The Confederate Constitution

0:00I come from a somewhat different mold and my thought processes on these issues have changed a bit over the last couple of years. I have written on American jurors' prudence and I have detected certain what I would deemed to be ominous trends in American case law and also an international law. I've also been involved and participated in a forthcoming book on the European Union which just simply heightened my concerns about what's happening not only nationally but internationally.

1:01And this sounds far fetched but those of you familiar with some of the rhetoric from the left can appreciate it. I'm not making this up but intellectuals, academics, policy makers who discuss these issues at the national level have a very different world view. So much so that I deem that nationalism is the state's right position of the 21st century. In other words, nation states are under threat. Not only have states rights been crushed but national rights are in the process of being crushed. And I know that there's a lot of hostility and amosity against our current president but I'm much more charitable to his position because I see the dynamics at the global level

2:01and the rhetoric, the language, the vocabulary at the international level and I shouldn't even use international because the word national of international is also coming out of fashion. We have to think in terms of globalism. Nation states are becoming sort of obsolete in the way policies evolving. So I'm going to make a presentation that's somewhat prospective, not only retrospective even though that's an important starting point and that's why the Confederate Constitution's important because the framers of the Confederate Constitution believe it or not anticipated these trends. They're very much familiar with them. They didn't necessarily articulate the concerns that I'm about to raise but intuitively they knew something was up with this notion of centralization.

3:02So think of the human family, think of globalism. And try to think of President Bush as governor Bush, the governor of a large state, the United States. And Copia Ngan as President Lincoln if you'd like but the president of currently the administrator of this global organization. I mean some of it seems to be far fetch but when you talk about the human family they mean what they say. And they're very familiar with technology and the impact of technology and changing the world. You could read people discussing, anticipating, promoting, under the radar screen but nevertheless they're very much behind it. The notion of the human family that has takes on almost a personality of persona. For example the internet is deemed to be some sort of nervous system globally.

4:08So there's this real integration that's coming together which technology is making possible. So when you have the Gore tax the intention originally was to put computers in internet access into Africa and other less developed countries. They're trying to bring them into the human family part of the nervous system. And they actually have visions in this vivid imagination where they see the earth as sort of a brain. We're just a little part of that. They also anticipate the United States 2% of the world's population. It's a very small part of this human family. But they deemed it to be a very greedy part. And just like South Carolina and other southern states pay a good bit of their revenue and their income and their wealth into the US treasury. The United States is expected to pay a good bit of its wealth in the redistribution dreams

5:15of our global leaders. So try to think in those terms because things are changing. They're changing very dramatically. Now when we discuss and consider the Confederate Constitution which is a pretty darn good model of how to organize a political society need to ask yourself who were these people? And the the thoughtful ones of course there were radicals on each side, North, and South, but the thoughtful southerners who met in Montgomery, Alabama considered history not only retrospectively but where things were going, where we were headed not only as a nation but also as an important part of Western civilization.

6:20So the Confederate Constitution let's clear some things up right up front. The framers were they opposed to empire. Absolutely not. They discussed empire. They anticipated that they wanted it. You read the speeches of Congress people particularly in the Senate. Of course this was prior to the 17th Amendment. They were representing their states much more effectively. They were accountable to their state legislatures, the respective ones, and to them. And I'm dealing in generalizations you could always find an exception to this. But they thought that once the Confederacy was up and running the major threat to the North and the North also articulated this concern was that it was going to be a commercial empire, a free trade of liberty. And you have senators from the New England states anticipating that states of the Mississippi

7:25Valley would be joining the Confederacy and the Confederate Constitution makes provisions for that. They expected and anticipated a larger organization but much more committed to the notion of freedom and free enterprise if I could use that word or that phrase. So empire, something the southerners, the Confederates were not adverse to. States rights, the southerners met what they said. You read closely the Confederate Constitution. They made provisions for the states to be self-governing. A state in the Confederacy did not have to have slavery. States in the Confederacy would decide for themselves whether or not they would manipulate their slaves. Slavery itself. Now I know that most

