'States Rights' doomed Confederate nation

Part of a series on why the South lost the Civil War

WHEN THE FRAMERS of the Confederate Constitution met in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 5, 1861, they wrote a Constitution very much like that of the Union they were leaving, but with some serious changes. They set the term of the new president at six years and did not permit his re-election; they guaranteed slavery throughout the Confederate States, but prohibited the importation of new slaves; they restricted the power of their own central government while granting huge powers to the individual states under the doctrine of "States Rights."

By March 11, 1861, the new Constitution was approved and sent to the several states for ratification.

The States Rights concept was an integral part of the new Constitution. For example, the central government was forbidden to review the actions of individual state courts; it could not make internal improvements such as roads or harbors; the individual states were permitted to make agreements among themselves; and each state was allowed to maintain its own military force.

And thus, the new Confederate nation, well-intentioned and with a talented population, with enormous resources spread over a huge land mass, was doomed from the outset.

Under the guise of providing for more democracy and less central control, the new nation started without the most fundamental of all powers, that of a nation to defend itself. The South seemed to have all the attributes necessary to call itself a nation; they possessed a shared sense of a common destiny--freedom from an oppressive government. They were politically organized and had a constitution. They certainly had clearly defined boundaries. They had a military--an early call for volunteers had more than 100,000 sign up and that was several times more than the Union government army--and seemed able to defend themselves, but these volunteers all had allegiances to their individual states as opposed to a "national entity. "

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