We learn from Walt Garlington that a figure in NC history– Thomas Burke from Hillsborough– advocated heavily for and originated some of the early language at the time of our nation’s founding that ultimately led to the Tenth Amendment. This, of course, is the constitutional provision that grants the states powers that are not explicitly enumerated for the federal government:
Divine Providence withdrew him quickly from this world. He left the Continental Congress in 1781, was elected governor of North Carolina in June of that year, was captured in October by Tories, and then paroled. After leaving the governorship in 1782, he lived another year before succumbing to complications caused by his imprisonment on December 2nd, 1783.
Despite his personal absence from the constitutional debates, his legacy remained very influential. The Burke Amendment would serve as the model of the Tenth Amendment to the current federal constitution, which has helped to preserve some shreds of State sovereignty in the face of the federal vortex that is intent on pulling every meaningful power and authority away from the States and localities and making them its own.
The Tenth Amendment has been tattered and torn by nearly 250 years of political activity in all three branches of government– executive, legislative and judicial. They are all guilty of trashing it.
But Thomas Burke from North Carolina nevertheless was right that it should have been a cornerstone of our constitutional republic; and we ought to do all we can to restore it.
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