December 24, 1860
On Christmas Eve, 1860, South Carolina announced that it would, indeed, be seceding from the Union and declared the many causes for taking this drastic step. On its face, this declaration would appear to articulate the reasons for secession and presumably would serve as part of the historical record—as an explanation of the secessionist’s cause. But, given the importance of the moment, perhaps this declaration would simply be a cloak—covering darker ambitions to continue to subjugate all other races to the white race with a veneer of nobly preserving states’ rights.
The declarants took issue with the momentum of the time: to expand rights to those not previously empowered. Of this momentum, the declaration stated: “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 peace and safety.” For the declarants, this expansion of rights was depriving others of their ability to create desirable policy, leading to acrimony and chaos.
This era must come to an end, the declarants claimed. “On the 4th 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 same day that Abraham Lincoln would enter the White House, South Carolina would effectuate its secession and prepare to wage war to secure its seceded status.
Of what would occur after secession, the declaration continued: “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.”
Worst of all, there was no cure for this ailment. “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 sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief,” wrote the declarants.
The declaration stated, as its conclusion: “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.”
With that, this declaration would give heart to all who had been calling for secession: finally, they would see the fruits of their labor; the change they had sought to bring about. The thinking went: no longer would southern states be subjugated to northern states, and by South Carolina being a nation of the world, she would be free to join other unions of states—and soon would.
For all its gravity, there remained the question of whether this declaration would stand up to be the noble expression of the South’s plight that its authors hoped it to be. Whenever someone, or a group, states the intentions behind actions, it is either: the truth; or a pretext for another aim—a cover for another, more hidden, reason. In this instance, maintaining states’ rights—specifically, the states’ rights to determine which of its inhabitants would be enfranchised—would be the declarants’ stated intention. Even a century and a half later, that stated intention has the power to resonate for its seemingly innocent and noble purpose: to preserve democracy; after all, if states did not protect their rights, presumably the federal government would subsume those rights and hollow out states—rendering them mostly ineffective and superfluous. But, perhaps the declaration’s weakest piece was its reasoning: if that intention of states’ rights was truly underlying South Carolina’s declaration, secession could not be the next logical step. It amounted to abandoning the Constitution and giving up on compromise; it set a precedent that when tensions became too high, secession was an option; it indulged those who called for the unthinkable—unthinkable because of its high risks and low potential for rewards; it unwisely suggested that there could be a better system for governing than that under the Constitution; and it showed the world that any sense of cohesion in the United States had evaporated.
Nonetheless, South Carolina, for the time being, would be in the wilderness; a state on its own, surrounded by the United States and no longer a part of them.
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