Did you know about this?The Missing 13th Amendment

The Missing 13th Amendment



David M. Dodge, Researcher, Date 08/01/91



In the winter of 1983, archival research expert David Dodge, and former
Baltimore police investigator Tom Dunn, were searching for evidence of
government corruption in public records stored in the Belfast Library on
the coast of Maine.



By chance, they discovered the library's oldest authentic copy of the
Constitution of the United States (printed in 1825). Both men were
stunned to see this document included a 13th Amendment that no longer
appears on current copies of the Constitution. Moreover, after studying
the Amendment's language and historical context, they realized the
principle intent of this "missing" 13th Amendment was to prohibit
lawyers from serving in government. So began a seven year, nationwide
search for the truth surrounding the most bizarre Constitutional puzzle
in American history -- the unlawful removal of a ratified Amendment from
the Constitution of the United States.



Since 1983, Dodge and Dunn have uncovered additional copies of the
Constitution with the "missing" 13th Amendment printed in at least
eighteen separate publications by ten different states and territories
over four decades from 1822 to 1860. In June of this year (1991), Dodge
uncovered the evidence that this missing 13th Amendment had indeed been
lawfully ratified by the state of Virginia and was therefore an
authentic Amendment to the American Constitution. If the evidence is
correct and no logical errors have been made, a 13th Amendment
restricting lawyers from serving in government was ratified in 1819 and
removed from the U.S. Constitution during the tumult of the Civil War.
Since the Amendment was never lawfully repealed, it is still the Law
today. The implications are enormous.



The story of this "missing" Amendment is complex and at times confusing
because the political issues and vocabulary of the American Revolution
were different from our own. However, there are essentially two issues:



What does the Amendment mean? and,

Was the Amendment ratified?

Before we consider the issue of ratification, we should first understand
the Amendment's meaning and consequent current relevance.



MEANING of the 13th Amendment

The "missing" 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:



"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."

At the first reading, the meaning of this 13th Amendment (also called
the "title of nobility" Amendment) seems obscure; unimportant. The
references to "nobility," "honour," "emperor," "king," and "prince,"
lead us to dismiss this Amendment as a petty post-revolution act of
spite directed against the British monarchy. The U.S. modern world of
Lady Di and Prince Charles, make anti-royalist sentiments seem so
archaic and quaint, that the Amendment can be ignored.



Not so. Consider some evidence of its historical significance:



First, "titles of nobility" were prohibited in both Article VI of the
Articles of Confederation (1777) and in Article I, Sections 9 and 10 of
the Constitution of the United States (1787);

Second, although already prohibited by the Constitution, an additional
"title of nobility" amendment was proposed in 1789, again in 1810, and
according to Dodge, finally ratified in 1819. Clearly, the founding
fathers saw such a serious threat in "titles of nobility" and "honors"
that anyone receiving them would forfeit their citizenship. Since the
government prohibited "titles of nobility" several times over four
decades, and went through the amending process (even though "titles of
nobility" were already prohibited by the Constitution), it's obvious
that the Amendment carried much more significance for our founding
fathers than is readily apparent today.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

To understand the meaning of this "missing" 13th Amendment, we must
understand its historical context -- the era surrounding the American
Revolution. We tend to regard the notion of "Democracy" as benign,
harmless, and politically unremarkable. But at the time of the American
Revolution, King George III and the other monarchies of Europe saw
Democracy as an unnatural, ungodly ideological threat, every bit as
dangerously radical as Communism was once regarded by modern Western
nations. Just as the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia spawned other
revolutions around the world, the American Revolution provided an
example and incentive for people all over the world to overthrow their
European monarchies.



Even though the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, the
simple fact of our existence threatened the monarchies. The United
States stood as a heroic role model for other nations, that inspired
them to also struggle against oppressive monarchies. The French
Revolution (1789-1799) and the Polish national uprising (1794) were in
part encouraged by the American Revolution. Though we stood like a
beacon of hope for most of the world, the monarchies regarded the United
States as a political typhoid Mary, the principle source of radical
democracy that was destroying monarchies around the world. The
monarchies must have realized that if the principle source of that
infection could be destroyed, the rest of the world might avoid the
contagion and the monarchies would be saved.



Their survival at stake, the monarchies sought to destroy or subvert the
American system of government. Knowing they couldn't destroy us
militarily, they resorted to more covert methods of political
subversion, employing spies and secret agents skilled in bribery and
legal deception -- it was, perhaps, the first "cold war". Since
governments run on money, politicians run for money, and money is the
usual enticement to commit treason, much of the monarchy's counter-
revolutionary efforts emanated from English banks.



Read the rest at:

http://www.lawfulpath.com/ref/13th-amend.shtml