South Carolina's Declaration of Causes

Declaration of Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

The people of the State of South Carolina…declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government…fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union…

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 be…discharged [allowed to leave]…such service or labor…

…an increasing hostility [unfriendliness] on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution [established practice] of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations….

…Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety [rightness] of our domestic institutions [slavery]; 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 encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes…

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…

…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….

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude [morality/goodness] 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.