Power

American Civics Research Library

Excerpted from How to Argue and Win Every Time by Gerry Spence

   All power, yours and theirs, is yours.  First, What is Power?  The power peculiar to each of us is that force that distinguishes each of us from all other beings.  Our power is our creativity, our joy, our sorrow, our anger, our pain.  This energy is our personhood.  The extraordinary mix of traits and talents and experiences that make up the fingerprint our our souls.  This power belongs to us and only to us.

   Power is an idea, a perception, a judgment, a thought - this thought:  The power I face is always the power I perceive.  Let me say it differently.  Their power is my perception of their power.  Their power is my thought.  The source of their power, therefore, is in my mind.  The power others posses is the power I give them.  If I've endowed the other with power that the other does not posses, then I face my own power, do I not?  My own power has become my opponent - my enemy.  On the other hand, if the other posses power but I do not perceive the other's power as effective against me, he has none...none for me.  

   We often encounter opponents who excel where we do not.  We can squander our time, our energy, all of our power in worrying about our opponent's power and thus give our power to him.  No argument, no matter how skillfully delivered, will change our opponent.  The only people we have the power to change are ourselves.  I refuse to relinquish my power to my opponent.  I keep my power.  I use it to prepare my cases, to prepare for my client...

...What do we do when our parents, teachers, or bosses use their power to control or injure us?  By understanding power we can make their power powerless against us.  Their threats, their rantings and ragings, their accusations and abuse.  What is it about?  It is not about their power.  It is about their infirmities.  Everyone's personality is pock-marked with holes, much like a block of Swiss Cheese.  A hole may represent a place void of intelligence where wisdom should have filled it.

   Still another hole may show a possity of sensitivity, insight or empathy.  We use power to fill the holes of our personality.  When a power entity, a judge for example, has no other personality asset with which to cover over his deficiencies we will endure, instead, his ugly exhibitions of raw power.

   Remember Lord Acton's immortal law:  "All power corrupts, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely."  Responsibility is a symbiotic twin of power.  Neither power nor responsibility can be effectively exercised without the other. They are like a binary star - two ends revolving around a center.  The almighty judge is responsible for justice in his court.  The all powerful parent is responsible for the child's growth and welfare.  The omnipotent boss is responsible for production at the plant.  But the judge cannot obtain justice without lawyers who present him with facts.  The parent cannot form the successful child without the love of the child.  The boss is powerless to achieve production without the respect and aid of his employees.  Are we not confronted with a paradox?  Is it not apparent that power is finally vested in the powerless?  And the power to aid those in power, those who bear the responsibility is always our power.  And when we exercise our power to aid those who have power over us, we vest ourselves with power.  Do we not?

   Power is like gasoline.  Spread over the landscape it can result in an inferno.  It can cause untold harm.  Correctly contained, it can cook supper or transport us to Boston.  Power is deceptive.  For at times there is no one more powerful than the powerless.  The Davids have always been more powerful than the Goliaths.  Isn't that true?  The meek, unsullied by power, shall indeed inherit the earth.

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A METROPOLITAN POLICE

A discourse delivered before the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, in the Melodeon, Boston, April 5, 1863

    This speech was intended as an emasculation of the power of the elected office of Sheriff - David Deschesne

From:  Speeches and Lectures of Wendell Phillips, 1864 Wendell Phillips, pp. 495-523

