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Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest

South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession

by David Gray Adler, PhD

Date: 1860

Author: Christopher Memminger

Genre: Government proclamation

Summary Overview

The Declaration of Causes of Secession, adopted on December 24, 1860, represented South Carolina’s statement to the South, the nation, and the world that it was compelled to secede from the United States In a detailed explanation, South Carolina presented the southern theory of the Union and the nature of the U.S. Constitution, aired its grievances against the North, and justified its decision to secede. The Declaration of Causes of Secession left no doubt that the precipitating factor behind South Carolina’s withdrawal from the Union was the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.

South Carolina’s decision to secede encouraged secessionists elsewhere to intensify their opposition to the Union and, in rapid fashion, to persuade their states to follow suit. The justifications for secession were grounded in the compact theory of the Constitution, the view that sovereign states had created the Union and, therefore, in the exercise of their sovereignty, could withdraw from the Union at their pleasure. The declaration sought legitimacy, moreover, through its reference to the causes that impelled the American colonists to declare their independence from England: The rights of the people had been violated by a government grown tyrannical. Those conditions in 1776 and 1860, South Carolina argued, justified the right of the people to create their own government. For South Carolinians, tyranny emerged in the form of Abraham Lincoln, who, they declared, intended to destroy slavery, in violation of southerners’ property rights in their slaves. The arguments aroused the passions of the lower southern states and soon put the nation on a war footing. As a result, the United States would never be the same.

Defining Moment

The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 proved to be the tipping point for South Carolina. Fearful that Lincoln would place the law of slavery on a path toward its extinction, secessionists in South Carolina called for a convention to remove their state from the Union on November 6, the day Lincoln was elected.

Three different positions developed in response to Lincoln’s election. The first, held by the “fire-eaters,” argued for immediate secession, believing that each state should secede without waiting for a decision from other states. The second group, known as the “cooperationists,” argued that states should not act individually, but collectively, in response to Lincoln’s victory. The third position, that of the “unconditional unionists,” (living principally in the border states: Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, and Missouri) opposed the idea of secession.

The Lower South was united by its belief in state sovereignty and states’ rights, its insistence on a constitutional property right to slaves, and its considerable fear of northern intentions. Lincoln’s election unleashed a panoply of fears. South Carolinian secessionists hammered away at a grim future under Lincoln and the Republicans, who, they believed, meant to abolish slavery. Secessionists, for example, pointed to the impact on the South of Republican opposition to the extension of slavery in the western territories. The net result, they argued, would be the incorporation in the Union of additional free states, which would easily outnumber southern states in Congress. Congress would repeal the Fugitive Slave Act, and slaves would engage in a mass migration to the North, depriving the South of its labor pool. Lincoln, it was charged, would appoint Republicans to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the institution that had been long controlled by Southern justices would become a tool of the North. Finally, Congress might employ means of abolishing slavery altogether. In sum, the southern way of life was jeopardized by the ascension of Lincoln. In this context, the secessionists won converts, and South Carolina withdrew from the Union.

Author Biography

Following Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, South Carolina state legislator Christopher Gustavus Memminger became a forceful advocate of secession and was the author South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession. He was also selected to represent South Carolina as a delegate to the provisional congress that established the Confederate States of America and chaired the committee that wrote the provisional constitution in just four days.

DDProtest_South_Carolina.tif

Memminger was born on January 9, 1803, in Württemberg, Germany. After his father was killed in combat, Memminger immigrated with his mother to Charleston, South Carolina. His mother died from yellow fever in 1807, and Christopher was soon taken into the home of Thomas Bennett, later a governor of South Carolina. Memminger graduated from South Carolina College in 1819 and, after studying law, opened in 1825 what became a highly successful law practice in Charleston.

In 1836 when he won a seat in the South Carolina legislature, where he served until 1852. He returned to the legislature and served from 1854 to 1860. Throughout his political career, Memminger defended slavery. While viewed as moderate among secessionists, at least until Lincoln’s election, he boldly asserted the need for South Carolina to secede and even declared that his state may have to drag others with it. In 1861 the Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed Memminger secretary of the treasury. Despite his creative efforts to raise money, Memminger was helpless in the face of the depreciation of the currency and the ultimate collapse of Confederate credit, for which he was nonetheless held responsible.

In 1864 he resigned from his post. He received a presidential pardon from President Andrew Johnson in 1866 for his role in the war and retired to Flat Rock, North Carolina, a year later, where he resumed the practice of law. He spent his retirement in service of public education for blacks and whites. He died on March 7, 1888.

Historical Document

December 24, 1860

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 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

Glossary

burthening: placing a burden, responsibility, or duty upon

eloign: to remove or carry away, as to conceal

evinced: shown or demonstrated clearly

forbearance: the act of refraining or resisting

General Government: national or federal government

insurrection: the act of rebellion against civil authority

material: relevant

rendition: the act of surrendering a person to another jurisdiction

sovereignty: the location or repository of the supreme power in a country or political entity

Document Analysis

The first two paragraphs express South Carolina’s frustration with the federal government. The government, it asserts, has frequently violated the US Constitution, particularly in its encroachments on the rights of states. In fact, South Carolina had come perilously close to seceding from the Union in 1852, the declaration states, but out of respect to sister states, and with hope for improvement, elected to stay in the Union. Still, after years of usurpations and abuses of power, South Carolina had reached the end of its patience. It now had little choice but to secede. It is an exercise of respect for other states, and even for other nations, that it believes it has the duty to identify and explain the causes that have compelled its secession.

