine for the purposes of political influence, and whatever may be the dispositions of some of them their power of mischief must necessarily be confined to a narrow space and felt only in their immediate neighborhoods.
. . . . . . .
The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. … The power[sic] which the moneyed interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head and with our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by the Bank of the United States. {emphasis added)
[added 2/19/2021]
Democratic President Jackson turns the presidency over to Democratic Vice President Martin Van Buren. Jackson is giving to Van Buren a federal debt that has contracted from 7,000,000 to 340,000 Dollars, going from 1 to 0.02% of the Gross National Product, and from 60 to 2 Cents per person.
NOTE: The Union is paying for these minimally incidental federal borrowings through lawful Indirect (tariffs and excise) taxes placed upon manufactured goods.
[added 2/19/2021]