Corwin Amendment

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The Corwin Amendment was, and remains, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. Ohio Republican Congressman Thomas Corwin offered 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, including "persons held to labor or service" (a reference to slavery). In particular, the Corwin Amendment was intended to prohibit the Congress from banning slavery in those states whose laws permitted it. 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 H. Seward of New York. However, the newly formed Confederate States of America was totally committed to independence and ignored the Corwin Amendment.

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[edit] Text

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.[1]

[edit] Proposal by the Congress

On February 28, 1861, the United States House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 133–65.[2] Days later, on March 2, the United States Senate also adopted it, 24–12.[3] Since proposed constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority, 132 votes were required in the House and 24 in the Senate. Since seven slave states had already decided to secede from the Union at that point, those states ignored the proposed amendment.

Outgoing President James Buchanan, a Democrat, publicly endorsed the resolution. However, Presidents play no formal role in the Constitutional amendment process.[4]

[edit] Ratification actions by the states

Pursuant to Article V of the Constitution, consideration of the Corwin Amendment then shifted to the state legislatures. Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, declared 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."[5] On May 13, 1861, the Ohio General Assembly became the first to ratify the amendment. The next to ratify was the Maryland General Assembly in January, 1862. Later that year, Illinois lawmakers approved the amendment while they were sitting in session as a state constitutional convention rather than as a legislature, thus causing some to see this particular ratification as possibly invalid.

Although Connecticut, Kentucky, and New York also considered the amendment at the time, they rejected it. Technically, though, the Corwin Amendment is still alive and awaiting its chance to become part of the Constitution, but the number of state legislatures that would need to ratify it has climbed to 38.

[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 Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, which finally both abolished slavery in all sections of the nation and granted Congress the power to enforce its terms. A competing theory suggests that if a later amendment conflicting with an already-ratified Corwin Amendment were to have been incorporated into the Constitution, then the later amendment

(A) not only could have but should have explicitly repealed the Corwin Amendment (as when the Twenty first Amendment explicitly repealed the Eighteenth Amendment); or
(B) would have been deemed, by mere inference, to modify or completely obliterate an already-ratified Corwin Amendment.

Corwin Amendment supporters seem to have believed that it would not have changed 1860s law other than to have restricted the Congress's future powers. It further appears that supporters regarded the amendment as simply a reiteration of principles already contained in the Constitution. That view, however, contrasts with the position espoused by some abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass and Lysander Spooner, who argued that the Constitution did not, in fact, truly protect slavery.

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 that 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] Source

  • Lee, R. Alton. "The Corwin Amendment in the Secession Crisis", Ohio Historical Quarterly 1961 70(1): 1-26

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Corwin Amendment appears officially in Volume 12 of the Statutes at Large at page 251.
  2. ^ Congressional Globe, p. 1285
  3. ^ Congressional Globe, p. 1403
  4. ^ The Supreme Court ruled in Hollingsworth v. Virginia (1798) that the President's signature is not needed in order for a proposed Constitutional amendment to be adopted.
  5. ^ The reference to "implied constitutional law" pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in the Dred Scott case.

[edit] External links

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