The 19th Century Violation of the United States Constitution

This is from The Enemy Unmasked by Bill Hughes.

Chapter 4
Thaddeus Stevens and the Trashing of the Constitution

Anyone who saw the Congress of the 1860s would declare that Thaddeus Stevens was undeniably in charge.

His tremendous power as a party leader lay in the biting bitterness of his tongue and the dominating arrogance of his manner, before which weaker men shriveled. When a colleague dared question the wisdom of his policy, he replied with studied contempt that he did not ‘propose either to take his counsel, recognize his authority, or believe a word he says.’ His flings were consuming flame, his invective terrible to withstand…. One who observed him well thought that ‘the intensity of his hatred was almost next to infernal.’ There were no neutral tones in his vocabulary… He had no sympathy with failure. Thus there was a hardness about him that made men dread him. Time and again he was to enter a party caucus with sentiment against him to tongue-lash his followers into line. It was easier to follow than to cross him. He had all the domineering arrogance of the traditional boss. He brooked no opposition. Schurz [A colleague of Stevens] noted even in his conversation, ‘a certain absolutism of opinion with contemptuous scorn for adverse argument.’ He was a dictator who handed down his decrees and woe to the rebels who would reject him… And he could not compromise – that was at once his strength and weakness. It made him a leader while he lived, and a failure in the perspective of the years. He held no council, heeded no advice, hearkened to no warning, and with an iron will he pushed forward as his instinct bade, defying, if need be, the opinion of his time, and turning it by sheer force to his purpose. A striking figure on the canvas of history – stern, arrogant, intense, with a threatening light in his eye, and something between a sneer and a Voltairian smile upon his thin, hard lips. Such was the greatest party and congressional leader of his time. — Claude Bowers, The Tragic Era, AMS Press, pp. 74, 84.

He was in his sixties at the time, slowing due to age and illness, but his mind had lost none of its invective. He was not a particularly brilliant man. He made sure that everyone knew exactly where he stood, and he expected everyone to stand with him. If they did not, he made sure that they knew he was very unhappy about it. This radical, Thaddeus Stevens, controlled the Congress and applied all his overbearing and caustic manner to bring about one of the greatest revolutions in America since 1776. Through his influence, certain hidden changes were implemented into the Reconstruction Amendments that did so much more than provide freedom and equality for the slaves but rather attacked the very rationale for the Bill of Rights.

We have seen that the banished Jesuit Order used the wealth of the Rothschild to finance Adam Weishaupt in founding the Illuminati on May 1, 1776. We have also seen that the principles laid out by the Jesuits and Weishaupt were carried out in the French Revolution. Two years after the Constitution of the United States was ratified, the Jesuits carried out their principles of government in the French Revolution. These two antagonistic forms of government were laid open for all the world to see. The Constitution guaranteed a Republican government where the government was founded on law, and every citizen was equal before the law. In France, however, the great cry was for democracy.

At that time (1789) France was the richest and most populous nation on the continent of Europe, and it was here that the ‘Great Experiment in Democracy’ began. The battle cry was ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity.’ The vehicle was Socialism. — Dee Zahner, The Secret Side of History, LTAA Communications Publishers, p. 34.

The United States of America is not a democracy. It is a republic, and there is a big difference between the two. A pure democracy is based solely on the majority without any restrictions on what the majority can do. An excellent example of a democracy is a lynch mob. The majority wants to hang the person, and the minority, the person to be hanged, does not want to be hanged. They have a vote and then hang the person. In a pure democracy, the minority is the victim of the majority.

In contrast, a Republic is founded on a set of laws that govern what the majority can and cannot do. The law on which the United States; Republic is founded is the Constitution. For instance, the Constitution says,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” — First amendment to the Constitution.

