USA: Born With The Continental Army: June 14, 1775 ?

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During recent months, at AstroDatabnk.com, among the postings in the USA birth charts Feedback, an astrologer has posted some few messages inspired by an esoteric, Alice Bailey, astrological persepective on the mundane world. At the writer's website is maintained that the true birth chart of the USA is that of June 14, 1775, 21:51:00 hours @ Lagna 10.Capricorn.18 (The writer renders it as Tropical: 01.Aquarius.02).

http://www.kolumbus.fi/justus.johansson/USA/USA.html

Before this notice sets aflutter the expectations of my fellow SAMVA members, please read the rest of my commentary here. The claims for this proposed national birth chart are shown to be historically unwarranted and easily put to rest by a straightforward reading of the relevant background of this mundane event.

THE HISTORY BEHIND JUNE 14, 1775:

Following more than a month of pressure from most of the United Colonies following the Battles at Concord and Lexington the Continental Congress took its first steps towards inter-Colonial defense by enacting the following Resolutions on May 26, 1775:

Resolved:

That it be recommended to the congress aforesaid to persevere the more vigourously in preparing for their defence, as it is very uncertain whether the earnest endeavours of the Congress to accommodate the unhappy differences between G. Britain and the Colonies by conciliatory measures will be successful.

Resolved:

Unanimously, 1, That his Majesty's most faithful subjects, in these Colonies, are reduced to a dangerous and critical situation, by the attempts of the British Ministry to carry into execution, by force of arms, several unconstitutional and oppressive acts of the British parliament for laying taxes in America; to enforce the collection of those taxes, and for altering and changing the constitution and internal police of some of these Colonies, in violation of the natural and civil rights of the Colonists.

Unanimously 2. Hostilities being actually commenced in the Massachusetts bay, by the British troops, under the command of General Gage, and the lives of a number of the inhabitants of that Colony destroyed, the town of Boston having not only been long occupied as a garrisoned town in an enemy's country, but the inhabitants thereof treated with a severity and cruelty not to be justifyed even towards declared enemies; large re-inforcements too being ordered and soon expected, for the declared purpose of compelling these Colonies to submit to the operation of the sd acts; Resolved, therefore, that for the express purpose of securing and defending these Colonies, and preserving them in safety against all attempts to carry the said acts into execution by force of arms, these Colonies be immediately put into a state of defence.

Unanimously 3. But, as we most ardently wish for a restoration of the harmony formerly subsisting between our Mother country and these Colonies, the interruption of which must, at all events, be exceedingly injurious to both countries, Resolved, that with a sincere design of contributing by all the means in our power, not incompatible with a just regard for the undoubted rights and true interests of these Colonies, to the promotion of this most desirable reconciliation, an humble and dutiful petition be presented to his Majesty.

By the middle of June 1775 Congress began to take concrete step to fulfill the aforementioned Resolves. First were the measures toward the formation of a Continental Army. On June 14 Congress resolved to refer by name to the Continental Army for the first time. It called for six companies of riflemen to be raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia, and prescribed grades of pay. The enlistment oath was as follows:

I have, this day, voluntarily enlisted myself, as a soldier, in the American Continental army, for one year, unless sooner discharged: And I do bind myself to conform, in all instances, to such rules and regulations, as are, or shall be, established by the government of the said Army.

It set up a committee to draft regulations for the Army. On June 15 Congress resolved to appoint George Washington General of the Continental armed forces; He was then commissioned on June 17. So too the Continental Army command and support structure was organized, including two Major Generals, eight Brigadier Generals, one Adjutant General, one Commissary General, one Quartermaster General, one Pay Master General, and one Chief Engineer. On the 20th Washington was empowered to recruit troops on his own authority.

The creation of the Continental Army is at the heart of the nationalist-minded claims, at least of one esoteric astrologer, that Congress assumed sovereign authority at this point in time in American history, and not a year later, on July 2, 1776, as maintained by numerous uncontradicted histories of this period, by professionals published going all the way back to the year

1850.

