Primary
Source Documents:
Declaration of Causes of Seceding States
Georgia
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political
connection with the Government of the United States
of America, present to their confederates and the
world the causes which have led to the separation.
For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious
causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding
confederate States with reference to the subject of
African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our
security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility,
and persistently refused to comply with their express
constitutional obligations to us in reference to that
property, and by the use of their power in the Federal
Government have striven to deprive us of an equal
enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.
This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued
with every circumstance of aggravation which could
arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people,
and has placed the two sections of the Union for many
years past in the condition of virtual civil war.
Our people, still attached to the Union from habit
and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped
that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not
redress, at least exemption from further insults,
injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated
all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation.
Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm
hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of
our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors
of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large
majority committed the Government of the United States
into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an
equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the
case, have declared with equal firmness that they
shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise,
progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political
organization into whose hands the administration of
the Federal Government has been committed will fully
justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.
The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party,
under its present name and organization, is of recent
origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party.
While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered
advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned
theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial
restrictions, of protection, of special privileges,
of waste and corruption in the administration of Government,
anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery
it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery
was the great difficulty in the way of the formation
of the Constitution.
While the subordination and the political and social
inequality of the African race was fully conceded
by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would
soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding
States of the original thirteen. The opposition to
slavery was then, as now, general in those States
and the Constitution was made with direct reference
to that fact. But a distinct abolition party was not
formed in the United States for more than half a century
after the Government went into operation. The main
reason was that the North, even if united, could not
control both branches of the Legislature during any
portion of that time. Therefore such an organization
must have resulted either in utter failure or in the
total overthrow of the Government. The material prosperity
of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal
Government; that of the the South not at all. In the
first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial,
and manufacturing interests of the North began to
seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the
agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing
smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their
own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is
now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating
interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders
and against competition in the coasting trade.
Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory
acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to
each of their interests, which they enjoy without
diminution to this day. Not content with these great
and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the
legitimate burden of their business as much as possible
upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the
cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of
their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government
now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support
of these objects. Theses interests, in connection
with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have
also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers
and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business
from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing
it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal
deficiency.
The manufacturing interests entered into the same
struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government
bounties and special favors. This interest was confined
mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding
States. Wielding these great States it held great
power and influence, and its demands were in full
proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners
wisely based their demands upon special facts and
reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby
mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest.
They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business
in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital,
the hostile legislation of other countries toward
them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the
time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay
the debt incurred in our war for independence. These
reasons prevailed, and they received for many years
enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the
whole country.
But when these reasons ceased they were no less
clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors
were less heeded-- the country had put the principle
of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having
enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200
per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty
years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden
change, but the principle was settled, and free trade,
low duties, and economy in public expenditures was
the verdict of the American people. The South and
the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There
was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct
issue, none at all.
All these classes saw this and felt it and cast
about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment of
the North offered the best chance for success. An
anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North
alone for support, but a united North was now strong
enough to control the Government in all of its departments,
and a sectional party was therefore determined upon.
Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its
completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery,
which it was well known was very general among the
people of the North, had been long dormant or passive;
it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive
activity. This question was before us. We had acquired
a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress
had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was
the question then demanding solution. This state of
facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment
throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern
anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right
to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional
legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient
exercise of this power to that end. This insulting
and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation
and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and
paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a
division of it on the line of the Missouri restriction
or an equal participation in the whole of it. These
propositions were refused, the agitation became general,
and the public danger was great. The case of the South
was impregnable. The price of the acquisition was
the blood and treasure of both sections-- of all,
and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles
of equity and justice.
The Constitution delegated no power to Congress
to excluded either party from its free enjoyment;
therefore our right was good under the Constitution.
Our rights were further fortified by the practice
of the Government from the beginning. Slavery was
forbidden in the country northwest of the Ohio River
by what is called the ordinance of 1787. That ordinance
was adopted under the old confederation and by the
assent of Virginia, who owned and ceded the country,
and therefore this case must stand on its own special
circumstances. The Government of the United States
claimed territory by virtue of the treaty of 1783
with Great Britain, acquired territory by cession
from Georgia and North Carolina, by treaty from France,
and by treaty from Spain. These acquisitions largely
exceeded the original limits of the Republic. In all
of these acquisitions the policy of the Government
was uniform. It opened them to the settlement of all
the citizens of all the States of the Union. They
emigrated thither with their property of every kind
(including slaves). All were equally protected by
public authority in their persons and property until
the inhabitants became sufficiently numerous and otherwise
capable of bearing the burdens and performing the
duties of self-government, when they were admitted
into the Union upon equal terms with the other States,
with whatever republican constitution they might adopt
for themselves.
