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To: FLT-bird
The Confederate Constitution hardly differed from the US Constitution as it then was on the issue of slavery.

Have you not read the Confederate constitution?

Where it differed significantly was in more clearly protecting state's rights/limiting the power of the central government and in limiting the ability of the central government to spend money.

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

38 posted on 04/12/2022 5:45:30 AM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: DoodleDawg

“Slavery is not mentioned at all in the U. S. Constitution.”

Is this really a true statement?

The reason I ask: it sounds misleading.


42 posted on 04/12/2022 6:03:53 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: DoodleDawg
Have you not read the Confederate constitution?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

51 posted on 04/12/2022 6:16:35 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: DoodleDawg
Slavery is not mentioned at all in the U. S. Constitution.

Very misleading statement verging on a lie.

Slavery is mentioned twice in the US Constitution through the usage of euphemisms, and you know this.

Article IV, section 2 is entirely about slavery and the authorization to Congress to pass a law in 1808 to end the slave trade is also about slavery.

89 posted on 04/12/2022 7:32:57 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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