My research suggests that a highly probable cause for the amendment's introduction was the activities of former vice president Aaron Burr and General Wilkerson. Other issues of the day may very well have been considered also.

The final draft of the amendment and the one that passed Congress was designed to strip a citizen of their citizenship under a specific set of acts, which would have constituted disloyalty to the American political system and a potential threat to the sovereignty of America.

Congress would be allowed on a case by case basis to grant the citizen the right to accept gifts, offices, pensions, etc. if it was determined that it would be in the best interest of the nation.

Why would the United States adopt a Constitution with a clear prohibition against certain activities, yet not attach a penalty to it?

The lack of a penalty for crimes committed against the United States did not make any sense. By Constitutional agreement, everyone was barred from introducing any new amendments to the Constitution until the beginning of 1809.

The issue of accepting, issuing, or retaining any Titles of Nobility or Honor was outside the jurisdiction of Congress. However the remaining part of the law was under their desecration.

The conditions of that time were really no different then those of today. If you accept money, bribes, gifts, offices, etc. from a foreign power, banker, or agent of the same, to influence political, monetary, educational, or military events of the United States resulting in actions that would be in the best interest of that foreign entity and could prove damaging to the best interest of America, you should face a penalty and be prosecuted for those activities.

Striping a person of their citizenship prevents that person from ever running for any office, which seemed to be the best avenue for this type of treachery to exist, it represented an excellent way to protect American interests.

It’s interesting that so many of the founders held this prohibition to be the corner stone of our Republican form of government. Hamilton, Justice Story, and countless others were of that opinion.

Why would any state or nation make it a crime to murder, rob, rape, steal, lie, or anything else, but not attach a penalty to the violation of these prohibitions?

They haven’t and they wouldn’t!

However, there was great fear with regard to the current and future effects of this law from 1810 to 1830. These fears were clearly expressed to Congress by South Carolina when they tabled the amendment in 1814.

I suspect this got a lot of people to thinking and may have manifested itself as the failure to recognize Virginia’s assent to the proposal.

In those days it would have been a relatively simple matter to make records or a letter disappear. In an 1819 letter to the states from John Quincy Adams he wrote, that countless law books and records just vanished under the care of James Monroe, the former Secretary of State, with no explanation of how, why, where, or what.

Could the government back then have put the fix in on this amendment. You bet your sweet ass they could. And, I am of the opinion that that’s exactly what they did.