On this day in 1861, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas met in Montgomery, Alabama to adopt the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America. The constitution closely resembled the Constitution of the United States, even repeating much of its language. However, it was actually more similar to the Articles of Confederation -- the initial constitution of the nation following the Revolutionary War -- in its delegation of extensive powers to the states. The constitution also differed from the U.S. Constitution in its protection of slavery, which was “recognized and protected” in slave states and territories. However, in adherence to U.S. policy since the start of the 19th century, the foreign slave trade was prohibited. The constitution provided for six-year terms for the president and vice president, and the president was not eligible for successive terms. Although a presidential item veto was granted, the power...

On this day in 1767, John Quincy Adams, son of the second U.S. president, John Adams, is born in Braintree, Massachusetts. John Quincy Adams not only shared the elder Adams' passion for politics, but seemed to have inherited his father's cantankerous personality as well. At 14, he was already joining his dad on diplomatic missions; he entered the legal arena upon completing his schooling. As a young man, he served as minister to several countries, including the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Prussia, and England. In 1803, he commenced his first term as a Republican in the Senate and helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. From 1817 to 1824, he served as secretary of state to President James Monroe. While it is Monroe who gets most of the credit for his eponymous Doctrine, historians assert that Adams was the true mastermind behind it. In the heavily contested presidential election of 1824, a tie between Quincy Adams and Democrat Andrew Jackson p...

On March 6, 1820, President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise (also called the Compromise Bill of 1820) into law. The bill sought to make even the number of slave-holding states and free states in the nascent nation. It allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state while Maine joined as a free state. What's more, the bill prohibited portions of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36-degrees-30-minutes latitude line from engaging in slavery. Monroe, who was born into the Virginia slave-holding planter class, strongly supported states’ rights, but let Congress bicker over the issue of slavery in the new territories. He then closely examined any proposed legislation for its constitutionality. Although he realized that slavery ran contrary to the values written into the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, he, like fellow Virginians Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, feared abolition would rip apart the country they had fought so hard to crea...