Virginia Capitol Connections, Winter 2023 20 A Republic If You Can Keep It By TOM HYLAND American historical lore has it that when Benjamin Franklin exited Carpenter’s Hall (now known as Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1787, after having just helped complete the work of developing a new constitution for the United States of America, he was approached by a local citizen who posed the question: “Well, Dr. Franklin, what have we got?” Franklin’s alleged response was: “A republic, if we can keep it.” The work of keeping that republic is still on-going some 230 years later. Many Americans today may despair over whether it will be possible to keep our republic given the current partisan and highly divisive political, economic, environmental, cultural, and ethnic-related controversies. Without any attempt to minimize the seriousness of any of these current controversies (particularly the allegation that Russia may have covertly interfered in the 2016 presidential election) that so frequently dominate our daily media viewing and personal conversations, we need to keep in mind that our nation—both before, during, and after the American Revolution—has witnessed and prevailed over all those controversies that have come to our shores. During the RevolutionaryWar, this fledgling collection of rebelling colonies faced a number of crises that easily could have led to a disastrous defeat: The Conway Cabal of 1783, revealed in the wayward letters of Brigadier General Thomas Conway, consisted of a failed plot to remove George Washington from Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and install General Horatio Gates in his stead; Benedict Arnold’s failed treasonous action in 1780 of attempting to turn over to the American fort at West Point to the British Army, which would have threatened American control of the Hudson River and geographically divided the American colonies; and the Newburgh Conspiracy of 1783, a convening of a number of officers of the American Army for the purpose of protesting over their pay and pensions. Just several years later (1791-1794) after the adoption of our constitution, our first major crisis occurred with the onset of the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, where local farmers refused to pay the newly levied federal tax on locally-distilled whiskey, and actually tarred and feathered local federal tax collectors and set fire to the home of John Neville, the chief tax collector for that area. Federal troops and state militia had to be dispatched to put down the insurrection. Six years later, in the so-called political “Revolution of 1800,”many Americans questioned whether that republic could be maintained when Thomas Jefferson’s Anti-Federalist Party’s “democratic-republican rabble” won a presidential electoral victory over then President John Adams’ Federalist Party whom Jefferson’s supporters faulted for their “dangerous monarchial tendencies.” The same political, economic, and social “gloom and doom” appeared twenty-eight years later (1828), when the “Jacksonian democratic rabble” of the newly rising Democratic wing of the AntiFederalist Party, led by Andrew Jackson, defeated then President John Quincy Adams, who represented the then waning wing of the then Anti-Federalist establishment. Washington, D. C. social society was left aghast at the “rude farmers and backwoodsmen” who showed up for Jackson’s presidential inaugural in their “muddy boots and rude clothing” and consumed massive amounts of corn whiskey and generally trashed theWhite House and its environs. Likewise, after the presidential election of 1860, President-elect Abraham Lincoln had to be smuggled into Washington, D. C. for his inauguration in 1861 because pro- secessionist backers threatened to have him assassinated at Baltimore, Maryland on his railway trip to the capitol. Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 and the attempted assassination of his Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Steward created a great level of political, social, and racial turmoil throughout the nation for a number of years. Yet, our republic survived the Civil War that ensued that period. Those who may believe 2016 to be the first time that any other nation or its representatives, ever attempted to interfere either in our internal national politics or our international relations may not be familiar with the political antics of the infamous Edmond Charles Genet, the French Minister to the United States from 1793 to 1794. This self-styled “Citizen Genet” attempted to involve the United States into an on-going war between France and Great Britain. While that controversy was ultimately resolved by Genet’s recall to France, his associations with the Anti-Federalist Party left a taint on that party’s name for years and helped lead to the infamous Alien and SeditionActs of 1798, where “freedom of the press” was particularly challenged by the federal government. Consider also the case of the treasonous behavior of General James Wilkinson, the senior officer of the U. S. Army and Governor of the Louisiana Territory during the Jefferson and Madison Administrations (1800-1816) who was involved in the Burr Conspiracy of 1806-1807, an ill-fated attempt by Aaron Burr, the former Vice President under Jefferson, and his associates to separate several western states from the Union. Only after Wilkinson’s death, was it discovered that he had been a long-time paid agent of the Spanish government. During theWar of 1812, which was highly unpopular with the New England states and the Federalist Party (because it adversely affected their valuable regional trade relations with Great Britain), the party met for a series of meetings at Hartford, Connecticut in December 1814 and January 1815 to discuss their grievances about the war and their political problems with the increasing power of the federal government. Despite demands of the more radical delegates at this Hartford Convention for constitutional changes or secession from the Union and a separate peace with Great Britain, the moderate majority prevailed against these extreme proposals. With the Treaty of Peace between the United States and great Britain signed at Ghent, Belgium in December 1814 and General Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the British Army at New Orleans also that month, the Federalist Party suffered a major blow to its credibility and soon fell in general dishonor and loss of power. Even more recently, in 1917 (during the First World War), Arthur Zimmerman, the German Foreign Minister sent a telegram to the German Ambassador to Mexico proposing that in case of a war between the United States and Germany (the U. S. was still neutral at that time) the establishment of an Mexican-German alliance, which would return the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Mexico. That message was intercepted by British Intelligence and passed onto the U.S., thus being one of the first significant examples of signals intelligence interception in recorded history. To be certain, none of the above cited examples ever have involved any actual or alleged occasions of interference in our national elections; but, that situation has been due more to the circumstances that before the Spanish-AmericanWar the United States was not a major player in international politics, and that electronic communications then did not exist to the extent that it could have been used to attempt to influence election results. It should also be noted that from the perspective of electronic manipulation of election results, civil litigation was filed in 2004, lodging a charge against the Secretary of State for the State of Ohio and certain state contractors with “theft of votes by electronic manipulation” during the Ohio presidential elections that year. [See King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell.] History has shown us that the very nature of republican governments—guaranteed protections such as free speech, press and assembly; right to petition for grievances; ownership of firearms; prohibition on establishment of religion; right to security in personal and real property; protection against unreasonable search and seizure; right to a speedy and pubic trial by jury; etc.—all matters deliberately placed in our constitution and firmly enshrined there by 230 years of legal jurisprudence. These very same protections also make republics susceptible, not only in frequent and peaceable changes in government, but also to various types of internal insurrections, conspiracies, and See A Republic If You Can Keep It, continued on page 22
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