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When did the south rejoin the union5/21/2023 ![]() ![]() The new president confronted an unprecedented crisis. law impairing or denying the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” Beyond its focus on slavery, the Confederate Constitution allowed for a Congress composed of two chambers, a judicial branch, and an executive branch with a president to serve for six years.īy the time Lincoln reached Washington DC in February 1861, the CSA had already been established. Article One, Section Nine, declared that “No. Specifically, the constitution protected the interstate slave trade and guaranteed that slavery would exist in any new territory gained by the Confederacy. The Confederate Constitution declared that the new nation existed to defend and perpetuate racial slavery, and the leadership of the slaveholding class. The only real difference between the two documents concerned slavery. The constitution of the Confederate States of America (CSA), drafted at a convention in Montgomery Alabama in February 1861, closely followed the 1787 US Constitution. In this way, states could protect themselves, and slavery, from interference by what they perceived to be an overbearing central government. Individual member states agreed to unite under a central government for some purposes, such as defense, but to retain autonomy in other areas of government. The new nation formed by these men would not be a federal union, but a confederation like the one that had preceded the Constitution. Southerners justified their actions with arguments about nullification, the nature of the Constitution, and the social contract theory of government that had influenced the founders of the American Republic. However, they maintained, the states had not sacrificed their autonomy and could withdraw their consent to be controlled by the federal government. In the opinion of many Southern politicians, the federal Constitution that united the states as one nation was a contract by which individual states had agreed to be bound. The seven Deep South states that seceded quickly formed a new government. The very first Confederate imprint defining the moment that the first southern state formally seceded from the United States of America.įor More Info: Explore the causes, battles, and aftermath of the Civil War at the interactive website offered by the National Parks Service. The people of the South were not unanimous in their support of secession, but as always, the planter class had its way. Many cases secessions occurred after extremely divided conventions and popular votes. Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined them in rapid succession on January 19, January 26, and February 1, respectively. Senate rejected Crittenden’s proposal on January 16, 1861. Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama followed South Carolina and seceded before the U.S. ![]() On December 20, 1860, only a few days after Crittenden’s proposal was introduced in Congress, South Carolina began the march towards war when it seceded from the United States. Southern states rejected Crittenden’s compromise because it would prevent slaveholders from taking their human chattel north of the 36☃0′ line. Republicans, including President-elect Lincoln, rejected Crittenden’s proposals because they ran counter to the party’s goal of keeping slavery out of the territories. In an attempt to protect slavery in southern states, Crittenden proposed to introduce it in California, which had been a free state for ten years. He further proposed an amendment that would prohibit Congress from abolishing slavery anywhere it already existed or from interfering with the interstate slave trade. Specifically, Crittenden proposed an amendment that would restore the 36☃0′ line from the Missouri Compromise and extend it all the way to the Pacific Ocean, protecting and ensuring slavery south of the line while prohibiting it north of the line. Crittenden’s goal was to keep the South from seceding, and his strategy was to transform the Constitution to explicitly protect slavery forever. Before Abraham Lincoln took office, John Crittenden, a senator from Kentucky who had helped form the Constitutional Union Party during the 1860 presidential election, attempted to defuse the explosive situation by offering six constitutional amendments and a series of resolutions, known as the Crittenden Compromise. ![]()
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