First Annual Jefferson Seminar
"The Confederate Constitution"
August 14-17, 2008
Athens, Georgia
During August 14-17 the Abbeville
Institute held its first Jefferson Seminar in Athens, Georgia.
These seminars are devoted to exploring the topic of Liberty
and the Southern Tradition, broadly conceived. We take Jefferson
to be paradigmatic of much that is valuable in the Southern
tradition, especially its love of liberty, limited government,
and a regard for the resources needed to preserve individual
liberty as well as the corporate liberty of small communities
to govern themselves.
Jefferson seminars can be on
any topic regarding liberty, but we are especially interested
in those that spring from or have a relation to the Southern
tradition, e.g., Liberty and Individualism, Religion and Liberty,
Liberty and Tradition, Liberty and Virtue, Liberty and Modern
Rationalism, Liberty and State Nullification, Liberty and
Secession.
The topic of the first Jefferson
Seminar was "Liberty and the Confederate Constitution." The
Confederate Constitution is the third Constitution Americans
have made for themselves. Yet it is little known, even among
Southerners. Just as the U.S. Constitution was, in effect,
a criticism of the Articles of Confederation for not providing
sufficient power in the central government, so the C.S.A.
Constitution was a criticism of the U.S. Constitution for
not providing adequate barriers to the central government.
Discussion revealed that the
C.S.A. Constitution retained the basic format of the U.S.
Constitution but introduced a number of reforms designed to
check the growth of centralization. Among these were efforts
to restrict the flow of revenue to the central government
by prohibiting the practice of tacking on pork barrel projects
to a bill that have nothing to do with its subject; by prohibiting
subsidies for business; and by giving the President a single
six year term and the line item veto.
The C.S.A. Constitution enabled
State legislatures to impeach federal officials, and it had
a more democratic rule of constitutional change. If only three
States concurred on an Amendment to the Constitution, Congress
would have to call a Convention of the States to vote on the
Amendment. By contrast, the U.S. Constitution requires two
thirds of the States to call a Convention. Further, the U.S.
Constitution requires three fourths of the States to ratify
an Amendment. The C.S.A. Constitution requires only two thirds.
Since the Civil War it has been almost impossible to amend
the U.S. Constitution except on small matters.
Being acknowledged as sovereign
States, a Confederate State could secede from the Union. As
we ponder the runaway centralization we have experienced since
1865, we can only regret that the world did not have the opportunity
to see how a competing federation of States that privileged
a decentralist idiom over a centralist one might have worked
. Moreover the C.S.A. Constitution is an American constitution,
its main reforms being intimated in Jefferson's exposition
of the Constitution of 1789.
New England ran an extensive
international slave trade throughout the western hemisphere
for 160 years, and was permitted to do so by the U.S. Constitution,
until 1808. The C.S.A. outlawed the slave trade and, unlike
the U.S. Constitution, required Congress to pass legislation
enforcing it. Failure of Congress to pass the necessary legislation
enabled a lucrative illicit slave trade to be run out of the
northeastern States until 1861. The C.S.A. Constitution left
slavery up to the States and allowed for the existence of
non-slave holding States.
This first Jefferson Seminar
was limited to 16 participants and was by invitation only.
The discussion was open and based on a 200 page book of readings
put together by the Abbeville Institute that included essays
and antebellum documents. The participants included academics
from the fields of political science, history, philosophy,
religion, economics, and law as well as practitioners of constitutional
law. The seminar was held in the recently restored home of
T.R.R. Cobb who was on the committee that drafted the C.S.A.
Constitution. The seminar was funded by the Watson-Brown Foundation.
This first Jefferson seminar was by invitation only, but future
seminars need not be. If you are interested in participating
in a future Jefferson seminar, or have a topic to suggest,
or would be interested in providing financial support for
a seminar, please contact us.
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