8:28of you in your universities probably get the line that the south succeeded to protect slavery, which of course is not the case. And there's ample evidence to prove that point. Now there were some of course who did. They thought slavery was an important foundation of Western civilization but many did not. And another important component of the Confederate Constitution was the role of Christianity. Not necessarily a dogmatic type of Christianity but a civilization based upon Christianity. We'll be discussing that. But from a prospective point of view, I want you to think about these principles of the Confederacy where we were, where we are, and where we're headed. And the courts are going to be playing a major role in where we are headed. I want to start off with a

9:31quotation from a recently decided case. Certain all of you are familiar with Grutterby Bolinger on the affirmative action case. Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer slipped this into their concurring opinion. This is what those two justices wrote. And this is something that international jurors have been advocating, pushing, and hoping for. Dr. Livickston will be talking about the theory of selective incorporation. And this is the theory of selective incorporation taken to the next level. This is what Justice Ginsburg wrote. The courts observation that race conscious programs quote must have a logical end point. And this is where the court majority opinion said, well, we're going to give these universities like the University of Michigan 25 years to have decent representation of minorities and others in their

10:38law school. And then we're going to come back and reevaluate it. She continues, accords with the international understanding of the Office of Affirmative Action, the International Understanding. The International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination ratified by the United States in 1994. Endorses special and concrete measures to ensure the adequate development and protection of certain racial groups or individuals belonging to them. For the purpose of guaranteeing them, the full and equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms. But such measures the convention instructs shall in no case entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate rights for different racial groups after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved.

11:40Now what are these fundamental rights? We're going to talk about that tomorrow, but it's essentially a redistribution of wealth. And that's what affirmative actions all about, redistributing the wealth. Now when you look at some of the protocols and treaties and all these other international agreements that the United States is a party to, it's amazing. And you have the UN Declaration of Rights from 1948 and they include all sorts of privileges, rights, opportunities. Now the courts are not just for the rights, juridically should be enforcing those rights today, but the political and cultural climate is not right. But the court knows that and the court operates incrementally.

12:46And some recent scholarship on the courts where they're trying to justify judicial activism, and this goes back to the first part of the 20th century, that academics and judges and such were saying democracy is failed. We need to turn the administration of the country over to judges who are not accountable to the electorate. I'm talking about federal judges. So things are changing and slowly but surely, the courts, as this concurring opinion points out, are ready to make the leap. There will be incorporating into American case law the provisions, the mandates of these international treaties and protocols in which we are obligated

13:46to enforce. Now we talk about states' rights, we could talk about the 10th Amendment, but it has been dead, not necessarily with the theory of incorporation, which started in 1925 in the first Amendment case, but in 1920 in a case that involved a treaty between the United States and Great Britain, and it's Missouri v. Holland. And to make a long story short, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, essentially, we will know what the 10th Amendment reserved by deciding what this nation has become. So the 10th Amendment is very fluid, but it's not the type of fluidity where it's getting more power, but it's being drained. Okay? So treaties and international agreements are

14:49extremely important and trying to understand where we're going as a country. And we could, you know, go off on tangents about the implications of this and that and so on, but we're just going to try to establish, it'll give you a picture of the landscape that has changed over the last century or so. Okay? Now, when we get, when we discuss the Confederate Constitution, we need to ask ourselves, what were these men attempting to do? If you want to talk about slavery, you know, we, we, I've had some side discussions about that. Sure, slavery is a necessary, but not a sufficient cause for the southerners. It's not that these southerners, these Confederates, were succeeding from the Union to protect an institution that they knew was not only

