How Do You Know If You've Won?

Winning does not mean anything unless you are better off after victory than you were before. If you think you have won an argument, but the other side does not change its mind, then chances are you didn't actually win. You may be more brilliant, you may have better strategy and tactics, you may have beaten the enemy to a bloody pulp and gotten them to surrender in the last battle of the war. But if in the end you pay tribute to them, instead of their paying tribute to you, then you have not won. Hannibal beat Rome in every battle, and yet he did not win. Sometimes our military leaders can hand us victories on silver platters that our civil leaders and diplomats never take advantage of.

We beat the British in the Battle of New Orleans. But we did not win the war, since we had to pay the British for the Louisiana Purchase on that note they got from France, and they did not have to pay us to repair the damage they had done during the Sack of Hampton and the burning of Washington.

The British Burning Washington

Why did it turn out that way? Could there have been a different outcome? And is the shoddy treatment of Jean Laffite by the Madison administration related to this?

 A meeting between Aaron Burr and James Madison toward the end of Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain suggests an answer.

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

Neither Madison nor Jefferson were military men. Neither had served in any of the battles of the American Revolution. But while Jefferson had succeeded in avoiding war during his administration, Madison declared war.

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

That the line between privateers and pirates had been so blurred by the end of the War of 1812 is due to the Neutrality Act.

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

The Embargo Act had been an attempt to avoid war by outlawing international commerce. Anybody who thinks Jefferson was the original libertarian must not have heard of the Embargo Act.

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

Not paying taxes on goods that you sell to the American people is a service to the American people against their government. But the wool is still being pulled over the eyes of most people on this point.

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

Why couldn't we send privateers to collect restitution from our enemies, instead of taxing citizens to pay for the military?

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

A war is not won until the enemy pays for all the damage it has caused. Payment can come in the form or gold or of land. But if not paid for, the damage is absorbed by the people  -- and that is not a victory.

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

No war should ever be fought at the expense of the people! Every war should be bankrolled by the enemy. That's why letters of marque are provided for in the Constitution. When was the last time we took advantage of that provision?

An Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain

The Constitution has not been just lately infringed upon. The very Founders were already in the process of unraveling its fabric as soon as they each came into office. You don't have to be an anarchist to want to reform this situation. We can restore the Constitution only by acknowledging how early on it was undermined by politicians in office -- even those who drafted it themselves.

A Conversation between Dolley and Aaron

Dolley Madison in One of Her Famous Hats

It was Aaron Burr who introduced James Madison to Dolley. Madison was a painfully shy bachelor. Burr was his friend from college. And Dolley was that flirty widow lady who lived in the same boarding house with Burr. Burr was not interested in Dolley, but he thought that she would do his friend Jemmy Madison a world of good. So he set them up. He told Jemmy that Dolley was interested in him. He told Dolley that Mr. Madison had shown an interest in her. That's all it took!

In Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain, I extrapolate from these well know facts about the first lady who loved hats to create a meeting between Aaron Burr and Dolley Madison right after the end of the War of 1812.

Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates

A milliners shop would have been just the place to find Dolley, Everyone knew of her fascination with head gear.

Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates

The letter from Jean Laffite to James Madison  did not meet with much better success than the letter from Theodosia to Dolley, pleading on behalf of her exiled father.

Excerpt from Theodosia and the Pirates

Aaron Burr may or may not have spoken to James Madison on behalf of Jean Laffite. But this small snippet of a conversation between Aaron and Dolley rings true. What else would they have said to each other?

Rendering Unto Caesar

Separation of Church and State is a doctrine enshrined in the first amendment to the constitution and penned by James Madison. There are many today among the religious right in the United States who bristle against this doctrine and insist that the United States is a "Christian Nation."

But did you know that separation of Church and State is actually a Christian doctrine that predates the first amendment? Matthew 22:21 states:

 "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ).

