I think it’s a good point to make that the Union id NOT fight the war as some sort of anti-slavery crusade. From the Federal perspective, it was more of a combination of putting down a rebellion and preserving the union. Slavery was a distant third- there were slave states that remained within the Union.
For the Confederacy, they seceded because that they felt that they were going to be denied what they felt their was their “right” to own slaves- that was pretty much the only right that they were concerned with when they talked about states’ rights being denied.
The Union war was NOT a crusade against slavery, which is something that needs to be said. By saying that “it was all about slavery”, it leads people to believe that the Union was animated by that more than the other concerns, which is not true.
The preamble to the CC does say “We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” which may be what kirkrapine had in mind.
The Confederate Constitution didn’t explicitly forbid secession; on the other hand, it didn’t explicitly protect any right of states to secede either. (Even Joseph Stalin stuck a clause in the 1936 Soviet Constitution claiming that “To every Union Republic is reserved the right freely to secede from the USSR”, which clause was carried forward to each of the USSR’s subsequent constitutions.) Like the U.S. Constitution (which the Confederate Constitution was a close adaptation of) the Confederate Constitution simply doesn’t say anything about the issue of state secession one way or the other.
On balance, the Confederate Constitution doesn’t seem to have been much more protective of “states’ rights” than the pre-Reconstruction U.S. Constitution was (and in a few areas was arguably somewhat more centralized). The Confederate Constitution did have much more explicit and considerably stronger protections for slavery than did even the pre-Reconstruction U.S. Constitution.
It’s kind of a funny “gotcha”, but that arguably simply meant that this was the “permanent federal government” as opposed to the “provisional” Confederate Constitution (which was explicitly time limited to a maximum of one year).
And a “permanent federal government” says nothing about whether any individual state has to remain under its jurisdiction. It just means that as long as there’s a Confederacy, here’s what the federal government is.
The United States was fighting because it was attacked. By a country that was attacking them in order to defend slavery.
It’s like World War II. Germany attacked Poland because it wanted more territory. So Poland wasn’t seeking territorial expansion - but territorial expansion was still the reason why Poland was fighting.
So to sum up: slavery slavery slavery slavery slavery.
The one difference I noticed which does seem like a big deal, is that the CC allowed the states to apply taxes to ships from other states. ISTM, allowing trade wars between states would have led to a much less economically united country. And since tariffs were an important part of government revenue at the time, likely seen as giving noticeable more power to the states. (though the ability to lay duties was subservient to federal treaties)
The federal position all along was that the rebel states did *not *secede, and couldn’t (even if they said they did), and were *not *a separate country, but that it was simply an insurrection that needed to be suppressed as the Constitution provided. The rebels committed the first acts of aggression, yes, but that’s what made it an insurrection instead of posturing. What would have happened if the secession declarations had *not *been followed by insurrection is an interesting hypothetical, beyond noting that those states would have abandoned their federal representation and negotiating power entirely.
Preserving the union and ending slavery were *both *Union goals, the first one being at least partly a cover story for the second one until it became a generally held enough position for it to be stated more openly. Lincoln’s own often-quoted statements were those of a politician who knew he couldn’t get too far ahead of his people - he most certainly *was *an abolitionist, but he couldn’t get abolition done without the slave states first losing their ability to resist it.
Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
—Frederick Douglass, 1876
This is interesting because I had heard it explictly stated too, but also looked at the Confederate constitution after you posted and did not see any clause prohibiting secession. Apparently there was a proposed amendment to add a clause explicitly allowing secession, but it was voted done. Some of the commentary on it theorizes that the drafters felt that if they wrote a clause explicitly allowing secession but otherwise used the language of the US constitution, they were effectively saying “the US constitution doesn’t allow secession, it would requires a clause like the one we added” which contradicted their argument that they were legally separating themselves from a compact.
A person can believe the right to secede is present under the US Constitution, fight to defend said right, and still believe that secession should be outlawed in the Confederate Constitution.
Well yeah, but the North didn’t go to war to abolish slavery. That’s what I’m trying to say; they weren’t concerned enough with the slave issue to go to war except that the South was seceding as a result of it.