hi, i’m bronni, and am currently studying for my a-levels, (erm, kind of like an english version of whatever test you take in your last year in school)

one of my subject choices this year is history, and next year we’re going to study the American Civil War, and we were told that we had to prepare a presentation over the summer on an aspect of this war, and my lovely teacher gave me the american constitution.

i am quite excited to start learning about this whole era, but i’ve pretty much never done any American history whatsoever.. and i don’t exactly understand the constitution very much..

if there is anyone generous enough (and with a bit of time on their hands) to tell me ITT which parts of the constitution are relevant to this war- and also i think the confederacy made up their own one, and if anyone could tell me what they specifically changed and why, i’d be eternally grateful..

i know it’s a pain but will any of you pleaseplease help me??

ily all lots

xxxxxx

maybe, depends how helpful people are..

also just to add, copy and pasting from wikipedia is not acceptable

Wikipedia’s actually pretty good for this…

Quick summary would be that the 10th Amendment says that any power not given to the federal government is reserved to the states, so the slave states argued that the feds shouldn’t interfere in their slaving.

Then when Lincoln was elected President the Confederate states seceded, bringing the Preamble to the Constitution into relevance; in his inaugural address Lincoln argued that the phrase “to form a more perfect union” implied that secession was illegal – that the federal government had been established as having power over the people directly rather than being an agreement between the states as the Articles of Confederacy had been.

The Confederacy wrote their own constitution, but it was mostly verbatim from the US constitution. They added some protection for slavery and added some rights for the states, took some other rights for the federal (confederal?) government. Full explanation here.

That help?

man-man edited this message on 08/28/2009 3:50PM

Preamble to the Constitution – introduction, ie first section of the dogreat timesent

inaugural address – speech a president makes before taking office

“to form a more perfect union” (is this in the constitution?)

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings
of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America. 

Yeah, it’s in the dogreat timesent.

verbatim – word for word

ghax edited this message on 08/28/2009 4:47PM

Raepdog Posted:

I can show you my paper on it, it has some stuff on the war that could help get you ideas flowing.

that’d be lovely!!!

tubmail me or facebook or whatever

xxxxx ily

Hi bronnih good luck on your A-levels and pls unblock me from facebook!

Americans, they fought european imperialism to get their independence but then ended up having a large empire themselves.

Sarcasm Inc Posted:

Don’t forget to include a piece on amendments to the Constitution. And an analysis on whether America as a whole still holds true to the values and ideas espoused in tit’s first dogreat timesent.

That last bit is particularly interesting. You find that a lot of the values that the religious right is trying to push are completely unconstitutional, especially when it comes to civil liberties such as gay marriage and so-called ‘family values’. They claim to love america and all it stands for, and yet their ideals don’t seem to go beyond a sort of blindly patriotic nationalist fervour.

I’m somewhat of a libertarian myself (although not esp. politically), and i am a big admirer of the american constitution. I think that it’s an amazingly elegant and concise dogreat timesent.

Unfortunately, i can’t help you too much with the history; my interests are more philosophical. But in order to make learning fun, i suggest you watch some episodes of the show ‘Bull****’ by penn and teller; they do a lot of episodes about constitutional rights, in a lolerific way. Also, check out www.nationstates.com – i think it would be a great tool for a presentation about how govt. policy works.

kittiejenn Posted:

Schoolhouse rock. Log in to see images!

bronnih Posted:

if there is anyone generous enough (and with a bit of time on their hands) to tell me ITT which parts of the constitution are relevant to this war- and also i think the confederacy made up their own one, and if anyone could tell me what they specifically changed and why, i’d be eternally grateful.

As was noted, the federal government had no authority to tell the states what to do wrt slavery; it could only pbum laws regarding the importation of slaves (that’s in the Constitution).

The invasion of a foreign country which Lincoln initiated was not only a war of aggression but unconstitutional—no declaration was ever pbumed by Congress. Further, Lincoln the Petty Tyrant arbitrarily suspended habeas corpus (with a fishy rubber-stamp by a lack-of-quorum Congress)—which only Congress can do. He had newspapers that disagreed with him shut down. He tried to get the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court arrested for treason for reminding Lincoln that he had no authority to suspend habeas corpus.

As for secession—there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent it, so there’s really no relevant part there.

The CSA Constitution did protect slavery and did set a limit on all internal improvement schemes, i.e. government make-work programs for infrastructure.