Free Republic

FLT-bird on Crittenden Compromise items: "Discussions started in late 1860 right after the election and everyone knew secession was coming."

No, however, specific proposals from Mississippi Democrat Sen. Davis -- which had been rejected by Congress in February, 1860 -- were in December dusted off and reconsidered, and again mostly rejected, in the Crittenden Compromise of December 1860.
As a result of these rejections, Mississippi led other Deep South states into secession.

FLT-bird: "Slave owners had the right of transit already as per the Dred Scott decision.
There was nothing to decide, as the Supreme Court had already ruled."

Contrary to your claims here, the issue in 1860 was far from settled, which is why:

1. Northern courts totally ignored Crazy Roger's insane rantings, except to condemn them and reaffirm their own anti-slavery laws.

2. Mississippi Sen. Davis's February 1860 proposal -- that Congress act to guarantee a "right of any citizen of the United States to take his slaver property into the common Territories" -- clearly implied the SCOTUS Dred Scott ravings did not settle the matter.

3. In December 1860, in Congress the Crittenden Committee looked at many proposed "compromises" to stop secessions, including the "right to sojourn", many such rejected by Republicans.

4. In March 1861 the CSA constitution again asserted a slaveholder's "right of sojourn" with his slaves, thus revealing the issue was far from settled, even in the new Confederacy.

FLT-bird: "The idea of a constitutional amendment expressly protecting slavery was one that occurred to lots of people - not just Davis as you would have it.
Had Southern states really been concerned about the continuation of slavery, they could have simply accepted the Corwin amendment - yet they did not."

Contrary to your repeated claims, the Montgomery Constitutional Convention totally accepted and embraced the idea of Corwin and so inserted it into their own CSA constitution.
Any suggestion otherwise is just crazy.

FLT-bird quoting BROJOEK: "Confederates loved Corwin and copied and pasted it into their Montgomery constitution"

FLT-bird: "The Corwin Amendment came out before the Confederate Constitution.
Your timeline is backwards."

Read what you quoted me as saying again.
The fact remains -- all your denials notwithstanding -- that Confederates loved and embraced Corwin so much they copied and pasted it directly into their own Montgomery CSA constitution.

FLT-bird: "Lest anyone think it was, explicit protection of slavery in the US Constitution was a bargaining chip the North was quite happy to offer.
The original 7 seceding states turned it down."

Naw... Confederates didn't "turn it down" because that was never even a question for them.
They did fully accept, embrace and then copy and paste the Corwin idea into their own Montgomery CSA constitution, along with several other pro-slavery provisions which Republicans had rejected in December 1860.

FLT-bird: "This was not contrary to the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court in the Dred Scott ruling.
All a slave owner could do was transit with his slaves.
He could not reside in a state that had abolished slavery.
He could not employ his slaves in an enterprise there."

Those are all lies.
The truth is that Crazy Roger Taney (why do you think I call him "Crazy Roger"??) abolished all such restrictions on the alleged "right to sojourn" in free states and territories!!!

Crazy Roger claimed there were no limits on a slaveholder's rights to take his "property" into other states and stay there as long as he wanted.

Consider the case of Dred Scott, the man, a slave taken from the slave-state of Missouri to the free-state of Illinois and lived there for six years!!, from 1830 to 1836, and then was taken to the free-territory of Wisconsin for another four years!!, from 1836 to 1840.
So Dred Scott had lived in free-states or territories for 10 years and yet Crazy Roger still claimed that was not long enough to declare the man, Dred Scott (or his family), freed.

Indeed, the lunatic Crazy Roger Taney and his insane Democrat fellow SCOTUS justices declared that not only could Dred Scott never be freed by living in free states & territories, but also, that even if Dred Scott were voluntarily freed, as an African-American, the man could never become a US citizen with all the rights and privileges of other US citizens, i.e., voting, juries, military service, etc.

How is you do not yet grasp the depths of depravity in Crazy Roger Taney's Dred Scott opinions??

FLT-bird: "And yet, and yet, that was the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court.
Not litigated or decided by the Dred Scott case was how long a slave owner could have to transit with his slaves.
States could enact laws governing that and declare that any state on its territory longer than a reasonable period for transit were thereby deemed to be legally emancipated."

Again, those are lies.
The truth is that Crazy Roger's Dred Scott ravings effectively declared all such laws unconstitutional and invalid, and removed all limitations on the lengths of time slaveholders could "sojourn" with their "property" in free-states & territories.

See my link above for actual Crazy Roger quotes.

FLT-bird: "There is eyewitness testimony from numerous sources that Lincoln worked directly with Republicans in Congress to draft the Corwin Amendment, get it introduced in Congress and get it passed both by Congress as well as by multiple Northern states."

None of which you've presented here for closer inspection.

FLT-bird: "No matter how much you or anybody else does not like it, that was the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States and as such was the law of the land.
Your incessant childish namecalling changes nothing."

Nooo... "Crazy Roger" is not "name-calling", it is a factual description of a raving lunatic, as were his fellow Democrat SCOTUS justices, as are Democrats today.
Indeed, the very word, "Democratic" from the beginning in the 1790s meant, "stark raving Jacobin lunatics" of the French Revolution.
So, while Thomas Jefferson called himself a small-r republican, his Federalist opponents called his party the Democratic-republicans, by which they meant "lunatics".
And, of course, Jeffersonians were perfectly happy with the designation and so kept the name "Democratics".

So, Democrats always were, and remain insane, none more so than Crazy Roger Taney.

FLT-bird: "That might've affected politics.
Then again, most people were far more concerned about the Morrill Tariff which was working its way through Congress at this time."

And yet nobody in any document of the time mentioned the Morrill Tariff as a reason for secession.
What every such document did mention, some of them exclusively, was slavery.

FLT-bird: "Wrong.
Rhode Island and Connecticut passed bills banning slavery in 1843 and 1848, respectively, and New Hampshire passed a final abolition bill in 1857.
Vermont was not admitted as a state until 1791.
Massachusetts had abolished slavery in 1783-84."

