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1
SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, On February 27, 1861, in an attempt to avert the
3secession of Southern states, United States Representative
4Thomas Corwin of Ohio proposed an amendment to the United
5States Constitution that would prohibit the United States
6Constitution from being amended in a manner that authorizes
7Congress to abolish or interfere with the states' domestic
8institutions, including slavery; and
 
9    WHEREAS, On March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment was
10approved by a joint resolution of the Thirty-Sixth United
11States Congress (12 Stat. 251) and was submitted to the states
12under Article V of the United States Constitution for
13ratification with no deadline given for completion of its
14ratification; and
 
15    WHEREAS, The Twenty-Third General Assembly of the State of
16Illinois ratified the Corwin Amendment in "An Act ratifying a
17certain amendment to the Constitution of the United States",
18in force June 2, 1863 (Public Laws 1863, p. 41); and
 
19    WHEREAS, The Corwin Amendment has not yet been ratified by
20three-fourths of the states and, therefore, is not part of the
21United States Constitution at this time; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, It is still possible that a sufficient number of
2states could belatedly ratify the Corwin Amendment thereby
3adding it to the United States Constitution, as occurred with
4the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which
5was first proposed in 1789 and was not ratified by a sufficient
6number of states until 1992; and
 
7    WHEREAS, With the end of the Civil War and the
8ratification of the actual 13th Amendment to the United States
9Constitution in 1865, the purposes of the Corwin Amendment
10have become moot; therefore, be it
 
11    RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL
12ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE HOUSE OF
13REPRESENTATIVES CONCURRING HEREIN, that the State of Illinois
14rescinds its 1863 ratification of the following proposition,
15known as the Corwin Amendment to the United States
16Constitution:
 
17
"ARTICLE XIII.
18No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will
19authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or
20interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions
21thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by
22the laws of said State."; and be it further
 

 

 

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1    RESOLVED, That certified copies of this resolution be
2forwarded to the Archivist of the United States, the President
3of the United States, the President and Secretary of the
4United States Senate, the Speaker and Clerk of the United
5States House of Representatives, and each member of the
6Illinois congressional delegation with the request that it be
7printed verbatim in the Congressional Record.