If a law was proposed in Congress to set up a national religion, and everyone in Congress voted for it, it still cannot be done, because the Constitution prohibits this type of law. The Constitution says that the government is not permitted to pass any law concerning religion. During the Dark Ages, over 150 million Christians were put to death because they would not abide by the universal religion at that time. The same thing would happen in America if America were a pure democracy.

The word democracy cannot be found in the Constitution or in the Declaration of Independence, or in any of the state’s constitutions. Many of the Founders of the United States tried to warn about the dangers of a pure democracy.

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death. — James Madison, Federalist Paper #10.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. — John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Vol. 6, New Library Press, p. 484.

If America had been established as a pure democracy, it would have long since ceased to exist.

What we learn today from the study of the Great Revolution [French Revolution]… is that it was the source and origin of all the present communist, anarchist, and socialist conceptions…. up till now, modern socialism has added absolutely nothing to the ideas that were circulating among the French people between 1789 and 1794…. Modern socialism has only systematized those ideas and found arguments in their favor. — Nesta Webster, The French Revolution, Noontide Press, p. 5.

The French Revolution was a source for communist, anarchist, and socialist conceptions; conceptions that, when carried to conclusion, resulted in the necessity of installing drainage systems to carry away the torrents of blood that flowed from French guillotines. These same ‘conceptions’ applied during the twentieth century have resulted in the murder of well over one hundred million human beings. There is much to learn from the Great Revolution. — Dee Zahner, The Secret Side of History, LTAA Communications, p. 35.

At the same time anarchy is seeking to sweep away all law, not only divine but human. The centralizing of wealth and power; the vast combinations for the enriching of the few at the expense of the many; the combinations of the poorer classes for the defense of their interests and claims; the spirit of unrest, of riot and bloodshed; the world-wide dissemination of the same teachings that led to the French Revolution – all are tending to involve the whole world in a struggle similar to that which convulsed France. — E.G. White, Education, Pacific Press Publishing Association, p. 228.

The principles of democracy or mob rule have filled this world with blood. Thaddeus Stevens was most instrumental in bringing the ideals of the French Revolution to America under the guise of bringing freedom to the downtrodden slaves.

As we have seen, the ideas of Karl Marx were nothing new. He simply took the ideas of the Jesuits and Weishaupt and codified them into the Communist Manifesto.

In actual fact the Communist Manifesto was in circulation for many years before Marx’s name was widely enough recognized to establish his authorship for this revolutionary handbook. All Karl Marx really did was update and codify the very same revolutionary plans and principles set down seventy years earlier by Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Order of the Illuminati in Bavaria. And, it is widely acknowledged by serious scholars of this subject that the League of the Just Men was simply an extension of the Illuminati. — Gary Allen, None Dare Call it Conspiracy, Concord, p. 25.

The principles of democracy, communism, and the French Revolution, codified by Karl Marx, are seen in countless countries in the twentieth century. From the purges in Russia by Josef Stalin to Mao Tse Tung’s Reign of Terror in China, to Pol Pot in Cambodia, and numerous others, the results of Jesuitism have filled this world with misery, pain, suffering, and death. Will the United States, the greatest bastion of Republican government, fall as well?

After the Civil War, America was in shambles. The South had to start all over again. Over three million slaves, who had only known the cotton fields and hard labor, were now free. Carpetbaggers were pillaging an already depleted South. Abraham Lincoln, the man who guided America through the bloody Civil War, was dead from a Jesuit assassin’s bullet. Great struggles faced the war-torn nation.

Lincoln, like Andrew Johnson after him, wanted to allow the seceded Southern states back in the Union, but a group in Congress called the Radical Red Republicans objected. They wanted some things changed before they would allow that. They were instrumental in having the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments placed into the Constitution. The amendments, in part, are stated below and on the surface look very good. However, as after declarations were made, it became clear that freedom and equality for the Afro-American free man were used to create an entirely new citizenship, which broadened the powers of the national government and attacked the Bill of Rights. This was the same method used in France; the peasants were struggling under horrible difficulties, so the reign of terror granted them liberty and equality. Hidden beneath this was a drive to expand the power of the government and entrench the peasants in bondage still.

