,- Sniitlx'rn Ilixtorn-til Society Papers.
was changed, "All legislative powers herein delegated shall be vested in a congress," &c.
The two constitutions, in parallel columns, are printed as an ap- pendix to my " Memoir of Joseph E. Johnston," R. H. Woodward & Co., Baltimore, 1891, and the alterations of the Constitution of the United States are shown in that of the Confederate States in ital- ics, and I assert here that every amendment was an improvement on the original instrument. The Confederate statesmen, who then in- cluded the leading minds in America, did not propose any change in the government, and they only amended the old Constitution so as to make it conform to the construction which they put upon it, and which was consistent with the origin and history and intention of the original Constitution. They hoped that if war could be avoided, all the other States, except New England ones, would corm- in and form an amended Union under the amended Constitution. The loss of New England they were prepared to bear in a resigned and Christian spirit, while they congratulated New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on their new associates, who they would find so agree- able to live with. I am bound to say that this Confederate hope was superficial and baseless. They never did understand that the war was not for abolition of slavery, but was a war for dominion ot the strong over the weak; of conquest, of selfishness, of avarice. Abolition and humanity were the pretexts; preservation of the Union the mockery, but the reality was the money there was in it, and the money there would be in it when the rich, productive, agricultural South should be made serfs to the vigorous, active, intelligent, greedy North.
The war was a contractors' war. They pushed it on to get con- tracts, and then pressed it further to make those contracts good.
But the Constitution of the Confederate States was a copy of that of the United States, amended as I have shown.
Article III, section i, of the old Constitution provides that "the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." The amended Constitution adopts this section without change of a word, except "Confederate" is substi- tuted for "United."
This is the only change as appears by the official copy of the Con- stitution of the Confederate States, now before me, printed by the Congress in Richmond in 1864.
I am thus particular, for what purports to be the Constitution ot
