You and your cohort seem to be the only ones saying it was over slavery. And what you and your friend continue to ignore about the Corwin Amendment is the fact that while it protected slavery where it existed it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery. Having adopted their own constitution which protected slavery far more than the Corwin amendment did, why would the Southern states accept half a loaf?
Here we go again. Another denial that the vast majority of Americans believe and repeat the claim that the war was about slavery.
And what you and your friend continue to ignore about the Corwin Amendment is the fact that while it protected slavery where it existed it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery.
Slavery could not expand within the United States, even if a law to do so had been passed by that Congress which BroJoeK says was under the Control of the Democrats which were committed to slavery.
You couldn't set up plantations in the territories because slave intensive cash crops wouldn't grow there.
It couldn't grow in west Texas or beyond without modern irrigation systems, so it was impossible to grow it there in the 1860s. This whole allegation about "expansion" I now think was just a load of propaganda.
Expanding it into the Caribbean (it was already there) or Mexico, would have been outside the prerogative of the US to control anyway, so is therefore irrelevant.
Thanks for making that excellent point.
It turns the arguments from FLT-bird and DiogenesLamp on their heads.
They claim Corwin proves secession was not about slavery since Confederates "rejected" the Corwin "offer".
In fact, as you point out here, it proves that secessionists would accept nothing less that full 100% legalization of slavery at all times in all places, which is what the new Confederate constitution gave them.
In contrast, Corwin still allowed for restrictions on slavery in territories and gradual state-by-state abolition.
Lincoln said he took that to be the old Constitution's meaning already and so did not oppose it.
But for secessionists the new Confederate constitution was a far better offer, so they took it.