The U.S. Constitution or how the west was won.

Preamble
The Constitution-The writing of it.
The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments)-Why they weren't in the body of the Constitution.

Preamble

The Constitution of the United States is a type of contract. I should know since I wrote it. (More specifically it is a compact.)

Here is how I got suckered into writing it.

First I got suckered into writing the Declaration of Independence. I was certainly a fool to allow that to happen. Of course I swore that I would never let anything like that happen again. After the revolution the states got together when I had to take care of Monticello for weeks at a time because of my wife's chronic illness.

They realized the truth of the matter and that was this: England would look for any conflict between the states as an excuse to take sides. Then they would enter with troops to help one of the states and then proceed to take over all the states. The other thing they might do is take two states with different or opposing laws and say that the difference or conflict meant that one of the states was essentially lawless. Again that would give England an excuse to invade one state and then eventually take over all the other states.

So in any of these situations it meant that there needed to be a relative consistency in the laws from state to state.

Also, none of the laws could very strongly conflict with any English laws or they would also declare us lawless or pirates, etc.

So Congress needed a lawyer that could make sure there were no conflicts that would give England that very big excuse to come back. They said, 'Well whoever we decide on is a dead man if the English find out who he is and then come back.' So one delegate essentially said: 'Since Thomas Jefferson has already screwed himself completely by writing the Declaration of Independence we should appoint him. They can only hang him once and that way we will still have one decent lawyer left'. Most of them agreed that this was the best thing to do. (I can't recall who the other lawyer was but at first they were going to appoint him to the position.)

During the 1780's we were a loose knit confederation of independent states. So for almost ten years I was the legal adviser to eleven of the thirteen states. Every law they passed I either secretly approved, denied or modified. All proposed legislation and questions were taken by stage to Baltimore. (Stage lines and even the towns at which the letters were put on the stage changed often to prevent English spies from finding out.) From Baltimore they were hidden in a person's belongings and taken to another location where a night messenger brought them to Monticello on horseback. I think in wintertime a man in a small sled brought them. The system changed often to prevent us from getting found out.

I had to make sure that there were not any conflicts with England's laws or their legal apparatus. We had to act more English than England in this respect. The 13 states during the ten years of the Continental Congress acted as a cauldron into which a thousand laws were placed. From them I determined what would work for the upcoming Federal Government and how to prevent any abuses of government. The main good that came out of this system was that it prevented the states from producing outlandish laws. When one state started to get out of hand and unworkable then the laws in the other states showed the errors of their ways and it showed them how to return to a workable system. Land was cheap so if one state did not change to a more workable system then the people would move to the other state. (I am convinced that had France been divided into states then the abuses of their revolution never would have occurred and Napoleon never would have risen to power.)

We were showing the world that we were completely responsible and that the English propaganda about us needing their 'guidance and support' fell on deaf ears in all the countries that mattered.

The European treaties read that England could attack a lawless or pirate nation without undue interference by the other nations of Europe. However, if England attacked a neutral and lawful nation then the other countries could side against the English and even declare war against them.

We were neutral and as long as we were lawful any interference by England would have voided their treaties with other nations. Then those nations would have declared war with England in a heart beat just so they could unify. Then they would have all attacked and taken over England's other valuable real estate like India, Jamaica, Canada, etc.

The main problem was that if a law we passed had the smallest conflict with England's laws it could possibly be used as a legal basis for an invasion by England. Then the other European nations would not have a reason to abrogate their treaties with England. England could then lawfully invade the states and even use the assistance of other European nations like the US used European and other nations to help them take over Afghanistan.

That is the tightrope that we walked. But it was even worse than that.

All the European nations were looking to gain a foothold in America by taking over one of the states so that also had to be taken into account. A perceived of threat by any one of the states might set them off and they were not above exaggeration and downright fabricating stories to gain their desired ends. Every state tried to keep a very low profile so as to be seen as a non threat to Europe. That way if the European nations invaded they would invade one of the other states instead of theirs.

England was looking for any excuse to invade the states. Second in line to invade the states was France and third was Spain and forth was the Holy Roman Empire (which I previously and mistakenly often referred to as 'Germany'). We had to change from being just a loose knit group of states to become a tightly controlled group since eventually it was inevitable that something would happen to give one of those European countries with a huge army an excuse to invade us (and they were looking for any excuse).