16:00not practical to keep. I mean, most southerners realize that and you could look at what was happening in the Confederate Congress, the Confederate Congress, they were having these discussions about manumidding slaves. What do we do with the slaves? The Confederate Congress. The issue was freedom and they're essentially, as opposed to, you could say, their economic rights. Now, you could have pictures in your minds of celebrations and firebrands, but these men loved the Union. They were part of the Union. You could read their exit speeches in the US Senate, and these men were torn, but they did essentially what they thought was their duty. They were also convinced that the Union from which they seceded provided a constitutional blueprint from which to structure a new Union. Now, most scholarship considers the acceptance of

17:05the 1789 constitutional blueprint as evidence that southern succession was illegitimate. And merely a result of Sour grapes stemming from their anticipated declining influence in national politics, i.e. the Republican victory of Mr. Lincoln and his administration. Hence, the roles of the political game were fine, i.e. the US Constitution. They just wanted a new set of players, so that southern political interests would dominate in this new Union. The continual refrain in academia is that this Confederate Constitution is a word-for-word copy of the US Constitution with some minor editorial changes. It's true that most of the Confederate Constitution is word-for-word, a word-for-word copy of the US Constitution. But it is also true that

18:08the structural and linguistic deviations from the US Constitution have profound implications for the depth and breadth of national power vis-a-vis the states, or what we might call corporate rights, the rights of the local communities. And as we all know, the Supreme Court pedantically scours the Constitution. It's wording, it's structure, it's language, in order to justify or legitimize various aspects of governmental power. And overall, the court has been favorable to national power and detrimental to states' rights, or corporate rights. The changes to be found in the Confederate Constitution, it's substantively alter juridical prerogatives that favor national power over states' rights. And as we review the Confederate Constitution, this becomes clear.

19:14Some of you might not know that the Confederate Congress refused to pass the enabling legislation to organize the Confederate Supreme Court. When you read the debates of the Confederate Congress, it's quite clear why they did not organize the Confederate Constitution. There are a couple cases, one in 1819, one in 1820, up until that point, it was unclear who would dominate the American judicial system. The southerners at Anson Midwestern states, Ohio and other states, anticipated or interpreted the supremacy clause, there simply be instructions to state judges, instructions to the effect that while you're adjudicating a case that involves national laws against state laws, state judges, please keep in mind that national law supreme.

20:20But it left to the state judges the interpretation of those national laws. Now these state judges were accountable to the people of the state, as was the case in the under the Confederacy. But of course in Martin V. Hunter in 1819 and Cones V. Virginia in 1820, Chief Justice John Marshall changed that. Justice Story in the Martin case because the Chief Justice had property interest in the Martin case in Western Virginia and had to do with the Treaty of Paris and that land actually belonged to loyalists, Tories and based upon the Treaty of Paris they were supposed to get that land back. But Virginia had already confiscated the land in between the treaties and they said well that doesn't apply to us because the law was after we had already confiscated and sold

21:25the land and Chief Justice Marshall had invested interest in that so he recused himself. The Joseph story picked up where he left off but would have been a very different America had that not occurred and I made the point the other day that the greatest American jurist acknowledged by all, even today people who study American case law acknowledged that St. George Tucker from Virginia he was known as the American Black Stone that had even Chief Justice. You would have had a different outcome. But let's look at the Confederate Constitution and we could start with the preamble even though it doesn't really have a constitutional standing it's important because it got constitutional standing when it helped the nationalists justify their policies. Now the preamble to the Confederate Constitution contains four important qualifications to the U.S. Constitution's preamble. First,

22:27it affirms that the people of the Confederacy ordained and established this Confederate Constitution through their respective states each state acting in its sovereign and independent character. The U.S. Supreme Court has dubiously maintained that the U.S. Constitution was ordained and established by the American people not the states and we've heard quite a bit about that over the last few days. Although Article 7 of the U.S. Constitution requires ratification or the conventions of the nine states of nine states the conventions were deemed to be state-based forms for collective action of the American people. For example in 1798 Justice Chase in rejecting quote the omnipotence of state legislatures and quote declared that the people of the United States erected their Constitution or forms of government to establish justice to promote the general welfare to secure the blessings of liberty and to protect their persons and property

