Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/408

370 ing to the views of the South under the United States Constitution. In other respects the compact thus written, from which resulted the Confederate States of America, was modeled upon the great instrument adopted by the founders of the United States. Mr. Davis, who had no direct part in framing this supreme law of the government, declared his belief that it was a model of wise, deliberate statesmanship, and referring to the question so prominent in the discussions of North and South, he remarks, &quot;With regard to slavery and the slave trade the provisions of the Constitution furnished an effective answer to the assertion so often made that the Confederacy was founded on slavery and intended to perpetuate and extend it. Property in slaves already existing was recognized and guaranteed just as it was by the Constitution of the United States, and the rights of such property in the common territories were protected against any such hostile discrimination as had been attempted in the Union. But the extension of slavery, in the only practical sense of that phrase, was more distinctly and effectually precluded by the Confederate than by the Federal Constitution. The further importation of negroes from any country other than the slaveholding States and territories of the United States was peremptorily prohibited, and Congress was further endowed with the power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State or territory not belonging to the Confederacy. Mr. Stephens, next in official rank, said concerning this constitution, &quot; The whole document negatives the idea which so many have been active in endeavoring to put in the enduring form of history, that the Convention at Montgomery was nothing but a set of conspirators, whose object was the overthrow of the principles of the Constitution of the United States and the creation of a great slave oligarchy instead of the free institutions thereby secured and guaranteed.

Having completely organized the government and put