- Wouldn't this apply to the victims of 9/11, of which
each victim's family was legislated to receive over a million because their
loved one happened to die on that tragic day?
-
- How much do the families of our military receive for
those who died in combat fighting for OUR NATIONAL SECURITY?
-
- Where are the same benefits for those who died in the
Oklahoma City bombing?
-
- What gives our congressional representatives the authority
to pass compensation BILLS on selected victims of "terrorism"?
-
- Our Constitution states that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL
so therefore they ALL SHOULD BE EQUALLY COMPENSATED OR EQUALLY NOT COMPENSATED.
You can't pick and choose that some will and some won't, that is if we
still have a Constitution!
-
-
- 'SOCKDOLAGER' - A True Tale of Congressman Davy Crockett
-
- A "sockdolager" is a knock-down blow. This
is a newspaper reporter's captivating story or his unforgettable encounter
with the old "Bear Hunter" from Tennessee. From the Life of
Colonel David Crockett, by Edward S. Ellis (Philadelphia: Porter &
Coates, 1884)
-
- Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was a great
admirer of his character, and, having several friends who were intimate
with him, I found no difficulty in making his acquaintance. I was fascinated
with him, and he seemed to take a fancy to me.
-
- I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives
when a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow
of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been
made in its support- rather, as I thought, because it afforded the speakers
a fine opportunity for display than from the necessity of convincing anybody,
for it seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about
to put the question when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course,
that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in support
of the bill. He commenced:
-
- "Mr. Speaker- I have as much respect for the memory
of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living,
if suffering there by, as any man in this House, but we must not permit
our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead
us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go
into argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money
as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have
the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we
please in charity; but as a member of Congress we have no right so to appropriate
a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to
us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased.
-
- Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close
of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never
heard that the government was in arrears to him. This government can owe
no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is
a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained?
If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to
have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever
hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War
of 1812 precisely the same amount.
-
- There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of a gallant
a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good
in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily
bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate
five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and
my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of
widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never
hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government
did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract
it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain.
- Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot,
without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment
of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as
a charity.
-
- Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as
much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor.
I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object,
and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more
than the bill asks."
- He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put
upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally
supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received
but few votes, and, of course, was lost.
-
- Like many other young men, and old ones, too, for that
matter, who had not thought upon the subject, I desired the passage of
the bill, and felt outraged at is defeat. I determined that I would persuade
my friend Crockett to move a reconsideration the next day.
-
- Previous engagements preventing me from seeing Crockett
that night, I went early to his room the next morning and found him engaged
in addressing and franking letters, a large pile of which lay upon his
table.
-
- I broke in upon him rather abruptly, by asking him what
devil had possessed him to make that speech and defeat that bill yesterday.
Without turning his head or looking up from his work, he replied:
-
- "You see that I am very busy now; take a seat and
cool yourself. I will be through in a few minutes, and then I will tell
you all about it."
-
- He continued his employment for about ten minutes, and
when he had finished he turned to me and said: "Now, sir, I will
answer your question. But thereby hangs a tale, and one of considerable
length, to which you will have to listen."
-
- I listened, and this is the tale which I heard:
-
- "Several years ago I was one evening standing on
the steps of the Capitol some other members of Congress, when our attention
was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a
large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could.
When we got there, I went to work, and I never worked as hard in my life
as I did there for several hours. But, in spite of all that could be done,
many houses were burned and many families made homeless, and, besides,
some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was
very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt
that something ought to be done for them, and everybody else seemed to
feel the same way.
-
- The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating
$20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it
through as soon as it could be done. I said everybody felt as I did.
That was not quite so; for, though they perhaps sympathized as deeply with
the sufferers as I did, there were a few of the members who did not think
we had the right to indulge our sympathy or excite our charity at the expense
of anybody but ourselves. They opposed the bill, and upon its passage
demanded the yeas and nays. There were not enough of them to sustain the
call, but many of us wanted our names to appear in favor of what we considered
a praiseworhty measure, and we voted with them to sustain it. So the nays
were recorded, and my name appeared on the journals in favor of the bill.
-
- The next summer, when it began to be time to think about
the election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of
my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some
time off, I did not know what might turn up, and I thought it was best
to let the boys know that I had not forgot them, and that going to Congress
had not made me too proud to go to see them.
- So I put a couple of shirts and a few twists of tobacco
into my saddlebags, and put out. I had been out about a week and had found
things going very smoothly, when, riding one day in a part of my district
in which I was more of a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field
plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should
meet as he came to the fence. As he came up I spoke to the man. He replied
politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly, and was about turning his horse
for another furrow when I said to him: "Don't be in such a hurry,
my friend; I want to have a little talk with you, and get better acquainted."
-
- He replied: "I am very busy, and have but little
time to talk, but if it does not take too long, I will listen to what you
have to say."
-
- I began: "Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate
beings called candidates, and.."
-
- "Yes, I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I
have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected.
I suppose you are out electioneering now, but had better not waste your
time or mine. I shall not vote for you again."
-
- This was a sockdolager...I begged him to tell me what
was the matter.
