PLEASE  READ  SOME  OF  FORMER  U.S.  MARINE AND  WEBMASTER'S  JACK  CUNNINGHAM'S  DAY-TO-DAY  EXPERIENCES  OF  LIVING  AND  SERVING  (24/7)  IN  A  VIETNAMESE  PEASANT  VILLAGE  AT:   http://www.capveterans.com/jack_cunningham

 

HOLLYWOOD  VIETNAM  WAR  NEWS:  Oliver Stone recruits Bruce Willis for My Lai massacre film

http://www.capveterans.com/unknown_war/id57.html

 

The four years of American Civil War that ripped apart the nation from 1861–65 achieved what seventy-five years of compromise could not.

 

The more men you make free, the more freedom is strengthened, and the . . . greater is the security of the State. Frederick Douglas  1864

 

 

September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest  single day  in U.S. history.  An estimated 6,300 Union and Confederate soldiers died at Antietam, Maryland, in a savage battle that took place nearly a year and a half into the Civil War.    (National Archives)   http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters_of_freedom_10.html  

The American Civil War ended on April 9, 1865.   The war produced about 970,000 casualties (3% of the population), including approximately 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War) 

Today, according to estimates, there are over 300,000,000 people living in America.   The 1860 United States Census showed 12,240,000 Americans living in the southern states and 19,203,008 Americans living in the states the census classified as free states.   For a total of 31,443,008 Americans in the 1860 United States Census.

http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1860a-02.pdf

To show a rough comparison based on population increases between 1860 (Battle of Antietam 1862) and today,  well-over 50,000 Americans would die in battle in a single day, if the same results happened at Antietam, Maryland on September 17, 1862.   The American Civil War produced about 970,000 casualties (3% of the population).    Based on today's America, 3% of 300,000,000 would translate to about 9,000,000 casualties.  

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/

What would American politicians do if we lost over 50,000 Americans in a single day's battle?

As of December 20, 2006, according to a CNN count, 2,954 Americans have died in Iraq.

Freedom Is Not Free.

It was not free in 1862 and it is still not free...

....

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters_of_freedom_1.html

In 1761, fifteen years before the United States of America burst onto the world stage with the Declaration of Independence, the American colonists were loyal British subjects who celebrated the coronation of their new King, George III. The colonies that stretched from present-day Maine to Georgia were distinctly English in character although they had been settled by Scots, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, Swedes, Finns, Africans, French, Germans, and Swiss, as well as English.

As English men and women, the American colonists were heirs to the thirteenth-century English document, the Magna Carta (details below), which established the principles that no one is above the law (not even the King), and that no one can take away certain rights. So in 1763, when the King began to assert his authority over the colonies to make them share the cost of the Seven Years' War England had just fought and won, the English colonists protested by invoking their rights as free men and loyal subjects. It was only after a decade of repeated efforts on the part of the colonists to defend their rights that they resorted to armed conflict and, eventually, to the unthinkable–separation from the motherland.

Constitution

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html

The Federal Convention convened in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Because the delegations from only two states were at first present, the members adjourned from day to day until a quorum of seven states was obtained on May 25. Through discussion and debate it became clear by mid-June that, rather than amend the existing Articles, the Convention would draft an entirely new frame of government. All through the summer, in closed sessions, the delegates debated, and redrafted the articles of the new Constitution. Among the chief points at issue were how much power to allow the central government, how many representatives in Congress to allow each state, and how these representatives should be elected--directly by the people or by the state legislators. The work of many minds, the Constitution stands as a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise.

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html

....

Bill of Rights

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html

During the debates on the adoption of the Constitution, its opponents repeatedly charged that the Constitution as drafted would open the way to tyranny by the central government. Fresh in their minds was the memory of the British violation of civil rights before and during the Revolution. They demanded a "bill of rights" that would spell out the immunities of individual citizens. Several state conventions in their formal ratification of the Constitution asked for such amendments; others ratified the Constitution with the understanding that the amendments would be offered.

On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States therefore proposed to the state legislatures 12 amendments to the Constitution that met arguments most frequently advanced against it. The first two proposed amendments, which concerned the number of constituents for each Representative and the compensation of Congressmen, were not ratified. Articles 3 to 12, however, ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, constitute the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights.

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html

....

The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. . . . In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth. President Abraham Lincoln  1862

CHARTERS  OF  FREEDOM

"A New World Is At Hand."

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters_of_freedom_10.html

September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day in U.S. history. An estimated 6,300 Union and Confederate soldiers died at Antietam, Maryland, in a savage battle that took place nearly a year and a half into the Civil War. It was one day in a war that raged from 1861–65 and cost some 623,000 lives. In a total national population of twenty-seven million in 1860, that number would be proportionately equivalent to losing more than five million today. That bloody day marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.

At stake in the Civil War was the survival of the United States of America as a single nation. Eleven Southern states, invoking the spirit of 1776, seceded from the Union in 1861 to form a nation they named the Confederate States of America. The Federal Government refused to allow it. Massive armies representing the Union and the Confederacy squared off in a conflict that tested the experiment in self-government as never before. At the end of the Civil War's carnage, the primacy of the Federal Government over the states was indisputably upheld.

Americans had been wrestling with the fundamental question of nationhood since the earliest days of the Revolution. In 1774, as the British colonists struggled to unite in the cause of American liberty, Patrick Henry rose to address the Continental Congress in one of its earliest sessions: "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." It took the Civil War to make it so.   (See AMENDMENT XIV that was ratified mostly due to the Civil War below.)

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters_of_freedom_10.html

....

The more men you make free, the more freedom is strengthened, and the . . . greater is the security of the State. Frederick Douglas  1864

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment.

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.    (What is DUE PROCESS below.)

Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

*Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.