 This quote is attributed to Jesus and is in the context of the question of whether it is proper for Judeans to pay taxes to their Roman overlords. One of the ironies of the New Testament was that Jesus purported to be the Messiah, which means the anointed King of Israel and the head of its secular authority, and that it was because of the hope of being freed from the Romans and their oppressive taxation system that many Judeans followed him. It was also for this reason that he was crucified.

It was the disciples in their gospels who then enshrined a view of religion as divorced from politics and national identity.

In the history of religion, this is a turning point, because up till then  each nation had its own gods, who were believed to intercede for that nation in divine battles, and the success of a conqueror was seen as the success of that nation's god in his battle with the defeated nation's god. To separate religion from patriotism seemed unthinkable.

In time, the Christian religion gained ascendancy in the Roman Empire, so much so that it became the official religion, quite in contravention of the doctrine of "Render Unto Caesar", and by the Middle Ages, all traces of separation of Church and State had pretty much disappeared in Europe. Of course, between the Renaissance and the emergence of the modern nation state a lot of changes did occur. One of the most interesting ones is the founding of the independent Vatican City State.

The Gardens from atop St. Peter's Baslica
Source: Wikipedia

Vatican City became a sovereign nation on February 11, 1929 under the Lateran Treaty signed by Benito Mussolini on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel the Third and by Cardinal Pietro Gaspari for Pope Pius XI.

The fact that the Pope is a foreign prince had been a problem for Catholic Americans for some time, especially when they wanted to run for public office, as people accused them of violating their citizenship by swearing their allegiance to the Pope. But this was also a very great boon to American nuns and priests imprisoned by the Japanese in China during World War II. In August of 1943 all American Catholic nuns and priests imprisoned at Weihsien Internment camp were released to be repatriated, because the Emperor of Japan accepted the argument advanced by the the Papal legate to Tokyo that they were citizens of a neutral sovereign: Vatican City. One has to wonder: when they returned to America, were they still allowed to vote?

Dual Citizenship is still a tricky topic today. In current American passports the following standard warning is printed:

LOSS OF U.S. CITIZENSHIP. Under certain circumstances, you may lose your U.S. citizenship by performing voluntarily and with intention to relinquish U.S. citizenship, any of the following acts: 1) Being naturalized in a foreign state; 2) taking an oath or making a declaration to a foreign state; 3) serving in the armed forces of a foreign state; 4) accepting employment with a foreign government; or 5) formally renouncing U.S. citizenship before a U.S. consular officer overseas.

Separating Church and State becomes very tricky once the Church you belong to is also a State. One can argue that this is only a problem if you are a Catholic. But dual citizenship is not strictly a Catholic problem. Many Americans are faced with this issue. A repeal of the Neutrality Act and related laws would resolve the problem  and would leave the constitutional rights of all Americans intact, regardless of their country of origin or religious affiliation.

Patterson and Ross Awarded Laffite-owned Property They Seized

This week on Historia Obscura there is a very significant article by Pam Keyes.

http://www.historiaobscura.com/john-dicks-letter-to-monroe-honoring-the-baratarians/

The article gives the background for a letter written by John Dick, the US District Attorney for Louisiana,  to James Monroe, the Secretary of State, on behalf of the Baratarian privateers. President James Madison had just signed a blanket pardon to the Baratarians for their evasion of the Customs Taxes of the day prior to the Battle of New Orleans. Dick was glad he did not have to prosecute any of the Baratarians, because of their indispensable service to the United States that helped defeat the British.

But despite the presidential pardon, Pam Keyes notes in her article that property belonging to the Baratarians, and the Laffites in particular, which had been seized in the Patterson-Ross raid prior to the Battle of New Orleans, was awarded by Congress to the raiders, Patterson and Ross,  to have and to hold and to spend as they pleased.