13th
[Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

14th
[Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

15th
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.]

Notice the following statements from the Justices of the Supreme Court and actual cases where these amendments were interpreted. These amendments were interpreted far beyond freedom and equality for the black man.

The following statement is from the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1872. Notice how the Supreme Court interpreted the case in light of the 14th Amendment.

We are of the opinion that the rights claimed by these plaintiffs in error [fundamental common-law rights] if they have any existence are not privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States within the meaning of the clause of the 14th Amendment under consideration. — Slaughter-House Cases, 83 US 36, 80 (1872)

According to the first Supreme Court case in which the 14th Amendment was considered, it was interpreted to mean that the Bill of Rights would not be considered as privileges and immunities of 14th Amendment U.S. citizenship. This stance of the Supreme Court continued and was spelled out very clearly in subsequent cases.

The right of trial by jury in civil cases, guaranteed by the 7th Amendment… and the right to bear arms, guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, have been distinctly held not to be privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment… the decision rested upon the ground that this clause of the 14th Amendment did not forbid the states to abridge the personal rights enumerated in the first eight Amendments, because those rights were not within the meaning of the clause ‘privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. — Twining v. New Jersey, 211 US 97, 105, 106, (1908)

Many people, who lived during that time, recognized that the Constitution was under attack by Thaddeus Stevens and his followers. That the Constitution was under direct attack after the Civil War is apparent from the books written about that era, from the newspapers, and from the speeches made by President Andrew Johnson.

Never have American public men in responsible positions, directing the destiny of the Nation, been so brutal, hypocritical, and corrupt. The Constitution was treated as a doormat on which politicians and army officers wiped their feet after wading in the muck… So appalling is the picture of these revolutionary years that even historians have preferred to overlook many essential things. Thus, Andrew Johnson, who fought the bravest battle for constitutional liberty and for the preservation of our institutions ever waged by an Executive, until recently was left in the pillory to which unscrupulous gamblers for power consigned him… and the London ‘Times’ was commenting that ‘it is the Constitution rather than Mr. Johnson that is in danger.” – Claude Bowers, The Tragic Era, AMS Press, emphasis supplied, p. 157.

The Constitution was a doormat for politicians to walk on with their muddy feet! The Constitution was in grave danger of being trashed!! These are appalling statements in the light of the glorious, Protestant principles that that document represents. It is very clear, that following the Civil War; the Constitution came under furious attack from ‘American’ politicians who were bent on bringing America under the sway of the Principles of Communism/Illuminism/Jesuitism, And they would use the good and noble, which was freeing of the slaves, in order to diabolically undermine the Bill of Rights. Is this not still happening today? We hear so much about ‘defending freedom’, which sounds great, while American liberties are trampled in the dust by Patriot Acts I and II.

Here are some excerpts from speeches made by President Andrew Johnson. While reading these, remember that Andrew Johnson was almost removed from office because he refused to go along with the Radical Red Republicans.

I love the Constitution: I intend to plant myself, with the confident hope and belief that if the Union remains together, in less than four years the now triumphant party will be overthrown. — ibid. p. 33.

The best efforts of my life have been exerted for the maintenance of the Constitution, the enforcement of the laws, and the preservation of the Union of the States. — ibid. p. 162.

Greeted cordially at Baltimore, he had said he Would rather be a free citizen than be inaugurated President ‘over the ruins of the Constitution,’ and ‘rather be a free man than be President and be a slave.’ – ibid, p. 241.

“The President stands squarely against Congress and the people.” Wrote the indignant Julian. “Neither Jefferson nor Jackson… ever asserted with such fearless fidelity and ringing emphasis the fundamental principles of civil liberty,” said the New York World. – ibid, p. 102.