23:33from violence. Justice Eradell concurred by stating that quote it has been the policy of all American states which have individually framed their state constitutions since the revolution in the people of the United States when they framed the federal Constitution to define with precision the objects of legislative power and to restrain its exercise within marked and set boundaries. Now keep in mind that the U.S. preamble initially listed the states we the people then South Carolina and North Carolina Virginia, Pennsylvania but for some editorial cleanup they took it out because they didn't know which states were going to ratify the Constitution. A national Constitution ordained and established by the people the nation places the national unit as the principal and contra distinction to the states. Accordingly if a state is not the source of

24:34authority i.e. the principal in this legal relationship it cannot withdraw that authority from the national government when it's interest dictate that it should. In his first inaugural dress President Lincoln announced that he would basis administration's legitimacy on the policy preferences of the American people not the states. Lincoln insisted that quote the chief magistrate drives all his authority from the people end quote if you the fracturing of the union not between northern and southern states but a division among the American people into the people of the north the majority and the people of the south the minority. For Lincoln and his Republican party the breakup of the union would be resolved quote by judgment of this great tribunal the American people end quote. This approach gave his war policies to coercefully hold the union intact the constitutional cover

25:36he needed the same as the case when you look at case law Texas B. White Hickman B. Jones another important case is it was the American people the states had no legal standing. So the Confederate Constitution specifically identifies the states as the parties to the compact that was the thinking in 1787 but it needed clarification. Second the Confederate preamble recovers the tradition to the Declaration of Independence the articles of Confederation and in an original view of the US Constitution that the states are the sources of authority for the national government. The Confederate framers deleted the phrases provide for the common defense and they also deleted promote the general welfare from their preamble and the attempt to particularize the documents application to the states as opposed to a general

26:38application to the American people. The third important qualification of the preamble is the purpose of the CSA Constitution. The Confederate Constitution was to form a permanent federal government not a more perfect union. So when the articles make reference to a permanent or perpetual union I should say the articles and then the US Constitution says a more perfect union length and argued rhetorically if something's perpetual and that's later to be made more perfect then it's indesolable that lasts into infinity eternity which of course doesn't take much to see the flaws in that argument. Lincoln equated a perfect union with an indesolable and perpetual union

27:45and he meant to enforce it a union of the American people not a union of states. Fourth the preamble as well as article one section eight lacks quote the general welfare as an objective of the union or the congress there's no general welfare there are particular welfare of the people in the respective states and fifthly and this is important the preamble invokes the favoring guidance of Almighty God such an invocation is not necessarily consistent with the thrust of abolitionism which placed its faith in the higher law of human reason as you all know there's a great debate among theologians and clergy in the anti-bellum period about the Christianity of slavery and the South won that argument as Genevieve points out and others the Bible does sanction slavery

28:55not necessarily the type of slavery that was in the South there were certain norms that had to be conformed to but slavery is sanctioned by the Bible this created a great split prior to the states preceding from the union Protestant denominations were succeeding from each other and to northern and second southern churches then you could read some of the correspondence the books that were written by Protestant theologians and they discussed this so much so that some northerners became very dissatisfied with the Bible and they start to slip into transcendentalism they begin to deny the divinity of Christ now think about the South and your communion and a particular products and denomination and your fellow church members are denying the divinity of Christ so you could see that things were starting to crack up

29:59in the 1840s and 1850s but the southerners went back and even today you could see that where's the Bible belt it's in the South that's a legacy of that commitment it's cultural heritage the fact that the Confederate framers prayed for God's favor and guidance manifested dependence on divine will and subordination to divine provenance we see this throughout Confederate documents through the respective states southerners had a covenant with divine that had conditions attached the terms of association among the states are articulated in the Confederate Constitution which is subordinated to biblical mandates to submit to God's guidance God's guidance is not to be found in burning bushes or latter-day prophets but in the text of the Bible to deviate from the constitutional mandates was to break one's word and to act in bad faith