   I have been requested to speak to you to-day on the subject of a Metropolitan Police.  That plan has already been presented, two or three years ago, to this community, and, of late, very elaborately and eloquently argued before a committee of the Legislature, by Edward L. Peirce, Esq., and still more comprehensively and in detail by Charles M. Ellis, Esq.; but it is one of vital importance to the welfare and progress of our city, and, until the object be achieved, it can never be too frequently considered and urged.  Other cities have led the way in this path, years ago.  The capital of the civilize world, London, many years ago, found herself utterly unable to contend with the evils of accumulated population, - found municipal machinery utterly inadequate for security of life or property in her streets; and the national government, by the hand of Sir Robert Peel, assumed the police regulation of that cluster of towns which we commonly call London, though the plan does not include the city proper.  New York, on our continent, about six years ago, followed the example; Baltimore and Cincinnati have done likewise to a greater or less extent, and so also have some of the other Western cities.  The experience of all great accumulations of property and population reads us a lesson, that the execution of the laws therein demand extra consideration and peculiar machinery.  The self-organized Safety Committees of San Francisco and other cities prove the same fact.  Indeed, great cities are nests of great vices, and it has been the experience of republics that great cities are an exception to the common rule of self-governed communities.  Neither New York, nor New Orleans, nor Baltimore - none of the great cities - has found the ballot box of its individual voters a sufficient protection, through a police organization.  Great cities cannot be protected on the theory of republican institutions.  We may like it or not, - seventy years have tried the experiment, and, so far, it is a failure; and if there is no resource outside of the city limits, then a self-governed great city is, so far as my experience goes, the most uncomfortable which any man who loves free speech can live in.  It is no surprise, therefore, that we ask you no longer to let the police force represent the voters of Boston.  Hitherto, the police regulations in the city of Boston have been modeled on those of a small town; that is, the inhabitant themselves have called into existence a body of constables, in fact, to execute the laws of the State and the by-laws of the city.  Our text, in presenting this subject to you, is this:  in Boston, as everywhere else, where large numbers are brought together and great masses of property are found, a police force appointed by the voters of the place cannot be relied on to execute the laws; and, in order to secure their full and impartial execution, it has been found necessary elsewhere, and I shall attempt to show you that it is necessary here, to put the control of the police force into other hands than those of the voters of the place.  That is our claim, - that the men of the peninsula, like those of other great cities, are not to be trusted with the execution of the State laws, but that executive power must be based on broader foundations.  Such a course is no uncommon machinery in democratic institutions.  We put the interpretation of the laws - the judiciary - not into the hands of any local municipal body, but the interpretation of the State laws is in the hands of persons appointed by the whole State.  I invoke the same principle for their execution, - following old republican precedents, as I shall shortly show.

   In order to sustain this claim before you, I ought to show three or four things.  First, that in important particular - important particular - the law has failed of execution; that good and vitally important laws have failed of execution.  Secondly, I ought to show you that this failure is due to the machinery which the city puts in motion for the execution of the laws.  Thirdly, that a better machinery may be found.  And, fourthly, that it is important for the welfare of the State that the attempt to find a better machinery should be made.

   My first point is to show you that in important particulars, where great and grave interests are involved, the laws have failed of execution.  You perceive that this involves, in fact an indictment against the city government.  It is, in reality, arraigning the government of the city for failure to do its duty.  Before I pass to it, therefore, let me make one protest.  I do not come here to find fault with individual policemen.  I think our body of police is as good, on the average, as that of any great city I know.  I think upon all trying occasions they have done their duty, as far as they have been permitted, and have always shown full capacity to do their whole duty.  Neither do I come here to arraign the individuals of the city government; not, however, on account of the same excuse, but because I deem it unnecessary.  They are mere puppets, fluttering before us for a little while; they are only victims of a great system, which they did not originate and cannot control.  Looking over the last dozen years, considering that the Mayer and Aldermen during those years have been, in the aggregate, only a standing committee appointed by the grog-shops of the peninsula, it has been no honor, but a shame, to hold one of those offices.  No man with a full measure of self-respect could accept such an office.  All politics necessitates questionable compliances; but this serfdom touches a base depth.  It is not however necessary, and certainly not within my plan to-day, to arraign individuals.  I am merely criticizing a system which throws up into unfitting places and undue importance men who have no real right to the power which they are wholly unable or unwilling to use.