Again, you're just lying.
The truth is that all of those states, plus the entirety of the Old Northwest Territories had begun to abolish slavery before the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

1. 1777 Vermont
2. 1780 Pennsylvania
3. 1783 Massachusetts
4. 1783 New Hampshire
5. 1784 Conncecticut
6. 1784 Rhode Island
7. 1787 Old Northwest Territories, which became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and about 1/3 of Minnesota.

Further, by the time of the 1787 Convention, over half of the delegates did not own slaves.

So, bottom line: your repeated claims -- that our Founders didn't care about slavery and weren't working to abolish it -- those claims are simply untrue.

FLT-bird: "Oh, and discussions that would culminate in the Corwin Amendment started in late 1860."

Naw, the US had debated slavery related issues since 1776.

The specific proposal which eventually ended up as Corwin began with Mississippi's Democrat Sen. Jefferson Davis's February 2, 1860 proposals in Congress.
Some of Davis' proposals found their way into the 1860 Southern Democrat (Breckenridge) party platform, and then all of them reemerged in the December 1860 debates over Crittenden's Compromise proposals.

In the end, Sen. Davis's insistence -- that Congress had no authority to abolish slavery within states -- made its way into both the new CSA Constitution and the proposed US Corwin Amendment.
Davis's other proposals regarding slavery in territories and an alleged slaveholders' "right of soujourn" were rejected by Republicans in December 1860, hence secession of Mississippi (#2 to secede) and other Deep South states.

FLT-bird: "Correct! And the Corwin Amendment was rejected by the original 7 seceding states."

Naw... the Corwin Amendment was eagerly accepted and adopted by the Montgomery, Alabama Constitutional Convention into their new CSA constitution, along with Jefferson Davis's other proposals to Congress from February 2, 1860.
Confederates loved Corwin and copied and pasted it into their Montgomery constitution:

Article I Section 9(4) "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

FLT-bird regarding CSA constitution's use of words like "slave": "They were simply more honest shameless."

Fixed it.

FLT-bird: "The Southern Slaveholders who wrote the 1787 Constitution did not think they would need any such provision and could not imagine that it would even be an issue.
The sovereign states did not delegate any such power to the newly proposed federal government and they never thought anybody would even suggest the federal government could directly interfere in states like that."

So far as I can tell, that was exactly Abraham Lincoln's opinion in 1860.
Lincoln then saw no need for an amendment along lines of Sen. Davis's February 1860 proposal, eventually adopted in Corwin in March 1861.
As far as Lincoln was concerned, such an amendment was unnecessary, but, if it helped keep the Union together, he did not oppose it.

FLT-bird on alleged slaveholders' "right of sojourn": "That was the law in the US at the time as per the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court.
The US Constitution was silent on the issue though all of the 13 original states had slavery."

Just as the 1787 US Constitution granted no authority to Federal government to abolish slavery in states, it also granted Federal government no authority to limit states from restricting and abolishing slavery themselves -- suggestions to the contrary from Crazy Roger Taney's 1857 Dred Scott ruling notwithstanding.

FLT-bird: "The ban on the foreign slave trade was quite meaningful and was something the US Constitution did not do."

And yet... and yet... the fact remains that the Confederacy's largest source for imported slaves would be the USA, and those imports were not outlawed.
Therefore, the CSA's constitutional provision is meaningless eyewash.

FLT-bird: "That is a gross mischaracterization.
They had a right of transit.
They could not stay for any extended period of time with their slaves.
They could not settle there with their slaves.
They had a right to pass through.
That is all that the majority of the US Supreme Court ruled they had and that is all they had under the Confederate Constitution."

And yet... and yet... Crazy Roger placed no time limit on his new-found "slaveholders' right of sojourn".
Dred Scott himself had lived for many years in free states and territories, and yet... and yet... in Crazy Rogers' eyes that was not enough to make poor Dred Scott a free man, much less a full US citizen.
Why is that, you might ask?

Answer: because Crazy Roger was a raging Democrat lunatic, and for no other conceivable reason.

FLT-bird: "Its also worth noticing that Republicans introduced it, many Republicans voted for it, Lincoln supported it and used his influence to get it ratified in multiple Northern states."

Your constant references to alleged historian Doris Kerns Goodwin notwithstanding, there is no actual evidence for Lincoln's direct involvement with Corwin either in Congress or in states.

FLT-bird: "All you've got here is namecalling.
The majority unanimous ravings of Southern Democrat lunatics of the US Supreme Court issued their ruling and as such it was the highly disputed law of the land."

Fixed it.
You can easily credit Crazy Roger with electing Republican majorities to Congress and Lincoln as president, in response to Crazy's Dred Scott opinion.

Crazy Roger's insane SCOTUS:

FLT-bird: "Slavery and owning slaves weren't seen as being any big deal in 1787 and certainly not the moral issue people would see it as today.
Given all these people were slave owners and all of the original 13 states had slavery its hardly a stretch to think they would have agreed that a US Citizen could go into any US territory with his property - that includes his slaves."

Believe me, I do understand why you want to minimize Crazy Roger's raging insanities, and make him appear like any other normal human being, and therefore you ignore his worst lunacies and focus on just what might possibly be defended.
And the reasons are obvious -- in 1857 Crazy Roger was not alone in his opinions and they were shared widely by slaveholders and slavery defenders throughout the South.

They were all just as crazy as Roger was.
Do I need to list out for you all the craziness Democrats like Crazy Roger inflicted on the USA in 1857?

FLT-bird on 1787 Founders: "It was a hope in some vague murky future that slavery would wither away. "

Nooooo... it was far more than a "vague hope" because our Founders were willing to take legal actions to restrict and abolish slavery wherever possible, a prime example being abolition of slavery in the Old Northwest Territories in 1787.
In 1787 the Old Northwest Territories were an area 50% larger than the eventual borders of the six Southern States combined.

Further, by 1787, abolition was already the law in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania -- a total of 65% of all Northern state area.
So, if we add the 65% of Northern States area plus the Northwest Territories, then we see that in 1787, almost exactly half of the entirety of US square miles were under laws abolishing slavery -- that was vastly more than a "vague hope".