It has been my fate for the last five years to fight those who have been opposed to the Union… I intend to fight all opponents of the Constitution… to fight the enemies of this glorious Union forever and forever. – ibid, p. 132.

According to Constitutional scholar, George P. Fletcher, Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia University:

The Civil War called forth a new constitutional order. At the heart of this postbellum legal order lay the Reconstruction Amendments-the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, ratified in the years 1865 to 1870. The principles of this new legal regime are so radically different from our original Constitution, drafted in 1787, that they deserve to be recognized as a second American constitution. The new constitution established, in fact, a second American Republic. The first Constitution was based on the principles of peoplehood as a voluntary association, individual freedom, and republican elitism. The guiding premises of the second constitution were, in contrast, organic nationhood, equality of all persons, and popular democracy. These are Principles radically opposed to each other. – George P. Fletcher, Our Secret Constitution, Oxford University Press, p. 2.

This professor at Columbia University recognized that the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments brought about a completely different constitution that the one established in 1787. He declared that these amendments created a new constitution. As we have seen from subsequent court cases after the passing of those Amendments, it is clear that that is exactly what Stevens and Rome wanted to do.

Summing it up, by 1868 the Jesuits, with their radicals Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, had forced the Fourteenth Amendment on the peoples of the States, North and South. They had created a new nation as a result of a new citizenship. By 1872 the Jesuits, with their radicals on the Supreme Court, had made the powers of both the Federal and State governments absolute, limited only by decisions of their respective King’s benches- the Federal and State Supreme Courts. The transition from a Presbyterian form of government to a Roman Catholic form of government had been accomplished. And how did they do it? By declaring that the Bill of Rights were not privileges and immunities of Fourteenth Amendment citizenship, thereby overthrowing the ancient liberties. – Eric Phelps, Vatican Assassins, Halycon Unified Services, p. 327.

We are at a loss for words in describing the dismal, diabolical, and demoralizing depravity of this singular man… he was the great tool of the Jesuits in creating their socialist-communist monster of the Twentieth Century, Fourteenth Amendment America. He was called a ‘traitor’ by President Johnson while he ‘destroyed the government of the Old Union, changed its form and spirit, and made a new Union with new theories and new powers.’ Horace Greeley, one of Stevens’ masters, adds, ‘We have brought all laborers to a common level… by reducing the whole working population, white and black, to a condition of serfdom.’ On his deathbed, this old communist ‘commoner’ was baptized into the Roman Catholic Institution for a job well done in obedience to the Papal Caesar’s tyrannical Holy Alliance and the Black Pope’s evil Council of Trent. –ibid, p. 331.

In light of the heinous and destructive work of Thaddeus Stevens and the Radical Republicans, it is easy to conclude that they were the tools of Rome in destroying the great Protestant Constitution. No more wicked and diabolical men ever walked the land of the free and the home of the brave. Further insights into the life of Thaddeus Stevens add more and more evidence of Rome’s vicious involvement in the undermining of the Constitution in the name of freedom and equality.

Early in his life, Stevens was very poor. As a result, he always held a manifest contempt for the aristocrats and the wealthy. He always held that the wealthy were made that way because they had exploited the poor. Throughout his political career, Stevens always sided with the poor. However, in the famous conflict between Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle, Stevens did a very strange thing. Jackson was siding with the common man in America, fighting against the Biddle-Rothschild-Jesuit front that sought to enslave America. One would think that Stevens would automatically side with Jackson and the common people. However, this was not the case.

This enemy of aristocracy fairly frothed with rage Against the Jacksonian Democracy, and fought with fervor for the moneyed aristocracy represented by Nicholas Biddle and the Bank. In his earlier years, he had been as fervent in the support of the Hamiltonian aristocracy. It is these marked contradictions in his character that make him so difficult to analyze. – Claude Bowers, The Tragic Era, AMS Press p. 68.

