Benedict Arnold was a traitor, but was never tried as one. He switched sides twice during the revolutionary war. 

Benedict ArnoldBy Thomas Hart -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php

Aaron Burr was never a traitor, but he was tried and acquitted. That case, the United States v. Aaron Burr, is still precedent today. It maintains the very narrow constitutional definition of treason.

The definition of a traitor cannot be changed by case law or statute. Instead, it is found directly in Article Three, Section 3 of the constitution. However, if you are not a lawyer or a newly sworn in naturalized citizen of the United States, there is a big chance that you may not know this. One of the ironies of the American experience is that those born into it are often ignorant of the history.

Remembering Veterans

Today was Veterans Day. Julia Hanna told me about her two grandfathers, Grandfather Mike Hanna and Grandpa Fulkerson. They each served in World War II.

She also shared information about her great grandfather Moses Hanna who served in WWI, and who was awarded American citizenship after his service.

I spoke about Jean Laffite, who saved the United States in the Battle of New Orleans, whose ships were looted by the Navy, and who still chose to donate flints and gunpowder as well as artillery, but received no reward, not even citizenship. I also mentioned Aaron Burr who served in the Revolutionary War, but was not recognized as a veteran until very late in his life.

                                                   Related
http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2019/11/11/honoring-my-veteran-relatives-on-veterans-day/

Aaron Burr on Mary Shelley

Today is Mary Shelley's birthday. Remembered today as the author of Frankenstein, she didn't exactly spring fully made out of nowhere, catapulting into eternal fame. Long before she eloped with the poet Shelley, she was known as the daughter of Williiam Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, an Anarchist who married a proto-feminist.

The story of how Mary Shelley came to be Mary Shelley, is told in Theodosia and the Pirates, and it is narrated by none other than Aaron Burr.

Did you know that Mary Shelley is mentioned in Theodosia and the Pirates? #MaryShelley #AaronBurr #MaryWollstonecraft #WilliamGodwinhttps://t.co/QLaeeFFCt4 pic.twitter.com/5R1r1U67R7

— Aya Katz (@AyaKatz) August 30, 2019

Not Anti-War But Anti-Tyranny

War can be hell. But it is also something that many young men look forward to so they can test their mettle, men like Alexander Hamilton, who in a 1769 letter to a friend wrote: "I wish there was a war." (He apparently had not yet mastered the subjunctive.) In times of peace, young men often wish for war. In times of war, all men wish for peace.

Here is a song by Leslie Fish explaining why the wish for total peace, if granted, would lead to tyranny. We all want peace, but not at the price of a one world government.

Is it wrong to long for a war to break out just to gratify one's personal wish to go to war? Well, it is if you start a war just to make that happen! It is if you conscript and/or tax others to serve in that war without their consent. But it's not wrong,  if you are a privateer or a mercenary, and you offer your services to those who want them and would be willing to pay.

Who should pay for waging war? Those who want to wage war. That way we can put a cap on it. But it is not wrong for a young warrior to long to serve. It is not wrong for men and women who have that calling to pursue it.

In the video embedded below, I read from Nathan Alterman's poem "אמרה חרב הנצורים" --"Said the Sword of the Besieged".  The poem is from the point of view of a sword being wielded in a hopeless last battle, in which the warrior is killed.

In the discussion that ensues after the reading, my father, Amnon Katz, says: "The sword's entire purpose is battle. And it is happy to fulfill its purpose. Even under these tragic circumstances. But we get the impression that also the one who wields the sword is privy to these values and to this experience, to the glory of this bitter and awful hour." Is it wrong for a young man to long for battle? To sign up for voluntary military service? To hope for glory?

Both Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton served in the American Revolution. Both distinguished themselves. But Aaron Burr wanted always to be on the front lines, so when he was offered a desk job by George Washington, he turned it down. Hamilton was ambitious for advancement, so he took that job.

Both Jean Laffite and Aaron Burr served the US as volunteers. Neither of them did it for a "free" college education or for a salary. Laffite was never reimbursed for his contribution or for those things that were taken from him by force. For years, Aaron Burr was destitute after being persecuted by Jefferson, but as a veteran he was not entitled to a military pension. Finally, when Burr was very old, President Jackson granted him a small pension.

Is all war bad? Or only some wars? Is getting paid for war always bad? Shouldn't our soldiers be paid?

There are some Libertarians who seem to have serious problems with the idea that military service could be entered into in the hopes of going into battle or for pay.  In the video embedded below. Austin Petersen and Larry Sharpe discuss a recent anti-military statement by the Vice Chair of the Libertarian Party.

Not all libertarians are anti-military or anti-war. "Did you agree to kill people for money?" Austin Petersen asks Larry Sharpe.  Sharpe replied "War is evil. War is bad. ...Would I join now? No. I'm also not 17 years old anymore."

But is it wrong to be 17 years old and long to serve? I don't think so.  Should soldiers expect always to be penniless and to go begging when they are in want?

Why do we honor our soldiers only when we see them as poor and without compensation for their service? Why do we think that they deserve less than teachers or doctors? Is it because we are uncomfortable with the work they do? Or is it because public funding for anything corrupts?

Let us honor our soldiers and work toward a free country where they can ply their trade with their heads held high and with compensation that is not dependent on taxation.  We do not want a standing army, but we do need to have warriors who are well trained and ready to fight for us. If we repeal the Neutrality Act and the Logan Act, we can restore the freedom that volunteer soldiers like Aaron Burr fought for in the Revolutionary War!