   To return now to my first point, I am to show you that, in many important particulars, the laws have failed of execution.  I shall take, in the first place, temperance.  Some men look upon this temperance cause as whining bigotry, narrow asceticism, or a vulgar sentimentality, fit for little minds, weak women, and weaker men.  On the contrary, I regard it as second only to one or two others of the primary reforms of this age, and for this reason.  Every race has its peculiar temptation; every clime has its specific sin.  The tropics and  tropical races are tempted to one form of sensuality; the colder and temperate regions, and our Saxon blood, find their peculiar temptation in the stimulus of drink and food.  In old times our heaven was a drunken revel.  We relieve ourselves from the over-weariness of constant and exhausting toil by intoxication.  Science has brought a cheap means of drunkenness within the reach of every individual  National prosperity and free institutions have put into the hands of almost every workman the means of being drunk for a week on the labor of two or three hours.  With that blood and that temptation, we have adopted democratic institutions, where the law has no sanction but the purpose and virtue of the masses.  The statute-book rests not on bayonets, as in Europe, but on the hearts of the people.  A drunken people can never be the basis of a free government.  It is the corner-stone neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress.  To us, therefore, the title-deeds of whose estates and the safety of whose lives depend upon the tranquility of the streets, upon the virtue of the masses, the presence of any vice which brutalizes the average mass of mankind, and tends to make it more readily the tool of intriguing and corrupt leaders, is necessarily a stab at the very life of the nation.  Against such a vice is marshaled the Temperance Reformation.  That my sketch is no mere fancy picture, every one of you knows.  Every one of you can glance back over your own path, and count many and many a one among those who started from the goal at your side, with equal energy and perhaps greater promise, who has found a drunkards' grave long before this.  The brightness of the bar, the ornament of the pulpit, the hope and blessing and stay of many a family, - you know, every one of you who has reached middle life, how often on your path you set up the warning, "Fallen before the temptations of the streets!"  Hardly one house in this city, whether it be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or whether it find hard, cold maintenance by the most earnest economy, no matter which, - hardly a house that does no count, among sons or nephews, some victim of this vice.  The skeleton of this warning sits at every board.  The whole world is kindred in this suffering.  The country mother launches her boy with trembling upon the temptations of city life; the father trusts his daughter anxiously to the young man she has chosen, knowing what a wreck intoxication may make of the house-tree they set up.  Alas!  how often are their worst forebodings more than fulfilled!  I have known a case - and probably many of you can recall some almost equal to it - where one worthy woman could count father, brother, husband, and son-in law, all drunkards, - no man among her near kindred, except her son, who was not a victim of this vice.  Like all other appetites, this finds resolution weak when se against the constant presence of temptation.  This is the evil  How are the laws relating to it executed in this city?  Let me tell you.

   First, there has been great discussion of this evil, - wide, earnest, patient discussion, for thirty-five years.  The whole community has been stirred by the discussion of this question.  Finally, after various experiments, the majority of the State decided that the method to stay this evil was to stop the open sale of intoxicating drink.  They left moral suasion still to address the individual,  and set themselves as a community to close the doors of temptation.  Every man acquainted with his own nature or with society knows that weak virtue, walking through our streets, and meeting at every tenth door (for that is the average) the temptation to drink, must fall; that one must be a moral Hercules to stand erect.  To prevent the open sale of intoxicating liquor has been the method selected by the State =to help its citizens to be virtuous; in other words, the State has enacted what is called the Maine Liquor Law, - the plan of refusing all licenses to sell, to be drunk on the spot or elsewhere, and allowing only an official agent to sell for medicinal purposes and the arts.  You may drink in your own parlors, you may make what indulgence you please your daily rules, the State does not touch you there; there you injure only yourself, and those you directly influence; that the State cannot reach.  But when you open your door and say to your fellow-citizens, "Come and indulge," the State has a right to ask, "In what do you invite them to indulge?"  Is it in something that helps, or something that harms, the community?"

   I will try to show you, in a moment, on what grounds the State decided that these numberless open doors harmed the community, and that the method to be adopted was to shut them up.... 

Metropolitan Police still under construction...

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notes from Introduction to Psychopharmacology

Excerpts from Introduction to Psychopharmacology, ©1983 Upjohn Company, 

Written by Malcom Lader, DSc, PhD, MD, FRC Psych, Dipl Psych Med.  Professor of Clinical Psycopharmacology, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London.

All notes in blue are from David Deschesne, American Civics Research Library.

"The general practitioner, the psychiatrist, and the internist prescribe psychotropic drugs in large quantities to large numbers of patients.  Yet many of these prescribers, judging by the questions I am asked after lecturing on the topic, are not confident that they have sufficient knowledge to use these drugs efficiently.  The psychotropic drugs were discovered mainly by accident, and their pharmacology is complex - involving as it does brain mechanisms that are poorly understood." - Preface

"Even now, many physicians find the psychotropic agents puzzling because of their empirical nature." - p. 8

"Drugs are available to lessen behavioural disturbances in children, to curtail the sex drive, and to combat obsessions, but their usefulness is still poorly established." - p. 9

"Psychopharmacology has perhaps been less successful in its relationships to psychology, both animal and human.  Behaviour is so complex a topic and any drug so multifarious in its actions that the conjunction of the two could hardly be expected to be enlightening." - p. 10

"...little is known of synaptic regulatory mechanisms..." - p. 18

"Irreversible inactivators of acetylcholinesterase were developed as insecticides and nerve-gas poisons..." - p. 18

"Little is known of 5-HT receptor characteristics." - p. 25 note: 5-HT is also known as Serotonin