Bottom line: in 1787 our Founders held abolition as far more than a "vague hope" for the future.
They had already acted to legally abolish slavery in half of all US land area.

FLT-bird: "There is no evidence that the drafters of the Corwin Amendment were influenced by the Confederate Constitution.
The Corwin Amendment came first after all."

So, as we get deeper into the historical weeds here, the first thing to understand is that there were actually two new CSA constitutions:

1. Provisional Constitution, started February 5, 1861, adopted on February 8, 1861 -- three days to "copy and paste" a provisional constitution.

2. Permanent Constitution, started on February 28, 1861, adopted on March 11, 1861 -- 12 days to add some minor changes to the provisional constitution.

How did these two differ?
Regarding slavery, there were more specific guarantees of slavery spelled out in the March 11 permanent constitution than had been in the February 8 provisional version.
The key additions were:

Mississippi Sen. Jefferson Davis:

1. Article I Section 9(4) "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."[13]

2. Article IV Section 2(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."[31]

3. Article IV Section 3(3): "In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states."[32]

These new additions exactly match proposals made by Mississippi's Democrat Senator Davis in Congress on February 2, 1860, (1860, not 1861).

So, these ideas were well known in Washington, and only the first of them was accepted by Crittenden in December 1860 and later by Corwin in March 1861.
In other words: in December 1860, when Congress debated proposals to save the Union, all three of Sen. Davis' February 1860 proposals were on the table, but only the first was accepted by Republicans in the Crittenden Compromise and later in the proposed Corwin Amendment.

Had Republicans been willing to accept all three of Davis' February 1860 slavery proposals, according to Davis himself, Mississippi would have no need to secede in 1861.

To be clear, these "compromises" all involved slavery, none of them had anything to do with those other issues our Lost Causers love to point at -- especially tariffs, or Federal infrastructure spending, or "bounties" for "fishing smacks", or the depredations of "Indian Savages" and "Mexican banditti".

FLT-bird: "You claim the Confederate Constitution was "all but completed" yet you have no evidence for this.
The Corwin Amendment came out first.
That article you cite in the Confederate Constitution was just the Corwin Amendment...and as you have said before, the Corwin Amendment was just an explicit spelling out of what already existed.
The US Federal government could not bad slavery in a state.
Nothing in the US Constitution gave it the power to do so."

I'm saying only what's obviously true -- that since 90% of the new CSA constitution was just a "copy and paste" of the 1787 US Constitution, it took only three days to write the first provisional constitution, then eight more days to convert that to the permanent CSA constitution adopted on March 11.
This is the historical timeline in Montgomery, Alabama:

• February 4, 1861 -- The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States first met in Montgomery, Alabama.

• February 5, 1861 -- The CSA Constitutional Convention first met in Montgomery, Alabama.
  
• February 8, 1861 -- The CSA Congress adopted a provisional constitution.

• February 9, 1861 -- The CSA Constitutional Convention elected Jefferson Davis Provisional President and Alexander H. Stephens the Provisional Vice President.

• February 11 -- Stephens took office.
• February 18 -- Davis took office, First Inaugural Address.

• February 28 -- CSA permanent Constitutional Convention started.
  
• March 11, 1861, the permanent CSA Constitution adopted.[1]

Again, point is, there were two CSA constitutions -- the provisional adopted on February 8 and the permanent on March 11.
Both were mostly "cut and paste" versions of the 1787 US Constitution, but there were differences, including more explicit language protecting slavery in the permanent CSA constitution than had been in the previous provisional constitution.
This new pro-slavery language came from Mississippi Sen. Davis' February 2, 1860 proposals in Congress.

There is no reason for us to think the delegates in Montgomery kept their proceedings secret or that their provisional and permanent constitutions were not fully known by others (i.e., northerners), at the time.

FLT-bird: "The Founding Fathers were certainly embarrassed by how hypocritical it was in light of the rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence.
Yet they were perfectly willing to protect slavery in the US Constitution.
The only difference in the Confederate Constitution was it was more honest.
They actually said the word "slave".
They otherwise protected it no more than the Founding Fathers had in the US Constitution."

One difference is 1860 Confederates were unashamed of what our 1787 Founders considered shameful.

There were three other differences worth mentioning, only one of which was addressed by either Crittenden or Corwin:

Kentucky Sen. Crittenden:

1. The 1861 CSA constitution explicitly guarantees no "law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

   This is the key guaranteed proposed by Sen. Davis in February 1860 and addressed by both Crittenden in December 1860 and Corwin in March 1861.
   However, no such guarantee was even imagined by our Founders in 1787.

2. The 1861 CSA constitution explicitly guarantees slaveholders, "...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."

   This is Crazy Roger's 1857 Dred Scott ruling, and also Sen. Davis' February 1860 proposal, but it's nowhere to be found in our Founders' 1787 Constitution, and was rejected by Republicans in December 1860.

3. The 1861 CSA constitution explicitly guarantees slavery in Confederate territories: "In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states."

   This also is Crazy Roger's 1857 Dred Scott ruling, also in Sen. Davis' February 1860 proposals, also nowhere to be found in our Founders' 1787 US Constitution, and also rejected by Republicans in December 1860.

FLT-bird: "It was that slaves could still be traded between those US States that still allowed slavery and Confederate states.
In other words, they left the situation exactly as it had been prior to secession."

The CSA constitutional ban on slave importations was utterly meaningless if it did not include their biggest, indeed only, source of imported slaves, the USA.

FLT-bird: "If anyone thought the federal government could force a state to abolish slavery, Lincoln sure answered that one.
He expressly said the federal government had no such power and he said it repeatedly."

And yet.. and yet... that is precisely the issue addressed by Mississippi Sen. Davis in February 1860, by Crittenden in December 1860, by the new CSA constitution in February 1861 and by Corwin in March 1861.
So, obviously, the matter was not as firmly settled as you'd like us all to believe today.

