CHAPTER 7
Slavery and the
Confederate States of America
The importation of negroes of the African race, from any foreign country, other than the .slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby firrbidden, and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 1
Constitution of the Confederate States of America
As demonstrated, to the mind of modern liberals, the Confederate States of America and the institution of slavery are synonymous. Many Americans have bought into the lie that the Southern Confederacy was created in order to maintain and expand the slavery kingdom. Yet, it was Abraham Lincoln and not Jefferson Davis who, in his inaugural address as president,' promised the force of government for the protection of the institution of slavery. When one contrasts how the United States Constitution dealt with the issue of the African slave trade and how the Confederate States Constitution dealt with the issue, it is hard to believe that the Confederate States of America was established to promote slavery.
In Article I, Section 9, the United States Constitution stated:
The migration or importation of such persons, as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person [emphasis added].
Notice that according to this section of the Constitution, the importation of African slaves was protected from 1788 until 1808 or a period of twenty years. In the year 1808, the slave trade would only end if Congress passed appropriate laws ending the nefarious trade, which it subsequently did. This section of the Constitution was adopted over the objection of a majority of Southern delegates at the Constitutional Convention, who desired an unconditional termination of the trade. In a combined effort, delegates from New England and some Southern delegates managed to obtain this protection for the slave trade. The old adage that "the power to tax is the power to destroy" must have been on the minds of those who proposed this section of the Constitution. Notice that the Federal government was denied the right to tax slaves imported into the United States at more than ten dollars per slave, thus preventing Congress from taxing the slave trade out of existence. This is just another example of the Federal Constitution's protection of the slave trade.
Now, how did the Confederate Constitution treat the issue of the African slave trade? In both the Provisional Constitution of the Confederacy (March 1861 through February 1862) and the Constitution of the Confederate States (February 1862 through April 1865) the importation of African slaves from foreign countries was unequivocally prohibited. Unlike the United States Constitution, which first protected the slave trade for twenty years and then only allowed Congress at a later date to act on the issue, the Confederate Constitution completely outlawed the slave trade. Not only did the Confederate Constitution prohibit further importation of African slaves, but the Confederate Congress was required by its Constitution to pass all necessary laws to prevent said importation. Unlike the United States Constitution in which Congress was given the option to legislate against the slave trade twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution, the Confederate Constitution commanded the legislature to positively act against the slave trade.
Only one small exception to the importation of African slaves was allowed in the Confederate Constitution. The first paragraph of Section 9 stated that slaves from the slaveholding states or territories of the United States of America would be allowed into the Confederacy. Nevertheless, in the second paragraph of Section 9, Congress was given the authority to prohibit even that importation. Paragraph 2 stated:
Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.
Is it not more than just a little strange that the American Constitution that was adopted with the assistance of New England protected the African slave trade, whereas the Constitution that was adopted by the South unequivocally prohibited the African slave trade?
But how did the Confederate Constitution deal with the issue of slavery itself? In Paragraph 4 of Section 9 the Confederate Constitution stated:
No bill of attainder, or ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves, shall he passed.
Article I, Section 9, of the Confederate Constitution comprised the limitations on the central government and therefore protection for individual civil rights. This section was analogous to the protection for civil rights found in the Bill of Rights of the Federal Constitution. The limitations of Article I, Section 9, of the Confederate Constitution were limits on the power of the Confederate government, not the state governments. Whereas the central government of the Confederacy was prohibited from interfering with the institution of slavery, the state governments were not so limited. It will be noted that limitations on the actions of the state governments of the Confederate States were listed in Article I, Section 10, of the Confederate Constitution. Each of the three paragraphs began with the words "No State shall." A reading of Section 10 will prove that the states of the Confederacy were not prohibited from abolishing the institution of slavery.
