“ . . . and bank-notes will become as plentiful as oak leaves”

—Thomas Jefferson

“ They [the people], and not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labours and our amusements . . . our people . . .must come to labour sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses . . . .”

—Thomas Jefferson

"But an opinion that it is possible for the present generation to seize and use the property of future generations has produced to both parties concerned, effects of the same complexion with the usual fruits of national errour. The present age is cajoled to tax and enslave itself, by the errour of believing that it taxes and enslaves future ages to enrich itself."

—John Taylor of Caroline

"A crocodile has been worshipped, and its priesthood have asserted that morality required the people to suffer themselves to be eaten by the crocodile."

—John Taylor of Caroline

“We are now making an experiment, which has never yet succeeded in any region or quarter of the earth, at any time, from the deluge to this day. With regard to the antediluvian times, history is not very full; but there is no proof that it has ever succeeded, even before the flood.”

—John Randolph of Roanoke

“I said that this Government, if put to the test—a test that it is by no means calculated to endure—as a government for the management of the internal concerns of this country, is one of the worst that can be conceived . . . .”

—John Randolph of Roanoke

"Why should the government pay the expenses of one class of men rather than another?"

—John C. Calhoun

"A habit of profusion and extravagance has grown up utterly inconsistent with republican simplicity and virtue, and which was rapidly sapping the foundation of our government."

—John C. Calhoun

"It was impossible to force the minds of the public officers to the importance of attendance to the public money, because we had too much of it."

—John C. Calhoun

"It has been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be trusted to the hands of mortal man."

—John C. Calhoun

"We must curb the Banking system, or it will certainly ruin the country."

—John C. Calhoun

"The government is the executive committee of great wealth."

—Frank L. Owsley, Southern Agrarian, 1936

From the beginning of the U.S. Government, Southerners saw it as a locus of liberty, honour, and American mutuality. From its beginning, the predominant class in the North regarded the government as a source of profits. To Southerners, the Constitution was the means of the people's control over government power. To Northerners, it was an instrument to be manipulated for their advantage. This difference came to a head in the struggle between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson and his friends, notable Virginians of the time like John Randolph and John Taylor, called Hamilton, John Adams, and their friends "monarchists." By this was meant not only that they favoured kingship, which they did, but also that they wanted a strong central government built on patronage to the wealthy (at the expense of the ordinary hard-working producers). This patronage was to be financed through national debt, manipulation of the currency, and various types of business subsidy, which they falsely claimed were necessary and beneficial to all Americans.

Jefferson and his friends (which, to be fair, included a valiant minority of Northerners) managed to hold Hamilton's schemes in abeyance for two generations, although the Hamiltonians never ceased to put them forward aggressively. Lincoln's conquest and near-destruction of the South established the Northern program without any effective check. Yet Jeffersonian ideals continued to wield a certain power long afterward, right up to World War II. The regime of the Republican George W. Bush and the Democrat Barack Obama (there is no real difference) have now delivered the final death blow to the system of government and to the ideals of freedom established by our forefathers. The Constitution no longer exists except as a collection of minor procedural rules. The distinction between government spending for public purposes and for private profits has been abolished, as has the distinction between federal spending for national purposes and for merely local purposes. The government is now making sure the economy is frozen so that those who are presently wealthy will remain wealthy and so that your and my children and grandchildren will pay the price in diminished life.

Only among the Southern people is there still enough allegiance to the genuine American founding principles to offer a viable alternative, but these principles can never be made real under the present evil empire.

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