RELATED

http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2017/05/you-get-what-you-pay-for.html

New Year, New Goals and a Video on Burr

In 2017, my goal is to refrain from writing new books, but to spend more time promoting the books I have already written or published. I also plan to support and promote the work of other writers, dead or alive, whose contributions I value.

With that in mind, I would like to share this video from the year 2000 of  Roger G. Kennedy talking about his book  Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character.

The video takes an hour to watch, and I hope you will set aside that time to watch it. For me, highlights from Kennedy's talk include his mention of the following points:

• at the time when Burr was successfully campaigning as an abolitionist, free blacks and women who owned property could vote in the state where Burr was soliciting their vote.
• when Burr suggested to Jefferson that women should be allowed to hold high office, Jefferson wrote back that this was something for which neither the public nor he himself were prepared.
• while Burr was promiscuous and insolvent -- vices he shared with Hamilton and Jefferson -- he was never mean or cruel to anyone. 
• Hamilton projected onto Burr all his own issues, and he used Burr as a means to commit suicide.
• Burr was a war hero as soon as the war began and preferred to serve in active combat than on George Washington's staff -- for which Washington never forgave him.
• Thomas Jefferson personally indicted Aaron Burr of treason. There was no grand jury. There was no inquiry or investigation. It was the one and only presidential indictment in American history.
• Burr was tried for treason three times, and all three juries acquitted him. One of those juries also indicted Jefferson for even bringing such baseless charges against Burr.
• People remember the charges leveled at Burr more than they remember the outcome of the cases brought against him
• The second historian was a revisionist. Any true historian looks for the truth, rather than repeating what someone else has written about the past.

Roger G. Kennedy was a great and engaging speaker, as well as a persuasive and scholarly writer. He died in 2011. When asked in the year  2000 what contemporary politician reminded him of Burr, he said "Adlai Stevenson." This rather startled me. For one thing, I don't even think of Adlai Stevenson as contemporary. For another, the man was a progressive Democrat  -- not my cup of tea. But Roger Kennedy was on Dwight D. Eisenhauer's campaign staff, so Stevenson was a contemporary of his. And Kennedy also worked for Bill Clinton, so he seems to have been quite versatile, ideologically speaking.

Realizing that I am well out of my depth in evaluating Kennedy's life and politics, I nevertheless submit that he has made a meaningful contribution to Aaron Burr scholarship. For this I commend him. 

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?

We Annexed Texas the Right Way

Davy Crockett

Yesterday was a Friday, and at The Libertarian Republic I posted a list of the top five libertarian war heroes. Even though the list format tends to promote facile generalizations, I am happy with the article I wrote, and so I want to share it here.

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/top-5-libertarian-war-heroes/

Even though the biographies of the five men are short and superficial, using the list format enabled me to make the following point about the Neutrality Act and about how the annexation of Texas was done the right  way:

The United States was founded on the principle that residents of a geographic area should be allowed to decide for themselves how they want to be governed. It was also founded with the help of volunteers from elsewhere, like the Marquis de Lafayette, who fought in the American Revolution, just because he liked the ideas the Americans espoused. At the very start of the Republic, it was understood that any individual American could decide for himself what foreign wars he wanted to fight in and what Empire or regime he wanted to help topple, without asking for permission from the government of the United States. That's why American privateers fought on behalf of the French against Britain at a time when the United States was at peace with Britain. But wanting to put an end to this, in the Jay Treaty negotiations, Britain lobbied for the passage of the Neutrality Act, thereby putting an end to the legal pursuit of foreign policy by individual Americans for fun and profit. But this did not mean that Americans stopped trying. Aaron Burr was one example of somebody who wanted to help Hispanic colonists to liberate themselves from Spain. Long after Jefferson had ruined Burr, there were Mexican revolutionaries still writing the former Vice President letters asking for his help in their liberation from Spain. Jean Laffite, the smuggler and privateer, founded Galveston as a stronghold against Spain. But... just as they had done when he contributed to the defeat of the British in the Battle of New Orleans, the American government drove him away from Galveston so that they could give Texas to Spain on a silver platter under the terms of the Adams-Onis treaty. The United States did not drive Laffite out because they wanted Galveston for themselves. In fact, if it had been up to the American government, Texas would never have belonged to the U.S. But men like Davy Crockett and Sam Houston, when they got fed up with the corruption in Washington D.C. and opposed President Jackson's Indian Removal Act, went to help the Mexicans in Texas liberate themselves from what was now Mexico. They formed their own government, and the Republic of Texas eventually chose willingly to be annexed by the United States.

That's the story. And by looking at the biographies of the five men on my list in close succession, I think that you can see it is a single story with a unified plot line.  The theme of the story is individuals fighting against foreign governments, whether their own government allows it or not.

The Louisiana Purchase had been unconstitutional, precisely because entry into the Union was supposed to be voluntary. You were not supposed to be able to buy new territories and new constituents at the expense of the taxpayers. Jefferson was afraid that Burr was out to steal the territories that he bought, by turning the residents in those territories against the idea of eventually being annexed into the United States. This was completely untrue. Burr was going after fresh new territory south of the border. He was doing it at his own expense, without getting the United States into debt and without conscripting a single soldier.

But let's face it: Talking to the people living in American-held territories and suggesting that they might not want to be annexed would not have been treason. So even if Burr had been plotting what Jefferson thought he was plotting, it would not have been wrong.

