The original Article XIII of the Constitution regarding titles of nobility is referred to in various government publications which invariably conclude that the amendment was never ratified. We have repeatedly documented a widespread assumption that facts which do not appear in the official State Department records simply do not exist. Researchers have often simply assumed that the lack of a separate entry of a Resolution on the 13^th amendment in Virginia's legislative records automatically precluded its appearance in the Revised Codes of Virginia as anything but a typographical error.

To be sure, this is somewhat understandable. A complete comprehension of the contents and operation of the Revised Codes of Virginia required examination of the entire legislative history of the amendment. Researchers had to work back and forth through the various records of Congress, the State Department, the several States individually, and through several years' worth of Virginia's handwritten rough bills and notes, in order to know exactly what happened.

There are good reasons why all prior research came to different conclusions. We know this, because we also conducted studies of previous attempts to research this amendment. In the past, regardless of the purpose of any one inquiry, most research relative to this amendment was always confined to a study of only one or two of the historic and legal sources traditionally connected with the amendment process. Most often, the study was severely limited by the disciplines and available resources of various researchers, who were attempting to answer the question for only one purpose or one literary effort at the time. This being the case, the research was usually confined to general political history, constitutional case law, the congressional records, the public State Department records, the state legislative records, or to any one or two of those avenues of investigation alone. This made it possible to arrive at a host of false or incomplete conclusions over the years, most of which ultimately (and unfortunately) invited far more public debate and editorial than unbiased study. Where the research dealt with publications of law, the result was often an actual subjugation of the law itself to administrative editorial. Errors were generally made in favor of records contained in the State Department. Eventually, those same errors found their way into the works of editors hired by the states to perform the same task at the state level. In other much later cases, early and incomplete speculative research findings were co-opted by various political factions for their own use, and the result was tangentially detrimental to the continuing legitimate research effort. It was not until the TONA Committee of Correspondence undertook a thorough interdisciplinary study of the subject that it became possible to finally ascertain exactly what has become of this amendment.

As with any credible research, the results of this study had to be fully documented and capable of exact duplication and verification by other researchers who might follow. Virtually everything contained herein is a matter of public record, although these records are now archived in a number of locations and many are now considered as very rare. However tedious, no liberty was taken with regards to interpretation, and organization of this document was purposely made in such a way as to facilitate correlation of facts to the times and places where the events took place. As the reader will shortly discover, it was a long and complex series of various entities seeing the facts "through a keyhole" which led to the necessity for this work in the first place. There would be no point in continuing the work, if the outcome were to merely recreate that same sad situation all over again.

In every earlier study, some vital piece of information was invariably left out. Depending on who made the study and the purpose in doing so, the endeavor often declined into an academic argument over the relative political merits of the amendment in the first place, or both, based only on some subset of all the facts. This is extremely unfortunate, since it has led to larger consequences than anyone ever really expected. It was always easy to conclude that the entire exercise was interesting from a historical perspective, or perhaps instructive as to the general legislative process in this country. That is to say, it was easy make such judgements until this comprehensive study was completed. Arguing for or against theoretical interpretations of a law that never existed is one thing. Finding that the Constitution of the United States has been systematically abridged is quite another!

Although this report limits itself to the legislative history of the amendment. If the subject matter at hand was concerned with anything less weighty than a constitutional amendment, then the results of this study would still probably merit nothing more than scholarly admiration. As it turns out, though, the many surprising discoveries made during various research forays were nothing compared to the completed picture made by the whole of those discoveries when, at long last, they are viewed together.

The situation we uncover here is entirely unprecedented, and will require that corrective actions be taken which have never before been contemplated. Moreover, this particular law carries with it possible implications which were never more relevant than they are today. However, we will focus on the exact history of this law so that the reader can see clearly what is meant by the term systematic abridgement of the law. We will make no attempt within these pages to outline or interpret its modern applications. Those subjects are best left in their proper quarter. It is only after the existence and letter of the law is firmly understood that practical applications can be approached clearly and rationally. We think that the reader, once having grasped the situation from a historical perspective, will have no trouble seeing how it applies to current issues, and how the systematic abridgement of this particular law in the past presents the nation with a contemporary tragedy in the making. 

If the TONA Committee of Correspondence, as such, holds with any philosophy, then it is only that of viewing the United States Constitution as a living document and will belonging to all citizens. Without exception, every researcher involved felt very strongly about this one foundational concept, though we disagreed regularly and often as to the relative merits of any of dozens of interpretive notions. Based on this unifying sense of proportion and public duty, we felt that this research, by the very nature of the results found, properly belongs in the hands of all the citizens, and must therefore be brought to the attention of the public and all proper authorities without further delay.

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