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The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry into American Constitutionalism

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This book is perhaps the best I have read on the Confederate Constitution. The book explains the basis for the state's rights and tariff issues and how they effected the writing of the CS Constitution. A large portion of the book talks about John C. Calhoun and his stance on the issues. Also read to learn the improvements in the CS Constitution over the US counterpart. I would recomend this too all Americans, not just Southerners. If you were ever unsure as to what "state's rights" was, this is the book for you. Read! and learn the real reason the South seceeded.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. In reply to some of the points in conlawyer's condemnatory review...
1) Davis and Stephens, in their 1861 speeches mentioned by conlawyer, spoke of "agitation over slavery," rather than the desire to perpetuate slavery itself, as being the motivation behind secession. The slavery provisions of the Confederate Constitution of were designed to eliminate this "agitation over slavery"...that is, conflict between States which have emancipated and those which have not...not to protect slavery itself. It removed slavery from the realm of national government and placed it where it properly belonged, in the sphere of State legislative action. The Northern States had eliminated slavery when it became economically unviable in the North...not due to any moral outrage over slavery itself...and did so by the action of their individual State Legislatures. The Southern States, through the Confederate Constitution, simply preserved their right to handle the issue by the same means, and for the same reasons, which the Northern States had used.
2)The State Secession documents...actually, conlawyer is referring to the Declarations of the Causes of Secession issued by four of the States seceding from the Union (the rest did not explain their reasons)...do cite slavery as the prime reason for secession. Southerners often cite conflicts over high tariffs and other economic issues as the cause of secession, and a superficial reading of these Declarations of the Causes of Secession does seem to contradict this, as conlawyer points out. However, what these Declarations were doing was providing a legal basis for secession, just as the original Declaration of Independence set out the legal basis for America's secession from the British Empire. The Southern States needed a clear, unambiguous violation of the Constitution by the Northern States to justify their "breaking of the contract" represented by the Union. It was not unconstitutional for Congress to levy tariffs on imported goods bought by Southerners, or to spend the money thus raised on internal improvements and business subsidies for capitalists in the Northern States. So although the South might have liked to secede over these issues (the Republican Party platform called for high tariffs, internal improvements, and business subsidies, and indeed, soon after taking control, they passed the highest tariff in American history, which would have devastated the South economically), legally, they could not have justified "breaking the contract" between the Southern States and the rest of the Union on that basis. However, the Northern States were in clear violation of the Constitution by acts of their legislatures and decisions by their State Courts which nullified and prevented enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution (and the various Fugitive Slave Acts which were passed for the enforcement of said Clause). And it is this which is prominently cited in the Declarations of the Causes of Secession. Also, it is noteworthy that the Declaration issued by the State of Georgia does, in fact, talk about the tariff issue as well as slavery...indeed, it states that it was the alliance of Northern anti-slavery agitators with the Northern mercantilist/high tariff faction (represented by the Republican Party) which had allowed the election of Abraham Lincoln, thus creating the need for secession. So slavery is not the ONLY issue discussed in these declarations.
3) Article I, Section 9, Subsection 4, of the Confederate Constitution does prohibit the Confederate Congress from interfering with slavery, as conlawyer says. However, despite what conlawyer says, slavery is not "completely protected" by the Confederate Constitution. None of the provisions of the Confederate Constitution prevent the States from abolishing slavery. So the intent was not to protect slavery, but to preserve the right of the States to handle the issue when it became advantageous for them to do so, as the Northern States had themselves done. Conlawyer doesn't mention that there are other provisions in the Confederate Constitution intended to prevent future conflicts from arising between States which have abolished slavery and those which have not. If slavery was "completely protected" by the Confederate Constitution, and the founding fathers of the Confederacy intended that the slaves never be emancipated, why would those provisions have been included?
4) Conlawyer states that the question of whether a State has the right to secede from the Union was settled by the Supreme Court in the case of Marbury vs. Madison. This is not true. The said case mentions secession not at all. Like conlawyer,I encourage you to check it out...it can be found via an internet search.

"If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side."
--Ulysses S. Grant

I suspect that Grant -Commander of the Union Army and President of the United States- had a better idea of what the War was about than those who would deny the truth today.

This book helps destroy the myth that the so-called Civil War was about slavery, and the Southern states were fighting to preserve it! Facts are shown in this book that the South was fighting for smaller government, and the "right" of a state to govern itself. One of the myths about the Confederacy is that they imported slavery. Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 1 shows that the Confederate Government "outlawed' the international slave trade from its conception, the United States constitution did not! Many who wish to believe the myth of slavery, and the Confederacy will scoff at this book for it's FACTS, but than these people doubtless believe that World War 2 was about the Jewish people and the holocaust.

Simply based on the laughable liberal's response I would like to ask him why he chooses to perpetuate his fallacy, but I fear there will be no reply apart from insults. To clarify to "conlawyer" I would like him to tell me why then if the South had enough slave labor was an unskilled slave worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars? Or for example why did many blacks fight alongside Confederate forces during the Union campaigns if they were the liberators? And if the war was truly about slavery, why then would the other 80% of the Southern population, who had no slaves or any vested interest in its survival, fight the war? Certainly if it was to "keep the black man down" they needn't have fought at all since that was the outcome due to this radical solution concocted by the GOP of which I am a part. Their solution, namely social engineering on the part of earnest Northern lunatics, caused more suffering and tragedy then a Southern victory ever would. As a person born and raised in California my bias is merely towards that of logic. A retort to my inquiry is much craved.