Lots of people today do not know that Texas independence from Mexico was achieved through the rebellion of the people who lived in Texas against Mexico, including most Hispanic residents. It was not some Anglo-led plot to hurt Hispanics. It was the exact opposite of the policy being pursued by Andrew Jackson against the Cherokee nation. The government of the new Republic of Texas was inclusive.

If Davy Crockett and Sam Houston had obeyed the Neutrality Act, Texas would never have joined the Union at no cost to the taxpayers of the United States. The Neutrality Act should be repealed, so that Americans can continue to help others abroad when they choose, without involving the rest of us against our will.

But the other side of all this is that the idea of secession is something Jefferson was afraid of as early as his second term. A lot of Southerners don't know this. Once you start behaving like a Statist, buying and selling territories and the people in them, it makes you paranoid. Andrew Jackson's martial law during the Battle of New Orleans was something that happened because he did not really trust the people of Louisiana not to betray the United States to the British. He completely misunderstood them, lumping all "foreigners" together. He could not see how the French speaking population of the territory that had newly been annexed actually hated the British. But when you try to impose yourself on others, you also tend to think the worst of them.

The Neutrality Act did more harm than just destroying the individual careers of specific privateers. It put us on the slippery slope to the loss of all our civil liberties, because there in black and white in the body of the Statute the right of people to decide for themselves what government to support and which one to fight against was abridged. It undercuts the very reason for the American Revolution. It meant that we all came under the thumb of  foreign empires, if once our government negotiated a treaty with them. Thank goodness that real patriots like Sam Houston  never paid any attention to this law.

Austin Petersen on Religion

I've been too busy writing  libertarian articles to keep up much with this blog, but I would like to share an unusual interview that Austin Petersen just gave which focuses on his religion or lack thereof. Too many people who are atheists are left wing liberals. Too many people with the right views on property rights and free trade are also very committed to Christianity and often unable to disengage from it long enough to understand the first amendment. Austin Petersen is not afraid to come out in favor of freedom, and yet admits he is not a believer.

Watching the Apologia TV interview with Austin Petersen, I noticed how very much like one of our Founding Fathers he is. No, not Washington or Jefferson or Adams. Someone more outspoken and different and the grandson of a great theologian. Of course, I'm talking about Theodosia's father, Aaron Burr.

Thomas Jefferson may have been just as much an agnostic as Burr, but he hid behind language that made him sound like a Creationist. Who again was it he said had endowed man with rights? Burr was not militantly anti-religious, but he was also no hypocrite. He was cordial to religious people, and yet he did not lie to them. Even on his deathbed.

We had one chance to have an open non-believer as president when Burr was in the running. In 2020, we may get another opportunity, if Austin Petersen runs for president again.

When Not Voting is More Important than Voting: Election of 1800

In most elections, it is more important to vote for the candidate you want than against the one you do not want. But there was one point in American history, when abstaining from voting for your choice of Vice President was the only way to elect a President of the United States that you wanted. That was the election of 1800, when Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson were tied for President -- and all because the party leaders forgot to tell one of the electors not to vote for Vice President.

The way the constitution was originally set up, the person getting the most votes for president in the electoral college was to be the president, and the one with the second highest number of votes  -- like the first runner up in a beauty pageant -- was to be the Vice President. This made sense to a group of founding fathers who were hoping there would be no political parties, and people would just vote for the man they liked best. Under such a system, for instance, John Adams, if he were not re-elected as president, might still end up being the Vice President of the United States, if he won the second highest number of electoral votes for president.

However, the Federalist Adams was very unpopular in 1800, and both the candidates from the opposing Democratic-Republican Party beat him handily --  and that's how Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson ended up tied for President of the United States.

People who dislike Aaron Burr, including Jefferson and his historical apologists, have accused Burr of campaigning against Jefferson, but in fact, that's not how it happened. It happened because somebody at Party Headquarters forgot to instruct one of the electors to abstain from voting for Burr, the party's choice for Vice President.

In order for Burr to get the VP job, he had to beat Adams, but not have an equal or greater number of votes than Jefferson. Those were the constitutionally ordained facts that held at that time. Though this was set up for individuals voting their conscience, the well accepted way for groups to get around this system was by knowing in advance which of their numbers was to cast one vote less for the VP. And if the Democratic-Republican Party acting in concert wanted to achieve this goal, they had to keep from having every elector who supported the party vote for both men on their ticket.

This is the nature of collective action: as each man voted for the candidates of his choice, each believed he was being loyal to his party. Each one may have thought someone else would abstain from voting for Burr. And then all hell broke loose, because guess what? The Federalists decided they liked the second choice of the Democratic-Republicans better than their first choice. So when the tie breaking votes had to be cast, they set about trying to sway the electors to vote for Burr!

Because of what happened during that election, the constitution was changed, and the vice president, instead of being the second runner-up -- is just a stooge for the president. The amendment in question was a capitulation to the political reality of a two party system.

 Can we break through this year and elect a third party candidate? I support Austin Petersen and hope he will be elected President. But I am not sure, if that happens, whether we may not just end up changing the two major parties to be the Democrats and Libertarians, rather than the Republicans and the Democrats.  Is there any way we can also opt out of having only two parties? Or even having any parties? Could we ever get to the point where each of us just votes for the best person for the job?