31:04such behavior had consequences such as the withdrawal of divine favor the cause of transcendental transcendental order is directly incorporated into the Confederate Constitution with God as a guarantor of its terms it is more than a legal document it's even more than a compact it's a covenant among the states contingent upon their willingness to morally and ethically interact with one another so the preamble is an introduction this is not inconsistent with the original Constitution but it brings clarifications to the US Constitution that were necessary because of the manipulation of the history and the wording of the US Constitution's preamble so in many ways you could think of the US of the Confederate Constitution as a in one sense reactionary

32:08not conservative they're not conserving the Constitution of the 1860s by that time they said look this isn't going to work out it was reactionary they were going back to the 1780s now article one takes us into the public policy domain of the Confederate Constitution now remember the association among the states and the Confederacy have changed now I should also say that these gentlemen when they met in Montgomery we're talking about six states the other the border states were not participating they came later but they of course apparently agreed to this because it became members of the Confederacy it may have been different had the border states participated in the Constitutional Convention in Montgomery in 1861 but that's another story

33:12but it's a different type of association among the states and probably much closer to the original designs the southern or the state's rights perspective or preferences filling in or trying to clarify some of the ambiguities that were left hanging when the US Constitution was ratified in 1789 and that's the same thing with these more public policy oriented it's as we go through this the the public policy making process and the first half of the 19th century evolved the rules of the game were being written now some of those rules of the game were unacceptable to the south and so they wanted to put in fundamental law clarifications and let's take a look at what some of those are article one section one the US Constitution stipulates quote all legislative powers hearing granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate

34:16and House of Representatives and the Confederate Constitution the powers are granted are not granted but they're delegated the principal agent of relationship jurisprudentially there's a substantive difference between granted powers and delegated powers this is made clear in the land case of McCulloch the Maryland through which Chief Justice Marshall conferred on the national government expansive legislative powers where he's talking about the necessary improper clause the granted powers elasticity of those powers and so on in that opinion Marshall insists that the US Constitution was created by the American people not the states Marshall conceded that the states preceded the US Constitution and the people of the states delegated to their state government certain powers because those powers were delegated the people had the prerogative to recall certain powers

35:19from the respective state governments and in state conventions assembled granted those record powers to the newly formed US government so what he does he says that okay the states preceded the union but when the state conventions meant to create the US Constitution they took from their state government and delivered those powers to the national government granted not delegated granted here it's yours keep it it's thinking in terms of a gift and discussing here's what Marshall wrote in the opinion and discussing this question the council for the state of Maryland have deemed it of some importance in construction of the Constitution to consider that the instrument not as emanating from the people but as the act of sovereign and independent states this was Maryland's position or whether or not they could tax the branch of the

36:22US bank the powers of the general government has been said are delegated by the states who alone are truly sovereign and must be exercised and subordination to the states who alone possess supreme dominion it has been said that the people have already surrendered all their powers to state sovereignty and had nothing more to give but surely the question whether they may resume and modify the powers granted to government does not remain to be settled in this country much more might the legitimacy of the general government be doubted had it been created by the states they weren't created by the states they were created by state conventions according to Marshall the powers delegated to the state's sovereignty were to be exercised by themselves not by a distinct and independent sovereignty created by themselves to the formation of a league such as was the confederation the state's sovereignty were certainly competent

37:24but when in order to form a more perfect union it was deemed necessary to change this alliance into an effective government possessing great and sovereign powers and acting directly on the people the necessity referring it to the people and of deriving its powers directly from them was felt and acknowledged by all the government of the union then whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case in other words this is dictum it's not really germane to the case is emphatically and truly a government of the people inform and in substance it emanates from them its powers are granted by them in order to be exercised directly on them and for their benefit and quote so Marshall in this 1819 decision has really cleared the decks yes the states preceded the union but the states in their conventions took power for acting a