A couple of weeks before Dick wrote his letter, and after the Baratarian indictments were dropped, Ross left New Orleans in March 1815 for Washington, D.C. to petition Congress with the help of a Congressional friend for the monies from the Barataria raid. The bill for the relief of Ross and Patterson was read for the first time in Congress on April 1816, a month before the sickly Ross died at a relative’s home in Pennsylvania. Jean Laffite went to Washington, too, but not until December 1815, when he wrote a letter to President Madison on Dec. 27 seeking recovery of the raid monies. Madison’s response is unknown, but at that time, he was not in Washington. On Feb. 22, 1817, President Madison signed into law an amended bill supported by Congress that directed the secretary of the treasury to pay Ross and Patterson $50,000 from the proceeds of the Barataria raid.

 We have to ask ourselves who were the pirates in this transaction, and who was the aggrieved property holder.

The Oath of Loyalty and National Identity

At one point, Jean Laffite required an oath of loyalty of all his privateers operating out of Galveston. Why was that necessary? Did he think an oath would make them more loyal? Or did it have more to do with the shifting laws concerning privateering?

After the War of 1812 the American admiralty courts began regarding any privateering vessel manned by multinational crews to be a pirate ship. Multinational crews on ships are a very common thing. Because ships travel from one destination to another, none of the people on a ship will typically remain in the territorial waters of their own country all of the time. This is true of passenger vessels, ships that transport goods, and to some extent even of fishing vessels. That's just the nature of the work. Because of this, crews can be recruited in many different locations and can return to their home port periodically to be with their families. The fact that people belonging to different nations work together on the same ship is not a good indication that it is engaged in piracy.

However, to understand the issue of  multinational versus single nation crews, we need to better acquaint ourselves with the difference between piracy and privateering as generally understood at the time:

   Broadly defined, piracy was the unlawful taking of one vessel by another one. It was simple highway robbery on the seas. In time of war, however, the merchant trade of each combatant became the legitimate prey not only of its' opponents warships, but also of private armed vessels, or privateers. In order to finance its war efforts while damaging the economy of its enemies, a government issued letters of marque and reprisal to qualified vessels. The owners -- and often they were whole syndicates of investors -- armed, equipped, and crewed their ships at their own expense, and posted a hefty cash bond as guarantee that they would observe the rules of warfare and respect civilian life. The vessels were supposed to be commissioned in the home port of the commission-granting country. Their crews were supposed to be made up of a majority of men native to that country. They were to bring their prizes into the port of the commissioning country or a friendly country, where a court of admiralty would examine papers and other evidence to decide whether the prize was eligible for capture and lawfully taken. If the court awarded possession of the prize to its captors, the prize ship and its cargo were sold and the proceeds shared between the crew, the investors and the government whose flag the privateer flew. (Davis, The Pirates Laffite, pp. 28-29)

This is how Jean Laffite spelled Carthagena in his letter to Madison

What would it mean that a crew consisted of a "majority of men native" to a particular country?  This question is trickier than one would suppose, especially with new countries, such as Cartagena and the United States, the majority of whose adult citizens at the time were all born as the subjects of a European country (Britain or Spain) long before the new country came into being. Let us remember that in 1812, the United States was only 36 years old, and anyone below that age could not possibly have been born an American citizen. The Republic of Cartagena, whose independence was won in 1811, was only a year old at the time. Jean Laffite had a letter of marque from Cartagena, and he was not a native of that country, nor had he ever lived there when he accepted that commission.

The flag of Cartagena

The fact of the matter is that multinational crews typically worked on most private vessels, and that countries at war with each other do not always even recognize each others'  rights to grant citizenship. Britain was kidnapping and "impressing" American sailors all the time before war was declared, on the theory that "once a British subject, always a British subject."

How did you become a citizen of a country that only just now had come into being? One way was to have been born there. Another was naturalization. Some countries, like Switzerland, make it next to impossible for someone not born there to become a citizen. Others, like the United States, make people jump through a series of hoops, involving a combination of legal residence, affidavits by sponsoring citizens, a test on civics that has to be passed and ultimately an oath of loyalty. Other countries, such as Columbia during the period when Jean Laffite later came to live there (the 1820s), make it much easier to become a citizen. You merely have to show up and evince your willingness to serve.

