Priceless National Treasure Recovered

Independence Day Gift Stuns U.S.

Atlanta, Georgia - June 27, 2000 - Joyously celebrating the nation's birthday, historical researchers in 8 states have just successfully completed a two-decade search for a "missing" constitutional amendment. "This important story belongs to all Americans," said JoEllen Perez, a representative for the research group. "It is both our inheritance and our legacy."

The multi-disciplined research group refers to itself as the TONA Committee of Correspondence. A dozen member volunteers represent a broad spectrum of American professional and scholastic life, including, for example, full-time researchers and constitutional history experts, a former police investigator, and several antique book collectors.

Mistakenly thought by the federal government to have been left unratified, the amendment was officially printed by the states and territories for 67 years:

If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor, 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.

 

Proposed in 1809 by Congress, the amendment enjoyed tremendous support. Continuing interference and subterfuge by foreign governments was a constant problem to the young nation. Due to a series of clerical blunders made during and after the War of 1812, it was long believed that Article XIII of the Constitution had missed ratification by a count of only one state.

However, the researchers now have solid proof that Virginia ratified the amendment in 1819. The amendment was ratified by inclusion in a sweeping legislative action designed to completely reenact many laws simultaneously. The new amendment was then published in a book, rather than as a single document, and was eventually buried in a quickly-mounting pile of official government files. The states and territories, however, included the new amendment with their own official printings of the Constitution, and taught it in the public schools.

Then Washington buried the amendment even further. By 1833, the growing nation ran out of copies of the U.S. Statutes - the most official version of the nation's laws. Even the courts started relying on an unofficial book called Commentaries on the Constitution, written by Joseph Story, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Relying on the defective records in Washington, Story boldly proclaimed the amendment had never been ratified.

At Joseph Story's suggestion, a new edition of the U.S. Statutes was published. Story offered his services as a consultant. Not surprisingly, the resulting 1845 edition of the Statutes dropped Article XIII. The Statutes are the required citation for the federal courts, so even the legal community no longer recognized the law.

Nearly 70 years later, with all the original legislators long since buried, even the states themselves slowly accepted the federal government's insistence that the whole thing was a big mistake. The states stopped publishing the amendment, some citing a mistaken State Department report given to Congress over a year before the amendment was finally ratified by Virginia. Finally, the amendment just "disappeared".

State Department records are still in error today, despite ample evidence to the contrary. "Constitutional amendments are ageless, and can only be revoked by undergoing the entire amendment process again," said a spokesperson for the researchers. "It only remains now for Congress to correct the official records, and this priceless treasure will be restored to its rightful place in our national heritage. Happy Birthday, America!"