First. Immediate secession of States.
Second. A convention to meet at Montgomery, Alabama, not later than February 15th, to organize a Confederacy.
To prevent hostile legislation under the changed and more loyal impulses of the President and his reconstructed Cabinet, the cotton States Senators should remain awhile in their places, to "keep the hands of Buchanan tied."(107)
This cabal appointed Senators Jefferson Davis, Slidell, and Mallory "to carry out the objects of the meeting."
Thus, beneath the "Dome of the Capitol," treason was plotted by Senators and Representatives who still held their seats and official places, and still received their pay from the United States Treasury, for the sole purpose of enabling them the better to accomplish the end sought. Think of the prospective President of the "Confederate States of America," their future Minister to the Court of France, and their future Secretary of the Navy, plotting secretly in the Capitol at Washington to destroy the Union! But these were treasonable times.
Through resolution of the Mississippi Legislature, the Montgomery Convention was hastened, and it met February 4, instead of February 15, 1861, as suggested by the Washington caucus of Southern Congressmen. The delegates from the six seceded States east of the Mississippi assembled, and a little later (March 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)