"The translation of the drug effects on biochemical mechanisms (outlined in the previous chapter) into alterations in holistic behaviour is a difficult one, primarily because the relationship of neurotransmitters to various aspects of brain functioning is dauntingly complex." - p. 30

"The cholinergic pathways have not generally been worked out in detail, mainly because of the lack of appropriate techniques." - p. 32

"...many tests have been devised or adapted to assess drug effects in normal subjects.  However, it must be stressed that information about effects in normal subjects is limited to knowledge about relatively simple (in psychological terms) stimulants and depressants and to the detection of secondary psychotropic effects, eg, sedation with amitriptyline.  Anti-psychotic and antidepressant actions in normal subjects cannot be studied in any depth." - p. 40

"All of the above techniques are available for use in patients.  However, some adaptation to clinical conditions is usually necessary, and allowance has to be made for the generally poor psychological performance of many groups of psychiatrict patients." - p. 40 note:  changing parameters to get a "test" to turn out the way they want it to.

"It is impossible for the psychiatrist to know all the pharmacokinetic details about every psychotropic agent, its absorption characteristics, distribution, liver metabolism, kidney excretion, and drug interactions." - p. 43 note: pharmacokinetics is the study of how the body breaks down, or "burns" and gets rid of drugs.

"Despite some claims, these drugs are not unequivocally "antischizophrenic," and any drug-related improvement in prognosis for such patients ahs been modest.  Many difficulties attend the use of the antipsychotic drugs, but new drugs and improved formulations of older ones are providing steady but unspectacular progress." - p. 51

"In 1950, the closely related compound chlorpromazine was synthesized in France and found to have very powerful sedative properties, including "artificial hibernation" with retention of consciousness, marked indifference to surrounding, and hypothermia." - pp. 52-53

"Thus, chlorpromazine reduces motor activity without affecting motor power or coordination, and treated animals maintain unnatural postures - so-called catalepsy." - p. 56

"Many of the wide range of unwanted effects of the antipsychotic drugs are fairly minor:  feelings of slowness, sluggishness and heaviness, weakness or faintness, and anticholinergic effects such as dry mouth and blurred vision." - p. 60 note:  "downshifting" the human to a lower gear.

"Unlike the antipsychotic drugs, whose pharmacological effects can be related to specific pathways, the antidepressant's sites of action are unclear." - p. 73

"A fine, rapid tremor of the extremities can occur with the tricyuclic drugs, and ataxia and parkinsonism have been reported to occur in patients treated with imipramine or amitriptyline at does greater than 300mg/day.  Hypomania or mania may be precipitated in patients with bipolar illness, although it is difficult to be sure that this is not a spontaneous switch.  Psychotic features in schizophrenic patients may be made worse.  Central anticholinergic effects presumably account for the occasional toxic psychosis, because the psychosis can be reversed by the administration of physostigmine.  Visual phenomena, heightened perceptions and illusions are not uncommon in patients treated with high dosages.  Most tricyclic drugs lower the convulsive threshold, thus increasing the probability of convulsions." - p. 75 note:  If a "chemcial imbalance" is the problem - as they claim - why all the side effects when the chemicals are "balanced?"  Why do people with "normal chemical balances" not exhibit these side effects with "normal" chemical amounts?

"Overdoses of tricyclic drugs produce restlessness, agitation, and delirium.  Convulsions, coma, and death may supervene." - p. 76

"The safety and efficacy of MAOIs in children are not established: use of the drugs in children should be avoided." - p. 84

"Tryptophan is claimed to have hypnotic effects in doses greater than about 2 gm." - p. 85

"The biochemical and theoretical aspects of this 5-HT precursor are summarized later.  Its therapeutic value remains unestablished." - p. 86

----------------------------------These two lines sum up entire book----------------------------------------

"There are many technical problems in evaluating central amine disposition in man.  Plasma values are generally  a poor correlate of brain concentrations, and urinary excretion is usually at least as uninformative." - p. 88 note:  blood/urine tests are inconclusive for determining if any chemical imbalance exists to begin with - they are just guessing.