Related Articles

http://www.historiaobscura.com/one-vote-made-thomas-jefferson-president/

The Argument for Privateering Today

A Blimp of the same class as the Resolute

One of the cultural features that characterized warfare in the twentieth century was the virtual absence of privateers. Arguably, there were a few privateers, but even that has been discounted recently. The current entry on privateering in the Wikipedia says:

20th century

In December 1941 and the first months of 1942, Goodyear commercial L class blimp Resolute operating out of Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, flew anti-submarine patrols. As the civilian crew was armed with a rifle, many thought this made the ship a privateer, and that she and sister commercial blimps were operated under letter of marque until the Navy took over operation.^[32] Without congressional authorization, the Navy would not have been able to legally issue any letters of marque.

The last time I read this entry, prior to writing my novel Theodosia and the Pirates, it was much more positively in favor of the the idea that the blimp in question was issued a letter of marque. But whether or not the United States government did issue such a document authorizing the deployment of the Resolute is not the only question we should ask. Because in point of fact, historically many well known American privateers received their letters of marque from governments other than that of the United States. For instance, Jean Laffite had a letter of marque from the Republic of Cartagena. Later, he awarded other privateers letters of marque as head of the government in Galveston, as described in Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain. 

Recently, Austin Petersen, who is competing with two others for the Libertarian nomination for president of the United States, spoke at great length about the idea of issuing letters of marque and reprisal without declaring war against any nation. This way we can go after terrorists without starting a war. I am certainly in favor of that.

 Petersen mentioned the War of 1812 and American privateers, but not Jean Laffite, the most  important privateer contributor to that war on the American side. Is it because Laffite was not issued a letter of marque by the United States government? His letter of marque from the Republic of Cartagena allowed him to go after Spanish ships at a time when the United States had not declared war against Spain, even as Spain and Britain plotted together to take down the United States and return America to its status as a British colony. When Captain Lockyer approached the Baratarian privateer with an offer from the British, the letters he bore said that England had a treaty with Spain and had not an enemy in the world except the United States. He offered Laffite a chance to earn money and a position in the British Navy, but Laffite turned it down, because he wanted to be an American and an independent privateer, not a government employee. Laffite informed the United States of the British offer and of the British fleet's current location off the coast of Mobile. Instead of going after the British, the American Navy then attacked Laffite and his fleet of light privateering ships. Why? Because already privateering had gone into disrepute, and people like Commodore Daniel Patterson saw private fleets as an infringement on the career Navy officer's prerogative to a monopoly on waging war. 

Patterson did not use the ships he plundered from Laffite to fight the British. He sold them at auction to line his own pockets. But Laffite nevertheless managed to save the United States at the Battle of New Orleans by providing flints and gunpowder, which the Americans had run out of, as well as artillery and men to man it. And when his service was done, all he was granted for it was an empty pardon, and a flippant fare-thee-well. He was never compensated for his looted ships, and in the history books he has gone down as a pirate.

There are many reasons to prefer privateers over a standing army, not the least of which are these:

• Privateers can run a fleet on a shoestring budget, and always at their own expense. It is the enemy that pays their wages, not the American people.
• Privateers are a volunteer force, so nobody has to be drafted and nobody has to be taxed, and nobody need lose life or limb who does not get a share in the booty.
• Privateers can take care of business while the United States maintains neutrality, but this can only work if they are allowed to use letters of marque issued by countries other than the United States.

This last point is the one under contention between those like Austin Petersen, who favors privateering, and the vast majority of the American political establishment, who are against it. Neither side is very good at articulating what the problem is, so I will spell it out for you here: We must repeal the Neutrality Act so we can go back to the state of privateering at the time when the United States came into being.

http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2014/03/whats-wrong-with-neutrality-acts-of.html

For an in depth discussion of the Neutrality Act, read the article linked above. But here is a short recap. At the time the constitution of the United States came into effect, there was nothing to keep individual US citizens from fighting on any side they wished of any war going on anywhere in the world.  Many American privateers had letters of marque from France that allowed them to wage open war against Britain on the high seas. This was legal and moral and made sense, because France had helped the United States win its war of independence against Britain.

Now the government of the United States was not at war with  Britain. In fact, they were at peace. But it was legal and lawful and right for each citizen to pursue his own foreign policy, none of them binding the United States or bringing about any breach in the peace. The constitution provides that the executive branch cannot go to war unless Congress authorizes an official declaration of war. But the constitution also provides that any powers not granted to the United States government explicitly are reserved to the States and to the people. And by "the people" the constitution does not mean "collectively" as in "People's Republic of China" where everybody has to agree in order for one person to do something. "The People" in the United States constitution refers to the individual citizens, one by one. Any of them could go to war any day they wished, so long as the US as a whole was not involved in it. And this is exactly what Americans did, until 1794 when the Neutrality Act was passed.

Who lobbied for the Neutrality Act? Why, Britain, of course! They did not want to be beset by those pesky American privateers, so they threatened the United States diplomatically, saying the peace between our two nations depended on the passage in the United States congress of a law outlawing privateering. Should we let Britain make our laws? What good was the revolutionary war, if they can dictate terms from afar?

The Neutrality Act does not outlaw privateering if the United States picks a side in a foreign war and grants letters of marque to Americans to go to war against declared enemies. But it makes it illegal for an individual American to go to war against a country with which the United States is at peace.

