Loi Pham

Constitution of the Confederate States; March 11, 1861

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp#a1
The interpretation I chose is the Constitution of the Confederate States; March 11, 1861
written by Howell Cobb and approved by representatives of States of South Carolina, Georgia,
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. This is a government document and it is a
primary source, I expect to learned a lot about the demands and the purposes of the Confederate
States for writing this. This government document carries a similarity to the Constitution with
rulings of how representatives is chosen and how the vice president would take control in the
case that the president is absent. This government document almost mirrors the Constitution but
it does have some very differences. One minor but importance detail is the mention of the rules
in how it is directing to the Confederate States and not the States. The government document
directed the massage into that direct, to me, is to make it clear that these states want the power to
govern their own state.
Article IV have numbers laws regarding slaves, the different in this part is that the
Confederate Constitution mention slaves directly unlikely the constitution which never say
slaves directly. That is just another small detail that I find interest, but of course we have to talk
about the demands that separates the confederate states from the government power of the
Constitution. In Article I and part of section 2, the states make the ruling that the confederate
states are the ones to appoint taxes and not the central government. The little differences come
together to make the reasoning of the confederate states in writing their own constitution is to
move away from the control of the central government and they want the ability to taxes and

make their own laws. The intended audience of this government document have to be congress
man of the North in order to make it clear that these southern states wants to develop their own
constitution. I think is source is reliable because the author is the president of the confederate
congress and the time stamp watches the events of up raising in the south. I found this source
valuable because it meet my expectation and taught me what I wanted to learned, which is the
demands and purpose of the confederate states in putting together this constitution.