of Interior (Vacancy); Secretary of War, L. P.
Walker; Secretary of Navy, John Perkins, Jr.; Postmaster-General, H.
T. Ebett; Attorney-General, J. P. Benjamin.

The Constitution of the Confederate Government did not differ so very
radically from the Federal Constitution. The following were the chief
points:

"1. The importation of African negroes from any foreign country
other than the slave-holding States of the Confederate States is
hereby forbidden, and Congress is required to pass such laws as
shall effectually prevent the same.

"2. Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction
of slaves from any State not a member of this Confederacy.

"The Congress shall have power:

"1. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for
revenue necessary to pay the debts and carry on the government of
the Confederacy, and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be
uniform throughout the Confederacy.

"A slave in one State escaping to another shall be delivered,
upon the claim of the party to whom said slave may belong, by the
Executive authority of the State in which such slave may be
found; and in any case of abduction or forcible rescue, full
compensation, including the value of slave, and all costs and
expense, shall be made to the party by the State in which such
abduction or rescue shall take place.

"2. The government hereby instituted shall take immediate step's
for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it
and their late confederates of the United States in relation to
the public property and public debt at the time of their
withdrawal from them; these States hereby declaring it to be
their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to
the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations
of that Union, upon principles of right, justice, equity, and
good faith."

At first blush it would appear that the new government had not been
erected upon the slave question; that it had gone as far as the
Federal Government to suppress the foreign slave-trade; and that
nobler and sublimer ideas and motives had inspired and animated the
Southern people in their movement for a new government. But the men
who wrote the Confederate platform knew what they were about. They
knew that to avoid the charge that would certainly be made aga