The contradictions in Stevens can be readily understood in light of his involvement with the Jesuits-Rothschilds. Naturally, Stevens stood with common people, but when his masters told him otherwise, then he would throw out his principles and do as he was told. How else would one explain the flagrant contradictions in this man?

Steven had no religious convictions. He never attended church. However, one very interesting note about his religious life surfaces from the book by Claude Bowers.

He attended no church, which, within itself, would have colored the general impression of his character in the community in which he lived. For the Baptists, he had a certain sentimental regard due to the fact that it was the church of his mother, but he was probably a free thinker… ‘That his mind was a howling wilderness, so far as his sense of his obligation to God was concerned,’ was the opinion of Jeremiah Black; and Senator Grimes disliked him as ‘a debauchee in morals.’ Even so, one of his best friends was a Catholic priest in Lancaster, with whom he liked to talk and walk; and he was tenderly fond of children and extremely sensitive to the appeals of the poor, to whom he was unvaryingly generous. – ibid. p. 78, 79, emphasis supplied.

In light of the devilish route that Stevens took America and the beloved Bill of Rights, his close association with this Catholic priest would lead one to conclude that this priest had great influence over Stevens’ mind and served as his mentor in delineating to him exactly what path he was to pursue. That Stevens sought to undermine the Protestant Constitution declares that Stevens got the ideas from somewhere and his close association with this priest could certainly be one of the paths through which the Jesuit Order got to Stevens and twisted his willing mind!!

The other great influence in Stevens’ life from the Catholic Church came from his maid and then live-in-lover of many years; namely Lydia Smith.

In the rear of his house in Lancaster, among the fruit trees, stood a little house, occupied by Lydia Smith and her husband, a black negro barber, with their two children, likewise black. Mrs. Smith was mulatto, and was engaged as a housekeeper for the bachelor lawyer. [Stevens] After a time the husband died, and the widow moved into the master’s house, and there she lived for many years. When Stevens went to Washington, she accompanied him there. Wherever he was, there she was also… That she was devoted to Stevens was evident to all. In time, as he grew feeble, she became indispensable, acting as a buffer between him and those who would unnecessarily sap his strength… This assumption that she was Steven’s mistress was not confined, however, to undertone gossip, which is never impressive. It was current in the press, and in no instance was the publisher rebuked or threatened with a libel suit…. The housekeeper [Smith] lived with her husband until his death, and many years later was buried by his side in the Catholic cemetery in Lancaster… Many ascribed his deep-seated hatred for the Southern whites to the influence of Lydia. His fondness for her is shown in the fact that there is in Lancaster today a portrait of this comely mulatto from the brush of Esholtz, a prominent painter who also did a portrait of Stevens. – ibid. pp. 80, 81, 83.

At Stevens’ deathbed, we read:

There was Lydia Smith and the two Sisters, Loretta and Genevieve. As he was sinking rapidly, the doctor asked him how he felt. ‘Very mean, Doctor.’ Then Sister Loretta asked permission to baptize him in the Catholic faith. Lydia Smith was kneeling at the foot of the bed; the two Sisters were on their knees reading the prayers for the dying. And this Thaddeus Stevens passed to eternity. At the moment, his hand was in that of Sister Loretta, his breast heaved, he pressed her hand, and thus the end came. A year before he had said that when sick, he would rather send a hundred miles to have her with him at the end than most ministers he knew.w – ibid. p. 222.

From these statements by Bowers, we can glean many things. Stevens was very attached to Smith and obviously was living in an illicit relationship with her. Smith was a devout Roman Catholic and had a tremendous influence on Stevens. At Stevens’ deathbed, he was baptized by two Catholic nuns into the Catholic faith for the great service that Stevens had performed on behalf of the Catholic Church. It is clear that the influence of the Catholic priest of Lancaster and Lydia Smith were both instrumental in bringing Thaddeus Stevens to the mindset of swinging America from Protestantism to Catholicism. Only in the light of eternity will the heinous crimes of these people be fully realized.