How much should you have to give up in order to become a citizen? Can you still have other loyalties? Or should you have to tear from your heart all love and tenderness for your country of origin? Should you have to give up your language, your religion, your customs and your traditions? Theodore Roosevelt seemed to think so.

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Theodore Roosevelt, 1919.

When America was first founded, everyone was a new American, and people from other countries besides England, such as DuPont de Nemours, were welcomed with open arms. In the national archives, there is a letter from DuPont de Nemours in French to President Madison thanking him  for a Navy commission granted his grandson. President Madison was happy to help DuPont, and he did not lecture him about how maybe he should learn English first. Ironically, that letter is right next to the letter by Jean Laffite asking to be reimbursed for his stolen ships. Laffite's letter was in English, but it did contain a lot of misspellings. Laffite was trying to fit in, and DuPont was not.  Clearly something else was at play here when Laffite was rebuffed, but DuPont was rewarded than Theodore Roosevelt's linguistic jingoism. Nobody thought at the time that you had to speak English exclusively in order to be a good American.

Letter from Dupont to Madison

But as things progressed, fear of being overwhelmed by a majority of non-British immigrants began to upset many powerful people, and prejudice against others who spoke different languages at home or who belonged to a different religion became acceptable. It was not unusual for Catholics to be held in suspicion, because of their loyalty to the Pope, which was thought to conflict with their citizenship, or for Jews to have their religion cited as a reason why they could not serve in diplomatic positions abroad. The French speaking population of Louisiana was forced to stop speaking French by punishment for same in the public schools and many native American tribes suffered the same.

As this issue of nationality versus citizenship began to hold a more prominent place in the American imagination, Jean Laffite was faced with a quandary in his rulership over Galveston. How could he show that the crews of his vessels were not pirates, despite the fact that the sailors came from different races or nations and spoke different languages and believed in different creeds? The answer was a simple legalistic one: make them all swear loyalty to Jean Laffite's country and its flag.

Was Jean Laffite a tyrant when he did this? Not at all. He was an extremely tolerant man. He had no desire to change the people who worked for him into carbon copies of himself. He thought it was fine for them to speak different languages and worship different gods, as long as they served him well. But the legalistic expedient of the loyalty oath was a way to present a united front to the American legal system, which wanted to make sure everybody belonged to the same nation when they served together.

Which attitude was more truly American in spirit, Laffite's openness or the progressively more stifling stance of the American legal system?

American Diplomacy in the Wake of War

Diplomacy is  just one of the tools of war. At the bargaining table, many a nation has won more territory than it could possibly have conquered in a pitched battle. At the bargaining table, many a victor's gains have been squandered. Sadly, the United States has a long history of dumping friends in order to make "peace" with bullies.

Neutrality would be a very fine thing, if it meant not getting involved in other people's disputes. But under the pretext of maintaining "neutrality" the United States has often broken with its natural allies in order to appease its more powerful enemies.

Can you imagine going to war with France to help Britain, when only a few years earlier France helped you win your independence from Britain? That's what the administration of John Adams did without a declaration of war.

Or how about the way the Soviet Union ended up our ally in World War II and FDR divided up the world between himself and Stalin at Yalta? Was that in the best interest of US citizens? How?

 Or the way in which Israel is constantly being pressured to give up territory for the sake of peace, while simultaneously being offered bribes in the form of American financial aid at taxpayer expense? Would a powerful Israel not be a good thing for the US? How does using taxpayer money to bribe Israel not to defend itself from forces unfriendly to the US help American citizens? Does it make the price of oil go down? I don't think so.

 Or exactly why was it that  we severed diplomatic relations with our friend Taiwan in order to make peace with Mainland China? Wouldn't "neutrality" have demanded that we treat both China and Taiwan just exactly the same? Why do we have to stop being friends with Taiwan in order to offer friendship to China? Would a real friend ever ask that of us?