FLT-bird: "This only pertained to a right of transit as existed in the US prior to secession.
A Confederate state could not bar transit.
It could certainly abolish slavery if it wished.
A proposal that states that had already banned slavery not be admitted to the CSA was voted down in Montgomery during the Confederate constitutional convention."

Again, using Crazy Roger "logic", slaveholders were now constitutionally guaranteed an unlimited "right of sojourn" in any Confederate state, with their slaves, thus rendering any state abolition laws effectively mute.

FLT-bird on Corwin: "What you refuse to acknowledge is that Republicans introduced it to each house of Congress.
It could only have passed Congress with the necessary 2/3rds supermajority with substantial Republican support..."

Sure, but the majority of Republicans opposed Corwin, while Democrats voted unanimously for it, and that is worth noticing, imho.

FLT-bird on Dred Scott: "Your constant namecalling aside, what this decision proves is that it was a majority opinion of the SCOTUS and as such was binding law in the US.
Full Stop."

Right, the unanimous concurrences of five lunatic Southern Democrat justices, joined by two Doughfaced Northern Democrats and opposed by two Northern Republican justices.
So there's no doubt that the other Democrats were just as crazy as Crazy Roger Taney.
Democrats have always been crazy.
Crazy is not a failure of Democrats, it's their basic feature.

FLT-bird: "You said none would agree to the ruling.
It is incumbent upon you to provide evidence - not incumbent upon me to provide counter evidence.
You made the claim after all."

I've said exactly what is factual -- that there's no evidence any 1787 Founder supported any of Crazy Roger's 1857 Dred Scott rulings.
And there are tons of evidence to the contrary, beginning with my quote from their 1776 Declaration of Independence, you the part about "all men are created equal".

FLT-bird: "Yet many of those same Founding Fathers were themselves slaveowner and they incorporated protections for slavery in the US Constitution.
That strongly suggests they would have agreed with the majority opinion of the SCOTUS in Dred Scott."

Every Founder at some point expressed a desire for, or acquiescence in, efforts to restrict or abolish slavery, where that was possible.
This strongly suggests they would have opposed Crazy Roger's lunatic Dred Scott opinions.

FLT-bird: "Wrong. The Corwin Amendment was introduced on March 2 and was ratified by the Senate on March 4.
The Confederate Constitution was not introduced until March 11.
The Corwin Amendment preceded the Confederate Constitution."

Sorry, but your own timeline is wrong, as I have now spelled out in detail, twice, above.

FLT-bird: "There is no doubt the Founding Fathers were embarrassed by the existence of slavery which ran directly contrary to their lofty rhetoric expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
I don't think anyone would dispute that."

Then you have not really paid attention to jeffersondem's arguments here.
Jeffersondem insists, against all evidence to the contrary, that our Founders "enshrined" bondage in their "pro-slavery" Constitution.

So I suspect jeffersondem will be dismayed to learn from you that our Founders were embarrassed by an institution which ran directly contrary to their own lofty rhetoric.
Who would ever suspect that?

And I think DiogenesLamp shares jeffersondem's views on this.

Both will be highly disappointed to learn that you've now joined the opposition, at least on this topic.

😉

FLT-bird: "Hmm.
I don't see the words "at pleasure".
I do see consent of the governed and whenever the people of a state decide that the government becomes destructive of these ends (meaning consent) it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
So the power to decide what is "destructive of these ends" rests with the people of each state according to the Declaration of Independence.
"at pleasure" is a term you have invented which is nowhere to be found in the Declaration of Independence."

Madison's term, "at pleasure" is not in the DOI because there was nothing "at pleasure" about it!
Instead, our Founders used much stronger words:

1. "When... it becomes necessary..." -- "necessary", is not "at pleasure".

2. "...declare the causes which impel them to the separation." -- "impel", is not "at pleasure".

3. "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends..." -- "destructive", not "inconvenient" or "unpleasant", to be discarded "at pleasure".

4. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes..." -- "light and transient causes", are synonymous with "at pleasure", and should not be used to change governments.

5. "... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government..." -- "abuses and usurpations", "reduce them under absolute Despotism", these are the opposites of "at pleasure" reasons.

6. "... such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government..." -- again, "necessity" is the opposite of "at pleasure".

7. "...history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States..." -- "injuries and usurpations", "absolute Tyranny", these are the opposites of "at pleasure" secessions.

8. "...In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
   A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." -- "Oppressions", "repeated injuries" and "define a Tyrant" are opposites of "at pleasure".

9. "...We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends" -- yet again, "necessity" is the opposite of "at pleasure".

By the way, we have discussed Madison's views on "at pleasure" disunion, so we might well also mention Jefferson's views on secession (which he calls "scission"), expressed in a June 4 1798 letter to John Taylor:

"...perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch & debate to the people the proceedings of the other. but if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the union, no federal government can ever exist."

FLT-bird: "Also it is laughable to claim the 1860-61 secessionists were not inheritors of the 1776 secessionists original intentions.
Of course they were.
They were the children and grandchildren of those 1776 secessionists."

But you clearly don't yet grasp the essential fact about 1860 Fire Eater secessionists, which is that they were Democrats, and Democrats, by definition are devotees to, indeed worshippers of, the Big Lie, and in 1861, one Democrat Big Lie was that they accurately represented our Founders' original intentions.

But the truth is that Democrats didn't then, don't now and never reliably have.
And the reason is as obvious as it is simple -- the first Democrats' original supporters were anti-Federalists who opposed ratification of the US Constitution in 1788.
Their successors have also opposed it, by whatever means they believed necessary, ever since.

FLT-bird: "The Confederate Constitution adopted on March 11, 9 days after the Corwin Amendment..."

February 7, 1861, secessionists in Montgomery, Alabama
began work on their new Confederate constitution.

February 7, and since for 90% of it, all they did was copy and paste the 1787 US Constitution, we have to believe that most of the serious work was completed in a day or two.
Then, it took a few weeks to discuss and print the final version for adoption on March 11.

