Insert 19C- South Carolina Secession
Primary Source: Why Did South Carolina Secede? — 1860
Background: On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to leave the United States. Four days later, its secession convention issued a declaration explaining why. The excerpt below comes from that official document.
“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 assumed 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 encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes...
“For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government... 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.”
Source: Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, December 24, 1860. Full document — Yale Law School Avalon Project
Questions
- According to South Carolina, what had the Northern states done that violated the rights of Southern states?
- What does the document mean when it refers to enslaved people as “property”? Why is that word important to South Carolina’s constitutional argument?
- Who is the unnamed “man” elected president in the third paragraph? Why does South Carolina view his election as a threat?
- Identify two specific references to slavery in the excerpt. Based only on this document, how important does slavery appear to be in South Carolina’s decision to secede?
- Historical Analysis: Based on this document, why did South Carolina’s leaders believe that remaining in the Union threatened their interests? Use at least two specific pieces of evidence from the document to explain their reasoning.
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