Under this equally just and beneficent policy law
and order, stability and progress, peace and prosperity
marked every step of the progress of these new communities
until they entered as great and prosperous commonwealths
into the sisterhood of American States. In 1820 the
North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful
policy and demanded that the State of Missouri should
not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited
slavery within her limits by her constitution. After
a bitter and protracted struggle the North was defeated
in her special object, but her policy and position
led to the adoption of a section in the law for the
admission of Missouri, prohibiting slavery in all
that portion of the territory acquired from France
lying North of 36 [degrees] 30 [minutes] north latitude
and outside of Missouri. The venerable Madison at
the time of its adoption declared it unconstitutional.
Mr. Jefferson condemned the restriction and foresaw
its consequences and predicted that it would result
in the dissolution of the Union. His prediction is
now history. The North demanded the application of
the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of
the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts
of the public domain then and in all future time.
It was the announcement of her purpose to appropriate
to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter
to be acquired by the United States. The claim itself
was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with
which she supported it. That reason was her fixed
purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery
in the States where it exists. The South with great
unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle
of prohibition to the last extremity. This particular
question, in connection with a series of questions
affecting the same subject, was finally disposed of
by the defeat of prohibitory legislation.
The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the
total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and
their party friends. Immediately after this result
the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved
to unite all the elements in the North opposed to
slavery an to stake their future political fortunes
upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is
the party two whom the people of the North have committed
the Government. They raised their standard in 1856
and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential
contest again in 1860 and succeeded.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility
to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white
races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees
in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders
and applauded by its followers.
With these principles on their banners and these
utterances on their lips the majority of the people
of the North demand that we shall receive them as
our rulers.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is
the cardinal principle of this organization.
For forty years this question has been considered
and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people,
by the press, and before the tribunals of justice.
The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided
it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that
judgment, and in vindication of our refusal we offer
the Constitution of our country and point to the total
absence of any express power to exclude us. We offer
the practice of our Government for the first thirty
years of its existence in complete refutation of the
position that any such power is either necessary or
proper to the execution of any other power in relation
to the Territories. We offer the judgment of a large
minority of the people of the North, amounting to
more than one-third, who united with the unanimous
voice of the South against this usurpation; and, finally,
we offer the judgment of the Supreme Court of the
United States, the highest judicial tribunal of our
country, in our favor. This evidence ought to be conclusive
that we have never surrendered this right. The conduct
of our adversaries admonishes us that if we had surrendered
it, it is time to resume it.
The faithless conduct of our adversaries is not
confined to such acts as might aggrandize themselves
or their section of the Union. They are content if
they can only injure us. The Constitution declares
that persons charged with crimes in one State and
fleeing to another shall be delivered up on the demand
of the executive authority of the State from which
they may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where
the crime was committed. It would appear difficult
to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above
twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally
have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged
with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates,
with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all
criminals who seek to deprive us of this property
or who use it to destroy us. This clause of the Constitution
has no other sanction than their good faith; that
is withheld from us; we are remediless in the Union;
out of it we are remitted to the laws of nations.
A similar provision of the Constitution requires
them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision
and the one last referred to were our main inducements
for confederating with the Northern States. Without
them it is historically true that we would have rejected
the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic
Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency
to this important provision. This act depended to
a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in
the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding
States generally repealed all laws intended to aid
the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon
those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and
their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty.
Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for
the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers.
This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely
indispensible for the protection of constitutional
rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings
and all conceivable modes of hostility.
The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local
courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary
exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained
its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet
it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable
purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union.
We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep
and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant, even
accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate
of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is
everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative
enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him. Claimants
are murdered with impunity; officers of the law are
beaten by frantic mobs instigated by inflammatory
appeals from persons holding the highest public employment
in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict
with the clearest provisions of the Constitution,
and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several
of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel
the highway with his servant who may voluntarily accompany
him, without being declared by law a felon and being
subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult
to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility
than by the fraternity of such brethren.