Since December 1860, the US Congress had been dealing with many different proposals for "compromise" laws & amendments, hoping to stop further secessions.
On February 28, long after the new Confederate constitution was all but completed, Congressman Corwin proposed an amendment to the US Constitution which matched rather well the Confederate:

CSA Article I Section 9(4) "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

FLT-bird: "...does explicitly use the word "slavery" while the US constitution tap dances around it while referring to it several times.
So what?"

It well illustrates my point, since even in 1861 the US Congress' proposed Corwin Amendment simply repeated a circumlocution from our 1787 Constitution:

proposed Corwin: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

Our Founders in 1787 well understood that slavery was wrong and disgraceful, should not be mentioned directly in their Constitution and so must be addressed through circumlocutions and euphemisms.
Such squeamishness was completely gone in secessionists' 1861 Montgomery constitution.

FLT-bird: "The US Constitution allowed for the importation of slaves for another 20 years after ratification.
The Confederate Constitution was stricter in its ban on the slave trade."

The 1861 Confederate Constitution allowed for a major exception, which is not found in the 1787 US Constitution.
I would not call that "stricter".

FLT-bird quoting BJK: "Unlike the 1861 Confederate constitution, the US 1787 Constitution does not prohibit outlawing slavery."

FLT-bird: "This only applied to the Confederate Government not to the state governments.
Once again, this was an explicit spelling out of the situation that existed in the US prior to secession.
The US Federal government also had no power provided to it in the US Constitution to force a state to abolish slavery."

So you claim here, but the Corwin Amendment was intended to directly address your point, thus rather strongly implying the absence of such a guarantee in our Founders' original 1787 Constitution -- at least as perceived by Southern slaveholders.

FLT-bird quoting BJK: "Now, to a normal person reading this, it seems pretty clear that the Confederate constitution outlaws abolishing slavery..."

FLT-bird: "Oh that seems far from clear.
The Confederate Constitution applied to the central government, not to the states.
That was the same understanding everyone had about the US Constitution.
It only contained restrictions on the power of the federal government."

There are several more points to be made here:

1. You are unwilling to draw this same distinction between Federal and state authority regarding the proposed Corwin Amendment, which you insist would have ended abolition forever in the USA.

2. This suggests the distinction between Federal and state authorities was not so well established in Confederate minds as you'd have us believe here.

3. But more important, the CSA constitution itself directly restricts states authority over slavery in Article IV -- Sections 2(1) and 3(3), such that, using Crazy Roger Taney's logic, it would be impossible for any Confederate state to pass laws even restricting slavery, much less abolishing it.

4. This means your implied claims, that the 1861 CSA Constitution was effectively "slavery neutral" for states, are pure undiluted hogwash.

FLT-bird: "Here are some other facts: Republicans introduced the Corwin Amendment to each house of Congress.
Plenty of Republicans voted for the passage of it - which it did pass with the necessary 2/3rds supermajority.
It could not have passed without substantial Republican support."

The key fact which you refuse to acknowledge, is that a majority of Republicans in Congress opposed Corwin, while 100% of Democrats supported it, and Democrat Pres. Buchanan signed it!
That should cause you to pause and reflect, but since it doesn't comply with your Lost Cause propaganda, you simply ignore the most important fact.

FLT-bird on Dred Scott: "The fact remains that this was the majority opinion of the SCOTUS, not just the opinion of Chief Justice Taney."

Sure, and as we've reviewed before, 100% of the seven concurrences (including Crazy Roger himself) were Democrats, and five of those seven were Southern Democrats, while the other two concurrences were Northern Doughfaced Democrats -- Nelson from NY and Grier from PA.
The two dissenters were Republicans -- Curtis from MA and McLean from Ohio.

So Dred Scott's concurrences in no way prove that Crazy Roger was sane, rather they prove that all Democrats were (and many remain) equally insane.

FLT-bird: "The fact also remains that there is no way you can show that no Founding Father would have agreed with the SCOTUS' opinion in Dred Scott.
None of the Founders said anything about the issue - unless you can provide us a quote from each of the Founding Fathers showing otherwise."

Of course we do have many quotes from Founders on related subjects, beginning with this one from Jefferson, Franklin and Adams:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

And there are many similar quotes from virtually every Founder, all of them strongly suggesting that Crazy Roger Taney, and all Southern Democrats, if not all Democrats, had, by 1857 turned into stark raving lunatics.

FLT-bird: "And as the SCOTUS ruled in Dred Scott, the US Federal government could not outlaw slavery in US territories either.
So, any such law was in fact unconstitutional in the US.
You are free to disagree with the SCOTUS but that was the law of the land.
Furthermore, there is no way you can prove that was not the Founding Fathers' intent."

No Northerner accepted Crazy Roger's Dred Scott opinions as legitimate, for one reason, as Lincoln said in 1858:

"We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

It's a major factor in turning previously Democrat states of Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois to Republicans in 1860.

As for proving our Founders' intentions, I have proved those with one quote from the DOI above, and could add many more similar, if you still don't "get" it.

FLT-bird: "The Confederate Constitution did not treat slavery differently than how the US Constitution did prior to secession."

Only if you agree with the US 1787 Constitution, as grossly distorted by Crazy Roger Taney's 1857 lunatic opinions.

jeffersondem: "You may have a point about slaveowner Benjamin Franklin but I don't think slaveowner Charles Pinckney would have shied away from acknowledging slavery existed."

We're not talking about whether slavery existed, but rather about the question: why didn't our Founders use words like "slave" in their 1787 Constitution?
Why did they replace "slave" with euphemisms or indirect language?

The obvious answer is, our Founders well understood that slavery was both wrong and disgraceful, and so could not be called by its real name in their most polite of documents, the 1787 US Constitution.

As for Charles Pinckney, he was directly involved in the Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause, and so obviously participated in obscuring direct references to slaves, which are there called a "Person held to service or labor".

So, it looks to me like even SC's Charles Pinckney understood the 1787 American squeamishness about words like "slave", "slavery" or "enslaved".

A squeamishness which was totally abandoned in the South by 1860.