Jefferson initially opposed the Neutrality Act. It was Adams who wanted it, so he could pursue an undeclared Quasi-War against  France. Jefferson and Burr came to power after Adams' one single term in office, on a platform of repealing all those laws that the Federalists had put into effect in order to quash anyone who opposed Britain. But... Jefferson forgot all about that when Aaron Burr set out to conquer Mexico as a private citizen, acting at his own expense. Did you know that Burr was found not guilty of treason, but guilty of violating the Neutrality Act? When it served Jefferson's purposes, the law passed at the behest of Britain was allowed to stand.

http://www.historiaobscura.com/the-meaning-of-treason-united-states-v-aaron-burr/

Privateering came more and more under attack after the War of 1812, largely due to international accords that went contrary to the United States constitution. Today, most people do not know the difference between a pirate and a privateer. This situation will not be remedied unless we deal with the Neutrality Act head on. It is unconstitutional, as it abrogates the rights reserved to the people in that document. But you can be sure that no Supreme Court Justice, conservative or liberal, is going to rule it unconstitutional, because they are all Statists, right wing or left. So it is up to Congress to repeal it, once the Libertarian Party takes over.

The Role of John Quincy Adams in the Lives of Aaron Burr and Jean Laffite

John Quincy Adams, I think, was probably a very troubled man. We know there was good in him, because of his role in the Amistad case.  He was right to argue in favor of kidnapped Africans in their fight to liberate themselves, and in this matter I think that Aaron Burr and Jean Laffite would both be in agreement with him.

However, when it came to his treatment of Aaron Burr and Jean Laffite, he was not so upstanding. There, instead of fighting for the underdog -- the person whose rights had been trampled upon unfairly by the ruling party -- John Quincy Adams came out squarely in favor of the establishment.

When Aaron Burr had already been acquitted in his trial for treason earlier that year, John Quincy Adams, then serving in the Senate, made a  motion on the floor toward the end of 1807 when he was forty years old concerning "the conspiracy of Aaron Burr and his associates against the peace, union and liberties of the United States". He was trying to expel John Smith of Ohio from the Senate on the grounds that he had been a supporter of Burr. (Kennedy 1999.378).

Senator Hillhouse of Connecticutt rose up to reply to Adams: "Where is the evidence whereon we can ground a vote which is to disrobe a Senator from his office and of his honor? ... Nothing but jealousy, ... that jealousy that frequently attaches itself to a charge of treason."

What was John Quincy Adams so jealous about, that it required him to charge Burr anew of the treason of which he had just been acquitted in a trial by his peers? Could it be that he held the election of 1800 against Burr in the same way that Jefferson did? Burr had soundly beaten John Adams,  the Quincy's father, in votes to the presidency. He had tied with Jefferson. Could this have won him the enmity of both the younger Adams as well as his own running mate?

In Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain, Theodosia warns Jean Laffite that John Quincy Adams cannot be trusted.

At the time, John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State under President Monroe and he was negotiating a treaty with the Spanish Ambassador de Onis. The Adams-Onis Treaty set the western border between Spain and the United States at the Sabine River in return for Spain giving up Florida.

Effectively, what John Quincy Adams did was to trade Texas for Florida. There was just one problem: Texas did not belong to the United States. Texas was a separate sovereign nation, under the leadership of Jean Laffite.

When  Patterson of the US Navy sent Kearney on The Enterprise  to clear out the Laffites from Galveston, they were not doing it on behalf of the United States, as the United States had given up all claim to that territory. They were acting on behalf of Spain, as promised by John Quincy Adams!

It is perhaps a fitting biographical note that John Quincy Adams died of apoplexy suffered in 1848 while denying American servicemen recognition for their service in the Mexican-American War, to which he had been opposed. I believe that if John Quincy Adams had had his way, the United States would be much smaller than it currently is. He opposed the Burr expedition that was meant to liberate Texas from Spain. He opposed the right of Jean Laffite to govern Galveston, which Laffite was doing as a service to the United States. And he opposed every other territorial expansion in the western direction, if it meant taking territory that he had preemptively given away under his treaty with de Onis.

RELATED ARTICLES
.

Kennedy, Roger G. ,Burr, Hamilton and Jefferson: A Study in Character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1800

http://www.pubwages.com/14/the-character-of-aaron-burr-a-review

http://www.historiaobscura.com/the-meaning-of-treason-united-states-v-aaron-burr/

The Presidential Election of 1800

Even though the framers of the constitution did not make any mention of political parties, the party system emerged very early on in the history of American politics, and by the  fourth quadrennial presidential election two parties dominated the scene: the Federalists, whose leaders were John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

Because the framers of the constitution did not anticipate the rise of political parties, they provided that each member of the Electoral College could cast two votes for president, and that the person with the highest number of votes would be the new president, and the person with the second highest number of votes would be the new vice president. The reasoning behind this rule was that it would maximize the possibility that a person with a majority of national support would be elected president. (When people vote by the party and not by the person, the possibility of getting a majority is much greater, as electors never even consider voting for people that the major parties have not thrown their support behind.) It was thus that in 1800 the incumbent president was John Adams, a Federalist, and the incumbent Vice President, Thomas Jefferson was his rival, a Democratic-Republican.

In preparation for the election, each of the two major parties had a plan and a "ticket". Despite the fact that the constitution expected each candidate to run on his own and for the second runner up to be vice president, that is not at all how the major players in the election of 1800 organized themselves. Each party had a presidential candidate and a chosen running mate.

John Adams chose Charles Cotes Pinckney of South Carolina as his running mate. (He could not have chosen Alexander Hamilton, because Hamilton was foreign born, and thus ineligible to hold the office of president .) Thomas Jefferson chose Aaron Burr, of New York, as his running mate. Notice that they tried to keep things even between the North and the South: the presidential candidate from the North, Adams, chose a southerner for his running mate. The presidential candidate from the South, Thomas Jefferson, chose a northerner for his running mate. But make no mistake about it: despite the provisions in the constitution, there was a presidential ticket for each party that included a presidential and a vice presidential candidate. And in order to make sure that the right guy wound up president from their own slate, each party instructed one of their electors to vote against the vice presidential candidate of their choice, lest he get the exact same numbers as the presidential candidate.

