Franz von Papen Quotes
The nation demands a movement which has written upon its banner the internal and external national freedom that it will act as if it were the spiritual, social and political conscience of the nation.
Papen, Franz von. Memoirs. Translated by Brian Connell, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1953.
Jackson was reacting to the claimed right of South Carolina to nullify Federal tariffs and other Federal laws.
In 1786, many veterans of the American Revolution had still not yet been paid the promised wages for their military service by the new national government. The States however had imposed taxes on farms to fund the new state governments and pay the state’s war debts mostly to rich merchants. Many veterans could not pay the taxes and some were thrown into debtors’ prison, and others had their farms foreclosed. Led by Daniel Shays, a small group of Massachusetts men conducted a mini rebellion by closing local court houses and tried to take over the local state armory. The Governor put down the rebellion by force and the rebels were jailed. Samuel Adams, the former governor, recommended the death penalty (see {630527}), and several of the rebels were executed. Thomas Jefferson disagreed, via this famous quotation. This was one of the early crises of the new country and it was handled very poorly and unfairly.
This was the basic document issued after the Russian Revolution establishing the basic legal and economic structure of the new Soviet State. In one of the great ironies, the Communist state forced people to work, while the capitalistic United States and most of the European Countries so this as an invasion of rights and even provided welfare and other assistance to those who did not work as well as to others.
Garfield reminded Americans of how radical and unusual the concept of democracy had been at the time of the adoption of The Constitution, and that the American Revolution was one of ideas as well as armies.
Madison was defending the proposed Constitution against a vocal minority who complained that the Federal government would be dominant over the States and the large cities. Madison pointed out that it was people who fought the Revolution and sacrificed for it, not States or political entities. The Constitution was to be for the people, not the existing governmental entities. It was for Americans and not for local politicians. The “State’s Rights faction lost the debate, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights was adopted. That is why this quotation is so important. The slavery enthusiasts, racists, and others have constantly tried to diminish the Federal supremacy even to this day.
Ali was arguing that India should not be a single nation but each major ethnic group should have its own country. Pakistan was later to be separated out. However, the Akhoots, Christians, Dravidians and Sikhs did not have the same desire for separatism as the Muslims and stayed in India, and today India is a pluralistic nation which even includes about the same number of Muslims who have elected to be Indian citizens rather than Pakistani.
Note that at the time feminism was classified with the other “radical”, dangerous isms. Also, many people just did not take any of these movements seriously. The perception was that the advocates were mentally unbalanced.
Abraham Lincoln’s major political opponent in Illinois agreed with Lincoln on the criticality of preserving the Union from a split off of the Southern States. He tended to be more willing to pander to the South than Lincoln, however they were strong allies on the fundamental issue. However, what the slavery forces in the south wanted and needed to forever protect slavery was not in the power of any President to do, short of ending the democracy. Slavery was doomed in the long run if there was no way to enforce the Supreme Court’s Dredd Scott decision upon (Northern) states whose constitutions and laws made any slave who entered the state free and whose people would not use its police and legal powers to return runaway slaves. It was the abolitionists who won the majority in the battle of public opinion on slavery. It was only a matter of time when slavery would become untenable in the South. Lincoln was unwilling to force the Northern states to return fugitive slaves against the constitution, laws and will of the people of those states as Buchanan said he was (but had a hard time doing). Also Lincoln was unwilling to allow new territories to enter the union if they allowed slavery.
Some in the military and state department were distressed by this writing. England was our major WWII ally. We were fighting, side by side with soldiers of many of the colonies of the British Empire. Some nationalists in India were urging non-cooperation in the Allied war effort. Most American leaders adopted the policy of holding our differences with our allies (England, China & Russia) until after the war was won. However, Mrs. Roosevelt, was more outspoken than most other public officials.
Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk was a German conservative politician, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934.
