Corwin amendment
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The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. Ohio Republican Congressman Thomas Corwin proposed the amendment during the closing days of the 2nd Session of the 36th Congress in the form of House (Joint) Resolution No. 80. The proposed—but unratified—amendment would forbid any attempt to subsequently amend the Constitution to empower the Federal government to "abolish or interfere" with the "domestic institutions" of the states (a delicate way, in the 1800s, of referring to slavery). In particular, the Corwin Amendment was intended to prohibit Congress from banning the practice of slavery in those states whose laws permitted that practice. Offering the amendment was a last-ditch effort to avert the outbreak of the Civil War. Corwin's resolution emerged as the House of Representatives' version of an earlier, identical proposal in the Senate offered by William Seward of New York. However, the Confederate States of America were totally committed to independence and were not persuaded by the Corwin Amendment, inasmuch as they were already in the process of establishing a central government of their own.
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[edit] Text of the amendment
The Corwin Amendment appears officially in Volume 12 of the Statutes at Large at page 251. Its text is as follows:
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.
[edit] Proposal by Congress
On February 28, 1861, the United States House of Representatives narrowly approved the resolution by a vote of 133–65 (Page 1285, Congressional Globe). On March 2, 1861, it was barely adopted by the United States Senate with a vote of 24–12 (Page 1403, Congressional Globe). Since proposed constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority, 132 votes were required in the House and 24 in the Senate. Seven Confederate states had already declared their secession from the Union at that point; they had joined a new country and ignored the amendment.
The resolution was endorsed by outgoing President James Buchanan (the President plays no formal role in the amendment process.)
The Corwin Amendment had the distinction of being the only constitutional amendment offered to the states by Congress to have an actual numerical designation prematurely assigned to it by Congress. It appears as "Article Thirteen" in the proposing Congressional resolution.
[edit] Ratification actions in the states
Consideration of the Corwin Amendment then shifted to the state legislatures. In Lincoln's first inaugural address, he made reference to the Corwin Amendment, declaring his support for the proposed amendment: "[H]olding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable." The initial ratification of the Corwin Amendment was from the Ohio General Assembly on May 13, 1861, and the second ratification was by Maryland in January 1862. The Illinois state constitutional convention at the time also approved it, but that action is of questionable validity. The Amendment was considered in Connecticut, Kentucky, and New York, but never passed. There was never a likelihood it would win the approval of the necessary three-fourths of the states.
[edit] Effects
Apart from its subject matter, the Corwin Amendment also raises an important issue of constitutional theory, namely whether a democratic constitution can prohibit certain future amendments to itself through what amounts to an entrenched clause. When viewed as an entrenched clause, the Corwin Amendment—had it been ratified—might well have been construed to prohibit the later, true 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, which finally did abolish slavery outright uniformly in all sections of the nation and which granted power to Congress to enforce its terms. A competing theory suggests that were a later amendment—contrary to an already-ratified Corwin Amendment—to be incorporated into the Constitution, then:
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- (A) the Corwin Amendment could, and should, be explicitly repealed by that later amendment (as was the case with the 18th Amendment's explicit repeal by the 21st Amendment); or
- (B) by mere inference, the later amendment would be deemed to modify or completely obliterate an already-ratified Corwin Amendment.
The Corwin Amendment's 19th Century supporters seem to have believed that the Corwin Amendment would not have changed the status of the law as it existed in the 1860s other than simply to restrict Congress' future powers. It further appears that supporters regarded the Corwin Amendment as a mere reiteration of principles that were already contained in the original Constitution. That view, however, contrasts with the position espoused by some abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Lysander Spooner, who argued that slavery, in fact, was not truly protected in the original Constitution.
Several other suggested constitutional amendments, such as those included in the proposed Crittenden Compromise, likewise aimed to forestall the secession of additional states beyond those which had already done so. Most such proposals involved a return to the terms of the Missouri Compromise, but Republicans defeated all attempts to allow any further advance of slavery into the territories.
[edit] References
- Lee, R. Alton. "The Corwin Amendment in the Secession Crisis" Ohio Historical Quarterly 1961 70(1): 1-26
[edit] See also
- List of amendments to the United States Constitution
- List of proposed amendments to the United States Constitution
- Unsuccessful attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution
