In the small rural southern Ohio community of Cadiz, lies John Bingham. It's hard to find his grave but the local townspeople know where it is.
His actual grave site is marked fairly well for a local historical figure but otherwise it does not receive much publicity outside of the coal town which has fallen, like so many other small Ohio rural communities on hard times.
The man buried there lived a life all together larger than the area and region he came from and what he helped to create, not only factors into every legal brief written inside of America's jurisprudence today, but still stands very prominently among the most progressive legal and human constructs of all time in Western history.
We have fought four wars or more over the principles this Cadiz Ohio native helped to frame into lasting constitutional amendment sigificance and the African American race and other combined, have directly and expressly benefitted from his single minded if not understated efforts, who along w/ others of his era, framed the most important correction to America's most grave constitutional mistake and error in its 100 history to that time and beyond. It was John Bingham, whose early drafts and final proposals, gave birth to a new understanding of what America, both then and today, is....the 14th Amendment and its operative phrase..."No State shall deprive any individual, of his life, liberty or property, without due procss of law and,....the next line...which has been the high point of american jurisprudence ever since...
"or without the equal protection of the laws...."
without this phraseology, so concisely stated, there would have been NO foundation for the modern civil rights movement and no voting rights act, and ...many other fundamental notions of american civil liberty...including...
and no legal basis for say, miranda rights and protections, and a literal treasure trove of what most americans take so for granted, as our fundamental liberties, in and out of courts today...our virtual bill of rights itself...as incorporated to the States....
Yet, Bingham, is but one of the least known figures both in right here, in Ohio's history and particularly in southern Ohio's history yet, and aross all spectrums of america's political andlegal history; nonetheless, his legacy and his timeless contribution to the American narrative, is contained in the engraving and portrait of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclammtion, with this lawyer and constituitonal scholar, sitting at his side, inside the same portrait;
and there was a reason why he was placed in this portrait; Bingham himself helped to frame the very concept and words and worked on the final drafts of that 'rebirthing' document itself, at Lincoln's side...
This great American, thereafter served his nation on the field of legal battle alos, when not so long after that portrait was framed, Lincoln was assasinated...
John Bingham from rural Cadiz, Ohio then became one of the leading prosecutors of the Lincoln conspiracy trials and helped to prosecute those including the Surrat family co-conspirators, in a trial that has again been largely forgotten by recent american history.
[His life's work did not end there....becoming one of the leading proponents of the all important Civil War and Reconstruction Era Amendments ...and eventually one of America's first ambassador's to Japan...]
for these achievements and many more, we here at the MCCR are indicating we wish to recover Bingham and his fellow amazing peers, forgotten within the isolated, but determined, rust belt regions of our nation's heartland...right among its appalachian hills and townspeople...
and, we plan to explore, and describe, just where the other two men mentioned in this blog lives intertwine w/ Binghams, and precisely at the point where their brilliant constituitonal thinking and high minded concepts began to be placed into actual real time constitutional languages and a legal framework in order to preserve what a million or so lives or more were sacrificed to gain; freedom of and for the individual american, of all nationaliites and backgrounds forever and to be able to hold that "liberty interest"
held, against all the world, including one's own local government.
Brandeis, Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshal, MLK and JFK, Robert Kennedy, Obama, along with all of us living today...owe[d] this great but unassuming man of letters and the law, from southeastern Ohio's rolling hils, near where he is buried, a serious dept of appreciation and gratitude, for his singular and simply amazing contribution to the geniune, original "re-inventing" of America
....and this isn't some politician's bullsh.. statement we so often hear used for their own self interests, today; it's...the real American deal of our own forgotten lives, of our precious american history...
...largely never told to you and the rest of the nation, and beyond, ...today
1 comment:
John Bingham's legacy and contribution to america's basic struggle for freedom and liberty and equalilty for every american both past and present, is hardly equaled, given he is the principle author of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution, the Civil War Reconstruction Era Amendments and among its most ardent sponsors and supporters in the 39th Congress, which passed the same...
today, its hard to even imagine America, without the 14th Amendment; every single important civil rights milestone practially is premised upon the language and phraseology that Bingham both helped to create and fasten to the Foundation of this nation dedicated to democracy and liberty...
most of our criminal law proceedures and our basic american fundamental liberites, for all person, black and white and other, all tie directly into the 14th Amendment's first section and
as a nation, every person who has lived in the modern era, owes a major debt to the dedication and committment and spiritual vision this individual, from the hills of Cadiz, has given our nation, from the post civil war days forward...to the present
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