The public law of civilized nations requires every
State to restrain its citizens or subjects from committing
acts injurious to the peace and security of any other
State and from attempting to excite insurrection,
or to lessen the security, or to disturb the tranquillity
of their neighbors, and our Constitution wisely gives
Congress the power to punish all offenses against
the laws of nations.
These are sound and just principles which have received
the approbation of just men in all countries and all
centuries; but they are wholly disregarded by the
people of the Northern States, and the Federal Government
is impotent to maintain them. For twenty years past
the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern
States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert
our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile
war among us. They have sent emissaries among us for
the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these
efforts have received the public sanction of a majority
of the leading men of the Republican party in the
national councils, the same men who are now proposed
as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance
led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding
States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries
who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal
protection among our Northern confederates.
These are the same men who say the Union shall be
preserved.
Such are the opinions and such are the practices
of the Republican party, who have been called by their
own votes to administer the Federal Government under
the Constitution of the United States. We know their
treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which
they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If
we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs.
The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand
by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought
to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto
sought to establish any new government; they have
struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves
and the human race through and by that Constitution.
But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous
hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own
to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because
by their declared principles and policy they have
outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common
territories of the Union; put it under the ban of
the Republic in the States where it exists and out
of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because
they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who
assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite
of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because
their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and
subject us not only to the loss of our property but
the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children,
and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our
firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers
which our fathers delegated to the Government of the
United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards
for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce
and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi
from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken
of dissolving its connection with the government of
which we so long formed a part, it is but just that
we should declare the prominent reasons which have
induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution
of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the
world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes
by far the largest and most important portions of
commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar
to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and
by an imperious law of nature, none but the black
race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These
products have become necessities of the world, and
a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
That blow has been long aimed at the institution,
and was at the point of reaching its consummation.
There was no choice left us but submission to the
mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union,
whose principles had been subverted to work out our
ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our
institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently
prove.
The hostility to this institution commenced before
the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested
in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to
the Northwestern Territory.
The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived
the South of more than half the vast territory acquired
from France.
The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized
upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.
It has grown until it denies the right of property
in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on
the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the
government of the United States had jurisdiction.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into
the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining
it within its present limits, denying the power of
expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under
foot.
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost
every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken
the compact which our fathers pledged their faith
to maintain.
It advocates negro equality, socially and politically,
and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our
midst.
It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools
against us, until the whole popular mind of the North
is excited and inflamed with prejudice.
It has made combinations and formed associations
to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States
and wherever else slavery exists.
It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave,
but to destroy his present condition without providing
a better.
It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors
of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply
flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction
to our lives.
It has broken every compact into which it has entered
for our security.
It has given indubitable evidence of its design
to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial
pursuits and to destroy our social system.
It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes;
it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves
us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.
It has recently obtained control of the Government,
by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and
destroyed the last expectation of living together
in friendship and brotherhood.
Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we
should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a
matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either
submit to degradation, and to the loss of property
worth four billions of money, or we must secede from
the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as
well as every other species of property. For far less
cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown
of England.
Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps.
We embrace the alternative of separation; and for
the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our
rights with the full consciousness of the justice
of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability
to maintain it.
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce
and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the
Federal Union
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention
assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared
that the frequent violations of the Constitution of
the United States, by the Federal Government, and
its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the
States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing
from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions
and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore
at that time to exercise this right. Since that time,
these encroachments have continued to increase, and
further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed
her separate and equal place among nations, deems
it due to herself, to the remaining United States
of America, and to the nations of the world, that
she should declare the immediate causes which have
led to this act.
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire
embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for
the government of that portion composed of the thirteen
American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government
ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776,
in a Declaration, by the Colonies, "that they are,
and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES;
and that, as free and independent States, they have
full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things
which independent States may of right do."
They further solemnly declared that whenever any
"form of government becomes destructive of the ends
for which it was established, it is the right of the
people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a
new government." Deeming the Government of Great Britain
to have become destructive of these ends, they declared
that the Colonies "are absolved from all allegiance
to the British Crown, and that all political connection
between them and the State of Great Britain is, and
ought to be, totally dissolved."
