We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana... do hereby ordain and establish this Constitution for the Provisional Government of the same.
Original passage & context
"We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, invoking the favor of Almighty God, do hereby, in behalf of these States, ordain and establish this Constitution for the Provisional Government of the same [...] The importation of African negroes from any foreign country other than the slave-holding States of the United States, is hereby forbidden; and Congress are required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same."
Four days after the delegates sat down, a nation exists on paper. The preamble names its six states one by one — Texas, which seceded Feb 1, has not yet sent delegates. The slave-trade clause is the wager underneath the new government: the African trade is banned, which protects the market value of the slaves already held in the South. Non-contiguous passages from the one document joined with [...]; verified against the Yale Avalon Project.
Read it in the original — Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States, Feb 8, 1861 ↗