[Note: Paragraphs referred to are repeated at the end of this article.]

      In these days of renewed interest in states rights and the correction of what are viewed as fundamental failings of our federal government it is instructive to consider just how long these issues have existed. In that regard, rather than relying upon individual speeches and writings, I suggest the Constitution of the Confederate States of America can better serve this purpose.

      It can better serve this purpose in that the political leadership of many states agreed upon its contents and wording. On the other hand actual secession was a more complex issue than correcting issues so the observation that only eleven states signed it does negate its value. As a hypothetical example, Ohio could not seceed for military reasons unless Kentucky had seceeded.

      As the story of the civil war fades into history it underlying causes shift further and further from economic inequities and focus upon slavery. The Confederate States Constitution aids in dispelling that notion in noting that Article I, Section 9, paragraph (1) prohibits the importation of slaves into the country as was already a constitutional provision of the United States Constitution.

      The Confederate States Constitution specifically addresses and corrects these economic inequities. For example Art. I, Sec. 8, para. (3) is essentially the same as the US Constitution save that it prohibits discriminatory economic purposes when spending federal money.

      Matters like this go back to the Erie Canal. That canal fostered industrial economic development. That may have seemed far-sighted but only partially so and then only in hindsight. At the time it was done because certain people and certain states gained from this improvement.

      Today, this is still one of our recurring and divisive issues. We see it in protective tariffs to protect particular industries and to promote others.

      This paragraph goes on to require the people that benefit from the few interstate activities permitted to be the ones who pay for it. This prohibited the taxes of all the states from being used to benefit a few industries.

      Under the prohibition of bounties (rewards, things freely given) in para. (1) in Sec. 8 we find loan guaranties and subsidies for particular industries, such as the auto industry in the matter of Chrysler. Only a few years after the War between the States we found railroads being given land for laying track, which created a major divisive in the country for decades afterwards.

      The above reflects the response to what we still find in the textbooks, that there was the industrialized north and the agrarian south. When the US Government benefitted a particular industry it was also benefitting the states with those industries. Further the industries and states that benefitted did not pay for those improvements.

      The emphasis on waterways reflects the fact that they were the railroads and interstate highways of commerce of the time. A similar situation today would be if interstate highways were built only in the northern states but with tariffs raised from all the states. While it is granted we carry it a bit too far today builing interstate highways in Hawaii, there is a more basic question that we have not generally answered today. Should the federal government or the users pay for such things?

      The northern states got networks of canals, improved waterways and harbors, paid for by the revenues collected in all of the states. The states in which those improvements were made obtained the financial benefits of those improvements. And let us be frank about it, times have not changed and some of the increased earnings from those improvements went back to the congressmen who voted for them, graft, corruption or campaign contributions, whatever it was called in those days.

      Paragraph (7) makes it a requirement that the post office be self-supporting. That is a principle the US did not get around to until over a century later and still has some difficulty in making it happen. It continues the theme that the users should pay for the service.

      The CS Consitution recognized a fact of human nature or at least the nature of political humans, that despite the best laid prohibition a politician could find a way around it. Thus we find in Sec. 9, Para. (9) a requirement that all appropriations of money have a two thirds majority in place of the simple majority in the US Constitution.

      Paragraph (10) closes off another avenue of circumventing the constitution, prohibiting added payments after a specific price has been agreed upon and paid.

      To close another loophole, para. (20) implement a variation upon the line item veto. In this form it requires each bill to have only one subject and prohibits a misleading title. This problem has bedeviled the US government from the beginning in that the worst possible and unrelated provision can be attached to the most praiseworthy bill.

      We have always had pork barrel items attached to important bills such as those to keep the government functioning. These pork barrel items benefitting a particular state or business at a cost to all the other states. This is the third way they are prohibited by the CS Constitution.

      The CS Constitution clearly demonstrates the real reason for secession, that it was purely economic. It makes the changes felt required to prevent a similar cause for secession from recurring. It duplicated the slavery prohibitions in the US constitution at the time.

      More than demonstrating the real reason for secession it in fact corrected many of the faults we find in the US Constitution today. At this point we have only addressed two of them with a quasi-independent post office and the line item veto. The uncorrected items continue to raise division within the country today.

      Far from these being modern issues, they go back so far that solutions were well defined by the time the CS Constitution was written. Reigning in a strong central government has long been a concern in this country and there has been only one serious attempt to address the issue that ended in failure.

Article I

Section 8

(1) To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for revenue, necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States; but no bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry; and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the Confederate States.

(3) To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes; but neither this, nor any other clause contained in the Constitution, shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors and the removing of obstructions in river navigation; in all which cases such duties shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby as may be necessary to pay the costs and expenses thereof.

7) To establish post offices and post routes; but the expenses of the Post Office Department, after the Ist day of March in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-three, shall be paid out of its own revenues.

Section 9

(1) The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.

(9) Congress shall appropriate no money from the Treasury except by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses, taken by yeas and nays, unless it be asked and estimated for by some one of the heads of departments and submitted to Congress by the President; or for the purpose of paying its own expenses and contingencies; or for the payment of claims against the Confederate States, the justice of which shall have been judicially declared by a tribunal for the investigation of claims against the Government, which it is hereby made the duty of Congress to establish.

(10) All bills appropriating money shall specify in Federal currency the exact amount of each appropriation and the purposes for which it is made; and Congress shall grant no extra compensation to any public contractor, officer, agent, or servant, after such contract shall have been made or such service rendered.

(20) Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.