The Western Lands Issue
by Ron Nielsen
I was asked recently what ‘the western lands issue’ means. I use this term when speaking about the 11 western states that have substantial amounts of federally owned land within their borders. If we were making arguments in court as the plaintiff, I would call this ‘the issue at bar’ where the arguments presented would illustrate the moving parties rationale for seeking standing to sue.
The introduction to ‘the western lands issue’ being that there is a common belief system, perpetuated by specific interests, with the intent to obfuscate the details of the matter which then makes resolution not only difficult but impossible because after all, if one cannot identify a problem at its core one cannot fix it. What details am I referring to? Let’s identify the current belief of federally owned lands.
The current belief is that the states ‘gave back’ lands it was granted upon admission. The other belief is that the federal government cannot hold lands Constitutionally. They are both wrong. It is not my opinion that these are wrong, I intend to show these assumptions are wrong in PRACTICE and POLICY. This means the evidence will show that the federal government has engaged in practices from day 1 that refute both of the assumptions above.
The first document you need to become acquainted with is the Northwest Ordinance, this write up will focus on that piece of legislation with future write ups on the subsequent actions and legislation and case law, in this manner we will paint a complete picture of the situation. The Northwest ordinance began being drafted by Thomas Jefferson right after England ceded the Northwest Territories to the colonies in the treaty of Paris.
The treaty stipulated the terms to which England and the Colonies agreed to in order to settle the issue of England’s vast land holdings on the continent east of the Ohio river. For the purposes of brevity, I will assume each reader has access to Google and can read all the necessary texts upon a word search I will include selective pieces from the texts.
The original NWO (northwest ordinance) was passed by the Confederate Congress in 1787 and was then taken up by the Constitutional government for re-enactment in 1789. The dates are important. So the NWO was a Confederate creation, why is this important? Because of the language in the NWO in article 4, “The said territory, and the States which may be formed therein, shall forever remain a part of this Confederacy of the United States of America, subject to the Articles of Confederation, and to such alterations therein as shall be constitutionally made; and to all the acts and ordinances of the United States in Congress assembled, conformable thereto.” You are going to want to save article 4 for later comparison because its going to resurface in the arguments at bar from the governments attorneys in the case law.
What else did the Northwest ordinance do? It created a Temporary government to see to the administration of the NWO as it pertained to the creation of Territorial governments and the requirements of those governments to apply for statehood under the NWO.
Sec. 3. Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, That there shall be appointed from time to time by Congress, a governor, whose commission shall continue in force for the term of three years, unless sooner revoked by Congress; he shall reside in the district, and have a freehold estate therein in 1,000 acres of land, while in the exercise of his office.
Sec. 4. There shall be appointed from time to time by Congress, a secretary, whose commission shall continue in force for four years unless sooner revoked; he shall reside in the district, and have a freehold estate therein in 500 acres of land, while in the exercise of his office. It shall be his duty to keep and preserve the acts and laws passed by the legislature, and the public records of the district, and the proceedings of the governor in his executive department, and transmit authentic copies of such acts and proceedings, every six months, to the Secretary of Congress: There shall also be appointed a court to consist of three judges, any two of whom to form a court, who shall have a common law jurisdiction, and reside in the district, and have each therein a freehold estate in 500 acres of land while in the exercise of their offices; and their commissions shall continue in force during good behavior.
Sec. 5. The governor and judges, or a majority of them, shall adopt and publish in the district such laws of the original States, criminal and civil, as may be necessary and best suited to the circumstances of the district, and report them to Congress from time to time: which laws shall be in force in the district until the organization of the General Assembly therein, unless disapproved of by Congress; but afterwards the Legislature shall have authority to alter them as they shall think fit.
Sec. 6. The governor, for the time being, shall be commander in chief of the militia, appoint and commission all officers in the same below the rank of general officers; all general officers shall be appointed and commissioned by Congress.
And so every conflict with the Indian nations was under the authority of the governor, using the military might (hardware) of the United States as a ‘police action’. We must re-iterate here, while it is easy to cry ‘unconstitutional’ it is another matter to realize the entire effort was extra-constitutional, what do I mean here? What authorized the governor to use the militia in this fashion? The NWO. Who passed the NWO? It was a confederate creation. How could it be Constitutional? Article 6: All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
Is further confirmation necessary? Very well but we have to go a little deeper now if we are to support the supposition that the NWO was a previous engagement entered into and protected by Article 6. Let’s go point by point;
- The NWO was a confederate creation. The stile of the confederacy was ‘The United States of America’
- The stile of the Constitutional government was ‘The United States’
- The preamble to the Constitution reads, We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It is obvious from history that there was NO intent for the confederate government to continue operating after a certain date which at the time was uncertain as new lands were being added and the operation of the NWO continued until 1858 where it (the temporary government) was disbanded upon executive order by James Buchanan after all Territories had been settled and governments created. However, while the Territories had been settled the Indian wars were not quite finished and the militia found itself fighting Chief Joseph in north central Idaho (among other conflicts around the Territories) in 1877. The militia also found itself on stand-by waiting for Indian rebellion until 1901 and we will get into the events of 1901 in successive write-ups but remember that date.
