I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution, which amendment, however, I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.I had a thought yesterday and I resolved to put it before you and see if you could enlighten us on a particular point.
In the past, there has been some argument with someone whom you may have become recently familiar, about Lincoln's reference to the Corwin Amendment in his first inaugural address.
I have read elsewhere that Lincoln had his fingers all over the Corwin Amendment in it's earlier iterations and may have even written it himself. It occurs to me that his claim of "I have not seen" is very likely a blatant lie, or perhaps his lawyer's tongue splitting hairs as some are wont to do.
Perhaps he had not seen the exact written words of that last version of it, but it seems highly improbable that he was not well aware of the gist of it, especially with Seward ramrodding it through the Senate.
With your knowledge and resource skills, do you suppose you could show us if Lincoln was indeed involved with the creation of the Corwin amendment, and how deep his involvement might go?
With your knowledge and resource skills, do you suppose you could show us if Lincoln was indeed involved with the creation of the Corwin amendment, and how deep his involvement might go?
It is not my understanding that Lincoln was involved with the creation of the specific phrasing used in the Corwin Amendment. Lincoln did state, many times, his agreement with the gist of what was proposed. I provide the text of the Corwin Amendment and a quote from Ward Hill Lamon which may provide some background you have not seen before.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/GLC09040.pdf
See link for four-page hi-res copy of Congressional document, including President Lincoln's transmittal of the Corwin Amendment as "an authenticated copy of a joint resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States, adopted by Congress, and approved on the 2nd of March, 1861, by James Buchanan, President." Text of the Joint Resolution follows:
JOINT RESOLUTION TO AMEND THE CONSTITU-
TION OF THE UNITED STATES.Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, of America in Congress assembled, that the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said Legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution, viz:
ARTICLE XIII.
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.
WILLIAM PENNINGTON,
Speaker of the House of Representatives.JOHN BRECKINRIDGE,
Vice President of the United States, and President of the Senate.Approved March 2, 1861.
JAMES BUCHANAN.
Ward Hill Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln As President, edited by Bob O'Connor, pp. 15-18, (footnotes omitted). Ward Hill Lamon was the personal bodyguard of Abraham Lincoln and was appointed as Marshal of the District of Columbia.
It has been charged that Mr. Lincoln fully expected another compromise, but he had no intention of being chief among compromisers. He had said that the house was divided, and he now considered it imprudent to admit that the statement was untrue in point of fact—that there was in truth no line of division between the inmates. They charge that his assertion to the contrary was merely a little trick to get possession of the house itself, while the real owners were quarrelling over imaginary difficulties. Doubtless Mr. Seward also regarded the conflict of which he had been the herald as a partisan chimera had served its day; but after so long insisting that it was entirely “irrepressible,” it seemed to him at least unwise to come forward in person and actually repress it. They had a party as well as a country to save. And any tender of the compromise which gave the South equal or indeed any rights in the territories and in the places under the exclusive control of Congress, which supposed rights were insisted upon by a large minority of the people, would instantly dissolve the party.Their associated leaders were equally embarrassed. They had not entered upon the anti-slavery crusade with the feeling that animated the abolitionists; their “oral” sentiments were only borrowed for the occasion. The elections being over, they had no further use for them. And they knew very well as Mr. Jefferson had observed long ago that the extension of slavery into the territories did not reduce a single freeman from bondage or alter, except for the better, the condition of a single slave. They argued, in the mind of a sane man there could be no “moral idea” whatever connected with this branch of the controversy. And these leaders were all sane. They were therefore perfectly willing to surrender the substance of that by which the country had been convulsed and the Union imperiled—the exclusion of slavery from the territories.
“At this session,” says Mr. Greeley, “after the withdrawal of the southern members in such numbers as to give the Republicans a large majority in the House and the practical control of the Senate, three separate acts were passed organizing the territories of Colorado, Nevada and Dakota respectively—the three together covering a large portion of all the remaining territory of the United States.” All these acts were silent in regard to slavery leaving whatever rights had accrued to the South under the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision not merely unimpaired but unquestioned by any legislative action. “This was done,” continued Mr. Greeley, “not in accordance with the feelings and views of the Republicans who reported and passed the bills, but as a peace offering and concession to those southern Unionists who were constantly protesting that they cared nothing for the extension of slavery; in fact were rather opposed to it but would not tamely submit to a stigma placed on their section and institution by northern votes.”
It was in truth what the pure abolitionists regarded “dough-face” work to save a worthless Union, vain as a concession because it was never acknowledged to be a concession, and base because it was a faceless betrayal of the voters who had given the party the power on just the opposite principle. But this was not all. The House adopted by a very large majority Mr. Corwin’s report from the committee of 33 affirming the “justice and propriety” of a faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law and adding a new and stronger guarantee to the existence of slavery in the states and yet more: the fervid and frothy orators who had incited fourteen states to stain the statute books with “personal liberty” bills intended “to hinder” the recovery of slave property, now united in a resolution imploring them to revise and expunge them; and finally the House passed and the Senate concurred in the childish proposition to amend the federal Constitution so as to prohibit any further amendment that might give to Congress power to meddle with slavery in the states. All this was done by a majority of Mr. Lincoln’s friends in Congress, while individuals and a great part of the Republican press were inclined to go still farther in the same direction. What became of the “free soil principles” when the territories were organized without reference to them and what became of the “irrepressible conflict” when slavery in the states was buttressed anew by the proposed amendment to the Constitution?
Undoubtedly Mr. Lincoln hoped that these practical concessions would avert the war. They were intended to have the effect of a compromise without the name. They were not indeed entitled to the name whether taken separately or as a whole; for a compromise implies a bargain between two or more—adjusting difficulties on the basis of mutual sacrifice and mutual benefit. Here there was no sacrifice but of Republican principles, and no benefit to the South.