The following was written by COS Regional Captain James Peters. This was originally published in The Daily News-Record.
I knew almost nothing about our Constitution. As I have spoken to people over the last three years I have discovered that I was not alone.
With issues like freedom of speech and gun violence in the news daily, many people do talk about the First and Second Amendments, but for most, that is about the extent of their constitutional knowledge.
For those who do not know what the 19th does, it gives women in the United States the right to vote.
That amendment was ratified by the states on August 18, 1920. Before that change to our constitution 28 of the 48 states did not allow women to vote.
Although 20 states did allow women to vote, it took a constitutional amendment to make it the law for the entire country.
Although women began their fight to win the vote before the Civil War, that amendment did not happen for nearly 100 years.
Most people have heard of Susan B. Anthony. She along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Motts, and many other women traveled to many other states on their crusade for women’s suffrage.
What many might not know is there were thousands of women who were totally against women voting.
Josephine Jewell Dodge was a founder and president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. Others like Annie Nathan Meyer and Ida Tarbell were writers and journalists who also opposed women’s right to vote.
Alice Robertson was the vice president of Oklahoma’s anti-suffrage association, but after the 19th amendment was passed she ran for office and became the first woman from Oklahoma to be elected to Congress.
On May 21, 1919, U.S. Representative James R. Mann, a Republican from Illinois, and chairman of the Suffrage Committee proposed the House resolution to approve the 19th Amendment.
The measure passed the House 304 to 89 — a full 42 votes above the required two-thirds majority. On June 4, 1919, the U.S. Senate passed the 19th Amendment by two votes over its two-thirds required majority, 56-25.
The amendment was then sent to the states for ratification. By March of the following year, 35 states had approved the amendment, just shy of the three-fourths required for ratification.
The states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia were opposed to the amendment.
Tennessee’s state legislators were deadlocked in a 48-48 tie. Representative Harry T. Burn, a Republican from McMinn County, Tennessee cast the deciding vote and the 19th Amendment was ratified.
Since the original signing of our Constitution on September 17, 1787, more than 11,000 amendments have been proposed, but only 27 have been ratified by the states.
In 1789, James Madison introduced 19 amendments to the Constitution. On September 25, 1789, Congress adopted 12 of the amendments and sent them to the states for ratification.
Ten of these amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified and became part of the Constitution on December 10, 1791.
Our Founding Fathers were wise enough to know that the document they had written was not perfect and would need to have some changes made over time, so they included Article V which outlined the procedure to make these changes.
On September 15, 1787, two days before the Constitution was signed George Mason, a Virginian, stood up and basically said:
Gentlemen, we have made a horrible mistake. We have given all the power to the federal government and taken it away from the people and the states. Are we so naïve to believe that a government that becomes a tyranny will ever propose amendments to restrain its own tyranny?
Mason proposed one addition to Article V to allow the people, through their state legislators, a way to propose amendments to our constitution.
Mason’s addition to Article V was probably the only part of the constitution where there was 100% agreement.
Many today believe the federal government is all-powerful because we have let D.C. do whatever it desires.
It is time to put this monster back in its cage.
Our Tenth Amendment says, “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.”
We The People need to require the feds to live within a budget like 49 of our 50 states are required to do by their constitutions.
We need to limit the number of terms government officials are allowed to live off our tax dollars, and we need to insist they do only what the Constitution allows.
See conventionofstates.com, join the 5.4 million supporters nationwide, and sign the petition to make this a reality. We have our Constitution to protect and our country to save, so let’s get busy!
