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Conclusion

In Conclusion

 

We found that a number of previously supported arguments on this subject gained or lost credence, based on the complete research results, and these results are itemized as follows:
    1. The political relevance of the 13th amendment to national security was not confined to temporary pre-war agitation, as had been previously thought. Activity on the amendment and concerns over undue foreign influences continued well after the end of the War of 1812.
    2. The modern commonplace of setting time limits on ratifications for constitutional amendments was never practiced until the early 20th century. The only logical reason for doing so is to prevent proposed amendments from remaining eternally in motion until finally ratified or rejected. Though no language within the Constitution itself provides for this contingency, Supreme Court rulings have previously supported amendments left in motion in the same way that the existing constitutional law is considered as timeless unless otherwise specified. Ó JoEllen Perez, 2000
    3. The several states had an extremely sophisticated and well-developed system of informing one another as to their laws and legislative events, which did not rely on the services of the federal government for its operation, other than use of the post roads. Laws and legislative journals were interchanged regularly in this manner.
    4. News of state-proposed constitutional amendments and their results were officially passed amongst the several states without reference to any particular record-keeping services from the federal government. 
    5. Proposed amendments were treated sometimes in groups, and sometimes singly, within the state legislatures. Equal legislative attention was given, regardless of the origin of the proposal (Congress or another State).
    6. Continued publication of the original 13th Amendment by the several states was based on notice of the ratification by Virginia, rather than on a false impression created by the Bioren and Duane Statutes, as was previously thought. (The Bioren and Duane edition may possibly have contributed to a single anticipatory publication by Pennsylvania). While the Statutes were sold directly by the publishers to those states wishing to purchase, the Revised Codes was sent to all the states.
    7. It was the State Department records themselves, which contained most of the inaccuracies upon which later errors were repeatedly propagated. This is found in the record regarding South Carolina, and also in the non-inclusion of the Virginia record.
    8. The de facto dependence on State Department records at the federal level was actually exacerbated by the April 1814, and April 1818 Acts of Congress, which officially placed federal responsibility for recording and promulgating the law on the Secretary of State. This created the continued misconception that the State Department records were almost by definition an oracle of legal accuracy and the final word on what was or was not law.
    9. State-proposed constitutional amendments were never regularly recorded by the State Department. While the several states gave equal weight to all proposed amendments, the State Department was answerable directly to the President and Congress, and by default took official notice only of congressionally-proposed amendments.
    10. The Act of 1818 did not place any requirement on the states to report to the State Department. It only placed requirements on the State Department for reporting what was in its record.
    11. State Department records carry within themselves the evidence of their own internal inaccuracies, as seen in:  
      1. the Connecticut and South Carolina records on the 13th Amendment.
      2. table of contents of the 1894 History of the Constitution.
      3. Exclusion of the Virginia result from the record.
    12. There is no evidence that the State Department made any further effort to verify the accuracy of its existing records to date after the 1818 Act went into effect. Thus, the record stood and was carried forward in the same condition in which it was left at the time. The errors were provably carried forward by:
      1. The State Department itself.  
      2. Editors of the 1845 Little and Brown Statutes at Large.
      3. Inheritance of the source records by the National Archives.
      4. Inheritance of promulgation services by the Government Printing Office.
        1. See Checklist of U.S. Public Documents, 1911
      5. The Congressional Research Service.
      6. The States themselves, eventually, in later reliance on that record.
        1. New York
        2. Oregon.
    13. The actual legislative record of Virginia has been generally overlooked, and was somewhat obscured by inclusion of the 13th Amendment in the enacting legislation of the entire Revised Codes of 1819.
    14. It was Virginia's clear intention to simultaneously enact and publish the 13th Amendment is contained within Chapter XXXV of the Revised Codes itself.
      1. No retraction is made, though an errata sheet was placed in Volume 2 for such purpose, and was used as needed for other items.
      2. Examination of the entire body of Virginia legislative history from 1809 through 1819 entirely supports the enrolled bill status of the original 13th Amendment.
    15. Lacking congressional enactment prior to March 12, 1819 of any particular law pertaining to the exact format of Resolutions of ratification or rejection under Article IV, Section I of the Constitution, the full faith and credit clause of that Article stands undeterred.
    16. Communication of the result in Virginia to the State Department was further obscured by its arrival in book form, rather than as an individual package consisting only of the transmittal and Resolution. 
    17. Continued publication of the 13th Amendment by the states was not viewed by them as an error until after they began to refer back to the erroneous State Department records, the earlier of which (1818) predated the Virginia ratification (1819), and the later of which (1845, 1894) excluded notice of same. Some of the states which provably stopped publication of the 13th Amendment in reliance on the State Department records are
      1. New York, in the 1829 New York Revised Codes with a note appearing on p. 23, Vol. 1 referring Vol. IV of the printed papers of the 1st session of the 15th congress, No. 76. (President Monroe's February 4th, 1818 letter to Congress.)
      2. Oregon, in the 1854 Revised Statutes, also references the same document.
    18. State publications of the 13th Amendment fell within the provision of Article IV, Section I of the Constitution, and are only known to have been halted on the word of the State Department, which had no power to further enact or modify Article IV, Section I.
    19. Indexing of the 1845 Little and Brown Statutes at Large from the 1815 Bioren and Duane Statutes, to the 1833 Commentaries, to the 1845 Statutes created a further presumption that the amendment had never been ratified, as the Commentaries specifically state.
    20. The 1833 Commentaries themselves were written by Justice Story as a personal literary work, and as such did not obligate him to eschew non-judicial opinions on any particular topic.
    21. Indexing of the 1845 Little and Brown Statutes created a later presumption or affectation that the Commentaries were an official surrogate for the actual Statutes, even though the Statutes themselves note at length and in detail that this was never the case.
    22. The Congressional Act approving, accepting, and enacting the entire bodies of the 1814 and 1845 Statutes was identical in form to the Virginia Act of March 12, 1819 which approved, accepted, and enacted the entire body of law as the Revised Codes. The difference between them is that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to revoke the 13th Amendment, while Virginia did have the constitutional power to enact it.
    23. The practice of the states in communicating constitutional law to one another directly was later intersected by the legal community's tendency to accept the Statutes at Large without reference back to the States, which had created that original law. In this manner, the errors in the State Department record eventually had a round-robin effect, and settled back upon the several States again.
    24. At some later time, and prior to publication of the 1911 Checklist of U.S. Public Documents, it was decided that Colvin's inclusion of the 13th Amendment in the 1815 Bioren Edition of the Laws had been an "error", although:
      1. Monroe and Rush approved the edition as printed
      2. A disclaimer was issued upon publication.
      3. The Checklist itself is in error:
        1. in claiming that 4 states had rejected, rather than 3.
        2. in claiming that Virginia had never been heard from.
        3. in claiming that publication of the 13th Amendment had ceased by 1843.
        4. In claiming that the source of all later errors came from the Laws, when it is now known that the majority of errors came from the State Department's records as of 1818, 4 years after the Bioren Edition was already published.
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Last updated: 08/28/02