Confederate States

Abstract

The constitution of the Confederate States—proclaimed by delegates from the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, who were afterwards joined by the representatives of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas—bears date February 4, 1861. By the terms of the constitution, all legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall be citizens of the Confederate States, and have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. But no person of foreign birth, and not a citizen of the Confederate States, shall be allowed to vote for any officer, civil or political, state or federal. No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained the age of twenty-five years, and be a citizen of the Confederate States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.