"The most disturbing aspect of the accumulated mass of data on the psychobiology of depression is its lack of consistency." - p. 88 note:  they can't get two "tests" to come out the same.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"That the drugs improve many patients cannot be gainsaid.  The drugs have many biochemical effects, however, and we still do not know which are most relevant to their therapeutic actions." - p.89

LITHIUM

"Another effect of lithium is to interfere with energy processes in the cell by an action on cyclic AMP.  Together with electrolyte and neurotransmitter changes, a very complex set  of actions is attributable to lithium, and the effect is made even more convoluted by the inevitable compensating processes set in train.  For these reasons, the mode of action of lithium (or, more realistically, the major modes of action) remains uncertain." - p. 91

"Even now the relative advantages and disadvantages of lithium and the antipsychotic drugs are not clearly established." - p. 91

"Severe toxicity is accompanied by restlessness, confusion, nystagmus, epileptic convulsions, delirium, and, eventually, coma and death.  Muscular flaccidity or, conversely, hyperirritability and irreversible brain damage have also been reported." - p. 93

"Benign, reversible T-wave changes occur with lithium treatment, perhaps because of displaced intracellular potassium.  Arrhythmias, including ventricular premature contractions, tachycardia, and atrioventricular block, may occur rarely at therapeutic concentrations and more commonly at toxic levels.  Among gastrointestinal side effects are nausea, anorexia, loose stools, vomiting, and abdominal pain.  The main haemopoietic effect is a benign leucocytosis.  Acneform and other rashes may occur, as oedema.  Weight gain is often noted, the mechanism being unclear." - p. 94

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"A major quandary confronts the practitioner concerned with the patient who is chronically anxious and has major personality traits of anxiety, tension, and general neurotic symptoms.  Drug therapy can alleviate the anxiety but will not alter the severe underlying predisposition." - p. 103 note:  just like drinking alcohol will not get rid of your problems.

LSD

"LSD has been used...to accelerate the progress of patients in psychoanalysis when they seem "blocked"...for regular administration in group therapy sessions to release inhibitions..." - p. 108

"During the phase of LSD intoxication, the subject may be a danger to himself and to others.  Some bizarre crimes and accidental deaths have occurred, and profound depression may lead to attempted suicide." - p. 108

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Notes from Points of Rebellion

By William O'Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court, ©1970

"While violence is not protected by the Constitution, lawful conduct, such as marching and picketing often boils over into unlawful conduct because people are emotional, not rational, beings. So are the police; and very often they arrest the wrong people. For the police are an arm of the Establishment and view protesters with suspicion. Yet American protesters need not be submissive. A speaker who resists arrest is acting as a free man. The police do not have carte blanche to interfere with his freedom. They do not have the license to arrest at will or to silence people at will." - Points of Rebellion, ©1970 William O. Douglas - Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, pp.5-6.

Dave's note: While that may be a valid Constitutional maxim, today the police have been given carte blanche to do whatever they want, and the judges go right along with them.

***

"The world is filled with dangerous people. Every troublemaker across the globe is a communist(/Muslim). Our obsession is in part the product of a fear generated by Jospeh McCarthy(/television and print news media). Indeed a black silence of fear possesses the nation and is causing us to jettison some of our libertarian principles. Truman(/Bush) nutured that fear. Johnson(/Bush) promoted it, preaching the doctrine that the people of the world want what we have and, unless suppressed, will take it from us. That fear has made us all military experts - we all know what missiles to keep, what troop deployments to make, what overseas wars to search out and join. Military strategy has indeed become dominant in our thinking; and the dominance of the military attitude has had a sad effect at home. - ibid, pp 6-7

Dave's notes in blue

***

"Man has come to realize that if he is to have material "success," he must honor the folklore of the corporation state, respect its desires, and walk to the measure of its thinking. The interests of the corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into dollars. Its techniques, fashioned mainly on Madison Avenue and followed in Washington, D.C., are to produce climates of conformity that make any competing idea practically un-American. The older generation has in the main become mindless when it comes to criticism of the system. For it, perpetuation of the corporation state and its glorification represent the true Americanism." - ibid, p. 10

"Throughout the country the climate within our public schools has been against the full flowering of First Amendment traditions. The great rewards are in the Establishment and in work for the Establishment. While the Establishment welcomes inventive genius at the scientific level (provided it can get the patent and lock it up against competitive use), it does not welcome dissent on the great racial, ideological, and social issues that face our people.