But in 1800 something went wrong.  Things did not go as planned at party headquarters. The person on the Democratic-Republican side who had been instructed to vote against Aaron Burr forgot or changed his mind, and Jefferson and Burr tied for president, each with 73 electoral votes. In the Federalist party, Hamilton and Adams were not acting in unison, which may be one of the reasons why the Federalists lost their hold on the presidency.

The issues in the election centered on the Federalist support of England against France, which resulted in the use of the Neutrality Act to prevent American privateers from serving the French interests, while the American government was engaged in a Quasi-War with France. And to make sure that people did not complain about this, the Federalists had passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. All of these were highly unpopular measures, which is why the Democratic-Republicans were the clear winners. But while everybody was tired of the tyranny of the Adams administration, and most Americans did not want to be satellites of England, there was also concern that Thomas Jefferson might be a Jacobin, and that his presidency might result in a loss of property rights as was suffered by the bourgeoisie under the French Revolution. That is why certain people, some of them Federalists,  were campaigning behind closed doors to make Aaron Burr the president, and Thomas Jefferson the Vice President.

However, that was not Aaron Burr's doing, and he was an honorable man. He had promised to run with Jefferson as the vice presidential candidate, and though he had a chance to grab the presidency, he did not. He instructed his supporters in the House of Representatives to throw in their votes for Thomas Jefferson in the follow-up election of 1801. At this point, the Federalist supporters of Adams had been voting for Burr, while the faction of the Federalists that Hamilton controlled voted for Jefferson. Abigail Adams, in one of her letters, expressed the thought that Burr would make a pretty good president.

Thomas Jefferson, even though he did win the election, never forgave Burr for almost upstaging him, and the next time he ran for president, he did not choose Burr as a running mate. Another, far more permanent result of this election was that the constitution was amended. No more was the vice president to be the person with the second  highest number of votes for president. From now on, vice presidents would be elected separately from presidents, thereby acknowledging the practical power of the political party.

Today, most people do not know about any of this. Some say it's a shame we have political parties, since that was not envisioned by the founding fathers. Not envisioned perhaps, but all the founding fathers who ran for office were involved in political parties, so while they may not have wanted them to exist for the other side, they certainly did use them when they themselves were running. People also do not remember that Burr and Jefferson were running mates on the same political party slate. Some contrarians even remember that the president and vice president were elected in the same election, but they do not remember that in order to get around the rules they themselves had made, founding fathers like Adams and Jefferson instructed their political flunkies to cast one vote for somebody they did not want elected at all, just so there would be a clear presidential winner on their party slate distinct from the vice presidential winner.

The historical facts can be quite astonishing. Sometimes it pays to revisit them.

RELATED ARTICLES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1800

http://www.pubwages.com/14/the-character-of-aaron-burr-a-review

http://www.historiaobscura.com/the-meaning-of-treason-united-states-v-aaron-burr/

The Right to Resist Illegal Searches, Seizures and Arrests

Sometimes discretion is the better valor. Sometimes we cooperate with an authority figure or an armed robber or a bully in order to avoid the immediate bodily injury that would ensue if we didn't. That's a choice that every person has the right to make based on the circumstances, and it is not a good idea to judge other people on their failure to put up a fight when they had every right to. Not everybody is equally as brave. Not everybody is equally as good at martial arts. Not everybody can resist. And besides, it is wrong to blame the victim. But what about the other side of the coin? What if someone does stand up to the bully, the robber or the authority figure acting outside the law? Shouldn't we have that right? And shouldn't the law reviewing the case after the fact come down on the side of the resister using force to protect his or her constitutional rights? If we are not allowed to use force and arms to protect our rights, what good are they, anyway?

In the wake of the Sandra Bland incident, Lew Rockwell had the following "legal" advice to give:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/07/steve-silverman/be-prepared-to-flex-your-rights/

The advice boils down to this: you should not consent to an illegal search, you should voice your lack of consent clearly, but you should also not resist the search. This is about the same as telling a rape victim that she should loudly proclaim her lack of consent while passively submitting to a rape.

One of the reasons this advice is given is in order to later help exclude evidence found during the search.

If police search your car and find illegal items despite your refusal, your lawyer can file a motion to suppress — or throw out — the evidence in court. If the judge agrees that the officer’s search violated the 4th Amendment’s probable cause requirements, she’ll grant the motion. Unless the prosecution has other evidence, your charges would be dismissed.

But what if your objection to the illegal search has nothing to do with any contraband in your possession or evidence of a crime? What if you really have nothing to hide, except that you want your right to be free from illegal searches and seizures upheld? What if you're shy, and you don't want other people to see your stuff? What if being searched makes you feel violated?

The rules set down in the constitution and in the bill of rights were not meant to be some kind of technicality to get criminals off the hook in a trial. They were not meant as a legal trick to nullify bad drug laws. They were supposed to help citizens feel secure in their persons and their property . They were meant to guarantee that Americans would not be bullied and harassed in their own homes or their own turf by their government, in the way that they had been before by the redcoats. That was the purpose. Unless these rights can be protected by force of arms, they don't really exist.

I dealt with this issue in the wake of the Le Brave case in Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain. 

