The Corwin Amendment
The Not So Lost Cause [Jul 3, 2024]
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
The Corwin Amendment was passed by the 36th Congress on March 2, 1861. The House approved it by a vote of 133 to 65, and the Senate adopted it with no changes on a vote of 24 to 12. The amendment was also endorsed by Abraham Lincoln and his predecessor James Buchanan.
It was submitted to the state legislature for ratification, where it was ratified by Kentucky (April 4, 11861), Ohio (May 13, 1861), Rhode Island (May 31, 1861), Maryland (January 10, 1862), and Illinois (June 2, 1863). The Restored Government of Virginia (predecessors to West Virginia) voted to approve the amendment (February 13, 1862), though they did not do so when West Virginia became a state in 1863.
By the time the Corwin Amendment was passed, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had all seceded. All of these states except for South Carolina had seceded while the Corwin Amendment was making its way though the House. After it was passed, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded, the Arizona territory joined the Confederacy, and the Indian territory (Oklahoma) aligned itself with the Confederacy. Kentucky, Missouri, and the territory of New Mexico all had motions to secede at this time, with limited success.
Six states seceded while the amendment that would have preserved slavery was making its way though Congress. Four more states and two territories joined the Confederacy after it had been adopted by Congress. Two more states and a territory also made attempts at joining the confederacy.
Had all of the Confederate states rejoined the Union and ratified the Corwin Amendment, in addition to the five states that historically voted to ratify it, and the two remaining slave states (Delaware and Missouri) also ratified it, twenty states in total would have ratified the Corwin Amendment, meaning only three more states were needed in order to adopt it.
It would have been a lot easier to just remain in the Union or rejoin and ratify the Corwin Amendment than fighting a whole war if all you wanted was to maintain the practice of slavery. Really makes you think.
President James Buchanan also signed his endorsement of the Corwin Amendment, which was rather unusual at the time.1
In his first Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861) Abraham Lincoln stated that he had no objection to it being made into law:
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.2
Interestingly, since it does not have a ratification deadline and technically was never withdrawn, the amendment could still be adopted by state legislature. Teehee.
I think this is probably the single greatest counter-argument to the idea that slavery was the primary motivator of the South during the Civil War. Only three non-slave holding states were needed to ratify the amendment and, as many scholars and contemporaries alike have pointed out, this amendment was gaining a lot of traction very quickly. In all likelihood, it would have passed.
It just doesn’t make sense to go through the hassle of what would end up being the bloodiest war in US history if you could get the same thing without war. If nothing else, the South could have very easily simply waited to see if enough states voted to ratify it before leaving for good.
It’s not like the South had a lot of military industrial complex CEOs who wanted to profit off of war either, because the MIC wasn’t even a thing yet lol. In fact, military industry wasn’t even a thing at this time. Plus, the South was ridiculously poorly equipped anyways and half the time they were fighting with rusty farm guns and pitchforks.
Some may argue that the states which already seceded when this amendment was passed by Congress couldn’t afford to return to the Union without looking like idiots, and I would agree with that. But this is also a tacit admission that the South had other reasons to go to war/secede and that an easy (and functionally guaranteed) path to Constitutionally-protected slavery was not enough to outweigh that.
If you want some more datapoints/arguments on related topics, I would recommend checking out these articles by
So what was the point of the war?