South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

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. The first two paragraphs express South Carolina's frustration with the federal government. The government, it asserts, has frequently violated the Constitution of the United States, 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 fundamental principles that characterized the Declaration of Independence. It distills two cornerstones from the colonists' appeal: “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.” The first principle—that of self-government—was unassailable. The whole question, at least in the context of South Carolina's invocation of the fundamental right, involved the exercise of its power. What if a state, in the exercise of self-governance, were to abuse its powers? That state, by definition, would be tyrannical and thus vulnerable to revolution. Indeed, such behavior would invite thesecond great principle adduced by the colonists and embraced by South Carolina: 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 “Spirit of ’76” raises  vexing questions. For example, was secession legal, or was it an exercise in rebellion? Revolutions and rebellions typically are illegal, yet many secessionists argued that withdrawal was not illegal but fully constitutional. Of course, the American colonists had no legal or constitutional right to rebel against England. The Patriots in 1776 relied on the rhetoric of  natural or inalienable rights, particularly found in the right to “abolish” government when it becomes destructive of just ends. Would South Carolina abandon the constitutional argument in favor of a natural right to revolt against the Union? The model of 1776 was not as useful if South Carolina had a legal right to secede, anddisregard 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. They held this ground by adducing the “compact theory,” which maintained 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. The theory had its roots in the early Republic and had been manifested at various junctures in American history, including a role in the formation of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. These resolutions, drafted by James Madison (Virginia) and Thomas Jefferson (Kentucky), advanced the compact theory and the right of the states to judge the constitutionality of federal measures, in this case, the dreaded Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which punished speech that damaged the reputation of the government. The argument claims that the sovereign states had delegated  some parcel of authority to the federal government to act as their agent. Since sovereignty was undelegable and indivisible,  the states retained it. Under this view, states might leave the Union and create a new one at their discretion. That is what South Carolina and other secessionist states proceeded to do in their creation of the Confederate States of America.

Other secessionists contended that their action was both legal and revolutionary. They saw no conflict between the two positions. They claimed that secession was constitutionally permissible on the basis of the compact theory and, at the same time, saw no reason why a people might not abolish a government that was encroaching on their rights, as the Union was encroaching on the rights of Confederates. 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. But many southerners invoked the model of 1776 in a highly selective and indeed arbitrary manner. The willingness to invoke the principle of self-government was not accompanied by a willingness to invoke the other high-mindedprinciples of the Declaration of Independence, including liberty and equality. Critics of the South, including Republicans and abolitionists, were quick to point out the inconsistency and hypocrisy of the southern position.

The allure of legitimacy drew the South Carolinians  to a conservative position on the question of the legality of secession. They preferred to rest on the compact theory and the right to withdraw. It was their aim, therefore, to portray the federal government as revolutionary, since it was violating the rights of the southerners, particularly their property rights in slaves. They cite, for example, 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. In their depictions, 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 South Carolina declaration spells out 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, with each other, which limited the powers of the federal government. In addition, the powers not granted to the federal government were, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment, reserved to the states. Sovereignty was retained by the states.

The compact theory hinges on the viability of the claim that the Constitution was submitted to the states as states. The historical evidence refutes that proposition. In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the framers decided to submit the proposed Constitution to specifically held state-ratifying conventions. As James Madison explained it, the proposed Constitution could be evaluated only by a body that possessed higher authority than the proposed Constitution. States that would be created if and when the Constitution was adopted could hardly sit in judgment of the document that breathed life into them. The framers, as Madison explained, submitted the proposed Constitution to the people, who, as the sovereign entity in America, possessed the singular authority to approve or reject thedocument.

The question of the location of sovereignty in America represented the principal constitutional issue of the Civil War. The issue had seemingly been resolved in the Constitutional Convention. 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. His emphasis on the language in the preamble of the Constitution should have settled the question: “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union … do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The “people,” not the “states,” he pointed out, had ratified the Constitution. If the state legislatureshad ratified the Constitution, then they would have ordained it, but the people ratified it in special conventions to which delegates were elected to evaluate the proposed Constitution.

If the compact theory failed to explain the nature of the Constitution, then the concept of state sovereignty would be inadequate to justify secession. If secession were not lawful, then South Carolina would be forced to seek justication in the model of 1776, in the right, that is, to abolish government when it becomes destructive to the purposes for which it was established. It is in paragraphs 12–18 that South Carolina states its case that its right to slave property had been violated by the North. Under that scenario, the right to secede from the Union for the purpose of creating a new government is in play.

But the North, and specifically, Abraham Lincoln, denied that the property rights of the Confederate States has been violated.  Indeed, in his First Inaugural Address in 1861, President Lincoln was at pains to assure southerners that the Union would not interfere with slavery where it existed. He emphasized, moreover, that as president he would enforce the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act. At every turn, Lincoln sought to allay southern anxieties over the future of slavery. It was not enough, of course;  no assurance would have been sufficient, since the South  sought  to expand slavery into the territories. If the Union maintained that it would protect the property rights of the Confederates and the South claimed that secession was protected under the Constitution, which side waspromoting a “more perfect Union”?

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 pointedly 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. The decision was a great blunder. If South Carolina hadstayed in Congress, it might have been able to temper legislation and programs, and it might have avoided the greatest tragedy in American history.