What was Congresses role in all of this? To answer that we start at the Louisiana purchase and who? Thomas Jefferson, a central figure in this whole mess. Thomas Jefferson had real doubts as to whether the US could make the purchase under the Constitution but the question is why? Thomas had been involved in the disposition of acquired lands from foreign powers from day 1, so how could he suddenly question the practice? Because he drafted the original NWO and knew that the lands were to be held by the confederate created articles of Confederation and not the US created Constitutional government and when he negotiated the deal with France he was negotiating as an officer/agent of the new government…do you see the conflict?
The question is this, how did Congress resolve the conflict? The debates in Congress reveal that Congress decided to apply Article 4 section 3 clause 2 as meaning that the intent of the language was to allow the US government to hold land…. problem solved right? Now to prove this was the outcome of the debate I would normally tell you to consult the Congressional record but that MAY be difficult these days so instead I will turn your attention to a report entitled, “A report of the law of civil government in lands under military occupation by the military forces of the United States”. In this report you will find the arguments in Congress over the Louisiana purchase and much more.
I have asked this question repeatedly, “what was the purpose of putting the lands under the Articles of Confederation instead of the Constitutional government?”. I eventually thought of a compelling theory. You see the original lands in dispute prior to England’s cession of them were disputes between the colonies as to which colonies had original claim to said lands. The colonies refused to relinquish their claims to these lands creating quite a mess with the advent of the effort to ‘redraft’ the Articles of Confederation in order to create a more efficient government which we all know culminated in the creation of the Constitution.
Eventually the colonies were persuaded to give up their claims to the Confederate government and one must wonder what the ‘carrot’ was that was used to entice the colonies to do so, certainly the new government holding the lands was not a big selling point but there is a substantial lack of information here and I theorize it was destroyed when the library of Congress was burned to the ground in the war of 1812.
This means we have to try and piece together events the best we can with what is left. There’s no conspiracy here unless it was the English intent to damage our ability for future generations to make sense of this mess and make appropriate decisions based upon real and actual data which I wouldn’t put past the English of that day.
My theory (based out of the verbiage employed in the debates on the Louisiana purchase) was that the colonies had serious misgivings about a new government holding land but agreed to put the land into the old system as a sort of trust where the Articles of Confederation and the United States of America (stile of the confederacy…remember this statement it will come up again in the case law) held the land in trust on behalf of the United States (stile of the Constitutional government) but that the Constitutional government could make Constitutional changes to this system, “and to such alterations therein as shall be constitutionally made”.
We need to keep in mind that the Northwest Ordinance language here conveys an important clue as to this possible intent when it uses the term cited above. The Constitution came AFTER the Northwest Ordinance and this entire scheme shows an intent by the framers to have the Articles of Confederation be the holding entity for all the lands…I do not see how it can be viewed any differently and this realization assists us when we finally get to the assenting opinions in Downes v Bidwell because without this rationale the Downes case is simply too confusing and makes no sense.
So we have several things going on, the original Articles of Confederation system being the land holding company and then the Louisiana purchase being purchased by the Constitutional government, the question remains, who is the holder of the lands acquired during and after the Louisiana purchase?
The proposition put forward by Congress in debate over the Louisiana purchase was in the form of a question; ‘Does the Constitution follow the flag?’ The outcome of the debates was NO it does not. Is this a clue? If the lands purchased were to be held by the Constitutional government wouldn’t the Constitution now extend itself automatically?
The arguments show that the concern was that the people in the newly acquired lands may not have warm feelings toward a Representative style of government and that many of the peoples may still owe allegiance to foreign powers. One tends to believe that the newly acquired lands were automatically held by the Territorial holding company as laid out in Article 4 of the NWO because the NWO was the driving legislation for the creation of Territories and their subsequent conversion into states.
My rational mind cannot fall upon any other explanation that satisfies, but we need to assume we still don’t have enough data to make our case quite yet and so in the next part of this series we will need to examine the states admission acts before we move on to the case law.
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“My rational mind cannot fall upon any other explanation that satisfies, but we need to assume we still don’t have enough data to make our case quite yet and so in the next part of this series we will need to examine the states admission acts before we move on to the case law.”
Knowingly jumping off the cliff into the hell created by organized criminals who operate under the color of law is one thing, being led by deception off the same cliff is another thing, in both cases the victims are captured and consumed at the pleasure of the despotic, tyrannical, criminals.