We thought the most likely precipitating event would inevitably be that a captain licensed by one of the states would become a pirate. That would be all the reason any European nation needed to lawfully invade. We would be said to be licensing and harboring pirates. It was so sensitive a situation that even if we did not know a certain ship was a pirate ship (and it was being harbored in any of the states) it probably would have been enough reason for France to start a war. And they could have lied about it and pulled it off. All the nations of Europe would be able to say that the states were essentially like Somalia was in in the 1990's or Afghanistan in 2001 when they were harboring al Qaeda terrorists. Then the European countries would have struck in unison with three to five huge European armies and navies. That would have been the end of out little experiment in freedom as we could never have stood up to them.

This is what we were up against when Ben Franklin walked in one day and said 'lets make a nation with a constitution which is totally legal (in England) and then those European 'sons of bitches' can't ever invade us. [He used that term 'son's of bitches' more than any other in his rich vocabulary of profane words which included every known French profanity phrase or innuendo. His profanity was as far ranging as to include Russian and Congolese swear words. Ben knew the 'f...' word in over 40 languages including 15 from China and Mongolia and was very proud of the fact that he could rattle off the entire list in less than half a minute.]

Making the country legal was a completely unique concept. I have to admit that at first I thought was impossible. So Ben and I sat down and immediately started to work it out. You are living the results of our short, less than an hour, brain storming session.

The English kept branding us as brigands and pirates, a nation of 13 lawless states, that needed to be invaded and put back under their yoke. Now we were suddenly going to stop our smuggling and become more abiding of the England legal system than the English were. By doing so we were going to simply remove every one of the reasons they had given the world as an excuse to invade the US.

That way there would be absolutely not one single reason for the English to invade us. You may notice that the Constitution does not speak against the 'Crown' and avoids any animosity towards England. This was the reason for it.

The Constitution

The Constitution was written by me when I was supposed to be in France working hard as the Ambassador.

For me to go to France as Ambassador just to coddle King Louis was ridiculous when I had a huge plantation to take care of in Virginia. The real reason I became the ambassador was to write the constitution using the legal resources of the UK in order to make certain there were no loopholes in the Constitution. As the Ambassador to France people complained that I wasn't doing my job because I spent half my time going on hunts in an isolated part of France. Principally it was with one Frenchman and his wife who were highly invested in America. Since we never took an extra woman and it happened so often there were rumors about us three.

His house wasn't too far from the coast as I recall, maybe near Normandy, but anyway from there I would sneak across the channel. There I used the same law libraries the English barristers would later use to try to find the loopholes in the Constitution which I made absolutely and completely certain did not exist.

The reasons my authorship was kept a secret were many but mainly it was because there had been a bounty on my head for writing the Declaration of Independence. It's well known that those who signed the Declaration had bounties on their heads but the combined amount of those bounties was less than half the bounty on my head for having written that damn Declaration of Independence. I wasn't at all comfortable with that bounty on my head. I certainly wasn't about to have another one added. (I am assuming that by then the bounty on my head for writing the Declaration of Independence was canceled.)

That is why my writing the Constitution was kept a secret.

The English channel is not a great barrier to people who are determined to cross it. I got a white wig, a pair of glasses, some different clothes and went across to England undercover to use their law libraries. I do recall that I actually pretended to be a sailor until I got far from the coast. The English hated Thomas Jefferson more than any 'non-French' person alive. I am proud to say that I had already ruined their entire 'empire scheme' with the Declaration of Independence. Only me and my family knew what my real reason was for going to France. I might have been tortured to death if I had been caught. I had no choice though. I had to use the English library(s) in order to make the Constitution lawful and legal in accordance with all English laws and without a single flaw. Otherwise they would declare the Constitution in violation of their laws, hence illegal and then claim that our country was a lawless pirates haven which according to their laws and treaties with the other European Nations they had a right to invade. Etcetera. I was the one that explained to Congress how it was necessary to make the Constitution legal under the English laws so guess who got to hang the bell on that cat?

