THE CONSPIRACY OF THE LOST CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

O.K., let’s file this one under …

THE CONSPIRACY OF THE LOST CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

It’s simply amazing all of the mischief that gets done with iconic historical documents. 

Were these documents not locked up and kept under armed guard, people would be forever stealing, hiding them, or subjecting them to forgery.

Some people would even draw treasure maps on the back of some of them, taunting the Indiana Joneses among us to search for a mythical hidden treasure trove of knowledge salvaged from the library of Alexandria.

But conspiracy theorists would really rather have a map that might lead them to that diabolical top-secret government warehouse which is the elusive repository of all those missing documents that conspiracy theorists obsess about.

Stashed away inside that warehouse, I understand, are the real Roswell files, the original map of Antarctica, made by the cartographers of Atlantis, and later copied by Piri Reis, and the original specs to the nuclear warhead that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

There are also several copies of the stricken Amendment to The United States Constitution. 

Wait. 

The old yellowed parchment that starts with the three tall words We the People…

Jeff and I didn’t take and history classes at NYU, so I was surprised this morning when Jeff was droning on about how the ratification of a Constitutional Amendment requires a two thirds vote of both houses of Congress and approval of three quarters of the states. 

My ears certainly perked up when Jeff got to the part about the altered and incomplete copies of The United States Constitution which now appear in all of the history books.

The critical part of Jeff’s conspiracy theory goes something like this:

Jeff:  There’s a part of the Constitution, which no one knows about, which gives the Federal Government the power to take away citizenship for any on of a number of reasons.

O.K.  Usually I can just dismiss these sorts of things with a smile and a keyboard, and maybe a few random lines drawn between logical bullet points.

After all, there would have to be a paper trail the length of Pennsylvania Avenue concerning any sort of actual Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

So it should be pretty easy to dismiss this one…

But as I started to search for the truth, I began to see actual evidence that there was an Amendment to the Constitution that appeared in several easily tracked down19th century copies. 

This same Amendment is in none of the copies available from contemporary sources.

Now, how can this be?  The U.S. Constitution is, after all, one of the most well-researched and widely published documents in human history.

Prior to 1865, this Amendment appears in several copies of the document.  After 1865, is appears in none that I could find.

Conspiracy?  Certainly an anomaly.  So, Jeff was at least right about some of the basic facts. 

There was once an Amendment that was in copies of the Constitution.  Now there is not.

So, witness the following, and follow along as a witness.

The mysterious Amendment reads:

Article XIII

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.

Go ahead, look for yourself.  It’s actually not that hard to find copies of it in print.  And they are not forgeries.  The paper trail is way too long. 

The meaning and purpose of the Amendment is difficult for a non-historian blogger to discern.  On it’s face the Amendment seems to indicate that if you accept or receive one item among a list of fairly harmless items from a foreign head of state, or foreign nation, then zap!, no more United States citizenship.  You become an instant person without a country.  No trial, no due process, no recourse.

Seems pretty anti-American, and rather harsh.  Add to that the case of the Amendment’s mysterious disappearance, and perhaps Jeff has got the makings of a future “I told you so moment.”

Will I now have to check the return address of every gift I ever receive? 

Can any member of the British Parliament now send me an iPod and thereby instantly take away my right to vote?

So, this morning I left the confines of the apartment for some good old-fashioned dusty research in the 42nd Street Library.  I was careful not to accept any gifts from anyone with diplomatic plates on the way.

There, in rarely visited stacks, I found some question as to whether or not this original 13th Amendment was actually ever really officially part of the Constitution. 

It might not have ever really passed the ratification threshold, and if that was the case, it’s not missing, it was a mistake to ever include it in official copies.  A mistake which was compounded across scores of printed copies.

According to Congressional documents, this original proposed 13th Amendment was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the year 1810, by the two-thirds majority of each chamber required by the Constitution. 

That’s the first part of the Amendment process.

According to the Constitutional ratification rule, in order to become part of the Constitution, then three-quarters of the state legislatures have to say yes to the Amendment.

In the year 1810 there were seventeen states.  Three-quarters of seventeen is thirteen, so to make the Amendment the law of the land required yes votes from thirteen states.

It was very close.

Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Virginia and New Hampshire all clearly ratified the Amendment.

The Virginia Legislature became the thirteenth yes in 1819.

New York, South Carolina, Connecticut, and Rhode Island clearly did not ratify.

But that’s thirteen sates in the yes column.

So, as 1819, there was officially a Thirteenth Amendment.

Or was there?

Remember, Virginia did not ratify the Amendment until 1819.  In 1819 there were not seventeen states, but twenty one.

Louisiana, New Hampshire. Indiana, Illinois and Mississippi had all been admitted to the union by that point.  So now, sixteen states were required for ratification.

None of those four state legislatures left any record of voting on the issue.

It’s at the moment that the requisite threshold of the percentage of states is reached that the state count becomes crucial.  This was clearly the precedent in the Amendment process in the first ten, and the eleven and twelve.

So it seems that the 13th Amendment simply never passed the Constitutional threshold.

There is no secret Amendment lying in wait in a secret warehouse until a mass of citizenry rises up in a wave of treasonous activity.

It simply seems that over time the mistake was caught, though it’s still there in dozens of early copies of the Constitution.  Rather than a conspiracy, it was more likely just a case incorrect understanding of the process, a case of news traveling slowly.  

It gives me great comfort to know, all these years later, thata law that would seemingly be adopted because of fear of foreigners and foreign nations never made the ratification threshold. 

Kind of gives you confidence in the system.

Of course, the real 13th Amendment was adopted and ratified, in the mid-1800s, and has been included in all copies of the United States Constitution for over one hundred and fifty years. 

I encourage you to read up on that Amendment, as it was an extension of freedom and rights.

So the next time that you hear a conspiracy theorist talk about a missing part of the United States Constitution, steer him or her to the history books for a good old-fashioned civics lesson. 

The truth, hopefully, in time, will stop the spread of misinformation.

However, Jeff, I’ll meet you have way on this.  There was indeed some truth to the missing Amendment. 

But there is absolutely no truth to the conspiracy theory.

Until next time, e-mails are always welcome.