_______________ ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ORIGINAL THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT ________________

Senator Philip Reed of Maryland introduced the following proposal for an Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America on January 18, 1810: it was partly the product of the controversies over General James Wilkinson, who had been implicated in the Burr Affair.

It was, therefore, a proposed amendment concerning "titles of nobility" and was intended to augment existing language in the Constitution --

"If any citizen of the United States, shall accept of any title of nobility, from any king, prince or foreign state, such citizen shall thence forth be incapable of holding any office of honor or profit, under the United States."

A second and somewhat more cumbersome version of this proposed Amendment was read in the Senate on January 29th. On February 13th of 1810 it was agreed to recommit the proposal to a select committee for further work:

The TONA ( Titles of Nobility Amendment ) select committee was created, consisting of Senators Phillip Reed (Md.), William Branch Giles (Va.), Michael Leib (Pa.), William H. Crawford (Ga.) and Timothy Pickering (Ma.), for further consideration.

Pickering was an old line Puritan and a Federalist, while Reed was considered to be a close political associate of James Madison and the Democratic-Republicans. Over the next two and one-half months, these Senators reported several different versions of this proposed amendment, none of which were as succinct as the original language penned by Reed. However, as April neared its conclusion, a final version was read on the floor of the U.S. Senate for consideration as a Joint Resolution To Amend: these are the seventy-seven words which the Senators from the seventeen States of the union adopted --

"If any Citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any Emperor, King, Prince, or foreign Power, such person shall cease to be a Citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."

Due to the vagaries of type-setting which were a constant in that era, the text of this joint resolution to amend has often been printed without capitalizations of certain words, like Citizen and Power, for example. However, hand-written documents circulated to the Governors of the States in 1814, by then-Secretary of State James Monroe, confirm that these seventy-seven words were given as shown, in that correct order with capitalizations. Secondly, there is no particular difference in meaning, when the spelling of honour is given as 'honor,' which also occurs in printed versions.

THE JOINT RESOLUTION APPROVED BY AN ULTRA-MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE

Following a favorable vote of 26 to 1 in the United States Senate, the joint resolution to amend was sent to the House of Representatives for consideration. With very little in the way of dissent and debate, the precise language as given by the Senate was approved in the House on May 1, 1810. The final vote was 87 to 3 in favor of this joint resolution and included both Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. The Pennsylvania House delegation cast seventeen votes in favor of the TONA, with one member absent and not voting. Four of these Representatives were former officers who had served in the Revolution.

So, too, was the delegation from New Jersey counted in favor of the TONA. Former Brigadier General James Cox and former Wagonmaster Henry Southard were among the House veterans who stood in approval of this joint resolution to amend.

RATIFICATION OF THE ORIGINAL THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT DELAYED BY THE WAR OF 1812

Following the affirmative votes taken in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, the Joint Resolution To Amend was sent to the seventeen States for ratification by the legislatures:

The Joint Resolution was signed by J.B. Varnum, Speaker of the House, John Gaillard, President of the Senate pro tempore, and it was certified by Sam A. Otis, Secretary of the Senate.

As might be expected, given the leadership of Philip Reed, the first ratification of the original Thirteenth Amendment came from the Legislature of Maryland. In this era, legislative activity was dictated by the agricultural calendar, and so many of the States had their sessions in the mid-winter months. The Maryland approval was voted on Christmas Day, 1810 and other States followed with their approvals in early 1811. On January 31st, both Ohio and Kentucky approved the amendment, with Delaware voting for it on February 2, and Pennsylvania following with its approval on February 4th.

The process continued after the summer of 1811 and by the spring of 1812, eleven of the thirteen State legislatures needed for final approval have voted in the affirmative. The State of Massachusetts was the eleventh to approve, on February 27th. In March of that year, the proposal received its first rejection when the legislature of New York failed to ratify. The count was now eleven States in favor, one against, and on April 30th of 1812 Louisiana joined the union, as the 18th State.

However, the most scrupulous research conducted on this issue fails to find any statement by the leaders of this new State, requesting permission to ratify the proposed amendment. Nor did any Congressional leader suggest that Louisiana -- as a new State which was not present in the Article V drafting process done in 1810 -- should be invited to take a ratification vote. None was ever taken, in Louisiana, or in any of the other States which joined the union before March of 1819. That is an extremely important aspect of the history of this long-standing and long-missing constitutional amendment.