Our colleges and universities reflect primarily the interests of the Establishment and the status quo. Heavy infiltration of CIA funds has stilled critical thought in some areas." - ibid, pp. 12-13

***

"...much of modern education fills young, tender minds with information that is utterly irrelevant to modern problems of the nation or to the critical conditions of the world." - ibid, p. 14

***

"A man's belief is his own; he is the keeper of his conscience; Big Brother has no rightful concern in these areas." - ibid, p. 19

*****

"There is more knowledge and information than ever before: the experts have so multiplied that man has a new sense of impotence; man is indeed about to be delivered over to them. Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer." - ibid, p. 32

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Quigley advocates for increased weapon proliferation

"...The growing strength of the defensive rested on the rapid growth of firepower after the invention of the machine gun about 1862 (this made both bayonet and cavalry obsolete), the increasing use of field fortifications (this reduced the effectiveness of both artillery barrage and of offensive firepower), the invention of barbed wire about 1879 (this hampered the infantry charge of the second step and the cavalry pursuit of the third), and of the airplane in 1903 (this took from the cavalry its only surviving role as reconnaissance).  The tactical changes made necessary by these innovations were not recognized by military men until after they had inflicted the almost unbearable casualties of 1916-17, but these changes (such as use of tanks, infiltration, aerial bombardment, and the like) made weapons once again so expensive and so difficult to use that it became increasingly needful to replace the mass citizen army by an army of specialists.  Such a change, by reserving instruments of force to a minority, reversed the trend on the political level to a new development from democracy toward authoritarian government....

...The hope of the future does not rest, as commonly believed, in winning the peoples of the "buffer fringe" to one superpower or the other, but rather the invention of new weapons and new tactics that will be so cheap to obtain and so easy to use that they will increase the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare so greatly that the employment of our present weapons of mass destruction will become futile and, on this basis, there can be a revival of democracy and of political decentralization in all three parts of our present world." - Evolution of Civilizations, Carroll Quigley, ©1979 Liberty Fund, Inc., pp. 401-403

***

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William Stewart was just 17 years old and in his first year as a teacher at Lyons Union School in Ohio when this incident took place. He later moved on to become District Attorney for California, then U.S. Senator for the State of Nevada.

By: William M. Stewart

“There was a family of Easlicks living in Lyons, consisting of father, mother and three or four boys. They were all bad boys at school. George W., the oldest, was about a year older than I and regarded as the bully of the town. He had had trouble with my predecessor, William S. Hall, and the trustees expelled him from the school. After I was appointed his father came to me and begged very earnestly to have his boy taken back into school. Mr. Hall and the other teachers about the institution advised me to keep him out. I saw the trustees and they said I had better not take him back; but I told his father that I would receive him in the school, and the next day George came swaggering in and began to play tricks on the smaller boys. Several of them complained to me, and I told George he ought to behave himself and let the little boys alone. he said nothing, but gave me an insolent grin.

The next day he lifted a small boy, who was sitting in front of him, by his hair and made the little fellow cry out pitifully. I walked toward him in an easy manner and told him I would have to punish him. He appeared to regard that as the best joke he had ever heard, and came swaggering toward me to show me that he was ready for a fight. I grabbed and tripped him and he fell full length on his face. I jumped on his back, caught him by the hair, jammed his nose against the floor and hit him as hard as I could under the butt of the ear, which made him senseless for a few minutes. I waited for him to recover, but kept my position for fear he might revive and get the better of me. When he was able to speak he said, ‘Let us reason.’

‘Reason be damned!’ I replied. ‘I propose to kill you if you don’t behave yourself.’ He readily promised to behave in the future, and he never gave me another moment’s trouble, although he continued to attend during the remainder of the term.

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The War of 1812 was the last war this country fought to physically defend our own land from foreign aggressors. All other wars were fought overseas in somebody else’s country; in some cases the draft had to be used to supply the military with much-needed men.

In the War of 1812, Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, who eventually became President of the Confederate States, recalls her husband describing how a “reverse” draft had to be employed to actually keep men home because so many volunteered to serve to protect their homeland.

Mrs. Davis recalls her husband saying:

“Three of my brothers bore arms in the War of 1812, and the fourth was prevented from being in the army by an event so characteristic of the times, yet so unusual elsewhere, that it may be deemed worthy to note. When it was reported that the British were advancing to the attack of New Orleans, the men of Wilkinson County, who were then at home, commenced volunteering so rapidly that it was deemed necessary to put a check upon it, so as to retain a sufficient number at home for police purposes. For this purpose a county court, consisting of a justice and quorum, ordered a draft for a certain number of men to stay at home. This draft stopped my brother, who was about to start for New Orleans - making him the exception of my father’s adult sons who were engaged in the defense of the country during the War of 1812.”¹