All of these actions are part of a pattern that was established very early on in the history of the United States. There is nothing new under the sun, except that diplomacy as practiced by the US State Department does not tend to promote the natural interests of the United States and often penalizes United States citizens who are taxed to support policies inimical to their own interests.

The treatment of Jean Laffite by the United States, both at Barataria and at Galveston, is a case in point. Having driven Laffite out of his territory at Barataria when he helped defend New Orleans from the British invaders, when he moved to Galveston where he served as a buffer against Spain the United States went on to demand that he leave again, and not so that United States forces could take possession, either. It was so that Spain could retain its holdings in Texas, and so that the United States could maintain its fragile "friendship" with Spain. Is that neutrality? Siding with the local bully against the underdog who is friendly to you?

This is my take on it. But what did Jean Laffite think? A few well chosen snippets from his journal will give us an idea.

In this section of the Journal, Jean Laffite is talking about the events that precipitated his expulsion from Galveston. They involve the Spanish Ambassador de Onis putting pressure on President Monroe.

Ambassador de Onis protested more violently and thus forced President Monroe to send agents to Texas to verify the settlement of French refugees without the power of General Lallemand and to prevent him from settling in United States territory.

George Graham, who gave himself the honors, was chosen for the mission.  Mr. Graham was involved in banking matters in Washington, and he was always ready for placement when the occasion presented itself. Mr. Graham did not sympathize with Luis de Onis.

So then Mr. de Onis protested to Secretary John Quincy Adams on the subject of the French invasion of Texas. Mr de Onis and Mr. Adams were able to come to an agreement on their points.

John Quincy Adams, like his father John Adams, sympathized with the British against the French. He was perhaps more nearly neutral about Spanish interests, but Ambassador de Onis knew Adams the younger rather well, and he knew how to manipulate him to see things his own way.

Mr. Adams did not make much noise on the subject of my commune, but when he learned that my corsairs seized British ships, then along with the rest of his cabinet, he protested.

Like his father before him, John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state under President Monroe, sympathized with the British. It was a historic preference inherited from his father, the second president. The Federalist John Adams favored Britain, while Democratic-Republican Jefferson had been sympathetic to  France. Nobody seemed to be neutral, each faction having its own preferences in the European power struggle. In fact, throughout the career of Jean Laffite, it seems that the struggle between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, even when it seemingly culminated in the demise of the Federalist party, was still a factor.  There are echoes of this in the Journal of Jean Laffite.

Jean Laffite writes:

George Graham, a venal political banker in Washington, arrived at Galveston one month before the hurricane. President Monroe had given him orders to study the form of justice and of the government that existed in my commune.

 He pretended to be an official envoy. I treated him with the greatest courtesy and received him with the best hospitality in the world. 

Mr. Graham stayed with me for two weeks.  He was of an agreeable disposition, and each day we hunted and fished together.

 He could not understand why I accorded equal rights to all, without considerations of nationality or religion.

He represented exactly the same type as Alexander Hamilton, opposed to the principles of Thomas Jefferson. 

George Graham told Jean Laffite that "the territory situated to the west of the Sabine River belonged to the United States which had not authorized me to establish  a commune of my choice to the west of that river."

Concerned that there might be some official sanction behind Graham's words, Jean Laffite set out to Washington, where he met with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. At the time, Adams was fifty-one years old and Jean Laffite was thirty-six. Adams told Laffite that he had not authorized Graham to speak to him or to ask him to clear out of Galveston. Mr Graham was acting alone and without the sanction of the United States government.

Mr. Adams affirmed that Mr. Graham was in banking, and was interested above all  in commercial loans and credit to private businesses and that he liked neither the ideas of Thomas Jefferson nor the system of Napoleon. 

