Content area
Abstract
Sectional conflict and the Civil War unleashed a torrent of constitutional conventions in the American South. From 1860 to the turn of the twentieth century, southerners revised state constitutions at more than four times the rate of the nation. Delegates gathered in three waves of development: Secession (1860-1863); Reconstruction (1864-1869); and Redemption (1870-1902). Each wave flowed into and influenced the next. Seceding by convention necessitated reunion by convention, and after extensive amendment by Republicans, southern conservatives, or "Redeemers," rewrote constitutions again to purge reforms, retrench state governments, resist federal control, and secure white supremacy.
This dissertation examines the causes and consequences of this unprecedented series of state conventions using comparative historical analysis of southern and non-southern cases. It is well understood that secession, war, and reunion altered the course of American constitutional development, but few have recognized that the conventions of the era also forever changed the process of state constitution making in the South. In the four decades after 1902, the convention was almost completely abandoned as a means of amendment; and other methods, such as the initiative and referendum, which flourished elsewhere, were also absent in Dixie. This limited the ability of southern citizens to debate fundamental principles or make needed revisions. So the three waves of constitutional conflict actually undermined popular sovereignty in the region and perpetuated the rule of authoritarian state governments.
The heightened era of southern revision also affected the character and authority of state constitutions. One criticism of state constitutions is that they are so littered with unnecessary provisions that they appear less constitutional than the federal document. In the South this tendency was aggravated by the bitter competition between political regimes that used amendment of the organic law to secure their own policy preferences and power. As a result, the region had the longest, most detailed, and least respected constitutions in the nation by the early 1900s. Finally, because the southern conventions of the late nineteenth century were products of conflict with the national government, they offer a new perspective on the shifting boundaries of federalism and the path of American political development.