In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence,
each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise
its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution,
and appointed officers for the administration of government
in all its departments-- Legislative, Executive and
Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their
arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered
into a League known as the Articles of Confederation,
whereby they agreed to entrust the administration
of their external relations to a common agent, known
as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring,
in the first Article "that each State retains its
sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation,
expressly delegated to the United States in Congress
assembled."
Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution
was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783,
the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed
by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence
of the Colonies in the following terms: "ARTICLE 1--
His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United
States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode
Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia,
to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that
he treats with them as such; and for himself, his
heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the
government, propriety and territorial rights of the
same and every part thereof."
Thus were established the two great principles asserted
by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern
itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government
when it becomes destructive of the ends for which
it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment
of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony
became and was recognized by the mother Country a
FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.
In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to
revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th
September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the
adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known
as the Constitution of the United States.
The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted,
were the several sovereign States; they were to agree
or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact
was to take effect among those concurring; and the
General Government, as the common agent, was then
invested with their authority.
If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred,
the other four would have remained as they then were--
separate, sovereign States, independent of any of
the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of
the States did not accede to the Constitution until
long after it had gone into operation among the other
eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised
the functions of an independent nation.
By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed
upon the several States, and the exercise of certain
of their powers was restrained, which necessarily
implied their continued existence as sovereign States.
But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which
declared that the powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to
the States, are reserved to the States, respectively,
or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina,
by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance
assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered
her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations
she had undertaken.
Thus was established, by compact between the States,
a Government with definite objects and powers, limited
to the express words of the grant. This limitation
left the whole remaining mass of power subject to
the clause reserving it to the States or to the people,
and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved
rights.
We hold that the Government thus established is
subject to the two great principles asserted in the
Declaration of Independence; and we hold further,
that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third
fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact.
We maintain that in every compact between two or more
parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure
of one of the contracting parties to perform a material
part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation
of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided,
each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine
the fact of failure, with all its consequences.
In the present case, that fact is established with
certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have
deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their
constitutional obligations, and we refer to their
own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth
Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service
or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping
into another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service
or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact,
that without it that compact would not have been made.
The greater number of the contracting parties held
slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate
of the value of such a stipulation by making it a
condition in the Ordinance for the government of the
territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the
States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates
also for rendition by the several States of fugitives
from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed
laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the
States. For many years these laws were executed. But
an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding
States to the institution of slavery, has led to a
disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the
General Government have ceased to effect the objects
of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan,
Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either
nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any
attempt to execute them. In many of these States the
fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed,
and in none of them has the State Government complied
with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The
State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law
in conformity with her constitutional obligation;
but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her
more recently to enact laws which render inoperative
the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws
of Congress. In the State of New York even the right
of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals;
and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender
to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with
inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia.
Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately
broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States,
and the consequence follows that South Carolina is
released from her obligation.
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are
declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide
for the common defence, promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal
Government, in which each State was recognized as
an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions.
The right of property in slaves was recognized by
giving to free persons distinct political rights,
by giving them the right to represent, and burthening
them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves;
by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty
years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives
from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government
was instituted have been defeated, and the Government
itself has been made destructive of them by the action
of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have
assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of
our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights
of property established in fifteen of the States and
recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced
as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted
open establishment among them of societies, whose
avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign
the property of the citizens of other States. They
have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves
to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been
incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile
insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily
increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the
power of the common Government. Observing the *forms*
[emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a
sectional party has found within that Article establishing
the Executive Department, the means of subverting
the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been
drawn across the Union, and all the States north of
that line have united in the election of a man to
the high office of President of the United States,
whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.
He is to be entrusted with the administration of the
common Government, because he has declared that that
"Government cannot endure permanently half slave,
half free," and that the public mind must rest in
the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate
extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of
the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States
by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme
law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens;
and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new
policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its
beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take
possession of the Government. It has announced that
the South shall be excluded from the common territory,
that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional,
and that a war must be waged against slavery until
it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no
longer exist; the equal rights of the States will
be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have
the power of self-government, or self-protection,
and the Federal Government will have become their
enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the
irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain,
by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested
a great political error with the sanction of more
erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by
our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to
the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of
our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union
heretofore existing between this State and the other
States of North America, is dissolved, and that the
State of South Carolina has resumed her position among
the nations of the world, as a separate and independent
State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace,
contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do
all other acts and things which independent States
may of right do.
