Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

On July 4^th of 1776, Thomas Jefferson and others signed their own death warrants when he wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Let’s look at that statement and how this country has proven and tried to refute that statement.

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were ratified and came into force on March 1, 1781. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were instrumental in proposing a radical new concept, a constitution that was finally accepted by the thirteen states and became operational in 1789.

That was the year that George Washington and John Adams became the first President and Vice-President of this nation. The Constitution originally had the two top candidates filling these offices. Amendment twelve modified this, and the electoral college voted for both a President and a Vice President in 1803.

The Bill of Rights was the first ten amendments to the document, which were ratified by the states in 1791 and guarantee personal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, the right to publish, practice religion, possess firearms, and to assemble.

What most of us do not know is that the Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” These were originally referred to as States’ Rights and are continually opposed by many in the federal government.

In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected as our sixteenth President, the Confederate States of America was formed in February of 1861 by South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In April, hostilities between these and the Union began with an attack on Fort Sumter by the Confederates.

After the war began, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina decided to join the Confederacy. The major reason for cessation was the belief that Lincoln’s administration would support the abolitionist movement’s desire to end slavery nationwide. This was considered one of those states’ rights issues mentioned in the Tenth Amendment. When the conflict ended in 1865, the Union had declared the ownership of other humans a violation of our Constitution, and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation effectively ended this practice.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution sealed this as law and solved some of the problems still in the former Confederate states. The assassination of Lincoln again tested our resiliency as a country.

One last test for our land that happened before I was born was on December 7, 1940, when the Japanese attacked our naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, forcing Franklin Delano Roosevelt into requesting Congress to declare war on the Axis powers. Many believe that without the U.S. involvement in World War II, even more countries would have fallen.

©Copyright 2026 by Charles Kensinger