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To: DoodleDawg
DoodleDawg: How tiresome. We have to repeat the same quotes because you just can't help yourself and feel some strange compulsive need to keep writing to me after we each agreed that there was nothing constructive about talking at each other any further.

"The most remarkable features of the new instrument sprang from the purifying and reforming zeal of the delegates, who hoped to create a more guarded and virtuous government than that of Washington. The President was to hold office six years, and be ineligible for reelection. Expenditures were to be limited by a variety of careful provisions, and the President was given budgetary control over appropriations which Congress could break only by a two-thirds vote. Subordinate employees were protected against the forays of the spoils system. No bounties were ever to be paid out of the Treasury, no protective tariff was to be passed, and no post office deficit was to be permitted. The electoral college system was retained, but as a far-reaching innovation, Cabinet members were given seats in Congress for the discussion of departmental affairs. Some of these changes were unmistakable improvements, and the spirit behind all of them was an earnest desire to make government more honest and efficient." (Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, p. 435)

"The framers of the Confederate constitution improved upon the Constitution of the United States in a number of minor ways, designed to produce 'the elimination of political waste, the promotion of economical government, and the keeping of each echelon of complex government within its appointed orbit.' So effective were these changes that William M. Robinson, Jr., has termed the document 'the peak contribution of America to political science.' The process of amendment was altered. With certain exceptions Congress was not to appropriate money except by two-thirds vote of both houses. The amount and purpose of each appropriation were to be precisely specified; and after the fulfillment of a public contract Congress was not to grant any extra compensation to the contractor. 'Riders' on money bills were discouraged by the provision that the President might veto a given item of an appropriation bill without vetoing the entire bill. Each law was to deal with 'but one subject,' to be expressed in the title." (Randall and Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 157, 159)

". . . 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)

The Confederate Constitution banned the slave trade from anywhere but the places it was legal before secession ie it was still legal from slaveholding US states but nowhere else. That was effectively no change from what the US Constitution had said with the expiration of the grandfather clause in 1810.

It also expressly allowed states which had banned slavery to join the CSA. The clause you cite allowed people from other states to transit with their slaves. It did not require those states that had banned slavery to become slaveholding states. You've tried these weak arguments before and failed already.

511 posted on 03/27/2019 5:29:45 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird
How tiresome

Tiresome indeed. Here is a novel concept. Why not quote from the actual Confederate constitution and show where it allows slave-free states to join and where it bans all slave imports. You can do that, can't you.

The Confederate Constitution banned the slave trade from anywhere but the places it was legal before secession ie it was still legal from slaveholding US states but nowhere else.

In other words it protected slave imports.

It also expressly allowed states which had banned slavery to join the CSA.

If it expressly allowed it then quote the clause.

518 posted on 03/28/2019 3:20:04 AM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: DoodleDawg; DiogenesLamp; rockrr
FLT-bird quoting: "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. . . ."

Our Lost Causers like to downplay the importance of Confederate Constitution's pro-slavery additions.
To review (from post #477 above):

  1. Article 1, Sect 9(4) says no law can be passed against slavery.

  2. Article 2, Sect 2(1) says no restrictions or limitations on slaveholders' travel & sojourn with slaves, anywhere.

  3. Article 4, Sect 3(3) says slavery will be enforced in all CSA territories.
1) No laws against slavery, 2) no travel restrictions on slaveholders with slaves and 3) slavery enforced in territories -- those provisions any new state must accept before admission.
And this allows that new state to remain slave-free how?
523 posted on 03/28/2019 6:52:55 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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