The Jefferson Allegiance (36 page)

“What did Jefferson give Hamilton in return for the votes?” Ducharme asked.

Evie graced him with a smile. “You’re getting the hang of the way politics really works. Back-room deals. When he became President, Jefferson left a lot of Federalists in office, when the practice was to do a clean sweep.”

“And Adams?” Kincannon asked.

“He was so disgusted with all of it, he left Washington in the middle of the night right before Jefferson’s inauguration.

“Not very sporting,” Kincannon said. He pointed at the computer. “What’s this report on?”

“History,” Evie said.

“History?” Ducharme repeated. “All we’ve been getting is history lessons. Why is McBride’s so damn important? What’s it about?”

Kincannon cut in. “How ‘bout we read the darn thing?”

“We need to get moving,” Ducharme said.

“We need to know what we’re doing, Duke,” Kincannon countered. “And maybe, just as importantly, why McBride got killed. I would say he knew some things we need to know, and he put that information in his computer.”

“Is it about the Jefferson Allegiance?” Ducharme asked. “And the American Philosophical Society and the Society of the Cincinnati?”

In reply, Evie leaned forward, putting the laptop on the console between Ducharme and Kincannon.

Everyone in the Blazer leaned closer to read.

Dearest Evie:

I gathered most of the information that follows from the secret notes I uncovered in the Archives of the American Philosophical Society, although the known historical information in this report is readily available.

In every country, of course, the ruler is most important. For many people around the world not blessed with a democratic republic such as the United States enjoys, ‘the ruler’ is not just the head of a government, often people’s very lives depend on his whims. There are few philosophical kings, and even fewer ‘benign’ rulers. And, of course, the title “despot” implies little if any benevolence. In most countries, the people live to serve the ruler.

In the few thousand years of recorded history, the limited power of the American Presidency and government over the last two-plus centuries has represented the best of our country and is unique in history. Free elections, constitutional safeguards put in place by reasoning men at an unreasonable time, seem almost an improbability. Yet it happened in 1787.

Fifty-five men of rather dubious background carved out something unique: a document both flawed and designed to correct its own flaws- at least initially. It appeals to the logical mind that those who invented this government recognized their own limitations and put in place protections against those limitations. At the same time, they sought to achieve lofty goals for the individual, while ignoring large portions of their country’s population. The same intriguing combination of logic and awareness of human limitations. They were philosophers who were very understanding of the reality and precariousness of their situation.

It is often forgotten among many Americans that the fifty-five men who signed the Declaration of Independence were breaking the law and traitors to their government and king. One could say they were extremely “unpatriotic.” Five of them paid with their lives; captured by the British, tortured and executed. Two had sons killed during the war. Most lost their houses, their fortunes, and their reputations. Quite a few died in poverty; such is the gratitude of a free nation. At the very end of the Revolution, the British General Cornwallis had his headquarters in the home of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who urged General Washington to open fire on it. His house was destroyed, and the man died homeless and penniless.

Perhaps it was part of the flaws inherent in their genius and what they brought forth. Still, one wonders how many Americans today would give their lives for freedom—from a tyranny imposed by their own government?

Ducharme glanced at Evie. “What did McBride mean by that?”

Evie shrugged. “Think how the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be treated today. Frankly, I believe they would be outcasts, political heretics. Much as if Jesus came to a modern church to preach, he would most likely be cast out as a heretic.”

“Woman’s got a point,” Kincannon said. “They weren’t very open-minded in my old Bible study class.”

“You were a kid,” Ducharme told his partner.

“I was wise beyond my years,” Kincannon said. “And the one’s running it were adults.”

“Let’s keep reading,” Ducharme suggested.

Think about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Imagine declaring all men free and able to self-govern, yet ignoring women and counting African-Americans as three-fifths of a human being? And the three-fifths applied only to use that population for representation in Congress, not to allow them to vote, thus giving the slave states a greater proportion of representatives as opposed to true voting population. Plus, the Founding Fathers, an odd choice of words, added an article vowing never to change by Amendment that slaves would continue to be imported for 20 years.

Why? To make a compromise. To appease the slave states offended by the non-slave states. But to outlaw slavery would have forced the slave states out. There would have been no union, no United States. Instead they formed a Union that would have to face the immorality of slavery in the future. The fifty-five men knew this, and that they were sowing the seeds for an inevitable civil war. But one must have a country before a civil war, and they chose country.

The fact that the twenty-year article expired and no more slaves were imported into the United States after 1808 intrigued me, and it surprised many I told it to. Most thought slaves continued to be brought into the United States right up until the Civil War. In fact, what further surprised people was that the War of 1812 with Great Britain was to an extent a result of the stoppage of the importation of slaves into the United States. A move that crippled a significant economic interest of a country that pretended to be morally above slavery. The fact that Great Britain was the country that profited most from the slave trade has made a good topic for the cocktail circuit in Washington.

During all the wrangling over the form their new government would take, the Presidency seemed an afterthought because the perfection of he who they knew would be the first president—George Washington—eased their fears for the near future. Alexander Hamilton proposed that the President and Senators be elected for life. Jefferson, Madison and others saw a grave danger in this. Thus, another compromise. And that is what the Jefferson Allegiance is all about—compromise.