In paragraphs 3–7, the South Carolina document reviews the Declaration of Independence, pointing out two key principles: “the right of a State to govern itself” and “the right of a people to abolish a Government.” The whole question involved the exercise of its power. What if a state, in the exercise of self-governance, abused its powers? That state would be tyrannical and thus vulnerable to revolution, inviting the second great principle: the right of a people to abolish government when it violates the very tenets that gave birth to it in the first place.

South Carolina’s invocation of the Declaration raises questions. For example, was secession legal, or was it an exercise in rebellion? Many secessionists argued that withdrawal was legal and constitutional. The Patriots in 1776 relied on the rhetoric of inalienable rights, such as the right to “abolish” government when it becomes destructive of just ends. The model of 1776 was not as useful if South Carolina had a legal right to secede, and disregard of the rationale for independence in 1776 deprived South Carolinians of the ‘76 model. Which fork in the road to take?

Most South Carolinians believed that secession was constitutionally protected, arguing that the states were sovereign. At the time of the ratification of the Constitution, the sovereign states had opted to join the Union; it followed that they could leave the Union when they preferred to do so. Other secessionists contended that their action was both legal and revolutionary. They claimed that secession was constitutionally permissible on the basis of the compact theory and, at the same time, believed that a people could abolish a government that was violating their rights. The right of secession was a legal right; the right to abolish government was an exercise of an inalienable right, as claimed by the American colonists.

The South Carolinians aimed to portray the federal government as revolutionary, since it was violating the rights of the southerners, particularly their property rights in slaves. They cite the failure of the North to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, the passage by northern states of personal liberty laws for blacks, and opposition to the expansion of slavery in the territories asserting that the Union has become the menace to liberty, just as Great Britain had threatened the colonists’ liberty a century before.

In paragraphs 8–11, the declaration details the compact theory of the Constitution. The Constitution, it is argued, was submitted to “the states” for ratification. The sovereign states entered into a contract, or compact. Sovereignty was retained by the states.

The compact theory hinges on the claim that the Constitution was submitted to the states as states. However, in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the framers decided to submit the proposed Constitution to state-ratifying conventions—to the people themselves rather than the state governments. In 1819, in the landmark case of McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall had rejected the claim of state sovereignty. The people, he observed, were sovereign, not the states. The “people,” not the “states,” he pointed out, had ratified the Constitution.

In paragraphs 12–18 South Carolina states its case that its right to slave property had been violated by the North and, in particular, the issue of the Union’s attack on slavery is addressed in paragraph has 19–23. South Carolina contends that the Union has violated the provisions of the Constitution that maintain slavery, including the duty of states to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act. Since the Union has failed to adhere to its obligations in the Constitution to maintain a “more perfect Union,” South Carolina is within its rights to secede. But Lincoln reacted with a sharp rebuke. He reminded the South that dissolution of the Union undermines the Union. The Union cannot be perfect, he argued, if it is destroyed by southern states.

The South Carolina declaration refers, in paragraph 22, to the election of Lincoln as the precipitating factor in its decision to withdraw from the Union. The document assails Lincoln, without naming him, as “a man” who is hostile to slavery and determined to terminate its existence. In the face of such hostility, South Carolina claims (in paragraph 25), states will no longer have equal rights, and the “guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist”; states will lose both their rights of self-government and self-protection; and the “Federal Government will have become their enemy.” With that grim future, South Carolina declares, it is forced to secede from the Union.

Essential Themes

The South Carolina document explains and justifies the state’s secession from the Union. In moving and even passionate terms, the state airs its view of the Union, the location of sovereignty within the United States, and its understanding of the nature of the Constitution. The declaration, moreover, represents a distillation of some of South Carolina’s principal grievances against the North, and it explains, in the end, why the state had no choice but to secede. Whatever one’s view of the document might be, it provides a window into a theory that ultimately destroyed the Union. The Civil War constituted the gravest crisis in American constitutional history. The fact that the legal crisis stemmed principally from the debate on the repository of sovereignty in the United States brings the South Carolina document center stage, since it articulates a theory of state sovereignty. This was not, however, an abstract debate over political philosophy and practice. The issue of slavery and, in particular, fear that the Lincoln and the northern Republicans would either severely limit or abolish the institution were a crucial part of the secession movement.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

1 

Catton, Bruce. The Coming Fury. Vol. 1. Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, 1961.

2 

Farber, Daniel. Lincoln’s Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

3 

Hyman, Harold M., and William M. Wiecek. Equal Justice under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835–1875. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.

4 

McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York:Knopf, 1982.

5 

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

6 

Stampp, Kenneth M. The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Adler, David Gray. "South Carolina Declaration Of Causes Of Secession." Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest, edited by Aaron Gulyas, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DDProtest_0040.
APA 7th
Adler, D. G. (2017). South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession. In A. Gulyas (Ed.), Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Adler, David Gray. "South Carolina Declaration Of Causes Of Secession." Edited by Aaron Gulyas. Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed May 30, 2026. online.salempress.com.