The result of many an encounter between government forces and ordinary citizens is that the moment the government decides to violate rights, any resistance is deemed a cause for arrest and prosecution. In this way, even if there were no original reasons for arrest, justification can always be trumped up.

The same sort of reasoning was used in the Burr case, when even though Burr and his men never levied war on the United States, and never intended so to do, resisting arrest was seen as levying war against the government. Justice Marshall did not ever rule on this aspect of the case, because he merely found that since Burr was not there when his men were resisting arrest, he was not responsible for their actions. This left the way open for every atrocity since which was based on resistance to tyranny as an act of war against the state.

When the ATF agents climbed in through the window at Mt. Carmel, they had a sealed warrant that they did not bother to share with the Branch Davidians. The Davidians had every right to fire at strangers breaking into their home. But they were deemed to be in the wrong, because you are not allowed to resist the government, even if you don't know it's the government.

That is what is wrong with our constitutional rights at the moment -- that they exist only on paper and not in reality. With mottos like those of Lew Rockwell -- anti-state, anti-war, pro-market -- we can never win our rights back, Passive capitulation is not the answer.

Do You Have to Be at Home to Homeschool?

I was reading a blog the other day in which a mother who devoted her entire day to homeschooling her two boys felt overwhelmed, and she did not seem to be able to accomplish anything else in her life.

I thought back to the time when I was home schooled by my own father, from age thirteen to age sixteen. My father did not stay home to homeschool me. He continued to work. My mother was the one who stayed at home and prepared the meals and made sure that the household ran smoothly. But my mother was not my teacher. She did  not supervise my lessons or grade them or do anything that pertained to my school work. She did prepare my lunch, and she took care of my much younger brother all day. But my father was the headmaster of our school, and he taught all the classes, except for English. Because he was not a native speaker of English, he delegated that task to an English teacher who came by once a week.

                                                     Me in my home school T-shirt
                                                     Our school was named after the Israeli poet

Once a week, on Sunday, my father would have a long teaching session with me. Sometimes he was quite frustrated with my lack of talent in mathematics. Sometimes I was quite frustrated by his uncompromising teaching method that did not adapt to my limitations. But even though I did not accomplish everything he had hoped for me, the homeschooling was not a complete failure, as I was able to gain knowledge of history and languages and literature that is far greater than most American students get in high school. At sixteen, I began college.

Whatever regrets my father may have had about the homeschooling experiment, his entire self-worth was not tied into it, as he never gave up his life's work to engage in it, and he continued working on many other projects, both at his place of employment and at home, while he was also running our little home school. He was not so overwhelmed that everything else fell by the wayside. And as a result, I also did not see him as exclusively my teacher or caretaker. In fact, even when he was my only teacher, he was never my babysitter.

I got to know my father as a person, and I did not judge him solely on his success or failure as a teacher -- or as a parent. I was very much aware of his other accomplishments

                                          My father and I at the airport with one of his planes
                                          Aza, our dog, is careful as she approaches.

The same thing, I believe, was true of the relationship of Theodosia Burr with her father.

http://www.historiaobscura.com/aaron-burr-as-a-father/

Burr directed Theodosia's studies while serving in the Senate and was always correcting her compositions, even from a distance. However, his duties as a father did not keep him from following other pursuits and having a career of his own.  He was not so overwhelmed by directing his daughter's studies that he could accomplish nothing else.

One of the problems with today's conception of homeschooling is that it attempts to replace the public schools, and the public schools keep students occupied all day long, because one of their main functions is to babysit children, replacing the stay at home mother or nanny, more so than the tutor or the father who directs a child's studies while doing something else, too.

Parents do not have to be nannies in order to be good parents. Those who instruct their children do not have to stay home, and even if they do stay home, they can follow other pursuits. A teacher, to be a good teacher, does not have to keep a child occupied all day long. Even a mother who stays home is entitled to some time to herself. But in order to let the mother have that time, you also need to loosen the reins on the children. They need to have some free time, too.

Slide Show from Presentation before the Laffite Society

I gave a talk before the Laffite Society this Tuesday. It was all about how the changing laws concerning privateering -- and also filibustering -- affected the career of Jean Laffite. I am not going to set forth the content of my talk here, as I plan to submit that by the end of the year to Laffite Society for publication. However, the talk was accompanied by a slide show, and I will share some of the slides to give you some idea of what the talk covered. I will also comment on the content of the slides from the perspective of how this information was acquired, and how it relates to my own life and my process as a writer.

The next slide actually shows something from one of my many notebooks that helps to document the trajectory of my interest in Jean Laffite. I had been planning to write a book entitled Theodosia and the Pirates for a very long time, ever since I read Gore Vidal's Burr when I was sixteen. But it was not the first thing on my list. I was thinking that it would be kind of a light book, after I had finished writing all the truly important books about justice and honor and freedom. So it was always planned to be something that I would write toward the end of my life, as a kind of reward to myself. I knew that Theodosia was going to be the heroine. But which pirate should she meet?

Here in this notebook, while I was still engaged in writing the first half of Our Lady of Kaifeng, I jotted some notes about what I wanted Theodosia and the Pirates to be about.

Theodosia Burr Alston

Find a famous real life pirate from that era and relate the events of his life to the story of Theodosia after she was lost at sea. 

This is the story of what happens when none of our dreams come true and we have to give up World Conquest. 

It is about the life of contentment  and spontaneous happiness that is possible only after everything else goes wrong and we lose all hope.

