ch 2d) delegates
from Texas joined them. On the fourth day of its session the
national _slave-child_ was born, and christened "_Confederate States
of America_." The next day Jefferson Davis was elected President,
and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, Vice-President. Stephens
took the oath of office on the day following his election. Davis
arrived from Washington, and was, on the 18th, inaugurated the
first (and last) President of this Confederacy.

The next step was a permanent Constitution. With characteristic
celerity, this was prepared and adopted March 11, 1861, one week
after Lincoln became President of the United States, though the
Confederacy had been formed almost a month before his official term
commenced.

This instrument was modelled on the Constitution of the United
States.

It forbade the importation of negroes of the African race from any
foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or Territories
of the United States. Then following, for the first time probably
in the history of nations, the proposed new Republic dedicated
itself to eternal slavery, thus:

"No bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, or _law denying or
impairing_ the right of property in negro slaves, shall be
passed."(108)

Singularly enough, the astute friends of the institution of slavery,
knowing and avowing that it could not survive competition with the
free, well-paid labor necessary to manufacturing industries, and
knowing also that slavery was only adapted to rural pursuits, not
to skilled mechanical labor, and desiring to plant human slavery
permanently in the new nation, removed from all possibility of
competition with anything that might, by dignifying labor, build
up wealth as witnessed in the great Northern cities and thus endanger
slavery, sought to protect it by a clause incorporated in their
organic act, prohibiting any form of _tariff_ to protect home
industries.

"Nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations
be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry."(109)

Cotton was ever to be "King" in the Confederacy.

Mississippi's "Declaration of the Immediate Causes" justifying
secession with perfect honesty announced:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of
slavery--the greatest material interest in the world. . . . A blow
at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has
been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of re