38:28sovereign took that those powers from the states and relocated them in the national government the tetherman to the US constitution stipulates the powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution or prohibited by it to the states or reserved to the states respectively or to the people the confederate tetherman the equivalent stipulates that quote the powers not delegated to the confederate states by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people thereof and that thereof makes all the difference it's back to the states not to the American people so the tetherman meant ends with people the confederate tetherman version ends with thereof referring back to the states the thereof and the latter emphasizes

39:31that the confederacy is a government of the states that it emanates from them and that its powers are delegated by them indeed the confederate powers are exercised directly on the confederate people but with the states as the guardians as to how those powers are to be exercised so the states are the intermediate the wording or to the people thereof and this confederate constitution neutralizes the prospects that the American people constitute an alternative repository of power to the states this confederate reserve powers clarification was intended to resolve uncertainties between national state governments over delegated and reserved powers such uncertainties according to chief justice marshal were perpetually arising it will continue to arise as long as our systems shall exist according to marshal constitutional powers granted to the nation cannot be recalled by a state because such powers were not granted by a state but by the American people

40:37the American people would have to act together in order to recall granted powers so for succession to be legitimate the American people would have to allow the states to go to secede it could not be according to marshal now he's already anticipating succession at 1819 it could not be the act of a solitary state for a collection of states he wrote the government of the union as a government of the people it emanates from them its powers are granted by them in order to be exercised directly on them and for their benefit the government of the union though limited in its powers is supreme within its sphere of action and its laws when made in pursuance of the constitution form the supreme law of the land article one section two clause one of the confederate constitution

41:39stipulates the house of representative shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states then the electors in each state shall be citizens of the confederate states and have their qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature but no person of foreign birth not a citizen of the confederate states shall be allowed to vote for any officer civil political state or federal now this qualification manifests an appreciation of a southern community distinct from northern and western states the confederate framers anticipated a immigration from northern states a large immigration from northern states northern people and abroad is the confederacy commercially prospered and an attempt to mitigate the divisive national politics experience in the old union the confederate framers

42:41stifle stifle northern interests relocated in confederate states from percolating upward by essentially disenfranchising non indigenous southerners however stipulated in article four section three of the confederate constitution other states may be admitted into this confederacy by a vote of two thirds of the whole house of representatives and two thirds of the senate the senate voting by states so no non-southern interests could have a voice in confederate politics but only as a state and such a state could only be admitted by two thirds vote whereas in the u.s. constitution emission to the union requires owning a majority vote so they took their community seriously if you have a state of Virginia and people from Pennsylvania are going into Virginia to change the political complexion of that state they can't participate in the political process at the national level now if Pennsylvania wants to become part of the confederacy

43:44and two thirds of the confederate states agree to that then they have all the rights and privileges thereof but they were trying to protect their identity as a distinct people and anybody familiar with contemporary politics we could see what's happening to the south with immigration patterns you could take a look at North Carolina and how the dynamic political dynamics they're changing quite rapidly right in other words in order to protect or secure the distinctiveness of a particular community i.e. a state or remember the population at the time is approximately 30 million in the entire United States but they wanted to protect that distinctiveness now you could still have northern interests participate in confederate politics as a state at the state level but it required a two thirds vote which in and of itself shows that they were serious about protecting the distinctiveness of the national community so they weren't going to willy nilly accept states

44:49into the confederacy because you change the character of the confederacy if you just open the doors to anyone so they they realize the importance of that distinctiveness and to minimize divisive politics but when you think about early American political development you could have I mean the option of succession was always a real viable option as has been pointed out and it has a profound chilling effect on what's acceptable politically so if your membership in the union is voluntary and you don't like the way things are going you always have this exit option but once that option's taken away people could the majority could just run roughshod over your interest in rights and so the confederacy in other words things were operating along these lines by and large