The Continental Army was indeed under the direct control of Congress, and able to recruit men without the formal mediation of Colonial governments. But as the record shows, the first two months of the Revolutionary War had been conducted on the sole authority of the Colonial governments, and Congress' role had been purely advisory. Only with the permission of the Colonies did Congress begin to assume the direction of an ongoing war effort. In short, Congress did not assume war powers on its own authority, but as the delegated agent of each Colony's constituted war powers. Moreover, the Colonies continued to regulate their own militias, and some even continued to maintain small regular forces. For example in 1781, during his Revolutionary War governorship of the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson sent a battalion of Virginia Regulars across the Ohio on an expedition to assert that State's sovereignty over the Northwest Territory.

Even the renowned nationalist-minded constitutional authority Justice Story admitted that the exercise of war powers by Congress was only ad hoc and under the pressure of necessity, and could hardly be taken to reflect any intention on the part of the Colonists to create a sovereign national authority:

They [the Colonies] were suddenly brought together, not so much by any deliberate choice of a permanent union, as by the necessity of mutual co-operation and support in resistance of the measures of Great Britain. They found themselves, after having assembled a general Congress for mutual advice and encouragement, compelled by the course of events to clothe that body with sovereign powers in the most irregular and summary manner, and to permit them to assert the general prerogatives of peace and war, without any previous compact, and sanctioned only by the silent acquiescence of the people.

Despite the formation of a Continental Army under its direct command, Congress continued to rely on the Colonial governments to enforce its non-military recommendations. "The Association", focused on the trade embargo, depended entirely on the Colonies for enforcement. Congress on May 27, 1775 recommended the conditions under which the Colonies' conventions should forgive those adjudged guilty by local committees of violating The Association. On January 11, 1776 Congress requested that the cities, counties, and, in case of appeal, the Colonial assemblies, conventions, or committees of safety punish those who refused to accept bills of credit or attempted to discourage their acceptance. On March 14, 1776 it recommended that the Colonies disarm those "who are notoriously disaffected to the cause of America, or who have not associated, and shall refuse to associate, to defend, by arms, these United Colonies...." On June 24, 1776 Congress requested that the Colonies pass laws

against treason, defining citizenship, allegiance, and treason in terms of the Colonies:

Resolved, That all persons abiding within any of the United Colonies, and deriving protection from the laws of the same, owe allegiance to the said laws, and are members of such colonies....

That all persons, members of, or ownign allegiance to any of the United Colonies, as before described, who shall levy war against any of the said Colonies within the same, or be adherent to the King of Great Britain, or others the enemies of the said Colonies, or any of them, within the same, giving to him or them aid and comfort, are guilty of treason against such Colony.

That it be recommended to the legislatures of the several United Colonies, to pass laws for punishing... such persons before described....

The second paragraph, note, in defining treason against a Colony, used language almost identical to that traditionally used in the common law to define treason against the British sovereign. Thus, the reciprocity of allegiance and protection, a principle at the heart of the notion of citizenship, was established at the level of the individual Colony. The same resolution also recommended that the Colonies pass laws against counterfeiting.

This exercise of war powers by Congress could hardly have implied sovereign power, since it was exercised until July 2, 1776 with the often expressed purpose of restoring to their proper constitutional form the Colonial ties to their avowed sovereign, George III. Congress repeatedly issued addresses proclaiming their allegiance to the King and expressing a hope of reconciliation. One of the best examples of this was the February 13, 1776 letter of Congress to the inhabitants of the Colonies. It referred to the threatened "total loss of those [Colonial] constitutions," and the resulting "disagreeable Necessity of making temporary Deviations from those constitutions." The same letter stated that

the Powers, which the House of Commons receives from its Constituents, are entrusted by the Colonies to their Assemblies in the several Provinces. Those Assemblies have Authority, to propose and assent to Laws for the Government of their Electors, in the same Manner as [does] the House of Commons....

If it would be incongruous and absurd, that the same Property should be liable to be taxed by two Bodies independent of each other; would less incongruity and Absurdity ensue, if the same Offense were to be subjected to different and perhaps inconsistent Punishments?

In a single document, Congress described its exercise of power as a temporary deviation from the constitutions, implied the indivisibility of sovereign legislative power, and located that power in the Colonial assemblies alone.

The Continental Congress thus could not have assumed sovereign authority in the period before July 2, 1776, on which date, by the sovereign instructions of the People of each of what had been up until then the United Colonies, Congress declared them to be the United States. Every power it exercised was one previously exercised by the Colonies; it exercised the delegated sovereign power of the Colonies only by their sufferance; and the Colonies continued to exercise these sovereign powers intermittently even after delegating them to Congress.

 

 

 

 

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