 That was written on May 12, 2007. At the time, my daughter was almost eight, and Bow, the chimpanzee, was five. We had not had the breakthrough yet that catapulted him to literacy. The scribbling on the top right hand page from the notebook was by Bow. He always wanted to write if I was writing, although one could not make out anything in what he scribbled.We had just moved into the pen system, and both Bow and I were feeling depressed.

That was in May of 2007. By July of that same year, Bow had an enormous breakthrough. Though my original online article about this has been de-indexed, you can still read it on the Reddit Mirror.

http://www.redditmirror.cc/cache/websites/hubpages.com_7q880/hubpages.com/hub/Bow-and-Literacy.html

After Bow's breakthrough, I was busy documenting everything that happened with his language acquisition and submitting an article to Nature. I was also attending conferences with other primatologists and discussing my findings, and for a while there was great excitement in the air about Bow. And then all of that fizzled out. I could prove nothing, and it was all dismissed as Clever Hans.

In the meanwhile, I finished writing the first half of Our Lady of Kaifeng, and eventually I rediscovered my writing notebook with the entry on Theodosia and the Pirates. And somehow or other I went back to thinking about poor Theodosia, lost at sea, and how I needed a pirate to save her.

That is why on the right hand page, right under all that scribbling by Bow, I ended up writing this on  April 6, 2009: "The real life pirate will be Jean LaFitte."

I still knew very little about him. I could not even spell his name correctly. But I knew it could be nobody else. And that's when my focus, which up till then had been on Bow's literacy and on the inmates of an internment camp in Shandong Province in World War II, began to shift. And all of the sudden I absolutely needed to know everything there was to know about Jean Laffite. I ordered The Journal of Jean Laffite in the original from the library in Liberty, Texas and I read and re-read William C. Davis's The Pirates Laffite, and everything else that I could get my hands on concerning Laffite. And gradually it dawned on me: he was not a pirate! And what's more, I had met him before somewhere. He was familiar. He felt like home.

I suddenly began to understand that a momentous change had happened in the interpretation of the constitutional provisions of how war was to be waged and financed and what powers belonged to the government and what powers belonged to the people.  I began to see how it was that right at first, prior to the passage of the first Neutrality Act in 1794, Congress had to grant the right to declare war to the US government, but private citizens did not need permission from anybody to wage war, since all powers not granted to the Federal government were reserved to the states and to the people.

And then one day the Neutrality Act of  1794 was passed, to make it easier for the United States to please Britain in the Jay Treaty.

I never liked the Neutrality Act, because of how it affected Aaron Burr's plans to become emperor of Spain. But it was not against Aaron Burr that this law was actually designed. Both the Federalists and the British were deeply afraid of the Jacobins who were now running rampant in France under Maximilien de Robespierre, and they wanted to make sure the madness did not spread to England and beyond.  The Neutrality Act was, among other things, meant to discourage American privateers under a letter of marque from France from harrying the British when they were at peace with the United States, and it was invoked by John Adams in his undeclared Quasi-War against France.

The American privateers who had private interests in conflict with the foreign policy of the president  of the United States were not pirates. Or were they? And what exactly was the difference?

Jean Laffite, when he met Theodosia in my book,  on New Year's Day  1813, had a privateering license from Cartagena. No, not the one in Spain. The one in Colombia. Only there was no Colombia then, and the Republic of Cartagena had only in 1811 become free of Spain.

Of course, before that, before he had a privateering license from Cartagena, Jean Laffite had been a smuggler under the Embargo Act of 1807, which was Thomas Jefferson's way of keeping the United States out of war.

The public hated the Embargo Act. It destroyed American commerce.

But with smugglers like the Laffites operating to fill the gap, it was still possible to shop for cheap goods at Barataria. It was because he was such an independent privateer and smuggler that Jean Laffite was able to provide the United States with the flint and the gunpowder and the artillery and men that won the Battle of New Orleans for the American side. But no recognition was given him, because the tide of history had already gone the other way. When James Monroe came to power, the Neutrality Act was amended to make it even more damaging to American privateers and filibusters, and Jean Laffite was forced to give up Galveston, just as he had earlier given up Barataria. Not only that, but when he sought to serve in Simon Bolivar's Colombia, he had to take on a commission as Colombian naval officer. The Americans had pressured Bolivar to outlaw privateering in return for recognition of his government. So he nationalized all the privateering vessels, and he allowed their captains to stay on as government employees. When Jean Laffite disappeared from the historical record, he was no longer a privateer. He was a "brave Colombian naval officer" serving as a government's hired hand.

There was a lot more to my talk and many more slides, but there in a nutshell is the story. Why does it appeal to me? Why was it such an epiphany for me to discover the real Jean Laffite, rather than the pirate with a heart of gold that he was portrayed as by the media and the childhood history books? Because it all ties in. Everything in life is interconnected. Not only do Laffite's grievances and Theodosia Burr's complaints against the government match, it also fits into my own life story.

Today, there are no more privateers, and the government has a monopoly on waging war. But in almost every other field, government encroachment into private affairs is likewise felt. I am the only private ape language researcher remaining. All the others have fallen under a network of laws that has all but nationalized chimpanzee research. Whether they work for the government, a university or a non-profit, they are not allowed to make decisions on their own which are at odds with national policy on chimpanzees.

Jean Laffite is a hero who appeals to me on so many levels. He is much more than a plot device to save Theodosia Burr. And the two novels that I wrote about him and Theodosia are not light romances, as I originally thought they would be. They are an in-depth look at what happened to an entire nation very soon upon its formation. What happened to Jean Laffite happened to all America -- to all of us. It is our loss.