This section of the Confederate Constitution has provided an opportunity for many to assert that the Confederate Constitution "recognized and protected slavery." Of course, the Confederate Constitution protected slavery in the same manner that the Federal Constitution protected slavery. A review of how the United States Constitution dealt with the issue of slavery will demonstrate this point. The Federal Constitution protected the African slave trade (Article I, Section 9); it recognized the master's right in the property of his slaves (Article IV, Section 2); and it viewed the slave as only three-fifths as valuable as a white man (Article I, Section 2). Both the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Confederate States recognized and protected the right of a master to his slave property. As has already been demonstrated in preceding chapters, whether it was reclaiming fugitive slaves, protecting the African slave trade, or counting slaves as less valuable than white people, the North was the leader in these actions. Furthermore, the Confederate Constitution did not protect slavery any more than Lincoln said he would do, both in his debates with Douglas and in his inaugural address. In addressing the issue of slavery within a state, Lincoln said:
There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed.... It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it
Again, the author cites Lincoln to point out that Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government were doing no more than that which Lincoln had gone on record as favoring himself. How can the Confederate government be charged with being a defender of slavery for advancing the same ideas that Abraham Lincoln advocated?
Even though the Confederate Constitution outlawed the importation of African slaves, the detractors of the Confederacy still maintain that the Southern Confederacy existed to promote slavery. Yet, the very first veto that President Jefferson Davis issued was a veto to support the letter and spirit of the Confederate constitutional prohibition against the importation of African slaves. In the body of his veto message, President Davis declared the reason he felt justified in refusing to sign the proposed bill. His recommendation that the bill not be passed was upheld by the Confederate Congress. Thus, it is hard to maintain that the Confederate States government was attempting to expand the African slave trade
Veto Message
Executive Department, February 28, 1861
Montgomery, Alabama, C.S.A.
Gentlemen of Congress: With sincere deference
to the judgement of Congress, I have carefully considered the bill in relation to the slave trade, and to punish persons offending therein, but have not been able to approve it, and therefore do return it with a statement of my objections. The Constitution (section 7, article 1)3 provides that the importation of African negroes from any foreign country other than slave-holding States of the United States is hereby forbidden, and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same. The rule herein given is emphatic, and distinctly directs the legislation which shall effectually prevent the importation of African negroes. The bill before me denounces as high misdemeanor the importation of African negroes or other persons of color, either to be sold as slaves or to be held to service or labor, affixing heavy, degrading penalties on the act, if done with such intent. To that extent it accords with the requirements of the Constitution, but in the sixth section of the bill provision is made for the transfer of persons who may have been illegally imported into the Confederate States to the custody of foreign States or societies, upon condition of deportation and future freedom, and if the proposition thus to surrender them shall not he accepted, it is then made the duty of the President to cause said negroes to be sold at public outcry to the highest bidder in any one of the States where such sale shall not be inconsistent with the laws thereof. This provision seems to me to be in opposition to the policy declared in the Constitution-the prohibition of the importation of African negroes-and in derogation of its mandate to legislate for the effectuation of that object. Wherefore the bill is returned to you for further consideration, and together with objections, most respectfully submitted.
Jeff'n Davis
The preceding veto message as well as the actual words of the Confederate Constitution are historic fact. Nevertheless, sycophants of the politically correct view of the Confederate States of America still cling to the premise that the Confederacy was founded for the purpose of promoting and defending slavery. By reviewing the historical record, it is easy to establish the fact that the Confederate States of America was opposed to the African slave trade. But before the Confederacy was established, Southerners were accused of pressing forward with the "extension of slavery." From the time of the Wilmot Proviso, the North had attempted to limit the introduction of slaves into the commonly held territories of the United States. The North maintained that such movement would result in an increase in slavery in the United States. The South, on the other hand, responded by assuring the country that with the prohibition on the African slave trade, the number of slaves would remain the same regardless of where the slaves lived. For instance, if there were one million slaves residing in Virginia, the movement of one half of that number to the commonly held territories would not increase the number of slaves in the United States. The South reminded the North that the Constitution recognized and protected property in slaves and that Southerners gave their lives in the acquisition of those territories in greater numbers than the North had done. Also, if emancipation of slavery was the objective of all, then the dispersal of African-Americans over a larger area would make that eventual goal easier to obtain. Jefferson Davis stated that the movement of slaves into the territories "never did, and never could imply the addition of a single slave to the number already existing."4 The issue for the South was a question of how its citizens would be treated by the national government. As Davis explained:
The question was merely whether the slaveholder should be permitted to go, with his slaves, into territory (the common property of all) into which the non-slaveholder should be permitted to go with his property of any sort. There was no proposal nor desire on the part of the Southern States to reopen the slave-trade, which they had been foremost in suppressing, or to add to the number of slaves. It was a question of the distribution, or dispersion, of slaves, rather than the "extension of slavery." Removal is not extension. Indeed, if emancipation was the end to be desired, the dispersion of the negroes over a wider area among additional Territories, eventually to become States, and in climates unfavorable to slave-labor, instead of hindering, would have promoted this object by, diminishing the difficulties in the wav of ultimate emancipation.'