A very enlightening book that shows how the Confederate Constitution's sole purpose was to form a Republican style government with a majority of the sovereignty situated within the states rather than in a national identity. The prevailing myth, of course, is that the document was created to perpetuate a slavocracy, but if you study the language of the document carefully the Confederate framers anticipated that slave states might become free and/or free territories would want to join the Confederacy.

That is not to insinuate that the framers were in favor of emancipation, as DeRosa points out, just that they 100% committed to State's Rights. This is evident by the point that several times Fire Eaters and other radicals tried to implement measures that would have required all states to recognize slavery and/or all new incoming states to be slave states. These radicals were ultimately defeated because federally forcing an economic system onto a sovereign body violates a states ability to self determinate its future, thus invalidating "State's Rights".

Therefor I highly recommend this book to any Civil War buffs or anyone who wants to read about State's Right political theorem.

I think Professor Gallagher at UVA summed up the argument that the Civil War was not about slavery nicely when he said,(I paraphrase here):

"Ok, if the war wasn't about slavery, but instead was about state's rights, please show me a comprehensive list of specific rights that the states thought were important enough to secede over. I submit that the central right on any list will somehow involve slavery - be it guised in the form of property rights or state autonomy or the questions of state-determination of laws, these all ultimatley revolved around slavery."

The argument makes sense. If you analyze period Confederate documents and take them at face value, especially government documents, you'll find little mention of slavery. To a trained historian, the absence of this topic speaks volumes about its role in the conflict. Why on earth would Southern politicians use slave rhetoric to validate a war when their "nation" was populated mostly by non-slaveholding whites and slaves themselves. There is no real body of evidence that Southern soldiers fought for anything but hearth and home; and in almost all cases, hearth and home did not include slaves. Period Confederate politicians were smart people (there were also mostly from the slaveholding upper class) so they understood that rhetoric of slavery would not win them support at home (or indeed abroad) so they instead couched their rhetoric in terms of rights, laws and propriety of self-determination; all terms that if accepted, would clearly suggest that they did have the right to own slaves.

I submit that the analysis provided by this book is valid and very much needed, however it must be taken in context. To "analyize" this work without placing it in context leaves one wondering why then Abraham Lincoln bothered to free the slaves; a rediculous sentiment. If we understand that the anaylsis here is directed at documents designed to justify the act of secession in light of the limited interest in the South of slaves, we can understand how the author might mislead others (or indeed be mislead themself) about what actually brought millions of men to war against each other and what cost Americans over 600,000 casualties - state's rights or something more, you tell me.

This book is yet another attempt to "prove" that the Civil War "had nothing whatever to do about slavery." Wrong.

Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens wrote post-bellum books claiming that slavery was irrelevant to the War, that it was all about constitutionalism, etc. Problem: in 1861, speeches of Davis and Stephens emphatically place the blame for the War on slavery. They changed their minds from 1861 to the post-bellum period . . . could the fact that slavery was, you know, embarassing, have had an impact?

Also, the actual secession statements of the seceding states emphatically blame slavery as the root cause of the secession (available on the internet). There is no ambiguity.

The Confederate Constitution in Article I, section 9, subsection 4 prohibits the Confederate Congress from interfering with the "right" to own slaves. (Funny . . . modern-day Confederates uh, forget, to mention that!) The ban on slave importation is of small importance . . . enough humans were already enslaved to meet "needs". Slavery is completely protected in the Confederate Constitution. I urge all to read it; it is on the internet.

I will give today's Confederates a couple of points, though: (1) the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution did create a slaveholding republic (so much for their ringing endorsement of "freedom for all"!), and so did the Confederates, and (2) the Confederates were thoroughly in sinc with the God of the Bible, who throughout endorses slavery (Commandment 10 forbids covetting of a neighbor's slave -- "manservant" is the gentle language used in some versions of the Bible, but "slave" is intended, and appears explicitly in the NRSV, and in other accurate versions . . . God did NOT mean the gardener or the cleaning lady! Also, in Exodus 21 (directly following the first version of the 10 Commandments) gives some instructions on how to handle slaves.) God is mentioned prominently in the Confederate Constitution.

My advice is to check the internet for the documents appearing in 1860 and 1861, and not the latter-day fiction of writers who are embarassed by slavery.

One last note: The legal question of whether there was a "right" of secession was settled very early in the US Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison; the answer to whether there was a right for states to secede is NO. Look it up; it, too, is on the internet.

Like many of his fellow Neo-Confederates, Professor DeRosa seems to have a specific goal in mind when it comes to his book on the Confederate Constitution. Namely, his goal is to perpetuate the myth of the Lost Cause in such as way as to make it seem like it is a legitimate view of history. De Rosa specifically attempts to use an analysis of the Confederate Constitution to justify the idea that the Confederacy was based solely on the idea of states rights and not slavery. The book is perhaps most enlightening for what it leaves out. DeRosa does not spend much time talking about the Confederate constitution's approach to slavery, which is decidedly different from the U.S. consititution in several ways. I am sure many of the the members of the League of the South buy this book to make themselves feel better, but those of us who ignore the myth of the Lost Cause know better.