DiogenesLamp: "I don't think Roger Taney was crazy, I think he just operated under a different set of premises than other people at the time wanted to accept."

Believe me, DL, I do understand your argument here.
It's the same one Polonius made to his king and queen regarding Hamlet's inexplicable behavior:

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."
Act II, Scene 2

Sure, I "get" that, and therefore: once we figure out the logic behind such seemingly crazy behavior, it might not seem so "mad" after all, isn't that right?

But here, precisely, is your problem: what if the alleged "logic" behind it is all a Big Lie?
What if there's nothing true about it?

Then, I say, it's still madness, it's still crazy -- if your whole argument is built on lies and nonsense, then you are still nuts, not just "different premises" -- lies make you a lunatic.

That's why SCOTUS Chief Justice Taney can only ever legitimately be Crazy Roger.

DiogenesLamp: "Our modern era is somewhat similar.
Nowadays in the Liberal circles, if you don't accept that a biological male can become a "woman", they consider you crazy."

And why? Why? Why? Why do they do that?????

It's because, just like Crazy Roger Taney, they are DEMOCRATS!!

Democrats are all about the Big Lie -- it's who they are, it's what they do, it's how they make their livings, and always have!

Today's Democrats are nothing more than Crazy Roger Taney dressed up in drag!

How possibly can you not see that?
What's it going to take to open up your self-blinded eyes, FRiend?

The common thread through all of US history is one word: Democrats -- they have dominated and abused this country since the election of 1800, and are today as abusive as they ever were, including the 1850s and 1860s.

x: "The Corwin Amendment appeased many in the Upper South, but it wasn’t enough to calm those fears in the Deep South states that had already succeeded.
It was never going to bring them back into the union."

Right.
Corwin simply tried to match one protection for slavery that was already in the new Confederate constitution.

"Article I Section 9(4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.[13]"

The 1861 Confederate constitution included several other protections for slavery which neither Corwin nor the existing 1787 Constitution could ever match.

jeffersondem: "It seems to me you are attempting to distance the original 13 slave states from their unanimous vote to adopt the pro-slavery United States Constitution."

It seems to me that your nature is to always twist and turn words away from their plain meanings in order to support your own ridiculous conclusions.

So, first you proposed your word "enshrined" for slavery in the 1787 US Constitution, to which I argued effectively your "enshrined" should be replaced by "buried", "entombed" and/or "embalmed".

But instead, you now wish to replace "enshrined" with "pro-slavery", which is nearly the same and so my response is also pretty much the same -- our Founders were not "pro-slavery", but rather, to use the DOI's language, they were willing to say, "We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity..." of slavery, while also planning for its long term restrictions and abolition.

jeffersondem: "President Lincoln could find slavery in the United States Constitution, something you claim you can't find.
But I guess Lincoln was not playing a little game that day."

Naw... the only one playing little word-games here is you, FRiend, because that's what you love to do.

Our Founders clearly believed that slavery was wrong and disgraceful, so it should not be mentioned by name in their new Constitution and should also be restricted or abolished wherever possible.

See my post #99 above -- that's how they felt about exposing words like "slave" in their Constitution.

x to FLT-bird: "Slave states weren't happy about free states blocking the return of runaways.
When they had the upper hand they weren't opposed to federal overreach, as in Taney's Dred Scott opinion.
But you repeat it as a dogma that they were all about state sovereignty."

Among the far-reaching anti-states' rights affects of Crazy Roger's Dred Scott opinions were:

1. Crazy Roger not only invalidated the 1820 Missouri Compromise, by which Congress outlawed slavery in territories north of the 36d 30s parallel (except Missouri), but he also overturned territories' rights to outlaw slavery.

2. Crazy Roger outlawed states-rights to make African Americans citizens, with associated citizens' rights of voting and bearing arms, etc.

   

3. Crazy Roger not only confirmed the Compromise of 1850 federal authority over states' rights in the return of fugitive slaves, he also

4. Extended "slaveholder rights" into Northern free states.
   "Slaveholder rights" included legal slave codes and slaveholder authorities to impose punishments as enforcements.
   In other words, Crazy Roger effectively outlawed the Northern states-rights to prevent slaveholders from committing assault, battery, false imprisonment, domestic violence and other abuses, including sexual against slaves.

Bottom line: Southern concerns for "states' rights" never extended north of the Mason-Dixon line.

The tan colored areas below are US territories in which Crazy Roger declared that neither they nor Congress could outlaw slavery.
Notice that Kansas is blue in 1861, but prior to 1860, Kansas was ruled by Crazy Roger's opinion that territories could not legally abolish slavery.

DiogenesLamp: "You are focused on Taney, and *NOT* focused on the Massachussetts representative that deliberately launched this entire mess"

marktwain: "Why focus on the Massachusetts representative?
He did not chose to take the case.
He did not write the opinion.
He did not conspire with other justices and President Pierce about the case.
Pierce was a Democrat and a staunch anti-abolitionist.

"The case was somewhat unusual, and Taney had to stretch a bit to take it.

"Pierce was a drunk.
Many consider him one of the worst American presidents."

Thanks, this post bears repeating because our FRiend DiogenesLamp has peddled his Dred Scott conspiracy theory here for a long time now, and I've never before seen an effective response.

So, it turns out, there was a Dred Scott conspiracy, but it was not hatched in Massachusetts, rather by pro-slavery Southerners in Washington, DC.
They intended to end the slavery question by having SCOTUS declare abolition unconstitutional, and with Dred Scott, were just one small step away from their goal.

On Democrat Pres. Pierce, he was also a close personal friend of his Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, a friendship which did not end in 1861.

DL quoting BJK: "US 1787 Constitution never mentions slaves or slavery by name."

DiogenesLamp: "A silly point.
Article IV, section 2 is clearly referring to slaves.
Also the authorization of Congress to ban the slave trade in 1808 uses euphemisms, but it is absolutely referring to slaves."

Naw, my point is not at all silly, and the fact that you refuse to recognize its importance tells us something about your own thinking.