Journals of Congress
April, 1784
Page 277, 278
“That whensoever any of the said states shall have, of free inhabitants, as many as shall then be in any one the least numerous of the thirteen Original states, such State shall be admitted by its delegates into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the said original states;”
http://unionstatesassembly.info/journals/journals%20of%20the%20continental%20congress%201774-1789%20vol%2026%20jan%201%20-%20may%2010%201784.pdf
Claiming to have been given absolute authority, a routine method of operation for criminals who operate under the color of law, is a claim that can be tried by moral principles, such as those moral principles codified in our common laws that include trial by jury, which is trial by the whole people themselves, known as trial by the country, which is not trial by the government.
Claiming to have been given absolute authority is followed up smartly with another claim, and that other claim is such that the only authority that is authorized to enforce the claim of absolute authority is the government itself, not the people as a whole; themselves. Anyone daring to question that absolute authority of that mob called the government will be punished, and all the costs of punishing those who dare to question that absolute authority of that mob called the government will be made to pay for their own punishment.
“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.”
The power to create and maintain slaves is a criminal power, even when people are led to believe otherwise; even when people are led to believe that the criminal mob is “our” government. Debt slavery, indentured servitude, or any form in which some people somehow consume other people, one calorie at a time, or all at once, is accurately measurable as a crime, but only to those who actually care to know the facts that matter in those cases.
“Harrington has shown that power always follows property. This I believe to be as infallible a maxim, in politicks, as, that action and re-action are equal, is in mechanics. Nay I believe we may advance one step farther and affirm that the balance of power in a society, accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way then of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue, is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society: to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates. If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.”
John Adams to James Sullivan
Philadelphia, May 26, 1776
“Does it come down to the “Enabling Acts” ?”
Why is this difficult to see clearly? The people as a whole failed in their lawful duty when the allowed the criminals to take over in 1789, subsidizing African Slavery, and paving the way for rule by corporate legal fiction.
Out was the ancient knowledge that afforded the people as a whole their means to defend themselves with rule of law, which included independent, grass-roots, organic, grand jury investigations, and trial jury determinations of facts concerning any controversy which includes a take-over of the lawful government by “empire building” false federalist “Agencies,” and any of those who make the same deal with the devil.
So…why is this hard to understand? Is it ubiquitous blind belief in falsehood without question?
Has almost everyone taken the same deal, the same oath to falsehood? Go ahead and ignore the question, as you are told.
“…the moving parties rationale for seeking standing to sue.”
Failing to understand the nature of a criminal organization leads to this type of farcical argument. The criminals who took over the lawful government in America admit their criminality.
“… [C]onstitutional standing [is] … a word game played by secret rules…. Characterized neither by the private rights model of the seven common law forms of action nor by the “injury-in-fact” paradigm of modern standing doctrine, these matters took forms astonishingly similar to the “standingless” public action or “private attorney general” model that modern standing law is designed to thwart…. Adjudicatory models premised on a part-whole schema, like mandamus, are ultimately crowded out of our concept of justiciable controversies…. Procedurally, the models of access for raising claims of public right allowed individuals to command the attention of the law, as in the private rights model…. The Frothingham Court began its analysis with a discussion of nonconstitutional doctrines of equity, proceeded to reason from the constituent model in a way that shows clear prototype effects, then rejected the intermediate status of the public rights model, and finally raised constitutional considerations that helped lead to a modern conception of standing…. For over a hundred years, the metaphor of “standing” was shorthand for the question of whether a plaintiff had asserted claims that a court of equity would enforce….”
The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance.
Steven L. Winter
When the criminals claim that they fear “democracy,” or “mob rule,” they lie. They fear government by the whole people, and they fear the loss of their power to sway, control, and maneuver the mobs they create with their lies. They fear a shift of power from their hands as that power shifts to the hands of everyone as everyone is on an equal footing when government is enforced by the whole body of people, as it was, and as it is, exemplified in times and places where rule of law takes on a form such as the common law, with independent grand juries, independent trial juries, natural rights, and basic moral principles; such as the golden rule.
“The fact that, in that dark age, so many of the principles of natural equity, as those then embraced in the Common Law, should have been so uniformly recognized and enforced by juries, as to have become established by general consent as “the law of the land;” and the further fact that this “law of the land” was held so sacred that even the king could not lawfully infringe or alter it, but was required to swear to maintain it, are beautiful and impressive illustrations of the truth that men’s minds, even in the comparative infancy of other knowledge, have clear and coincident ideas of the elementary principles, and the paramount obligation, of justice. The same facts also prove that the common mind, and the general, or, perhaps, rather, the universal conscience, as developed in the untrammelled judgments of juries, may be safely relied upon for the preservation of individual rights in civil society; and that there is no necessity or excuse for that deluge of arbitrary legislation, with which the present age is overwhelmed, under the pretext that unless laws be made,the law will not be known; a pretext, by the way, almost universally used for overturning, instead of establishing, the principles of justice.”