45:54there's you know the two thirds vote to accept a new state that's different but even under a majority vote to accept to admit a new state into the union if you didn't like it as was the case with the you know north northeastern states with the acquisition of the territory from the Mexican war if you didn't like it you can leave so that would have a chilling effect on what your other states were going to impose on you now clause five stipulates the House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers and shall have the sole power of impeachment except this is in the confederate constitution that any judicial or other federal officer resident and acting solely within the limits of any state may be impeached by a vote of two thirds of both branches of the legislature thereof so they also once again this this corporate identity if you have a

46:58federal district judge taking over your school system your prisons whatever the case might be imposing on popular environmental policies you can impeach that judge and you could keep in peaching whoever they send down the way around that is to expand the jurisdiction of the federal judge or federal official but you could see this gives a powerful tool to the state and it would have a once again a profound chilling effect on what federal officers would do because you could kick them out you can impeach them you could remove them from your state jurisdiction yes but then again the jurisdiction issue what's the jurisdiction of a bureaucrat right but it would have application to more than one state if the bureaucrat has jurisdiction over many states or two states even then that official would not be susceptible to impeachment we are really running short on time

48:02let me just go through another few key points article one section six clause two this section provides at the congress may by law grant to the principal officers in each of the executive department to seat upon the floor of either house with the privilege of discussing any measures appertaining to his department now this innovation was a move or more accurately a turn towards a cabinet government in which the independent of the two branches of government were breached unlike a committee hearing where the executive department heads are questioned by legislatures this arrangement was more conducive to providing the executive branch opportunities to address the congress on executive branch terms article seven section seven clause two this provision provided that the Confederate president with the line item beat toe on appropriation bills it stipulates that the president may approve any appropriation or disapprove any other appropriation in the same

49:02bill in such case he shall in signing the bill designate the appropriations disapproved or he shall return a copy of such appropriations with his objections to the house in which the bill shall have originated and the same proceeding shall then be had as in a case of other bills disapproved by the president so the president has the line item veto coupled with each appropriations has to only address one area public policy and you could see that this is strengthening the executive branch and this was a response to the what was happening in American politics writers all these bills were you know loaded with pork barrel legislation and so on a couple more to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states with Indian tribes but neither this nor any other clause contained in the constitution shall ever be construed to delegate the power to congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce

50:08except for the purpose of furnishing lights beacons and boys and other a navigation upon the coast and the improvement of harbors and the removing of obstructions and river navigation and all which cases such duty shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby as maybe necessary to pay the cost and expenses thereof so internal improvements were really constrained within the Confederacy and those business interests that benefited from the internal improvements had to pay the cost and this is similar to the post office of the Confederacy had to be self-supporting let me just read a very brief quotation then I think we're going to have to break this is a senator boys who was at the Montgomery convention this is what he says about the post office of the Confederacy this is what he says about the post office of the United States and he took this thinking into Montgomery and incorporated it into the Confederate Constitution and he's having

51:12a discussion with Robert Tumbs on the floor of the Senate about the post office and the appropriations for the post office for the fiscal year of 1859 and this is what he writes that the parliament should be self-sustaining I assume as an axiom for why should one man be taxed to carry the letters of another there's no justice in it let those who send letters pay for them it is very convenient doubtless for the merchants literary men and professional men to have the hard working masses pay for their letters but it is not right let letters like merchandise be carried by private enterprise the service I have no doubt would be well and cheaply done for private enterprises always more efficient than government action indeed when I consider the immense patronage of this department as a states rights man opposed to too strong a federal government I see great advantage

52:14in getting rid of this patronage and thus simplifying the government end quote so this more or less was the thinking of the delegates in Montgomery and as you'll read through the Confederate Constitution it constrains constrains the Confederate government now what happens at the state level that's another issue as we all know state governments grow and expand and they can be just as impressive as the national government the difference is you have much more control over what happens at the state level okay and they also incorporated the bill of rights into the text and so on so essentially the Confederate Constitution is a reactionary document to downsize government and to make it more accountable to the states and in unambiguous language the states are the party to the compact not the Confederate people okay so thank you very much