By Judge Robert T. Mann*

As ruckuses go, South Carolina's lone and stubborn refusal to lower from its capitol flagpole the battle flag of the Army that surrendered at Appomattox in 1865 beats firing on Fort Sumter. But it makes life difficult for those of us Southerners who live in coastal Florida surrounded by Yankees.

I am determined to say a few kind words for the South and the Confederate States of America. The Confederates have a history worth noting.

Between the election of Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, and his inauguration in March of 1861, South Carolina seceded and was followed by the coastal states to the south and west. Those states sent delegates to Montgomery to fashion a new government.

South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were there for the provisional constitution, and Texas arrived soon after in time for the "permanent" constitution in March.

You will have read that the Confederacy safeguarded slavery. You probably will not have read that it prohibited the importation of slaves except from the slaveholding states of the United States.

And unless you got into the sparse literature on the Confederate constitution, you would have missed the second major point on which the Confederate States differed from the United States: They put restraints on Congress still missing from our federal constitution. Two of those restraints -- the item veto and the single-subject requirement -- are common in state constitutions.

Half the delegates who wrote a new Constitution in Montgomery had served in the U.S. Congress and were impressed by the experience. They prohibited bounties from the treasury. They took the commerce clause language about rivers and harbors and added that the costs of improvements to navigation should be borne by the navigation aided thereby.

They took the post office clause intact, and provided that the service should pay for itself after March 1863. A Texan named Reagan, the first Confederate postmaster general, ran it pay-as-you-go from the beginning, an idea adopted for the United States Postal Service many decades later.

The one innovation not followed in other states was a requirement that Congress had no power to appropriate money (except for its own use) except by a two-thirds vote, unless it was requested by the president or head of a department. Think of the ships and planes the Pentagon didn't ask for, but Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich saw they were provided anyhow.

Two of the Confederate changes have been widely adopted [in state constitutions]:

The requirement that bills address only a single subject would prohibit the current practice of passing pet bills that are attached as riders to bills that simply must pass. Most states now have such a provision, intended to prevent log-rolling; coupling two weak bills into one to sneak a pet project into must-pass legislation.

The other innovation, now common among the state constitutions, is the item veto, still not part of the federal constitution.

Congress attempted to do it by statute, which was patently unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court ultimately said so. But modern congressmen derived a sense of virtue from the statutory effort, and have not since talked seriously about amending the national constitution except to appease constituents bothered by abortion, flag-burning and the like.

A heightened sense of fiscal responsibility pervades the Confederate constitution. This might have been a reaction to the creation of personal fortunes in railroads, mines and other enterprises in the name of progress.

It is instructive to note the influence of bounties the Confederates forbade. One wonders how South Carolina could have attracted BMW had the Confederacy prevailed, or how George W. Bush could have found financial security without the stadium deal for the Texas Rangers baseball team.

If you want to think about Southern Heritage, think about the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. There are lots of books about the battles, but the men who gathered in Montgomery before General Beauregard fired that first shot did a good piece of work that deserves more than the little written about it.

*Robert T. Mann retired to his native Tarpon Springs as Professor of Law Emeritus from the University of Florida. He had served six terms in the Florida Legislature, been appointed as a judge on the Second District Court of Appeal, and served as chairman of the Public Service Commission. Judge Mann died February 26, 2002, in Clearwater, Florida, survived by his wife, two children, and a host of collateral kindred, of which I am one. I continue to miss his unannounced, but always welcomed, visits to my law office to use the photocopier and law books. He was always willing to let me Apick his brain@ about the law while he sipped a cold Coca-Cola (his favorite drink when iced tea - sweet, of course - was unavailable) from our office fridge. Although we both considered such exchanges as fair trade, there is little doubt that I derived more benefit from those sessions than he. Long before I entered the legal profession, Uncle Bob was a great influence over me. He took pleasure and sustenance from his connections to Florida=s sandy soil - as a cattleman, citrus grower, and gardener. His quick and sharp wit was legendary, as was his advocacy for ethics in government. During a legislative debate on an ethics bill, he retorted,

He never allowed his renowned wit, great intellect and professional accomplishments to isolate him from those around him, regardless of their social, ethnic or financial station in life. He was indeed a southern gentlemen, in every positive sense those terms infer.

Wit & Wisdom of Judge Robert T. Mann

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