-
- "Well, Colonel, it is hardly worthwhile to waste
time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave
a vote last winter which shows that either you have no capacity to understand
the Constitution, or that you are wanting in honesty and firmness to be
guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But
I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail
myself of the privilege of the Constitution to speak plainly to a candidate
for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say
that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine;
and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said,
that I believe you to be honest. But an understanding of the Constitution
different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be
worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all it provisions.
The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the
more honest he is."
-
- "I admit the truth of all you say, but there must
be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last
winter upon any constitutional question."
-
- "No, Colonel, there's no mistake. Though I live
in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington
and read very carefully all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say
that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers
by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?"
-
- "Certainly it is, and I thought that was the last
vote which anybody in the world would have found fault with."
-
- "Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution
any authority to give away the public money in charity?"
-
- Here was another sockdolager, for, when I began to think
about it, I could not remember a thing in the Constitution that authorized
it. I found I must take another tack, so I said:
-
- "Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have
got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich
country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve
its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing
Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just
as I did."
-
- "It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain
of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have
in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that
has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing
money at pleasure is the most dangerous power than can be entrusted to
man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which
reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the
poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse,
it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for
there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he
pays to the government.
-
- So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve
one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he.
If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter
of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as
$20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give
to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates
the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you
may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this
would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and
for robbing the people on the other.
-
- No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity.
Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please,
but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose.
If twice as many houses had been burned in this country as in Georgetown,
neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating
a dollar of relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress.
If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each
one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy
men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving
themselves of even a luxury of life.
-
- The Congressman chose to keep their own money, which,
if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditable; and the people
about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity
of giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress,
by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is
authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything
beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."
-
- I have given you an imperfect account of what he said.
Long before he was through, I was convinced that I had done wrong. He
wound up by saying:
-
- "So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution
in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger
to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond
the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security
for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not
make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and
you see that I cannot vote for you."
-
- I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have
opposition, and this man should go talking, he would set others to talking,
and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, and
the fact is, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to
him:
-
- "Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head
when you said I had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I
intended to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it full. I have
heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but what
you have said there at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than
all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it
that you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have
given that vote; and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I
ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I many be shot."
-
- He laughingly replied: "Yes, Colonel, you have
sworn to that one before, but I will trust you again upon one condition.
You say that you are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment
of it will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around
the district, you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied
it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep
down opposition, and, perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that
way."
-
- "If I don't," said I, "I wish I may be
shot; and to convince you that I am in earnest in what I say, I will come
back this way in a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering
of the people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I
will pay for it."
-
- "No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section,
but we have plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbecue, and some
to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over in a
few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is Thursday;
I will see to getting it up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday,
and we will go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to
see and hear you."
-
- "Well, I will be here. But one thing more before
I say good-bye. I must know your name."
-
- "My name is Bunce."
-
- "Not Horatio Bunce?"
-
- "Yes."
-
- "Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though
you say you have seen me; but I know you very well. I am glad I have met
you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend. You must
let me shake your hand before I go."
-
- We shook hands and parted.
-
- It was one of the luckiest hits of my life and I met
him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his
remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful
and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves
not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country
around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate
acquaintance. Though I had never met him before, I had heard much of him,
and but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had opposition,
and had been beaten. One thing is very certain, no man could now stand
up in that district under such a vote.
-
- At the appointed time I was at his house, having told
our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all
night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a confidence
in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.
-
- Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his
house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed,
I kept him up until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs
of government, and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got
all my life before.
-
- I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect
him - no that is not the word- I reverence and love him more than any living
man, and I go to see him two or three times every year, and I will tell
you, sir, if everyone who professes to be a Christian lived and acted and
enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.
-
- But to return to my story. The next morning we went
to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there.
I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend
introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted - at least,
they all knew me.
- In due time notice was given that I would speak to them.
They gathered around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech
by saying:
-
- "Fellow Citizens - I present myself before you
today feeling like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths
which ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my view.
I feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable
service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today more
for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes. That
I should make this acknowledgment is due to myself as well as to you.
Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration only."
-
- I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for
the appropriation as I have told it to you, and then told them why I was
satisfied it was wrong. I closed by saying:
-
- "And now, fellow Citizens, it remains only for
me to tell you that the most of the speech you have listened to with so
much interest was simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor,
Mr. Bunce, convinced me of my error. It is the best speech I ever made
in my life, but he is entitled to the credit of it. And now I hope he
is satisfied with his convert and that he will get up here and tell you
so."
-
- He came upon the stand and said: "Fellow Citizens
- It affords me great pleasure to comply with the request of Colonel Crockett.
I have always considered him a thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied
that he will faithfully perform all that he has promised you today."
-
- He went down, and there went up from the crowd such
a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.
-
- I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a
choking then and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell
you now that the remembrance of those few words spoken by such a man, and
the honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the
honors I have received and all the reputation I have ever made, or ever
shall make, as a member of Congress.
-
- "Now, Sir," concluded Crockett," you
know why I made that speech yesterday. I had several thousand copies of
it printed and was directing them to my constituents when you came in.
There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember
that I proposed to give a week's pay.
-
- There are in that House many very wealthy men - men who
think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them for a dinner
or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of
those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude
which the country owed the deceased - a debt which could not be paid by
money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against
the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition.
Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people.
But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and
many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."
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