What the Confederate States Constitution says about slavery

Unlike the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution, who were too embarrassed to mention slavery by name in their document, the Founding Fathers of the Confederate States Constitution refer to slavery explicitly throughout.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America

Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 prohibited the Confederate government from restricting slavery in any way:

"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

Article IV, Section 2 also prohibited states from interfering with slavery:

"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired."

Perhaps the most menacing provision of the Confederate States Constitution was the explicit protection Article IV, Section 3, Clause 3 offered to slavery in all future territories conquered or acquired by the Confederacy:

"The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several States; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States."

This provision ensured the perpetuation of slavery as long and as far as the Confederate States could extend it's political reach, and more then a few Confederates had their eyes fixed on Cuba and Central and South America as objects of future conquest.

Unlike the Confederate States Constitution, the United States Constitution freely permitted states to abolish slavery. If the day ever came when slavery was eliminated voluntarily throughout the United States of America, not one word of the United States Constitution would need to be changed, whereas slavery could never lawfully be abolished under the Confederate States Constitution.

Both Frederick Douglas and President Abraham Lincoln would probably be shocked to learn that some modern academics use theoretical economics to argue that the Confederate States Constitution offered greater protection for freedom then the United States Constitution.
 
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