Alabama | First printing of the Alabama Confederate Constitution

Alabama

Ordinances and Constitution of the State of Alabama, with the Constitution of the Provisional Government and of the Confederate States of America. Montgomery: Montgomery Advertiser Book and Job Printing Office, 1861

8vo (229 x 152 mm). Browned and stained, scattered foxing, sewing loose, some pages dog-eared. Original yellow printed wrappers; soiled, top of rear wrapper frayed, spine mostly gone.

First printing of the Alabama Confederate Constitution, and a very early printing of the constitution of the provisional government of the Confederate States of America. The first seventy-two pages record some fifty ordinances passed by the Alabama Legislature mostly relating to war measures, pages 72–112 contain the new Alabama constitution passed in January 1861 and adopted on 11 March, while pages 127–152 contain the actual Confederate constitution. Since the last ordinance is dated 20 March, it would seem that this volume was printed shortly thereafter. "The Alabama convention clearly identified the threat to slavery as the main reason for secession even if its ordinance did not use the word" (Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions, p. 163). Justification for its withdrawal from the Union was thus euphemistically phrased: "the election of Abraham Lincoln by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of Alabama."

Signed on front wrapper by Septimus Douglass Cabaniss, a Huntsville lawyer who served the Confederacy as an Alabama state legislator from 1861 to 1863, and also as a Colonel in the Intelligence Division of the Confederacy.

PROVENANCE

Septimus Douglass Cabaniss (signature on front wrapper)

REFERENCE:

Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions 33; Crandall 1455; Parrish & Willingham 2610; Sabin 57514