Constitution of the Confederate States of America

The Preamble to the Confederate Constitution begins: "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character..." The constitution contained many of the phrases and clauses which had led to disagreement among the states in the original Union, including a Supremacy Clause, a Commerce Clause and a Necessary and Proper Clause. The Confederate Congress had powers almost identical to the US Congress, however all the minor differences added together amounted to a much more constrained federal government than the US government of the times and of today. The Confederate Constitution contained clauses which increased the powers of the Executive Branch, such as the line item veto power given to the president. However, they also granted essentially a line item veto to the Senate and Congress by limiting each bill to one issue written in the name. By making both the executive and legislative branches of government more powerful they did more to tie the hands of the Federal government overall-enhancing the planned ineffectiveness of the central government, one of the founding premises of the US Constitution. The framers of the Confederate Constitution, having studied the various constitutional crises which had arisen in the United States between 1787 and 1860, tried to revise the constitution to eliminate the grievances which had been raised in that period.