The important point here is that our Founders went to great lengths to not just avoid words like "slave", they also tried to obscure slave references under language a casual reader might well not even understand.
Why?
Especially considering that 1861 secessionists had no problems with inserting words like "slave" when that's what they meant, why didn't our Founders?

The non-trivial, non-silly reasons are as obvious as they are important -- it's because our Founders well understood that slavery was both wrong and disgraceful, and so could not be called by its real name, but instead had to be referred to indirectly and euphemistically.

To our Founders, "slavery" was a "bad word", similar to a curse-word, or pornographic, and as such must not be used in their politest of documents.

So, to our Founders, 1861 Fire Eating Secessionists' use of words like "slave" in their Montgomery constitution, would be the equivalent of full-frontal nudity exposed.

Now, try to unsee that! 😂

marktwain: "To understand what was going on in the Dred Scott decision, I highly recommend "Dred Scott, The Inside story" by David T. Hardy."

Thanks for your link, I read your review.

Clearly, a key link in the chain of our Lost Causers' "logic" is the claim that Crazy Roger's Dred Scott opinions represented a valid interpretation of our Founders' Original Intentions.
They didn't, certainly not our Northern Founders, nor have I ever seen quotes from Southern Founders which confirm that their views in any way matched Crazy Rogers' Dred Scott ruminations.

jeffersondem mis-quoting BJK: ". . . unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession . . .”

"Sorry, don’t remember that phrase in the DOI or U.S. Constitution.
It sounds like something you made up; or maybe the fulminations of A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant . . ."

Naw...

But by leaving out the key words, "at pleasure", you've misquoted both me and our Founders' original intentions.
Those Founders' intentions can be found in many quotes, most completely spelled out by our Father of the Constitution, James Madison in his now famous letter to Nicholas Trist, with which I'm certain you are familiar.

I'm also certain you well understand that the entire Lost Cause ideology is built on a foundational claim that 1860 Fire Eating Secessionists were inheritors of our 1776 and 1787 Founders' Original Intentions.

They weren't, and one way we can know that is to realize your compulsion to misquote and leave out Founders' key distinction between disunion for a just cause, as in 1776 versus secession "at pleasure" as in 1860.

FLT-bird: "The 1861 Constitution flat out banned the slave trade.
The 1787 Constitution allowed for it to continue for 20 more years."

The 1861 Confederate constitution specified an exception which is not present in the 1787 US Constitution.

FLT-bird: "The Corwin Amendment which was introduced in each house of Congress by a Republican was - as Doris Kearns-Goodwin goes to great trouble to lay out - orchestrated by incoming Republican Abe Lincoln.
Kentucky, Ohio, Rhode Island, Maryland and Lincoln's Illinois ratified it."

Corwin helped keep Border Slave States in the Union:

Your word "orchestrated" can apply to NY Sen. Seward, but not to Lincoln.
And the fact remains, all your handwaving notwithstanding, that Corwin was supported by 100% of Democrats, while opposed by a majority of Republicans, and was even signed by Democrat Pres. Buchanan.

Further, Corwin simply matched language already found in the new Confederate constitution, and so could have no effect whatever on any already seceded states.
It did have a strong effect on keeping Border Slave States in the Union.

FLT-bird: "As NYs Seward said, NY would have ratified it too had the original 7 seceding states agreed to it.
They did not."

What is your source for this claim about Sen. Seward?

FLT-bird on SCOTUS' Dred Scott: "How do you know that? "

I know that no Founder ever agreed with Crazy Roger Taney's insane Dred Scott rulings because there are no quotes from any of them which remotely resemble Crazy Roger's alleged "logic".

FLT-bird: "You like to hurl epithets at Chief Justice Taney as if he alone were responsible but the fact is a majority of the SCOTUS agreed with him and ruled that way."

100% of those who concurred in Crazy Roger's Dred Scott insane rulings were Democrats and of those seven, five were Southern Democrats while the other two were Northern Doughface Democrats.

The two justices who dissented from Crazy Roger were both Republicans -- Curtis from Massachusetts and McLean from Ohio.

FLT-bird: "The 1861 Confederate Constitution was no different from what the law was in the US prior to 1861."

Nooooo... but obviously, the Southern slavocracy was deliriously happy with Crazy Roger's insane opinions, and so repeated them in their new 1861 Confederate constitution.

In the North, the reaction was quite different:

"The Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott was 'greeted with unmitigated wrath from every segment of the United States except the slave holding states.'[40]
The American political historian Robert G. McCloskey described:

The tempest of malediction that burst over the judges seems to have stunned them; far from extinguishing the slavery controversy, they had fanned its flames and had, moreover, deeply endangered the security of the judicial arm of government.
No such vilification as this had been heard even in the wrathful days following the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Taney’s opinion was assailed by the Northern press as a wicked 'stump speech' and was shamefully misquoted and distorted.
'If the people obey this decision,' said one newspaper, 'they disobey God.'[45]"

Perhaps the most important judgment on Crazy Roger's opinions came from lawyer out of Springfield, Illinois:

"Put that and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits.

And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of 'care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up', shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.

Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty [Democrats!!!] shall be met and overthrown.

We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.

To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation.
This is what we have to do."
A. Lincoln, June 16, 1858, "House Divided Speech"

FLT-bird: "The Confederate Constitution other than mentioning the word "slavery" explicitly didn't protect it any more than or provide additional rights to slaveowners that they did not have in the US at the time."

Our FRiend, jeffersondem, loves the word "enshrined" regarding slavery in the US Constitution.
In reality, the 1861 Confederate constitution did "enshrine" several important ideas that were not even hinted at in the 1787 US Constitution, but only very recently imposed on it through the insanities of Crazy Roger and against the strong objections of Northern Republicans.

FLT-bird: "Yes the Confederate Constitution was more honest in explicitly using the word slave while the US Constitution didn't specifically use that word even while doing exactly the same thing."

With the one curious exception of the Fugitive Slave clause, in which Confederates repeated the 1787 Constitution's euphemistic language, word for word.
In fact, the 1861 Confederate constitution did "enshrine" many protections for slavery which were in no way spelled out in the 1787 US Constitution, Crazy Roger's lunacies notwithstanding.

