The Secret Founding of America by Nicholas Hagger

Author:Nicholas Hagger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Secret Founding of America
ISBN: 9781780283500
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2011-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

The Freemasonic Constitution of 1787

The constitutional arrangements for the newly independent colonies were slow in coming. In mid-1776 Congress had adopted Richard Henry Lee’s resolution ‘That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States’. On Lee’s proposal, work began on the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution.

The Articles of Confederation were based on Franklin’s Albany Plan of 1754, which proposed colonial union (see Appendix IV). (As we have seen, the British Board of Trade had convened the Albany Congress to cement the loyalty of the Iroquois League against the French and had not adopted Franklin’s plan.) The Articles of Confederation (see Appendix VI) were approved on 15 November 1777, after Saratoga. By approving them, the Continental Congress agreed a new system that would be a federation of states, and the confederacy was to be called the United States of America, which would be a ‘perpetual union’. Each state was to ratify the Articles of Confederation. This took until March 1781.

There was now a loose association of states held together by the Articles of Confederation, with a weak central government. The new national State did not work. Sovereignty was vested in 13 states that were more concerned with their own local interests than with the national interest. The localizing of sovereignty in the states may have been a reaction against British central authority. In theory, Congress could conduct foreign policy, make war, make military appointments, borrow money and run the postal service. In fact, it had no power to enforce its requests and there was corruption and incompetence too.

The economy was in depression and the national government had inherited a war debt of $60 million. The revolutionary soldiers had not been fully paid. In 1781–2 the victorious general, George Washington, wintered with the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He made efforts to secure payment for the army, and in 1782 received a letter from Colonel Lewis Nicola urging him to use the army to make himself king. Washington indignantly declined. He seems to have believed that America would become a monarchy and also in the necessity of the principle of monarchy, but kingship contradicted his Templar Freemasonic philosophy, which was republican.11

By the end of 1786 government by the Continental Congress had ceased to be effective, although claims by some states to western lands were settled and the Northwest Ordinance established government north of the Ohio river. However, the confederation had given the nation the experience of operating a constitution under a written document and laid the basis for the present form of the US government.

The government of the Continental Congress muddled through for six years until May 1787, when the Constitutional Convention of 55 delegates met in the Pennsylvania State House, Philadelphia (now called Independence Hall). Its aim was ‘to render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union’.

The concept of federalism had been taken from Freemasonry, in particular the federalism of the Grand Lodge system of Freemasonry, which had been

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.