Then again, John Quincy Adams can't have been all that taken with Thomas Jefferson or Napoleon, either. It would be amusing to hear with what tone of voice Adams said this.

John Quincy Adams as painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1818
from the Wikipedia

In the end, when public opinion had been turned entirely against Laffite after the Le Brave incident, and when Graham was again dispatched to tell him he must leave, this time in a more official capacity, Jean Laffite informed George Graham that his government was against England and Spain, and he would abandon Galveston only on the condition the United States would occupy the Antilles as well as Florida. George Graham replied that he was more interested in loans received from Spain than in annexing any of its territories.

From a page of the Journal that has been badly burned
Relevant text reads: "Nous informames Mr. Graham que notre gouvernment etait contre Espagne et l'Angleterre et que nous abondonerions qu'a la condition que les Etats Unis occuperaient L'Antilles et la Floridie."

Can you imagine someone more interested in the well-being of the United States than one who insists that before he can abandon his post as a bulwark against its foes,  the United States should take over more territory?

The story of Jean Laffite should stand as a warning to all external well-wishers of the American experiment, not to set too much store on the friendship of a government whose foreign policy is to neutralize its friends for the sake of doing business with its enemies.

What's Wrong with the Neutrality Acts of 1794, 1817 and 1976?

A neutrality act sounds on its face like a good thing -- an expedient that helps to prevent war. If a neutrality act actually prohibited the government of the United States from waging war without the consent of congress, and by extension, the American people, then it would be an innocent enough thing, and it would not add much to the requirement that the executive branch of the government should not wage war without the consent of the people through their elected representatives in Congress. But like many a mislabeled legislative package, the various neutrality laws that the United States has enacted over the years are not there to limit the government in its subrosa activities in waging clandestine or unauthorized war. Their purpose is to tie the hands of United States citizens. Instead of making the government practice a studied neutrality while Americans abroad can act as they will, the so-called neutrality laws are there to penalize ordinary Americans from acting against governments that the United States government has decided to support. That is not neutrality. That is partisanship on the part of the government! It is granting the United States government a monopoly on the right to defend American interests abroad, and it is tying the hands of citizens in their own business outside the territories of the United States.

The first neutrality act was passed by the United States Congress in 1794 under the administration of  George Washington. The continental congress had had a treaty with France, but in 1794 the Jay Treaty with Great Britain was ratified. France accused the United States of violating its treaty with them, because Great Britain and France were at war. Many Americans at the time were privateers, supporting the French Republican government. The French ambassador to the United States had been actively recruiting American privateers to fight against Spain and Great Britain, the enemies of France. All of a sudden, it was illegal for Americans to ply their trade as privateers in service of a country that had helped support their own revolution and brought about their independence!

Now one might argue that if such a policy brings about peace, the financial interests of the American privateers should be sacrificed in the name of absolute neutrality. But no such thing happened. Instead, during the administration of Washington's successor, the Federalist John Adams, the United States entered into a Quasi-War with France.

USS Constellation vs L'Insurgente -1799

from the Wikipedia

What is a Quasi-War, we may well ask? It means a war that is waged without a declaration, without ratification by Congress and by extension without the consent of the American people.

This undeclared war went on until 1800 when a peace was signed, and it was largely due to this war that Adams did not win reelection. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr won the election under the Democratic-Republican ticket. Unfortunately, their election did not lead to a repeal of the Neutrality Act of 1794, which Jefferson used against Burr in his trial of 1807. Unable to find  the civilian Burr guilty of treason because of his projected private expedition against New Spain, Jefferson did succeed in pinning him with a misdemeanor under the Neutrality Act.

And in order to keep the United States safe from the depredations of Britain, after the end of the Quasi-War with France, Jefferson resorted to the expedient of the Embargo Act. Now, not only were American citizens prohibited from waging war against other countries -- they were not even allowed to engage in international trade, because they could not defend themselves and there was no one else to defend them.

