[FLT-bird]

BroJoeK: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.

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

BroJoeK: 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."

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.

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

The Confederate Constitution was honest in saying "slave/slavery" while the US Constitution provided all the same protections, it just didn't use the word.

BroJoeK: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.

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.

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

What was that exception? OH! I see. 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. They did not allow the importation of vast quantities of slaves from Africa like the US Constitution allowed for 20 more years. I would call that stricter.

BroJoeK: "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.

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.

“There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that— I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them.” Abraham Lincoln

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

Again, if that distinction were not so clear, Lincoln certainly cleared that up. See above quote.

BroJoeK: 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.

No. 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.

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

No it doesn't. It proves that your claims are pure undiluted hogwash.

BroJoeK; 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.

That's great. 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, and that the Republican leadership lobbied for state ratification and got several states to in fact ratify it. Of course admitting that would contradict your PC Revisionist propaganda so you refuse to admit those inconvenient facts.

BroJoeK: 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.

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.

BroJoeK; None of the Founders said anything about the issue - unless you can provide us a quote from each of the Founding Fathers showing otherwise."

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.

BroJoeK: 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.

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.

BroJoeK: 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.

Not all Northerners were Abolitionists. In fact, Abolitionists were a tiny minority prior to the war. Their candidates could not get more than single digit percentages of the vote. I have no doubt many were pissed because "the other team" won that round in the Supreme Court and that burned their asses just like it does today when the SCOTUS comes down on one side or the other of a political issue. I suspect Northerners were far more pissed about that than they were committed to abolition. All the evidence is, they overwhelmingly were not abolitionists.

BroJoeK: 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.

And I have proven that many of them were slave owners or as in Franklin's case were perfectly happy to profit from slavery and that they included protections of slavery in the US Constitution....if you still don't "get" it.

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

No matter how much you splutter and spew venom at Taney, that was the majority opinion of the SCOTUS and as such was the supreme law of the land.

[BroJoeK]

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.