By the time that New Hampshire ratified the original Thirteenth Amendment, in December of 1812, the United States had been at war with Great Britain for six months. As Professor Reginald Horsman of the University of Wisconsin noted in his Causes Of The War Of 1812, the War Hawks were strongest in the western frontier States of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. The Federalists of the mid-Atlantic States and New England formed the primary opposition to the Declaration of War, taken in June of 1812.

Because it is clear that the original Thirteenth Amendment was issued by Congress in 1810 with ultra-majorities in both the Senate and the House, it cannot be argued that this proposed amendment was taken up as a war-fighting measure. If that was in any way true, the Federalists who had supported the amendment would have voted against it ( and that did not happen ).

What did happen ? The early failures of U.S. military expeditions -- particularly the surrender of an entire army after a disastrous campaign near Detroit -- embroiled the young country in a great deal of controversy. Pending action on the constitutional amendment in South Carolina and Virginia was delayed, and in 1813 the Federalist-dominated legislature in Connecticut voted to reject the original Thirteenth.

By the spring of 1814, the new United States was badly fractured along political lines, and the war with Great Britain was the primary cause. Rhode Island's State legislature voted against the original Thirteenth Amendment despite the fact that its Senators had fully supported it in 1810. And of course, the situation only deteriorated from there, as British naval and ground forces raided the Chesapeake area in mid-summer. And in a most disastrous campaign, these combined forces marched on Washington City and burned the federal buildings there and the naval stores and ammunition. James Madison and other elected officials fled their capitol as resistance collapsed, and the British raiding party actually sat down to eat at the President's table and partook of his various beverages !!

Curiously enough, though, the two U.S. Senators from Maryland -- who had crafted and supported the original Thirteenth Amendment -- were the leaders in organizing the defense of Baltimore and Fort McHenry, leading to the ultimate failure of the British offensive of 1814. Samuel Smith, as Major General of the Maryland Militia, and Philip Reed were the heroes of that day.

The superb irony of the War of 1812 was the crushing defeat of a British invasion force, which sought to secure southern Louisiana and the port city of New Orleans in late December. The Battle of New Orleans -- a series of actions, in fact, and not one single encounter -- was won by the United States in January of 1815, well after a Treaty of peace had been concluded at Ghent in Belgium, on Christmas Eve of 1814. It is worth noting that the multi-cultural army assembled by General Andrew Jackson to defend New Orleans was rich in Tennessee and Kentucky militia and augmented by Free Men of Color and Choctaw warriors.

The ratification process for the joint resolution called the Titles Of Nobility Amendment continued in limbo, unresolved, for the next three years and more. Finally, in actions which still remain as the cause of an enormous controversy, the legislature of Virginia reported its ratification of the amendment by including it in The Revised Code of their State, approved for issuance and publication on March 12, 1819. It is certain that the House of Delegates voted to approve this amendment on February 2nd, 1811, but the records of subsequent votes which must have been taken as approvals appear to have been lost.

It is absolutely certain, however, that the combined efforts of the leading scholars of State law in Virginia, in the years 1817 and 1818, resulted in the final form of their Revised Code. And this authorized revisal of all the laws of Virginia included many legislative actions which had been "pretermitted" or left for future action and approval. In that Revised Code, approved by lawful action and ordered to be printed by the legislature, the original Thirteenth Amendment appears as a valid and ratified article of the Constitution for the United States.

The War of 1812 sewed many seeds of doubt, created confusion and left a legacy of bitterness that took years to resolve; and it caused the delay of the final ratification of this important amendment, a section which can rightly be called The Eleventh Plank of the Bill Of Rights.

It is also worth noting that every State admitted to the union between April of 1812 and the end of 1820 -- including Louisiana, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Maine and Missouri -- published its own State statutes with the Constitution included, showing the original Thirteenth Amendment as being ratified and properly included. The publication by Louisiana is the most eloquent proof possible, to show that their legislature did not consider anything to be amiss, in the final approval of this new Article of Amendment. And for the whole of the Jacksonian era, the Constitution can be found in newspapers, text books, books of State or Territorial law, and in a U.S. military handbook with this TONA or original Thirteenth Amendment included, as it was drafted and lawfully approved by Congress on May 1, 1810.

THE IMAGE WHICH DISPLAYS BELOW SHOWS THE ORIGINAL THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT AS PUBLISHED IN LOUISIANA -- BY LAW -- IN 1825.