So we went from a constitution that limited the government from waging war without the consent of the people, but allowed citizens to possess any weapon for the purposes of a well-regulated militia so that the people could wage war on their own to a situation where citizens were completely disarmed in defending themselves on the open seas or even venturing forth for purposes of trade.

The constitution limited the government but left unlimited powers and rights to each citizen. But the new laws were used to do the exact opposite. This state of affairs led directly to the War of 1812. Unable to defend themselves, under the administration of James Madison, the people allowed Congress to ratify a declaration of War against Great Britain. Allowing the government to have a monopoly on waging war will always lead inevitably to war.

Who helped  the United States win that war? Privateers and smugglers acting in contravention of both the Neutrality Act and the Embargo Act. Privateers who asserted their second amendment rights to wage war, despite unconstitutional legislation. The arms they bore were not limited to muskets. They had cannons and warships, too.

If we want to understand how Neutrality Acts lead to war, and how a monopoly on waging war violates the rights of citizens under the constitution to defend themselves, then a good place to start might be with Theodosia and the Pirates.

This information is as applicable today, as it was in the 1800s. If there are interests of United States citizens that need defending abroad, hadn't we better let those citizens defend those interests with every means at their disposal, while keeping our government neutral? Let's repeal the Neutrality Act once and for all, so that we can have peace, while those who wish to wage war to defend their own interests can do so at their own expense.

Traditional Command Structure

Some people believe that anarchy is bad, because it leads to chaos. Those people cling to authoritarian regimes and institutions, because they think that is the only way order can be maintained. In fact, anarchy, if left to take its natural course, leads to traditional command structure in social groups. The problem with authoritarianism isn't the command structure. The problem is that natural selection processes have ceased to function. In an authoritarian regime, the command hierarchy has calcified into something that no longer functions.

http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/What-is-Dominance

In chimpanzee groups, leadership is fluid. In hunter-gatherer societies, people follow leaders only to the extent that they believe a particular individual whom they are following is going the right way. But as civilization becomes more entrenched, people stop judging for themselves what is true and what is false, and they delegate their thinking to institutions, traditions and authorities.

Real dominance is something a leader earns. It is not something inherited by virtue of race, sex, age, or social rank in a highly structured society. Yet when people talk about traditional family roles, they somehow assume that authority is what leads to dominance. Men dominate women, adults dominate children and employers dominate employees as a result of the structure of society, as opposed to the structure building itself out of the function that each person plays in the immediate social circle.

In Theodosia and the Pirates the difference between natural dominance and false authoritarianism is highlighted. The American Navy has the authority, but not the leadership ability to thwart the British in the War of 1812. The privateers under Jean Laffite have no authority, but they have the ability to do so and the true support of the people. Joseph Alston has the authority to command the local militia, by virtue of being the Governor of South Carolina, but not the ability to exercise that command. James Madison has the authority to secure a declaration of war, but not the natural abilities of a true warrior like Aaron Burr to be a good supreme commander.

Even within the sphere of the family, there is a difference between natural marriage and legal marriage. In a legal marriage in the nineteenth century, a man commanded his wife by virtue of her oath of obedience. However, many men were unequal to the task, as being male did not necessarily give them natural dominance over the women they married. Arguably, in many ways Dolley Madison was a better leader than her husband in times of war, even though she was not his intellectual equal as a scholar.

By the same token, though Theodosia was a far better scholar than Jean Laffite, she was not his equal in leadership under fire. It is for this reason, and not because of any authoritarian command issues or sexist preconceptions, that in this novel, Theodosia accepted Jean's leadership.

Excerpt from page 210 of Theodosia and the Pirates

Today, with all the egalitarian changes in the law that we have seen take place, people are still confused about these issues. The majority support authoritarianism in science and in education, because they fear anarchy. They do not seem to realize that if we just allow nature to take its course, the right leader will always arise in a time of crisis. People will follow not because they are compelled to do so by fear of reprisal, but because they want to do the right thing.