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To: DoodleDawg
Have you not read the Confederate constitution?

I've read it. Its evident you haven't. It hardly differed from the US Constitution on the issue of slavery.

Hardly the case but let's stick with how the two documents dealt with slavery. Slavery is not mentioned at all in the U. S. Constitution. It's mentioned ten times in the Confederate Constitution. The Confederate Constitution specifically protected slave imports, prohibited any laws impairing the right of slave ownership, prevented the possibility of any non-slave state, required all territories acquired permit slavery, and basically made it impossible to amend the Constitution to end slavery. All clauses the U.S. Constitution didn't have, and most of which it still wouldn't have had even if the Corwin Amendment had been ratified.

The US Constitution did not mention slavery directly, but it had the 3/5ths compromise as well as a Fugitive Slave Clause. It also allowed for the African Slave trade to continue for 20 years. The Confederate Constitution kept the ban on the African slave trade. The only imports it allowed were from the US. In other words, it kept the status quo ante and nothing more.

It did not prevent any non slave state. In fact that was voted down.

". . . delegates from the Deep South met in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 [1861] to establish the Confederate States of America. The convention acted as a provisional government while at the same time drafting a permanent constitution. . . . Voted down were proposals to reopen the Atlantic slave trade . . . and to prohibit the admission of free states to the new Confederacy. . . .

"The resulting constitution was surprisingly similar to that of the United States. Most of the differences merely spelled out traditional southern interpretations of the federal charter. . . .

". . . it was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionism was not to establish a slaveholders' reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim. The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction." (Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1998, pp. 444-445, emphasis added)

As for the claim that it "required any territories acquired to permit slavery" that was the same as the US post Dred Scot.

You say it made it impossible to amend the constitution to end slavery. No it did not. That was up to each state. They were willing to admit states that did not have slavery after all....

51 posted on 04/12/2022 6:16:35 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird
I've read it. Its evident you haven't. It hardly differed from the US Constitution on the issue of slavery.,p> And yet with every post you demonstrate that you haven't.

The US Constitution did not mention slavery directly...

One major difference between the two documents - one mentions it ten times and one doesn't mention it at all.

...but it had the 3/5ths compromise as well as a Fugitive Slave Clause.

As it happens the first was applicable only to slavery but the Fugitive Slave Clause also covered indentured servants and apprentices.

It also allowed for the African Slave trade to continue for 20 years. The Confederate Constitution kept the ban on the African slave trade. The only imports it allowed were from the US. In other words, it kept the status quo ante and nothing more.

But unlike the U.S. Constitution specifically protected slave imports. One major difference.

It did not prevent any non slave state. In fact that was voted down.

Article 2, Clause 1: "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired." Where a state in the U.S. could prohibit slaves within its borders entirely no state in the Confederacy could be slave-free. Any slave owner could enter the state and remain as long as they wished with their property and there was nothing the state could do about it.

As for the claim that it "required any territories acquired to permit slavery" that was the same as the US post Dred Scot.

Except that the Confederate Constitution specifically protected slavery in the territories while the Dred Scott decision comments on slavery were made in dicta and were not binding. They certainly would have been challenged.

You say it made it impossible to amend the constitution to end slavery. No it did not.

The amendment process for the Confederate Constitution required Congress to act. Either to submit the amendment itself or, if it initiated in the states, "Congress shall summon a convention of all the States, to take into consideration such amendments to the Constitution as the said States shall concur in suggesting at the time when the said demand is made..." Yet Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 says "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." Such a call or such an amendment would certainly "impair the right of property in negro slaves" and would be, on the face of it, unconstitutional. It would have made an interesting question for the Confederate Supreme Court...had such an institution been allowed to exist.

73 posted on 04/12/2022 7:07:26 AM PDT by DoodleDawg
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