Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/227

 CONFEDERATE STATES This ordinance was immediately passed by the unanimous vote of the convention, and was signed on the same day by its members in the presence of the governor and of both branches of the legislature. At the conclusion of the ceremonies the president of the convention formally proclaimed the state of South Caro- lina an independent commonwealth. On the following day a special committee appointed to draft a " declaration of the causes which justify the secession of South Carolina from the federal union" made a report in which those causes are ths stated : " "We assert that fifteen of the states have deliberately re- fused for years past to fulfil their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the proof. The con- stitution of the United States, in its fourth article, provides as follows : l No person held to labor or service in one state, un- der the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in conse- quence 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 num- ber of the contracting parties held slaves, and the state of making it the condition of her cession of the territory w] 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 manv years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the northern 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 ob- jects of the constitution. The states of Maine, New Hamp- shire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ehode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa* have enacted laws which either nullify the acts of congress, or render useless any attempt to exe- cute them. In many of these states the fugitive is dis- charged from the service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the state government complied with the stipula- tion made in the constitution. The state of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law for the rendition of fugitive slaves in conformity with her constitutional undertaking, 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 uws 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 constitutional compact has been deliber- ately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding states, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from its obligation. The ends for which the constitution was framed are declared by itself to be ' to form a more per- fect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the common wel- fare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. 1 These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a fed- eral 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 burdening 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 as- sumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domes- tic institutions, and have denied the rights of property estab- lished in fifteen of the states and recognized by the constitu- tion; they have denounced as sinful the institution of sla- very; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloin 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 in- among the states which had enacted personal liberty laws was an error. Those states had no such laws. cited by emissaries, books, and pictures to servile insurrec- tion. For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of a common government. Observing the forms of the constitu- tion, a sectional party has found within that article establish- ing the executive department the means of subverting the con- stitution, 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 Uni- ted States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be intrusted 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 hi the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the subversion 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 votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy hostile to the south, and destructive of its peace and safety." This address was adopted on Dec. 24 by a vote of 124 to 30, and on the same day the gov- ernor issued the following proclamation : " Whereas, The good people of this state, in convention assembled, by an ordinance unanimously adopted and ratified on the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty, repealed an ordinance of the people of this state adopted on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, and have thereby dissolved the union between the state of South Carolina and other states under the name of the United States of America: " I, therefore, as governor and commander-in-chief in and over the state of South Carolina, by virtue of authority in me vested, do hereby proclaim to the world that this state is, aa she has a right to be, a separate, sovereign, free, and inde- pendent state, and as such has a right to levy war, conclude peace, negotiate treaties, leagues, or covenants, and to do all acts whatsoever that rightfully appertain to a free and inde- pendent state." At this time, also, the state forces seized the United States custom house, post office, and arsenal in Charleston, and Forts Pinckney and Moultrie in the harbor of that city. Major An- derson, the United States commander, who had only about 80 men, withdrew his com- mand from Fort Moultrie into Fort Sumter, which he considered more defensible. The con- vention on Dec. 25 appointed commissioners to visit the other slaveholding states and invite them to cooperate with South Carolina in the formation of a southern confederacy. Missis- sippi was the first to respond. Her convention passed the ordinance of secession on Jan. 9, by a vote of 84 to 15, which was subsequently made unanimous. Florida on the following day, Jan. 10, passed an ordinance of secession with a preamble declaring as a reason for the act, that " all hope of preserving the Union upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of the slaveholding states has been fully dissipated by the recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment of the free states." .The ordinance was passed by a vote of 62 to Y. Alabama was the next state to secede. Her chief city, Mobile, received the news of the secession of South Carolina with ringing of bells, firing of cannon, great gather- ings in the streets, enthusiastic speeches, and every demonstration of joy. The governor, Andrew B. Moore, had already called a con- vention of delegates, elected Dec. 24, which assembled Jan. 7, 1861. All the counties of the state were represented. A strong Union sentiment was manifested by the members from 220 VOL. v. 15
 * The enumeration of New York, Illinois, and Indiana