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Declaration
of the Causes of Secession
1861
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
indispensable 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.
Approved,
Tuesday, January 29, 1861
MISSISSIPPI
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.
SOUTH
CAROLINA
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
defense, 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 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.
Adopted
December 24, 1860
TEXAS
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.
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