As our government takes our country into another foreign military
adventure, our Armed Forces will be stretched even thinner. At some point, as our government finds more monsters, real or imagined, to destroy, they may wish to convince us that we need to sacrifice our sons and even daughters in a “draft”, or involuntary conscription into the military. They will tell us that it is necessary, that it’s “fair”, and that the “Courts” have judged it to be “Constitutional.”
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both advised us to, in questions of Law or the Constitution, to determine what the Writers intended, rather than what could be stretched or contrived out of the latest interpretation. Sadly, the Bench quit considering “Original Intent” over 1½ centuries ago.
One man who would have known original intent was Daniel Webster, who served both in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the early 1800’s, when many of the “Founding Fathers” were still alive and able to provide guidance. “Conscription” had been proposed in 1814. Daniel Webster, then a member of the House of Representatives, expressed his opposition on 9 December, saying:
“... It is time for Congress to examine & decide for itself. It has taken things on trust long enough. It has followed Executive recommendation, till there remains no hope of finding safety in that path. What is there, Sir, that makes it the duty of this people now to grant new confidence to the administration, & to surrender their most important rights to its discretion? On what merits of its own does it rest this extraordinary claim? When it calls thus loudly for the treasure & the lives of the people, what pledge does it offer, that it will not waste all in the same preposterous pursuits, which have hitherto engaged it? In the failure of all past promises, do we see any assurance of future performance? Are we to measure out our confidence in proportion to our disgraces, & now at last to grant
away every thing, because all that we have heretofore granted has been wasted or misapplied. What is there in our condition that bespeaks a wise or an able Government? What is the evidence, that the protection of the country is the object principally regarded?
Conscription is chosen as the most promising instrument, both of overcoming reluctance to the Service, & of subduing the difficulties which arise from the deficiencies of the Exchequer. The administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion. It contends that it may now take one out of every 25 men, & any part or the whole of the rest, whenever its occasions require. Persons thus taken by force, & put into an army, may be compelled to serve there, during the war, or for life. They may be put on any service, at home or abroad, for defense or for invasion, according to the will & pleasure of Government. This power does not grow out of any invasion of the country, or even out of a state of war. It belongs to Government at all times, in peace as well as in war, & is to be exercised under all circumstance, according to its mere discretion. This, Sir, is the amount of the principle contended for by the Secretary of War.
Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a free Government? Is this civil liberty? IS this the real character of our Constitution? No, Sir, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libelled, foully libelled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure & their own blood a Magna Charta to be slaves. Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, & parents from their children, & compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous & baleful aspect, to trample down & destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will show me any constitutional injunction, which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender every thing valuable in life, & even life itself, not when the safety of their country & its liberties may demand the
sacrifice, but whenever the purposes of an ambitious & mischievous Government may require it? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations &
references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free Government, & that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free government. It is an attempt to show, by proof & argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, & that we have a right to chains & bondage, firmly secured to us & our children, by the provisions of our
Government.
The supporters of the measures before us act on the principle that it is their task to raise arbitrary powers, by construction, out of a plain
written charter of National Liberty. It is their pleasing duty to free us of the delusion, which we have fondly cherished, that we are the subjects of a mild, free, & limited Government, & to demonstrate by a regular chain of premises & conclusions, that Government possesses over us a power more
tyrannical, more arbitrary, more dangerous, more allied to blood & murder, more full of every form of mischief, more productive of every sort & degree of misery, that had been exercised by any civilized Government, with a single exception, in modern times.
But it is said, that it might happen hat an army would not be raised by voluntary enlistment, in which case the power to raise armies would be granted in vain, unless they might be raised by compulsion. If this reasoning could prove any thing, it would equally show, that whenever the
legitimate powers of the Constitution should be so badly administered as to
cease to answer the great ends intended by them, such new powers may be assumed or usurped, as any existing administration may deem expedient. …
If the Secretary of War has proved the right of Congress to enact a law
enforcing a draft of men out of the Militia into the regular army, he will at any time be able to prove, quite as clearly, that Congress has the power to create a Dictator. The arguments which have helped him in one case, will equally aid him in the other. The same reason of a supposed or possible state necessity, which is urged now, may be repeated then, with equal pertinency & effect.
Sir, in granting Congress the power to raise armies, the People have granted all the means which are ordinary & usual, & which are consistent with the liberties & security of the People themselves; and they have granted no others. To talk about the unlimited power of the Government over the means to execute its authority, is to hold a language which is true only in regard to despotism. The tyranny of Arbitrary Government consists as much in its means as in its end; & it would be a ridiculous & absurd constitution which should be less cautious to guard against abused in the one case than in the other. … a free government, with an uncontrolled power of military conscription, is a solecism, at once the most ridiculous & abominable that ever entered into the head of man. …
Nor is it, Sir for the defense of his own house & home, that he who is the
subject of military draft is to perform the task allotted to him. You will put him upon a service equally foreign to his interests & abhorrent to his feelings. With his aid; you are to push your purposes of conquest. The battles which he is to fight are the battles of invasion; battles which he detests perhaps & abhors, less from the danger & the death that gather over them, & the blood with which they drench the plain, than from the principles
in which they have their origin. If, Sir, in this strife he fall – if, while ready to obey every rightful command of Government, he is forced from home against right, not to contend for the defense of his country, but to prosecute a miserable & detestable project of invasion, & in that strife he falls, ‘tis murder. It may stalk above the cognizance of human law, but in the sight of Heaven it is murder; & though millions of years may roll away, while his ashes & yours lie mingled together in the earth, the day will yet come, when his spirit & the sprits of his children must be met at the bar of
omnipotent justice. May God, in his compassion, shield me from any
participation in the enormity of this guilt.
The operation of measures thus unconstitutional & illegal ought to be prevented, by a resort to other measures which are both constitutional & legal. I express these sentiments here, Sir, because I shall express them to my constituents. Both they & myself live under a Constitution which teaches
us, that “the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power &
oppression, is absurd, slavish, & destructive of the good & happiness of mankind.” With the same earnestness with which I now exhort you to forbear from these measures, I shall exhort them to exercise their unquestionable right of providing for the security of their own liberties. …”
Modernists have argued against conscription on the basis of the 13th Amendment, that it was “Involuntary Servitude”, which the Courts have rejected. However, as Daniel Webster pointed out, it is Unconstitutional
because the power was never delegated by the People to the Federal Government.
I would attribute to Daniel Webster much more credibility in this matter
than I would our current government officials. After all, Daniel Webster, the story goes, successfully argued against the Devil and freed a man’s soul. In the case of our current government, it appears that most of them merely listen to the Devil, & then go along for the ride.
We need to let our elected representatives know that the draft is both unconstitutional and is abhorrent to a Free Republic and a Free People.
Rich Beecher
Rbeecher@hotmail.com