FLT-bird: "Bottom line the protections of slavery and the rights of slaveowners were the same in the Confederate Constitution as they had been under the US Constitution.
The only difference was that the Confederate Constitution is more honest in explicitly saying the word slavery."

Sorry, but that is a lie which you can only maintain by claiming that somehow Crazy Roger's insane opinions had anything to do with our 1787 Founding Fathers' Original Intentions.

They didn't, and in your heart of hearts, I think you well know that, as do your pro-Confederate FRiends here.

1787 Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia:

steve in dc: "Slavery, despite its inherent immorality, was not addressed in the Constitution.”

jeffersondem: "It was addressed in the sense it was enshrined in the United States Constitution."

Jeffersondem, your favorite term "enshrined" is too highfalutin a word, when "buried", "entombed" or "embalmed" would be better descriptions, because:

Montgomery, Alabama, February 1861:

1. Unlike the Confederate constitution -- framed in Montgomery, Alabama starting on February 7, 1861 -- the US 1787 Constitution never mentions slaves or slavery by name.
   Our Founders went to great lengths to avoid saying directly what they intended, suggesting they knew full well slavery was so wrong it must not be called by its proper name.
   So, they wanted to bury the corpse of slavery under a matting of obfuscatory words.

2. Unlike the 1861 Confederate constitution, the US 1787 Constitution does not allow exceptions in laws abolishing imports of slaves from other countries.

3. Unlike the 1861 Confederate constitution, the US 1787 Constitution does not prohibit outlawing slavery.
   As the CSA constitution said:

   "Article I Section 9(4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.[13]"

   Now, to a normal person reading this, it seems pretty clear that the Confederate constitution outlaws abolishing slavery, but our pro-Confederates here respond with two arguments:
   • This provision only prohibits the Confederate Federal government from abolishing slavery, it does not prohibit states from abolishing slavery.
     States, our pro-Confederates claim, were still free to abolish slavery if they wished.

   • Corwin, Corwin, Corwin, Corwin, Corwin!
     The CSA constitution, they claim, only says exactly what Corwin said:
     

     "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.[2][3]"

   Northern Doughfaced Democrat Pres. Buchanan,
   signed Corwin Amendment after unanimous Democrat votes for it.

   However, we should notice the historical timeline here:

   • February 7, 1861 -- the Confederate Secession Convention in Montgomery, Alabama, began work on their new Confederate constitution.
     It was completed on March 11, 1861.

   • February 28, 1861 -- Ohio Republican Congressman Corwin submitted his proposed amendment.
     It barely passed with 100% Democrat support and majority Republican opposition and was signed by Democrat Pres. Buchanan on March 4.

   So it appears to me that the Confederate constitution came first and Corwin was simply hoping to match what Confederates were already guaranteeing.
   Corwin was ratified by just two of five Union slave states and three of 18 Union free states -- nowhere near the 3/4 required.
   In 1864 Ohio rescinded its ratification and Maryland voted to abolish slavery on its own.

4. Unlike the 1861 CSA constitution, the 1787 USA Constitution makes no guarantees of a "right of sojourn" with slaves.
   In contrast, the CSA constitution says:

   "Article IV Section 2(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.[31]"

   Crazy Roger Taney's insane 1857 misinterpretations
   of our Founders' Original Intentions:

   To which our pro-Confederates respond: that's just what the SCOTUS 1857 Dred Scot ruling provided.
   However, the fact is that no Founder in 1787 would have interpreted their new US Constitution the way Crazy Roger Taney did in 1857.

5. Unlike the 1861 CSA constitution, the 1787 US Constitution did not forbid Congress from outlawing slavery in US territories.
   Indeed, the US Congress had outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territories in 1787, so that was clearly intended by our Founders.

   The CSA constitution says, regarding territories:

   "Article IV Section 3(3) -- In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states.[32]"

   Again, this was Crazy Roger's ruling in Dred Scott, but it had nothing to do with our Founders' original intentions.

   The three-fifths clauses of both constitutions are almost identical, except for Confederates' use of the words, "three-fifths of all slaves".

6. The fugitive slave clauses of both constitutions are identical, because for once Confederates decided to use our Southern Founders' euphemistic language instead of their own more blunt words regarding fugitive slaves.

Bottom line: your favorite word, "enshrined", is indeed the proper word for slavery in the 1861 CSA constitution, but not in the 1787 US Constitution.
Instead, our Founders in 1787 hoped to "bury", "entomb" and/or "embalm" slavery, as best they could at that time.
Sadly, for them and the USA, slavery was not yet dead in 1787.

jeffersondem: "But I think I know what you mean.
You mean that post-modern liberals in the U.S. that control the federal government will never allow a peaceful breakup of the empire like the communists in the old Soviet Union did."

Naw...
I meant that the whole question of unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure, was removed from any further discussion on and around April 9, 1865, Appomattox Court House, VA.:

HandyDandy: "There are those, (some on this thread) who in this year 2024 will bend, twist, spindle and mutilate that most basic statement and use it to prove that Lincoln, Republicans and the Union were promoting Slavery everywhere and forevermore.
I put forth that they are part and parcel to the very people who have contributed to bringing our country to its knees today, by tarnishing our heritage."

It's well worth noticing how many of our pro-secessionists also support Russia's invasion of Ukraine!??!

The names Yevgeny Prigozhin and Internet Research Agency (IRA) out of Olgino, St. Petersburg come to my mind, though most of our posters here pre-date the IRA's founding in 2013.
On the other hand, Putin's Old KGB Web Brigades go all the way back to the year 2000, when Putin first came to power in Russia, and Russians or Soviets were working at information operations for many decades prior.

They would certainly love nothing better than to force the USA into the kind of collapse as the Old Soviet Union suffered in 1991.

Of course, it's not going to happen, not ever, but that won't be for lack of trying by a good many Lost Cause posters on Free Republic.

Said to be the IRA, Olgino, St. Petersburg, "bot farm":