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You’re welcome.

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Tell them to read Lincoln’s August 22, 1862 letter to Horace Greeley on this subject. Lincoln denied that the war was about slavery, and he went further.

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“Federal property” in what sense. Today, the USA has bases in South Korea, Japan, etc. Those bases are used by the US Government to the common ends of the USA and the host country. This doesn’t mean that they have ceased to be part of South Korea, Japan, etc., nor does it mean that if they wanted to, the Koreans, Japanese, or whoever is their actual owner couldn’t tell the USA to withdraw from that territory.

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Nothing about this quotation is inconsistent with Jefferson’s insistence on what you call “strict construction” (which in any other area would be called “law”). He thought laws should be modified as new discoveries were made, their imperfections became evident, etc. This has nothing to do with giving judges power to remake law.

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It doesn’t make sense to me.

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You’re welcome.

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Jefferson adamantly opposed altering the Constitution by “construction.” It was the Virginia Constitution, not the US one, that he advocated amending extensively.

In addition to Dr. McClanahan’s points, let me add that in the Virginia Ratification Convention, the third most active Federalist orator, George Nicholas, said that if the Federal Government abused the powers it was being granted, Virginia could reclaim them. We call that secession. This was the last major speech before the final vote. Imagine it something like this:

Nicholas — We can always secede.
Call the roll!
The Constitution is narrowly approved, 88-80.

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In 1789, at Madison’s instigation, Congress sent 12 proposed amendments to the states for ratification. 10 of them became the Bill of Rights. One other was ratified in 1992: the 27th Amendment.

What happened was that in the late 1970s, a staffer at the Texas Capitol noticed that this proposed amendment was sitting there unratified. He then undertook, using his own money, to persuade state legislators around the country to pick it up and agree to it. His triumph came in 1992.

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For every overseas situation you call egregious, I can point to three others. It never ends.

Your question reminds me of President George H. W. Bush, who, when asked why he was dispatching soldiers and Marines to Somalia, said (I paraphrase), “I saw starving children on CNN, and I thought, ‘I have an army. I can stop this.'”

Have you ever seen “Black Hawk Down?”

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I concur about Johnson, certainly. Freeman’s _Lee’s Lieutenants_ is perhaps the classic military treatment. For a Lee biography, also see Freeman. For Grant, I like Simpson. For the C.S. Constitution, DeRosa. For Confederate political culture, Rable. For Confederate women, Faust. Again, there’s a book on basically any sub-topic you can think of.

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Oh, right. Pardon my gaffe.

The reason it’s not usually counted the first declaration of independence is that the signatories stood only for that county, not for an entire colony, and the idea that a county was sovereign was not one of the Patriots’ popular ideas. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who said so.

So, again, VA was the first state to establish its independence.

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On May 15, 1776, Virginia’s ruling Convention adopted three resolutions: one saying it needed a declaration of rights, one saying it needed a written republican constitution, and one calling for federal and treaty relationships with whichever colonies and foreign countries wanted them. This date was long celebrated as the date of Virginia’s independence, which it was.

Although May 20 is my birthday, I conclude that North Carolina was second by five days. In fact, its declaration arguably wasn’t authoritative or permanent.

People in Connecticut, by the way, say that a guy from here was first in flight. I’m actually a Texan living in exile, so I don’t have a dog in this fight.

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Thomas Jefferson warned Madison that appointing US Representative Joseph Story, R-MA, was a bad idea. Madison appointed him anyway. I aver in James Madison and the Making of America that if the goal of a Supreme Court appointment is to have the appointee reflect the president’s constitutional views in his performance on the bench, Story’s was arguably the worst appointment ever. Story became Marshall’s right-hand man in issuing a string of anti-Jeffersonian constitutional holdings, some of which Madison strongly lamented.

The Second American Party System (Democrats vs. Whigs) was composed of two parties whose leaders had all been Jeffersonian Republicans. The Whigs were generally nationalist.

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Fischer is an outstanding historian–not ideological, not captive to the latest fads, capable of constructing a good narrative, and fully in command of his sources. I recommend both of those titles.

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Jefferson’s Virginia required all men of military age to participate in regular militia musters (i.e., training). To those musters, every man who was not indigent must bring his own military weapon. He wanted all students at the University of Virginia to be regularly drilled in military science as well.

Has the time since Jefferson shown that disarming the population is conducive to prosperity?

I’d say “no.”

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