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V

irginia

C

apitol

C

onnections

, S

pring

2017

7

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

Sedition Acts 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 the War 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 FirstWorldWar), 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-American War 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;

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 Revolutionary War, 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 Anti-

Federalist Party, led byAndrew 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 the White House and its environs.

Likewise, after the presidential election of 1860, President-elect

Abraham Lincoln had to be smuggled intoWashington, D. C. for his

inauguration in 1861 because pro- secessionist backers threatened

to have him assassinated at Baltimore, Maryland on his railway trip

See

A Republic If You Can Keep It

, continued on page 8