Lysander Spooner, Essay on the Trial by Jury, 1852
To enslave people the professors of slavery claim ownership of everything, including land. If they can claim ownership of people, and get away with it, they can claim ownership of land and get away with that too. If you disagree, then they alone decide if you have standing, which is the power to disagree.
The common law, moral, lawful, legal, right, to own land, free of encumbrances, which is an allodial title, in so many words in English, is an ancient concept, along with the right to breath air, eat food, make a living, and defend life, property, and thereby maintain liberty.
Why has it been called the law of the land since ancient times?
“We have hitherto met you in the field of battle, with hostile minds, urged on by the great principle of self-defense; yet in those instances, where the fortune of war hath delivered any of your countrymen into our hands, we appeal to them that our enmity hath ceased the moment they were disarmed; and we have treated them more like citizens than prisoners of war. We now address you as part of the great family of mankind, whose freedom and happiness we most earnestly wish to promote and establish.
Distain, then, to continue the instruments of frantick ambition and lawless power. Fee the dignity and importance of your nature. Rise to the rank of free citizens of free states. Desist from the vain attempt to ravage and depopulate a country you cannot subdue, and accept from our munificence what can never be obtained from our fears. We are willing to receive you with open arms into the bosom of our country. Come, then, and partake of the blessings we tender to you in sincerity of heart.
In the name of these sovereign, free, and independent states we promise and engage to you that great privilege of man, the free and uninterrupted exercise of your religion, complete protection of your persons from injury, the peaceable possessions of the fruits of your honest industry, the absolute property in the soil granted to you to defend, unless you shall otherwise dispose of it, to your children and your children’s children for ever.1
Resolved, That it be recommended to the several states, who have vacant lands, to lay off with as much expedition as possible, a sufficient quantity of lands to answer the purposes expressed in the forgoing address; for which lands no charge is to be made against the United States.” Journals of the Continental Congress, 1778
Previous to the take over by the criminal mobs the actual federal government maintained a competition which afforded the whole people many choices as to which Nation-State maintained the highest quality and lowest cost provider of government services. In that lawful form of federating large areas of land, it was possible for people to invest in the best government that money could buy, and those people who choose independent, lawful, co-existence, had many flavors of that chosen life from which to choose the best freedom, in the best liberty, as they independently judge at liberty.
“Since the establishment of our new government, this order of things is but little changed. An individual, wishing to appropriate to himself lands still unappropriated by any other, pays to the public treasurer a sum of money proportioned to the quantity he wants. He carries the treasurer’s receipt to the auditors of public accompts, who thereupon debit the treasurer with the sum, and order the register of the land-office to give the party a warrant for his land. With this warrant from the register, he goes to the surveyor of the county where the land lies on which he has cast his eye. The surveyor lays it off for him, gives him its exact description, in the form of a certificate, which certificate he returns to the land-office, where a grant is made out, and is signed by the governor. This vests in him a perfect dominion in his lands, transmissible to whom he pleases by deed or will, or by descent to his heirs if he die intestate.”
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787.
Before the crooks took over America it was our known duty, our power, to hold the local and the state government accountable by lawful means, such as the discovery of probable cause to indict crooks in government made by independent grand juries, and trial by the country of the accused in those indicted cases of suspected crooks in government. It was the States duty to hold the federal government accountable, and it was the prerogative of the States to choose to remain a member of the federation and pay for it, or not.
That prerogative held by the States was lost, as was the power of the whole people as one to hold the government to account, that was lost too when the crooks took over. Also lost was the power to move from one despotic slave state to a state that was not despotic, to do so without an army of slaves hunting you down so as to return you to your masters, hunting you down in any part of the Consolidated Nation State that usurped the Federation of Independent States.
It would be interesting, in my opinion, to discuss this topic in detail, something an independent Grand Jury might do, but that is not what has been left to us by our criminal ancestors, and we live in a world run by criminals, and those criminals do not want their victims to know anything of value that might tip the scale in favor of rule of law.
Excellent article Mr Nielson…It truly is a mess,this lands issue, made worse today by empire building Federal Agencies and fanatic environmentalists…..I look forward to your next article,particularly in how so many Western states were robbed of their equal footing in land, compared to those in the east. Does it come down to the “Enabling Acts” ? That territories eager for statehood sold out much of their land in exchange for admission ? Maybe so in some states, but I can’t see my own state – California – being in anything but a commanding position when it came to admission to the union. Why would it let go of so much land inside it’s borders ? What with the gold rush in full swing – Ca was admitted in 1850 – they should have been able to write their own ticket…