A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State
of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.
The government of the United States, by certain
joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March,
in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of
Texas, then *a free, sovereign and independent nation*
[emphasis in the original], the annexation of the
latter to the former, as one of the co-equal states
thereof,
The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled,
on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented
to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution
for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day
of December in the same year, said State was formally
admitted into the Confederated Union.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence
and consented to become one of the Confederated Union
to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility
and secure more substantially the blessings of peace
and liberty to her people. She was received into the
confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee
of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation,
that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received
as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting
the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude
of the African to the white race within her limits--
a relation that had existed from the first settlement
of her wilderness by the white race, and which her
people intended should exist in all future time. Her
institutions and geographical position established
the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding
States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened
by association. But what has been the course of the
government of the United States, and of the people
and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since
our connection with them?
The controlling majority of the Federal Government,
under various pretences and disguises, has so administered
the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern
States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions,
from all the immense territory owned in common by
all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed
purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common
government to use it as a means of destroying the
institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding
States.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their
citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government,
infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws
have been permitted in those States and the common
territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws,
to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens
in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob
law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively
the property of the Northern States.
The Federal Government, while but partially under
the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies,
has for years almost entirely failed to protect the
lives and property of the people of Texas against
the Indian savages on our border, and more recently
against the murderous forays of banditti from the
neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State
government has expended large amounts for such purpose,
the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor,
thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing
than it was during the existence of the Republic of
Texas.
These and other wrongs we have patiently borne in
the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and
humanity would induce a different course of administration.
When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding
States, and that a majority of their citizens, our
grievances assume far greater magnitude.
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative
enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly
violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the
4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal
constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof;
thereby annulling a material provision of the compact,
designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between
the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights
of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions--
a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without
the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish
the object of its creation. Some of those States have
imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any
of their citizens or officers who may carry out in
good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal
laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation
of that good faith and comity which should exist between
entirely distinct nations, the people have formed
themselves into a great sectional party, now strong
enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of
those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility
to these Southern States and their beneficent and
patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming
the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective
of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature,
in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in
violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.
They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout
the confederacy, the recognition of political equality
between the white and negro races, and avow their
determination to press on their crusade against us,
so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
For years past this abolition organization has been
actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union,
and has rendered the federal congress the arena for
spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding
and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed
the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in
the federal congress, and rendered representation
of no avail in protecting Southern rights against
their exactions and encroachments. They have proclaimed,
and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary
doctrine that there is a 'higher law' than the constitution
and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that
they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our
rights.
They have for years past encouraged and sustained
lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent
their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern
citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.
They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending
citizens, and through the press their leading men
and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the
actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors
of several of their States have refused to deliver
parties implicated and indicted for participation
in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the States
aggrieved.
They have, through the mails and hired emissaries,
sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir
up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage
to our firesides.
They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn
our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves
for the same purpose.
They have impoverished the slave-holding States
by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching
themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting
Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason
that she is a slave-holding State.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of
the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have
elected as president and vice-president of the whole
confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high
positions are their approval of these long continued
wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the
final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of
the slave-holding States.
In view of these and many other facts, it is meet
that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments
of the various States, and of the confederacy itself,
were established exclusively by the white race, for
themselves and their posterity; that the African race
had no agency in their establishment; that they were
rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent
race, and in that condition only could their existence
in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government *all white men are
and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and
political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that
the servitude of the African race, as existing in
these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond
and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified
by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will
of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian
nations; while the destruction of the existing relations
between the two races, as advocated by our sectional
enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both
and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
By the secession of six of the slave-holding States,
and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise,
Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated
connection with the North, or unite her destinies
with the South.
For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting
that the federal constitution has been violated and
virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing
that the federal government is now passing under the
control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted
objects of its creation to those of oppression and
wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer
look for protection, but to God and her own sons--
We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention
assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all
political connection with the government of the United
States of America and the people thereof and confidently
appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen
of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on
the 23rd day of the present month.
Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in
the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.
