The other 13th amendment...

If you look in the US Constitution, this is the text you will read for the 13th amendment.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

but, there was a different 13th amendment that was in the process of ratification before the civil war which was supported by President Lincoln as well as his predecessor President Buchanan. Called the Corwin Amendment, the text of that amendment went like this:

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress 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."

www.kentucky.com...=cpy

The hope was that the amendment would convince the southern states to stop talking secession and come back into the fold so to speak and just weeks before the civil war erupted, President Lincoln had sent a copy to the states asking that they ratify it, saying that Buchanan had approved the amendment. Which some states did do. Although, I believe most, if not all rescinded their ratification since.

What's kind of mind blowing though is that this amendment is still on the books, with no statue of limitations... In 1963, for some strange reason, Texas Republican Henry Stollenwerck introduced a joint resolution into the Texas House of Representatives to ratify this amendment. It could still become a part of our constitution if 2/3 of the states were to ratify it, which is highly unlikely. It's also quite questionable just what effect that would have, since we now have a 13th amendment that prohibits slavery.

My question though is...
why the 1963 attempt to ratify in Texas? Although domestic institutions is usually interpreted to mean the institution of slavery, could it also be carried over to some other kind of institution, like marriage or something?

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: dawnstar
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I had no idea ATS was an entity back when the original 13th amendment was formed.

a reply to: dawnstar
Did you hit ENTER too soon? Sucks when that happens.

originally posted by: dawnstar NOTICE: AboveTopSecret.com management is now enforcing new standards for the opening posts of threads. Opening posts that contain minimal content, links with little or no explanation, YouTube videos with no commentary, images with little or no commentary, and similar nominal content may be removed without warning or explanation. If your topic is important to you, make sure you explain why, with links and supporting material so that our members may offer more relevant contributions, and ultimately, better threads. In fact, if you have less to say than this simple notice, then you probably do not have enough to start a new thread. Thank you for your assistance in helping to create great threads on ATS. When you click this form-field, this message will disappear.

I am almost positive that this was not the original 13th amendment...I'm calling BS

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme

originally posted by: dawnstar
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I had no idea ATS was an entity back when the original 13th amendment was formed.

It was the original draft. Marty McFly left the rough draft behind, inside of a "sports almanac". Unfortunately, the founding fathers had not the foresight to understand McFly's writings.

sorry, I accidentally hit the enter key somehow...
it's fixed now though... hope someone enjoys it?

a reply to: dawnstar

why the 1963 attempt to ratify in Texas? Although domestic institutions is usually interpreted to mean the institution of slavery, could it also be carried over to some other kind of institution, like marriage or something?

I would think that it would be introduced in 1963 in order to derail the impending Civil Rights Act. Integrated states would remain integrated.

Marriage laws would be effected. If state had laws against racial mixing, they would remain. If state law allowed 21 year old men to marry one or more 10 year old girls...

If state law established a particular official state religion...

If state law forbad talking against that religion...

Legal cases would have arisen over those laws and probably reached the Supreme Court. "Activist Judges" could ruin the states' fun.

a reply to: pthena

from what I am reading, it kind of sounds like " domestic institutions" is something similar to what some now are referring as "state's rights"??
if so, it's kind of ironic, since if the south had chosen to go ahead with this amendment instead of going to war....
they would have had their state's right...

a reply to: dawnstar

I finally got around to watching the movie Lincoln a couple of nights ago.

He was pulling some serious political tricks in order to get the 13th Amendment passed before the war ended. If the war ended and the former Confederate states had been back in the Union, it may have never passed.

That's the plot at least, I don't know how accurate it is.

a reply to: pthena
he may also have been the author of the Corwin Amendment...

Curiously, the amendment’s namesake – Ohio Rep. Thomas Corwin – was neither its originator nor even its primary sponsor. He inherited the proposal as the Republican chairman of the “Committee of Thirty Three,” a hastily-convened ad hoc legislative committee in the House that handled compromise proposals to avert the secession crisis. Its original House sponsor was committee member Charles Francis Adams, and even he received the text from the Senate version introduced by Lincoln’s soon-to-be Secretary of State William H. Seward. How Seward came to propose the measure is itself a matter of historical uncertainty, though a decent amount of evidence points to none other than Lincoln himself. As Lee’s article details and surviving letters attest, Seward introduced the amendment to the Senate following a conversation with Republican operative Thurlow Weed. A long time Seward ally, Lincoln summoned Weed to Springfield for a meeting on December 20, 1860 to talk about the prospective compromise measures being floated in Congress. Weed returned to New York with a short memorandum from Lincoln outlining his thoughts on the fugitive slave clause, though saying little about a constitutional protection for slavery. He also apparently told Seward “verbally, the substance of the suggestion [Lincoln] prepared for the consideration of the Republican members,” as Seward informed Lincoln in a letter of acknowledgement dated December 26. Seward described Weed’s “verbal” conveyance as a resolution stating “That the constitution should never be altered so as to authorise Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the state” – a clear description of the Corwin Amendment, which he presented the same day to the Republican members of the Senate’s compromise “Committee of Thirteen.”

philmagness.com...