South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession

About the Author

Following Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency, Christopher Gustavus Memminger, a member of  the South Carolina statehouse, became a forceful advocate of secession. As author of the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, Memminger asserted the reasons for the state's secession. Memminger was also selected to represent South Carolina as a delegate to the provisional congress that established the Confederate States of America. He served, moreover, as chairman of the twelve-man committee that wrote the provisional constitution in just four days.

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. After his mother died from yellow fever in 1807, young Christopher was sent to an orphanage. He 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 1832, he married Mary Wilkinson.

Memminger plunged into the world of politics 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. His career in the legislature was distinguished by his efforts as chair of the finance committee to reform state finances and the practices of the banking community and by his commitment to education.  In 1855 he embarked on a thirty-year career as Charleston's commissioner of schools,  marked by his efforts to establish a city public school system. For thirty-two years, moreover, he held a position on the board of South Carolina College.

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. The effort to successfully fund the Civil War was probably doomed from the start. 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  under intense public pressure. 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 in Charleston on March 7, 1888.