The electoral college, antiquated and flawed, was also a compromise. There have been candidates for the Presidency who received the majority of at-large votes, yet lost the election because they did not ‘swing’ crucial states for the electoral college.

But, like slavery, the inherent flaws in the Executive branch began to show almost immediately—in fact, as you will note in the First Section of my report, it was Thomas Jefferson, the third President, who exceeded his Constitutional limits and recognized the flaw and the potential for Imperialism in the future, and brought into being the Allegiance.

That the President be above the law will be expounded by subsequent administrations, as you will see in my other Sections based on when the APS intervened. Indeed, several Presidents have notably broken the law ‘for the greater good.’ Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was one such case. Illegal, but moral. And smartly, yet also deviously, Lincoln only freed the slaves in the rebelling Southern states, not those in border states he needed to keep in the Union.

The role of the Society of the Cincinnati was also a large issue. It was a very divisive issue among the Founding Fathers. Indeed, it was the reason the American Philosophical Society was redirected from its original purpose to counter the Cincinnatians. And, as you will see, the Cincinnatians pushed Presidents at times to break the law to further their own objectives.

So let us delve into history and see how the Jefferson Allegiance, or in most cases, the
threat
of the Jefferson Allegiance kept the country from sliding completely into an Imperial Presidency, and stopped the Cincinnatians from gaining the control they desire up to the present day:

McBride’s Report: The Imperial Presidency and the Jefferson Allegiance

Section One. Jefferson & Hamilton

Section Two. Polk & John Quincy Adams (and Lincoln)

Section Three. Lincoln & Grant

Section Four. Teddy Roosevelt & Alice Roosevelt

Section Five. Franklin Roosevelt & General Marshall

Section Six. Kennedy & Hoover and Mary Meyer

Section Seven. Nixon & McBride

They finished reading the short summaries of the times the American Philosophical Society had intervened—and even the report about Hoover and the Cincinnatians.

“Damn,” was Kincannon’s summary.

“They only had to actually pull out the Allegiance out twice,” Evie noted.

“But they sure used it like Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick,” Ducharme said. “And they often used someone close to the President to deliver the warning. Effective.”

“Hold on a sec—“ Evie. “I just realized something.” She scrolled back to the Kennedy section. “Mary Meyers. She was killed around a year after Kennedy was assassinated.” She looked up at Ducharme and Kincannon. “A single round at close range in the head…and another in the heart.”

“A message,” Ducharme said, “from the Cincinnatians.”

Evie nodded. “There’s more in the report,” she said, scrolling down.

Nixon was put out of office by the pressure of the Jefferson Allegiance, pre-empting the need for him to be impeached (strangely, many believe, wrongly, that Nixon was actually impeached). But his legacy had profound effects on shifting the balance of power from the legislative to the executive branch, to the point where the Founding Fathers would barely be able to recognize our current form of government. He was stopped, but many of the precedents he set have lived on.

Nixon, in various ways, took more control of the power of the purse than had been envisioned when our country was founded. The Founding Fathers believed that having the Legislative Branch control the money would keep the President in check, and also keep him from allying with those who wanted the purse directed their way—i.e. the Cincinnatians. Think of the military-industrial complex as warned of by Eisenhower. Nixon began the concept of calling any who opposed his fiscal policies “un-patriotic.” He used his powers to reward those economic areas he favored and hurt those he didn’t. He determined the level of spending, a right reserved for Congress.

He also trampled on Civil Liberties on a level not seen since FDR. He had the FBI, CIA and NSA investigate those who he deemed threats, real or imagined, regardless of what the law said those organizations were allowed to do.

The ability of the President to make decisions without having to inform Congress, never mind gain its approval, has echoed through every President since Nixon.

I was particularly interested in the Executive Branch and its power to take the country to war. As you can see from the previous historical sections, this power has evolved over the years to a form that would have been unacceptable to the Founding Fathers. I found an interesting piece of writing by James Madison that I wish to quote, because it seems to be something forgotten over the centuries since its writing:

“In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Besides the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.”

Thus, it was surprising for me to learn that the last time our country went to war under the strict guidelines laid out by the Founding Fathers, was in 1941. That was the last time Congress properly declared war.

Ducharme looked up from the screen. “Wait a second. Congress voted for the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Evie shook her head. “Read on.”

For every armed conflict the United States participated in since FDR and the Second World War—and there have been quite a few—the Chief Executive has gotten Congress to vote to suspend the Constitutional requirements for Congress itself to declare war, a strange paradox making an end run around the basic law set down by the Founding Fathers. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq—twice—Afghanistan. I imagine I might have even missed some conflicts or interventions in there that were not even voted on by Congress voting itself out of voting on it—such as Grenada, Lebanon, Somalia, the Balkans, Libya etc. All were done
not
in the manner the Founding Fathers set forth for the conduct of war, and use military might. And there is no doubt war profiteering by Cincinnatians plays a large role in many of these conflicts.