Yes, I was the man they had put in charge of it. I have to admit I was the most logical choice and that is what got me 'enlisted against my will'.

It was in England that the records existed which would make the US Constitution a legal contract under the English laws as well as under the laws of the independent colonies and the Continental Congress and also international law. I found out later that the English found my notes at the law library and it matched the phrasing of the Articles of Confederation precisely. Then a few months later the Constitution was signed. They were really upset that the writer of the Constitution had used their own library to make it legal. They were enraged. They knew that one person had written both documents but since they did not know who had written the Articles of Confederation they couldn't figure out who the author of the Constitution was.

It was completely absurd to attempt to make a contract of that length and have it still legal under 15 different sets of laws (13 states, the Congress and England). Well I must have been out of my mind to attempt such a thing. It worked though.

The main set of laws that were the most important ones to satisfy were the English laws. Being legal under the English legal system meant there was nothing they could legally do about us. Breaking an English law in that document or allowing a pirate to make their home in a US port were about the only ways that we could get 'busted'.

The Constitution was not so much based on the English legal system but on the basis of their legal system. The US Constitution was patterned mainly after indentured servitude contracts and court cases that went back to the 1400's. A man's life depended on these contracts and findings so these rulings were well established in the English legal system. They were so lawful that many of the English laws and especially those relating to human rights were patterned on them. As I recall (but dont quote me) this included the English laws on prisoner rights, capital punishment, Naval impress (draft) laws, some property ownership law and squatters rights.

The logic to not using the 18th century laws of England but using laws that were hundreds of years older was quite simple. In the 14th century and before it was just English laws that had been in effect for at least 500 years. Since then the English had taken over Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. With those lands came some of their laws. So the laws of England of the 18th century were a combination of English, Scottish and even some Irish laws with a smattering of Welsh laws that snuck in. The problem was that many of the laws conflicted. It was a mess and all the English had to do was find the worst of those laws and present it in court as evidence that our Constitution was illegal and hence our nation was also illegal.

That way they could find us forefathers all guilty of breaking the same English law and declare us felons at large. They were all set and ready to have big show trials to make us examples. The trials would have been covered by all the European Nations and used by those nations to threaten their own colonies into submission. However, what only the French knew was what our defense would have been if the English had managed to get us into court. I would have torn apart their entire corrupt legal system in front of Europe. It would have taken about three weeks for me to prove that England was an illegal piratical nation. It would have enabled all the countries of Europe to legally make war against England.

You had better believe I was going to do it if England had invaded the US and taken us to court.

By basing the Constitution on the basis of the English laws the English could do nothing. Basically if they said the Constitution was illegal they would have destroyed their own system of laws. They would have torn it out by the roots. Over half of the English laws would have been under scrutiny and half of those would have failed the scrutiny.

How could England survive with one forth of their laws invalidated in front of the nations of Europe? The French would have 'then claimed that the country was a haven for lawless pirates so they had a right to invade under international law', etcetera, etcetera. In fact they would have said that they had an obligation to invade.

So the Continental Congress signed a secret treaty with France declaring that France would go to war with England if they invaded us and took us forefathers to court. (This was in addition to the Treaty of Alliance.) Once I had proven that England was a pirate nation France planned to invade England's overseas colonies. Their main target of course was 'French Canada' and then the rest of Canada and then the Caribbean island of Jamaica and other islands. Then all the other European Nations would have attacked England directly, walled off their ports and the Thames with blockades and then they all would have set sail for those rich English overseas colonies that they all wanted to take over.

Taking me to court was no fun. It's never any fun. Remember that.

So I was doing this unprecedented dangerous legal work in the English law libraries right under the nose of even the English legal authorities who were in charge of those libraries. It was exciting but this outrageous (outrageous because standing at 6' 4" I stood out like a sore thumb) James Bond character even had to invent his own nifty little spying gadgets like the one on this page.

While I was invading the English law libraries our forefathers were patiently waiting back in America for me to send them both the Constitution and the assurance that by signing it they could not be convicted of breaking any English laws in any court of England or any other country that might ever want to invade us.

