Multiple shooting in Kennesaw, Georgia at FedEx location

[happyslug]

21. In the days of Draft Cards, that is all any one had to do

Last edited Tue Apr 29, 2014, 12:58 PM - Edit history (1)

In the days of Draft Cards, if you were male (Females were NOT drafted) and did not produce your draft card on demand, you could be arrested right then and there for NOT registering for the draft. The law PRESUMED you had not registered for the draft. , and as a male over age 18 YOU had to produce evidence that you HAD REGISTERED for the Draft.

This was viewed as Constitutional for when the Bill of Rights were adopted, the same Congress wrote the laws in regards to enlistments and followed what von Steuben had instituted in 1777. What von Steuben had adopted was the Prussian Rule on enlistments, all the Government had to show was you had enlisted, any discharge of that enlistment had to be produced by the enlistee. Thus former Service personal always kept a copy of their discharge papers. Without one, the Service can claim you had deserted and without the discharge papers such an ex service person was guilty of desertion.

Similar rules applied to Freed Slaves prior to the Civil War, if an African American was seen by anyone, he or she could be arrested. If that African American was a slave, he or she would be returned to his or her owner. On the othe hand, if they claim they were free, they had to show paper work, signed by their former master, that they were free (or get someone from their former master to say they were free, the burden of proof was on the African American). If no such evidence was produced, they would be held by the county sheriff for about 90 days, then sold to pay of the cost of their upkeep (this is the days where you had to PAY for the food you ate while you sat in jail, if you could not pay, the costs were accessed against you, and if you were an African American in the days of Slavery, sold to pay off that debt).

Side note:

Notice the rule, the African American had to show they were a Freeman, not the Sheriff that the African American was a runaway slave. The affect of this law was well known, thus during the US Civil War at Andersonville POW camp, the African American Prisoners were the ones assigned to bury the dead. This permitted African American POWs to be outside the Camp (where they could scourge for food, an option denied to the White POWs, thus African Americans in Andersonville had a lower death rate then White POWs). The reason the Commander of Andersonville assigned the job of burial of the dead to African American, is that if they ran away, the African Americans knew if they were captured by anyone else in the south (and that was what most likely would happen to them) they be sold as slaves. The South had accepted that the North had permitted African Americans to enlist and treated them as POWS if they African American Soldiers had surrendered (in most cases, you had several cases were the Southern Troops massacred African Americans, see Fort Pillow for the best known example) but if the African Americas escaped from the POW Camp and were picked up by a local Sheriff, they then would be sold into Slavery.

Thus this shift of the burden of proof from the owner to the African American was a harsh rule, but a rule easy to enforce and Constitutional for it was the common practice in the South at the time of the Adoption of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In the North, even prior to the movement to abolish slavery that started in 1783, the burden was on the slave owner not the slave, which was also the rule in the South when it came to Indentured Servants and White Slaves, through White Slavery ended by the end of the 1600s).

http://www.balchfriends.org/glimpse/JPetersIntroBkLaws.htm

I bring up the above two example as how a law can be constitutional that requires you to keep something. All the law has to say is you MUST have it, and on demand you must produce it. Just like Draft Cards had to be produced (and in the days of Slavery, how passes had to be produced by Slaves, and emancipation papers had to be produced by Freed Slaves or other African American). In fact Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers on the Militia, suggested such a situation when it came to the regular militia. Once a year they be called out and checked out if they have the proper amount and type of equipment required of the Militia and then sent home. Did not appear, or did not have the equipment, they would be arrested, jailed and fined.

Thus the Court's will have a tough time ruling such a law unconstitutional, given Hamilton's support for something similar in the Federalists Papers AND how enlistments were treated at the time of the adoption of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.