It passed the House and Senate when both were totally dominated by the Northern states.
The point here is that if the South had remained in the Union, they would have handed it permanent slavery on a silver platter.
Could it pass as an Amendment which takes alot of states voting - not just politicials in DC.
It was ratified by five northern states. Seward assured everyone that New York would also ratify it. If you add to this number, the 16 slave states in the Union, you have 21 states passing it while the Union consisted of 33 states.
24/33 = 72%. If Seward came through on his promise, New York would make 25 states, which puts the total at over 3/4ths.
So yes, the Corwin amendment had a very real chance of passing and becoming the 13th amendment. If they thought it would have kept the South in the Union, the powers that be in the North would have insured that it passed.
The way politics was going in the US, Slavery was going away eventually and those rich slaveowners would be out of their cashcow someday... And they WOULD NOT HAVE THAT
Well that's a good theory, but as i've pointed out above, if the South had taken the deal the North offered, slavery would have become virtually permanent.
You may not know about this, but the North was making a hell of a lot of money from Southern slavery. Out of every dollar produced by the South exporting goods to Europe, New York and Washington DC was getting 60% of it. They were making more money off of slavery than were the people who actually ran it.
Why do you suppose the North was so dead set on letting go of those southern states? Do you think they just woke up one day and said "Oh my God! There is slavery in the South, and we have to stamp it out!"
Nope. What got them upset is the fact that the money they were making from the South was about to stop, because the South was about to start trading directly with Europe without going through New York and Washington DC. Furthermore, the South was going to be importing European goods that would compete with Northern manufactures for markets in the South and the Midwest, and so they were also going to lose a ton of money if that happened.
Give the South permanent slavery and keep the money? Yeah, that's what they tried to do.
Second, the reason most secessionists refused to respond to Corwin was because they already had a much better deal, indeed an ironclad guarantee, in the Confederate constitution.
Why go for a half-hearted measure like Corwin, when you could have the real deal from Confederates?