Curse of Cannan - The New Ensign
Curse of Cannan - The New Ensign
Curse of Cannan - The New Ensign
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<strong>The</strong> Third Reconstruction Act, dated July 19, 1867, extended even greater powers to the military<br />
commanders <strong>of</strong> the Southern states. It provided that no military <strong>of</strong>ficer in any district shall be<br />
bound by any civil <strong>of</strong>ficer <strong>of</strong> the United States. By giving absolute power to the commanding<br />
<strong>of</strong>ficer, the Third Reconstruction Act confirmed that the Southern states were under absolute<br />
martial law, an important point to be brought up in a Constitutional challenge to the validity <strong>of</strong><br />
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. <strong>The</strong>re is also the legal point to be made<br />
that if these amendments were and are illegal, having been enacted under martial law, all <strong>of</strong> the<br />
subsequent amendments to the Constitution are also invalid, since they not only are not numbered<br />
correctly, but they also must be considered as having been enacted according to the provisions<br />
<strong>of</strong> these three amendments, which changed the requirements for citizenship and voting rights!<br />
<strong>The</strong> Fourth Reconstruction Act imposed even greater voting restrictions on the militarily occupied<br />
Southern states.<br />
Because he opposed the four Reconstruction Acts, which were patently unconstitutional, the<br />
Radical Republicans moved to impeach President Johnson and remove him from <strong>of</strong>fice. This<br />
has been a favorite tactic <strong>of</strong> those who have been defeated at the polls, as Presidents Nixon and<br />
Reagan were later to discover. <strong>The</strong> move to impeach Johnson lost by only one vote. <strong>The</strong> Radical<br />
Republicans had passed the four Reconstruction Acts only because they had previously taken<br />
the precaution in July <strong>of</strong> 1866 to reduce the number <strong>of</strong> justices on the Supreme Court from ten<br />
to seven, fearing that President Johnson might appoint justices who would uphold his opinion<br />
<strong>of</strong> the Reconstruction Acts. Such is the "law <strong>of</strong> the land." In April, 1869, after Grant had been<br />
elected President, the Congress again increased the number <strong>of</strong> justices to nine, which remains<br />
the number today. Congress subsequently denounced Presidents for their attempts to "pack" the<br />
Supreme Court, a privilege which seems to be reserved for themselves. Grant appointed justices<br />
who unanimously ruled to uphold the unconstitutional Reconstruction Acts. As Chief Justice <strong>of</strong><br />
the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, the <strong>New</strong> York banker, resisted all challenges to the<br />
Reconstruction Acts by the captive Southern states, declaring that these Acts were indeed<br />
"constitutional." From 1830 to 1860, he had been renowned in Ohio for his work in aiding fugitive<br />
slaves; he was called "the attorney general for runaway slaves." He later founded the Chase Bank,<br />
which is now allied with Aaron Burr's Manhattan Company to form the Chase Manhattan Bank.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Radical Republicans in Congress were led by the fiery Thaddeus Stevens, a lawyer from<br />
Pennsylvania who, through judicious investments in real estate, had become the largest taxpayer<br />
in Gettysburg. He was a grotesque cripple, clubfooted, described by his contemporaries as<br />
"fox-featured, with hollow voice and a permanent pout." He was bald from the effects <strong>of</strong> some<br />
disease, and wore a chestnut coloured wig. For many years his only companion had been his<br />
mulatto mistress, one Lydia Smith; he died in her bed.<br />
<strong>The</strong> military occupation was the principal force upholding the depredations <strong>of</strong> the carpetbaggers<br />
in the Southern states. <strong>The</strong>y had swarmed in to quickly amass huge fortunes in land by having<br />
the property <strong>of</strong> the impoverished Southerners confiscated, they being unable to pay the ruinous<br />
increases voted by the scalawag legislatures. During Reconstruction, six million acres in the state<br />
<strong>of</strong> Mississippi were sold for back taxes. <strong>The</strong> scalawag legislatures embarked on great spending<br />
sprees, running up huge state debts to the bankers. During Reconstruction, the state debt <strong>of</strong><br />
Louisiana increased from fourteen to forty-eight million dollars; in South Carolina from seven<br />
million to twenty-nine million; in Florida from a mere $524,000 to five million dollars. <strong>The</strong><br />
Fairfield Herald in South Carolina wrote editorially, November 20, 1872, "Reconstruction ... a<br />
hell born policy, which has trampled the fairest and noblest <strong>of</strong> states, our great statehood beneath<br />
the unholy ho<strong>of</strong>s <strong>of</strong> African savages and shoulder strapped brigands-the policy which has given<br />
up millions <strong>of</strong> our freeborn, high-souled brothers and sisters, countrymen and countrywomen,<br />
<strong>of</strong> Washington, Rutledge, Marion, and Lee, to the rule <strong>of</strong> gibbering, louse-eaten, devilworshipping<br />
barbarians, from the jungles <strong>of</strong> Dahomey, and perpetuated by buccaneers from Cape<br />
Cod, Memphrem agog, Hell, and Boston." Note that even a Southern editor knew about the<br />
devil-worship <strong>of</strong> the Canaanites. Amazingly enough, this was written during the military<br />
occupation, or rather, during its close. <strong>The</strong> descendants <strong>of</strong> the carpetbaggers now own all <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Southern press, and such an editorial cannot be read anywhere in the South today.<br />
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