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Pamphlet entitled "Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union; and the Ordinance of Secession." First edition, later printing. Charleston, SC: Evans & Cogswell, Printers to the Convention, 1860. Wrappers absent, 5.25 x 8.5, 13 pages. In very good to fine condition, with a light vertical fold, adhesive residue at the head of the title page, light overall wrinkling and creasing, and a slit to the blank last leaf.
The "Declaration of the Immediate Causes" and the accompanying "Ordinance of Secession" were pivotal documents issued in December 1860, marking South Carolina's formal withdrawal from the United States. The declaration, written by a seven member committee led by C.C. Memminger, outlined the state's primary grievance: the perceived failure of the federal government to uphold the constitutional rights of slaveholding states. It emphasized that Northern states had violated the Constitution by refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and by seeking to restrict the expansion of slavery into new territories. The document framed secession as a legitimate response to these alleged breaches of the constitutional compact between the states. The Ordinance of Secession, a succinct legal act, formally dissolved South Carolina’s ties to the Union. Together, these texts served as both a justification for secession and a bold assertion of states’ rights, laying the ideological groundwork for the Confederacy and the ensuing Civil War.