The English had several times the soldiers in Canada as they had there during and just after the revolution and they were doing nothing except waiting at the US border for marching south orders. Also, the English had sent to the states (and Canada) somewhere between five and fifteen thousand ex army regulars as 'sleeper cells' pretending to be settlers. Caches of guns were often confiscated from ships entering the US.*.

The English were ready to invade so no short cuts could be taken with the Constitution.

Here is what I was certain someone in England would figure it out just using only logic. The Constitution had to be written in England. Since I was the only forefather who went to Europe during this time it should be obvious who wrote the Constitution of the United States. Don't feel bad. Nobody in England figured it out either. I was certain someone would but alas, nobody did and I lived to become the third president of the very country that I invented! Ironic isn't it?

When I finished writing the Constitution and sent it to America to be signed I went to the court of King Louis the XVI and told him to get ready. French arms and supplies were placed on about 100 ships and they waited for the British to declare the Constitution illegal under English law. If the English had sailed off to attack and invade the US the French would have attacked England and 'claimed that the country was a lawless pirates haven so that they had a right to invade' etcetera, etcetera

The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments)

Yes, I know you were taught in your history class that they were added to get the individual states to sign the Constitution but that doesn't make any sense. If you look at them you cannot find any that tilt toward or favored one state over another. The desire for them was divided equally across all the states and across the entire population. The amendments were wanted by all Americans. So why did we make them amendments and not part of the Constitution?

The Bill of Rights were actually the parts of the Constitution that might have come in conflict with the laws of the European Nations and that would have allowed them to declare war on us, invade us, etcetera, etcetera.

So the radical ideas that various countries objected to became the first ten Amendments.

Let me explain this to you. I made the amendments so they could be easily and temporarily removed by another amendment just like a hundred years later the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment which was Prohibition.

That way the body of the Constitution would be left intact, whole and complete while only the Amendments of the Bill of Rights would be changed.

This concept was without precedence and it was a totally new way of using amendments. These amendments were totally unexpected and it threw all of Europe into a quandary trying to find legal ways (not prohibited by their own laws or treaties) to circumvent them. England alone had hundreds of lawyers pouring over law books trying to find a loophole. There were no loopholes as I made sure of that.

Yes, it was my idea.

Why make it so that the Amendments could be repealed with a vote? There were several reasons.

One was this. There was a distinct possibility that a European nation would have made one of the amendments an issue and started to rile up the rest of Europe in order to prepare for a multi nation invasion of the U.S. If and when that happened we would have quickly passed an amendment that would have canceled the objectionable amendment, then back date it and say to Europe, 'You are right. Last month we found out that amendment did not work out so we eliminated it. Thank you very much.' Then after things cooled down we would reinstate that amendment by passing yet a third amendment.

Another main reason that I did it this way is a lot more complex and difficult to explain but here goes. If a war got started we might need to remove one amendment so that we could align with one of the European nation. For example: If we needed to align with England who had strict anti-gun laws we might need to remove the Second Amendment for awhile so that the English rulers could justify becoming friends. Italy and even Spain were so entrenched in Catholicism that our freedom of religion (the First Amendment) could have become an issue with them and their treaties. So we could then just remove the thorny issue in less than ten minutes with a vote of Congress. I had three ways it could be modified by another amendment if Spain or Italy wanted to join us.

Another way I intended to used amendments is even more complex. We had figured out how to get all the nations of Europe to gang up on any nation that invaded us. Or as an alternative start World War I and let the Europeans destroy each other instead of us. It wasn't needed. They did that anyway and they did it without us. At least for the first three years of that war.

Most Americans don't realize that the Treaty of Alliance which allowed France to enter the Revolutionary War on our side did not terminate with the end of the Revolutionary war. It was in effect and hanging over the head of England for ~20 years until it was abrogated in 1799. During that entire period of time France was waiting and eager to defend us and that meant they would have attacked England as soon as the English fleet sailed over the horizon. As long as we had broken no English laws all of France's treaties and alignments held with all the other European powers. Now it gets to the good part. Since we were neutral and had not broken any laws it meant that England would have been breaking treaties by attacking a neutral country. That would violate the treaties they had with other nations. Then all those other countries that wanted a piece of English territory (that was about 11 countries including Scandinavian countries like Norway who wanted a part of Canada) could go to war with the English. They would all leap into the fray like in WWI only this time they would have loved to gang up on England and stripped her of all of her colonies from Quebec to India. Then England would not be able to say 'the sun never sets on the British Empire'. (Germany would have probably gained the most.)

