What’s the Glory in the Corwin Story?

Here we go! Another installment in my Slaughtering Sacred Cows series. Last time I took on Winston Churchill and it went pretty well with very few nastygrams except for that text from the Queen Mum that was not even close to being on topic (and was highly inappropriate). Anyway this time I’m going to take on something that for a major part of the population is held to be sacred and beyond question. That is, the Union cause during the War Between the States better known to the smattering of Americans who are interested in it as the American Civil War. Now I don’t have to spend a lot of time setting this one up. We all at least remember some of what we were “taught” back in school about the war, (through the haze of testosterone run amok, or estrogen for my seven female readers) and how the North fought the South to end slavery. It makes a cozy picture in that it puts the Union on the side of good and the Confederacy in the camp of pretty bad but not totally contemptible, thus allowing Southerners to wallow in shame without losing every last scrap of their self-esteem.  Like so many other watered down history lessons we have a good versus bad picture that makes the history easy to swallow. Unfortunately once you learn a little bit about the subject you find that it can be a little difficult to digest. As a yumpkin, lil’ Grossy was taught these lessons too and I more or less bought into them until my formal schooling was over and I started my real education.

First off reader, if you’ve been paying any attention at all you’ll know that Lincoln was far, far more interested in maintaining the nation’s status quo than he ever was in ending slavery. He wanted to keep slavery from entering the new territories but as for the original Southern states he was in the swim with slavery going on indefinitely. Granted, Abe certainly considered slavery to be a moral wrong but he had such a fetish when it came to the Union that he was willing to allow slavery to continue. We’ll leave aside Jefferson’s explicit statements about the states being permitted to leave the Union if the Federal government impinges on the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s for another post. By someone else. But consider this little snippet from the Abe-ster from a letter written to Horace Greeley in 1862. Now you should have read this somewhere by now but if I’m breaking it to you for the first time then this is kind of like we’re going to the prom. I guess.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

The dude just could not let the Union go. You know how you have that buddy who dates a girl for like a month, and he thinks he’s in love, and she dumps him, and then he just can’t let her go, and he starts writing her bad poetry, and makes you drive along with him as he drives past her house, and then you look over and there’s no one in the passenger seat and you realize that it’s just been you in the car all along, and you’re alone going on these weird missions to drive past this girl’s house even though you never even learned her middle name? You know what I mean?………….. Reader? Well that’s sort of like Abe during the Civil War.

But this post isn’t just about Abe Lincoln. No reader, there’s another topic in this post but sometimes it takes me a while to bring it around town. I want to talk about the Corwin Amendment, or as we almost called it, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Wha, wha, wha? That’s right reader, it wasn’t just Abe who was willing to let slavery exist in order to keep the Union all cozy and together, it was members of both houses of Congress, North and South. The Amendment was offered by Ohio Representative Thomas Corwin as a way to keep the Southern states from seceding so in a sense it told the slaves that while years from now average people will think that the North fought the war to free you, as of right now in 1861 you can go and shit in your hat. It was actually passed by the 36th Congress with a vote of 133 to 65 and states the following:

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.

That “persons held to labor or service” part isn’t referring to some “ethnic gentleman” you’re paying under the table to cut your grass. Oh no, they’re talking slaves there. So there it is. The Northern Congress was willing to do whatever it took to keep the slave states in the Union and yet somehow this fact seems to have been lost to history.

Back to Abe. In no less important a speech than his first inaugural he mentions the Corwin Amendment and says this:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service…[H]olding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

He also says this in the same speech.

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

So there’s the Great Emancipator weighing in. Doesn’t sound like he’s in the mood to do much manicpatin’ right there. Abe came around over time and did in fact take the position that slavery should be abolished but next time you look at a penny (five dollar bills are so hard to come by) spare a moment and think about the Corwin Amendment which almost became part of our Constitution and yet is about as well understood by most people as escrow.

H.R. Gross