As Davis pointed out in The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, the objection of the North to allowing slaves into the territories had more to do with reducing the influence of the South in the national government than with promoting freedom. Henry Cabot Lodge, in a letter to Sen. Thomas Pickering of Massachusetts, pointed out why the North was opposing the growth of the South. Lodge noted that with the growth of the South "the influence of our part of the Union must be diminished by the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity."6 The desire to prevent the South from gaining new states in the territories, and the desire to keep the African-American population at a minimum-and not the desire for freedom-was the driving force for the North on this issue.
The South saw the attack on the issue of slavery not so much as an attempt to end slavery in the United States as much as an attempt to end Southern influence in the national government. If the North was not willing to honor a constitutional right on this point, how could the interests and rights of the South be secured on any point? It must be pointed out once again that the Constitution of the United States never authorized the Federal government to interfere with the institution of slavery, but it did impose an obligation on the Federal government to protect slavery (Article IV, Section 2), the so-called fugitive slave section. During the time of the debate over the issue of slavery in the territories, the South recognized that all of its rights, not just the right to move slave property into commonly held territories, were at risk.
Although Kansas and other territories to the west offered little hope of a Southern-style plantation system, a firm demand was maintained to keep slavery out of the territories. In the West, neither climate nor soil was favorable to the types of agriculture that necessitated the introduction of the institution of slavery. A few slaves did move with their masters into Kansas and with them many non-slaveholding Southerners. Without a strong plantation system in place, the likelihood of a new state remaining a slave state was very slim. Davis stated that the agitation surrounding the question of slavery in the territories was simply sophism to advance the cause of Northern dominance of the Federal government.
[T]he "war-cry" was employed by the artful to inflame the minds of the less informed and less discerning; that it was adopted in utter disregard of the means by which negro emancipation might have been peaceably accomplished in the Territories, and with the sole object of obtaining sectional control and personal promotion by means of popular agitation.?
Thus, the Radical Abolitionists demanded immediate abolition of slavery but denied the South a chance to do what the North had done when it abolished slavery (i.e., decrease the numbers of African-Americans within its states).
If the issue of slavery in the territories was of great importance to the North, the secession of the Southern states from the Union should have been met with cries of joy. A prompt and complete end of slaves moving into the territories would have been realized once there were no more slave states in the Union. But as events around Fort Sumter would prove, the North would both refuse to allow the South equal rights in the commonly held territories of the Union and refuse to allow the South to peacefully leave the Union. At this point, Southerners began to believe that the United States Constitution could no longer protect any of their liberties. It is no wonder then that Southerners, non-slaveholders and slaveholders alike, would unite against such a perceived danger.
SUMMARY
No doubt, the most commonly held misconception about the Confederate States of America is that it was founded by slaveholders to promote and protect slavery in America. This falsehood is asserted even though the South led the nation in the founding of abolition societies and the emancipation of slaves. It has often been stated that because the states of the Confederacy were slave- holding states, they cannot be said to have been fighting for fr
eedom. Yet, in 1776, every American state that had declared its independence from Great Britain was a "slave state." Surely, more slaves were owned in the South in comparison to the North, but then the North was much more heavily engaged in the African slave trade than the South. If, in 1861, the Confederacy is to be condemned for the institution of slavery then in existence within the South, what can be said of the United States where both slavery and the African slave trade existed?
As demonstrated, the very first American constitution that unequivocally outlawed the importation of African slaves into this country was the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. Confederate President Jefferson Davis's first veto as president was issued on a bill that was considered by Davis to be in conflict with the spirit and letter of the Confederate Constitution's proscription of the African slave trade. While the United States Constitution had protected the African slave trade, the Constitution of the Confederate States was unambiguous about the issue-no African slave trade.
Myths of American Slavery Page 22