So England had a lot to lose if they messed up and invaded us 'improperly'. Basically one person on our end could have messed it up completely very easily by giving the Europeans a legal reason to invade. Even a sailor accidentally firing a cannon at the wrong time and near the wrong country's ship could have brought it all down on the U.S. if that country decided the cannon shot was a declaration of war.****

In summary: If one of the European countries had issues with the US then it was always with one of the amendments. If they had ever made an issue about it then we could have simply suspend that amendment by voting in a new one. Then later we could have simply voted in a third amendment that contained the first amendment and also removed or dis empowered the second amendment.

I had almost 300 amendments to the Constitution written down that we could have used for 300 different situations that might have come up so that we would prevail in those situations.***** When I hear a congressman on CNN ask a CIA executive if there is a contingency plan I laugh a bit. I'll be frank, I had over 300 contingency plans made up when George Washington became president. He was very impressed. Said he would not have to think once during his whole term as I had already done it for him.

* We usually kept the confiscation secret. That way the captain of the smuggling ship or others got accused of stealing them. The English did not know who to trust.

The guns came in through New York Harbor of all places and Boston and the Chesapeake Bay. There were over 500 confiscated and do you want to know what was the craziest part of it was? They were only smooth bore muskets. Had they sent money instead they could have bought twice as many of the more dreaded long range Kentucky rifles for the same amount of money! We had no use for those confiscated 500 muskets since they were so inaccurate. So for years they just sat around gathering dust.

I recall that there were about 40 barrels of powder in one confiscation so that meant there were cannons somewhere that had already made it through. Cannons are always shipped before the powder since they are more important. The powder can be brought in many ways and can be manufactured or bought if need be.

In 1790 the French started to prepare to invade the US. That is when those 500 smoothbore muskets disappeared. In 1791 rebel attacks in French Haiti that had been going on unsuccessfully for 40 years and had left tens of thousands dead, suddenly got kicked up five notches due to the appearance of 500 muskets in the hands of rebels. It was called the Slave Rebellion and it lead to the liberation of Haiti. They tossed the French right out on their ear and out of their richest province.

We eventually got the best deal in the style of buying Manhattan Island for $24 in beads when we purchased Louisiana from France for $7 Million. That was when Napoleon had to have his 'moving out of the western hemisphere' sale all because some damn planter in Virginia shipped 500 muskets in 20 crates labeled 'twill wool dresses' to Le Borgne, Haiti.

**Just read this 1724 account:.

...It was a utopia. According to Johnson’s account: Ours is a brave, a just, an innocent, and a noble cause; the cause of liberty. I advise a white ensign, with liberty painted in the fly, and if you like the motto, A Deo a Libertate, For God and Liberty, as an emblem of our uprightness and resolution.… The men, who lent an attentive ear, cry’d, Liberty, Liberty; we are freemen. Here

Sounds positively patriotic doesn't it? Except this is from Captain Charles Johnson’s 1724 book, 'A General History of the Pyrates' and was about the pirate colony Libertalia on the Indian Ocean Island of Madagascar. That certainly wasn't the US by a long shot. You can probably start to see what we were up against.

The Europeans hated such words as those the pirates used like 'liberty'. They had united to locate and wipe out the main pirate colonies about 60 or so years before. However, they were again becoming a big problem in both the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. So every time we used that French word 'liberty' the minds of most Europeans made a very short leap to thinking of us Americans as being pirates. You can tell we had an uphill battle to fight just to get out from under the yoke and evil legacy that pirates had before we could freely think of establishing the United States of America.

One of the ways we did it was not to use words that got Europeans upset like 'liberty'. Instead we used the less inflammatory word 'freedom' as in my statement: 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.' but we always really mean 't liberty'. The word freedom was technically worse than the word 'liberty' but not in the minds of most Europeans. Freedom allows for the right to enforce your will on others as the pirates did but liberty doesn't include it. As I stated on the first page:

It was always about liberty and not about freedom as most American's now demand with curt slogans. Liberty is a state of existence. Freedom concerns actions and is anarchy in the truest sense of the word, no matter how good a persons intentions. Freedoms were all different. Some curtailed other people rights and some didn't. Freedom of speech was one right that a person could always walk away from if they did not like hearing it exercised. The same with religion.

