Framing the Solid South: The State Constitutional Conventions of Secession, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1860-1902.(Book review)

During each cycle, the delegates in the earliest state conventions not only provided a constitutional template for later conventions but also worked directly with delegates in other states. [...]once the state constitutional convention was determined to be a legitimate process during the first wave of conventions during secession, Unionists and Republicans who opposed the measures introduced on the eve of the Civil War borrowed the tactic from their political enemies. [...]the Confederate constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama, undermined this vision of states' rights and enshrined a constitutional order in which "in the South's new fundamental law, all the power over slavery resided in the central state authority, and the web of constitutional protections ensured that slaveholders owed their allegiance to the national government" (p. 119). Part 4 explores the final wave of constitutional conventions that undid the democratic reforms of Reconstruction and disenfranchised African American voters under the guise of a conservative "Redemption" of southern states from what they perceived as subjugation on the part of the overly active federal government (p. 18).