The whole concept of the revolution was to be rid of the ruling by a few, be it pirates or the rulers of Europe who thought they had the right to dominate other people. However, the concept of liberty was so new that there were not any other words that even existed describing it besides 'freedom' except 'independence' but that's just freedom spelled differently.

We appear to have been too effective and ended up blurring the meaning of the word freedom with that of liberty until now people confuse the definitions and think those two words mean the same thing. That confuses the issue of right and wrong to no end.

***In one scenario we would have had to present our case in the courts of four countries at once to start WWI.

One thing that warring countries have done throughout history is to sign a peace treaty with their enemy. Then they would rebuild their army, get another country that they were aligned with by treaty to declare war on the enemy and then come to that countries aid. That way they could restart the war without breaking the peace treaty. To prevent this from occurring the countries would put a certain stipulation in the initial treaty. In one case there were five countries that had signed a treaty. They put in it that if a neutral country (one not involved in the treaty) went to war with any of the five countries and one of the five signers went to their assistance then none of the other signing countries could join the fighting. This prevented several or even four of the countries from ganging up on one of them (and the neutral country).

In this case if one of the five countries went to war with us then they only had to worry about one country coming to our aid.

So how would we win or at least have started WWI? If one of the five countries declared war on us then we were going to simultaneously submit a request for aid to the other four countries. Since all four would be presented with the request at the same time then those countries could each say there were no other countries on our side at the time that they signed up with us. Then, all four of the countries would have adhered to the terms of the treaty and we would end up with 4 countries on our side.

King Louis of France who was prepared to stand up for America's independence alone even against Austria-Prussia (though it would have been a losing battle) relished this 'loophole' which would have tripled the forces on our side. When Madison figured this one out I sent it to France. The King of France said it was brilliant and that he wanted to make Madison a subject of France. Madison was offered a tremendous amount of money just to review treaties for France but thought it might have been a conflict of interest.

****This is how we could have started an even bigger World War I. George Washington had four agents, two teams, who were trusted gun crews on English ships. They had U.S. made detonators with time delay fuses which were to be put into the barrel of cannons behind the cannon ball which were not quite seated all the way down. Immediately before before the ship pulled up next to a neutral ship they were to ram the ball the rest of the way to seat it. That would break a bottle containing phosphorus which would then ignite the 2 minute fuse which then burned a lot like a modern match. Then as they pulled up beside the neutral ship, BOOM, England would be at war with a neutral country. That would bring into play all those clauses in treaties that allowed everyone to side with the neutral country. It's all based on the fact that the European's hated with a passion any harming of neutrals.

I can't supply all the answers. Also, I'm not in possession of a magic ball. I was just in the thick of American politics and recall all these issues from my memory of that life. This specific information was known to me only because I was asked to decide on the best 5 contingency plans that I could think of (then I wrote them up) in case any of Washington's agents got caught and ratted us out. I also wrote 4 contingency plans in case our other agents which were on French ships got caught and I was more than a little horrified when George told me all out about that 'set up'. Mainly because I had been the Ambassador to France during part of that time and I might have been killed if those spies had been caught.

These were all 'deep sleeper cells'. If any of those four countries were planning war with us we would have known months before hand. Then the appropriate cells would have been awakened and ordered to start a war with another country instead of the US.

We had agents on the ships of four countries including Russia. Russia was probably about to invade from the west when Napoleon started in on them. Actually they were already in the process of it. What do think their claims in Alaska, half way across Canada and down to California were all about? Just look at this map. This was only 41 years after their first settlement was established in Alaska yet their official claim on the map was as far east as Alberta Canada (those are the Rocky Mountains on the right side of the map). However, their official claims were not anywhere near the extent of what they simply took over and absolutely nothing compared to what they intended to take over. Beside their well known Fort Ross in California which as everyone knows was fully recognized by all European nations as Spanish territory they had lots of other forts along the coast and throughout western Canada. The Russian traders themselves were found trading and trapping as far east as Manitoba, throughout the Hudson Bay and even some of the great lakes.

The thing that set me off (and still seems to set me off even 200 years later) was that their forts were where the natives had settled. They realized that the natives had figured out the best places to live so they would just murder all the natives and take over their locations. The Russians never even bother to scout out locations. They would just find the largest Native American settlement and assume it was the best location and then murder all the indians. This just goes to show that Russias intent was to ruthlessly take over America. We had solid evidence of their plans much earlier (by 1805) and we had indisputable proof by 1811.

Almost all of this evidence is probably still around the capital in various locations. Possibly many are in Madison's memoirs. He was the one that did most of the work. I then formulated the contingency plans based on his knowledge. He had people over in Europe pulling out treaties from 500 years in the past. Most of them were still in effect. He had them all indexed in his memory.

Later when Madison was president and it was no longer much of a secret one of Dolley Madison's favorite parlor games, done in complete innocence, was to have guests each pretend to be a country. (You couldn't chose Russia though since they never abided by treaties.) Then the guests would divide into two groups. And each person would assume to represent a country. The object was to figure a way to get all the countries (people) in one of the groups to go to war with those of the other group using treaties that their supposed country had signed over the previous 500 years.

Madison would explain which treaties and in what sequence he would present them to the different countries (party goers) in order to align them with the rest of the countries in their group. The last one he would notify was usually Germany since it could be depended upon to state 'we are treaty bound to go to war' and then they would go to war as inevitably as day turns to night.

By this method we could have arranged for any combination of countries to go to war with any other combination of countries of our choosing as precisely as if we were dialing the combinations to a bank vault. Germany was like the final turning of the handle and opening the vault door. It was as sure to happen as the conflict between Austria and Serbia avalanched into World War I.

Yes, in order to keep America free we were fully willing and able to have plunged the European countries into World War I as long ago as the 1780's.

One favorite flaw in treaties were the clauses that limited the 'maximum number' of citizens that could be in the other country at any one time. (That was put in the treaties in order to prevent armies from entering other countries in disguise.) After 80 years of peace often about ten times the 'maximum number' would have migrated from one country to the other and those people would even be reflected in the census as such. As friendly as it was it did violate the treaty. The two countries would almost be obligated to go to war with each other.

I think England had signed a treaty in about 1300 stating that they could only maintain a very small navy. By the late 1700's it was about 40 times that size and the treaty was still in effect. This abrogated the treaty which meant the signers were technically at war with each other. That treaty may have been with France, some provinces of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire.

*****It all started out when James Madison was attending Princeton and he joined a group of students on a project. It may have a been part of a class. They were going to make a cross language legal dictionary of older languages. They were using treaties to established the precise equivalent words in those different languages (similar to how the 'rosetta stone' was later used to decipher hieroglyphics). His group of students found that the treaties had more to offer than just words when they discovered that about four countries were still technically at war with each other because of a flaw in the dating. One of the countries had not signed until after the deadline. This invalidated the entire treaty. However, the countries didn't know that they were at war with each other. I don't recall the other details but Madison's group decided that instead of making the dictionary they would dedicate themselves to the pursuit of finding the flaws in all the treaties that they could locate.

I found out about it after he graduated and thought that could be very useful information and it grew from there. The people in that Princeton group became a think tank and some were sent to Europe to find every single European treaty that existed. They found more than the Europeans ever knew existed. Many of the treaties were still in effect even after hundreds of years. The rulers just forgot about them and wrote new ones. Sometimes the new treaties were at cross purposes and many were invalidated by a previous treaty. Sometimes a treaty elaborated that no changes or new treaties could be made. Then a hundred years later the countries would have forgotten about that treaty and made a new one. Another thing that I saw often was a treaty that did not allow a country to sign a new treaty with a named country. Then they would later sign one with them. Thus the later treaty was invalid from the start. So as you can probably tell treaties could be worked into just about any combination imaginable.

I can't recall how many invalid and flawed treaties they found but I think it was about 150. Certainly enough to start a WWI that would turn out just about anyway that us yanks wanted it to turn out.

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© 2004-10 John Pinil