istence as sovereign States. But, to remove all doubt, an | importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stip amendment was added, which declared that the powers for the rendition of fugitives from labor. not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. On 23d May, 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her people, passed an ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterward altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government, with defined objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant, and to so much more only as was necessary to execute the power granted. This limitation teft the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.

We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence, and we hold further that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle -namely, the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties the obligation is mutual-that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreemeut entirely releases the obligations of the other, and that, where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure with all its consequences.

In the present case that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fifteen of the States have deliberately refused for years past to fulfil their Constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth article, provides as follows:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and the State of Virginia had previously declared her estimate of its value by making it the condition of her ces sion of the territory which now composes the States north of the Ohio river.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for the reudition by the several States of fugitives from jus

tice from the other States.

We affirm that those ends for which this Gove was instituted have been defeated, and the Gove itself has been made destructive of them by the ad the non-slaveholding States. Those States bave a institutions, and have denied the rights of prope the right of deciding upon the propriety of our de tablished in fifteen of the States, and recognized Constitution; they have denounced as sinfui the tion of Slavery; they have permitted the open est disturb the peace and to endanger the property of t ment among them of societies whose avowed obje zens of other States. They have encouraged and a thousands of our slaves to leave their homes, and who remain have been incited by emissaries, bool pictures, to servile insurrection.

increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the
For seventy-five years this agitation has been st
Constitution, a sectional party has found within the
of the common Government. Observing the forms
ticle establishing the Executive Department the me
subverting the Constitution itself.
has been drawn across the Union, and all the
A geographica
north of that line have united in the election of a n
opinions and purposes are hostile to Slavery. He is
the high office of President of the United States,
intrusted with the administration of the common
ernment, because he has declared that that "G
and that the public mind must rest in the belief tha
ment cannot endure permanently half slave, half
very is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the subversion o vating to citizenship persons who, by the supreme 1 Constitution has been aided in some of the States b the land, are incapable of becoming citizens, and votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy h to the South, and destructive of its peace and safety

On the 4th of March next this party will take p sion of the Government. It has announced that the s shall be excluded from the common territory; tha judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a must be waged against Slavery until it shall throughout the United States.

The guarantees of the Constitution will then no lo Slaveholding States will no longer have the powe exist: the equal rights of the States will be lost. self-government or self-protection, and the Federal ernment will have become their enemies.

tion, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain by the Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the in that public opinion at the North has invested a grea litical error with the sanctions of a more erroneous gious belief.

We, therefore, the people of South Carolina, by our But an in-legation in Convention assembled, appealing to the preme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our in existing between this State and the other States of N tions, have solemnly declared that the Union hereto has resumed her position among the nations of the wo America is dissolved, and that the State of South Caro as a free, sovereign, and independent State, with power to levy war, conclude peace, contract allian establish commerce, and to do all other acts and th which independent States may of right do.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. creasing hostility on the part of the Northern States to the institution of Slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa have enacted laws which either nullify the acts of Congress, or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from the service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law for the rendition of fugitive slaves in conformity with her Constitutional undertaking; but the current of

anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State

of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals, and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the Constitutional compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from its obligations.

The ends for which this Constitution was framed are

declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, protect the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights; by giving them the right to represent, and burdening them with direct axes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the

And, for the support of this declaration, with a tually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we

our sacred honor.

discloses some interesting facts, and is su The debate on the adoption of these pap joined.

Upon Mr. Memminger's declaration bei read, questions as to the accuracy of certa Mr. Furman and Mr. Inglis rais Statements, the former as to whether Ne Jersey had, as alleged, voted for a “section candidate," and the latter as to the alleg tion that Pennsylvania had on her statut book a "personal liberty law."

Mr. INGLIS said: They (Pennsylvania) have wh they call a law to prevent kidnapping, nearly simil dition of public sentiment in Pennsylvania, has r to the law of Virginia, which law, owing to the co doubt been perverted to this purpose. A docume of this kind, and proceeding from a body like thi ought to be exactly accurate in its statements. should like to ask the Chairman of the Committe if he has satisfied himself with regard to the fact the

Mr. INGLIS. Will the gentleman give me the date of that report?

Mr. MEMMINGR. It was made at the last session, January 26th, 1860.

Mr. INGLIS. To what law do they refer? for Pennsylvania has recently revised her criminal code, and, I understand, has omitted some portion of that law. Mr. MEMMINGER. This is all the information I have on the subject. It confirms what is stated in the report.

Mr. ENGLISH read from De Bow's Review an article [a very erroneous one] in support of the assertion contained in the Declaration, that nearly all the Free States had refused to sustain the Constitution.

there is any such law as this on the statute-book oftain that this State did triumph then. Mr. Clay said, Pennsylvania? If he has, why then I am satisfied. before the nullification, that the tariff system had Mr. MEMMINGER. In reply to the gentleman I been established for all time. After the nullification wnld say that I hold in my hand an elaborate report ordinance Mr. Clay said that that ordinance abol on this point by a Committee of the Legisla-ished the American system, and that the State had ture of Virginia in which the laws of each State are triumphed. It is true that we were cheated in the professed to be correctly stated. compromise. The tariff is not the question which has brought us up to our present attitude. We are giving a list of the causes to the world-to the Southern States. Let them not quarrel with us now, when we are brought up to a dissolution of the Union, by the discussion of debatable and doctrinal points. The Whig party, throughout all the States, have been pro tective tariff men, and they cling to that old issue with all the passion incident to the pride of human opinions. Are we to go off now, when other Southern States are bringing their people up to the true mark-are we to go off on debatable and doctrinal points? Are we to go back to the consideration of this question, of this great controversy; go back to that party's politics around which so many passions cluster? Names, sir, are much. Opinions, preju diced passions, cluster around names. Our people have come up to this great act. I am willing in this issue to rest disunion upon the question of slavery. It is the great central point from which we are now proceeding. I believe, sir, that the reference to other States in this address is all correct. The gentleman from Chesterfield says that a certain construction of one act of the Pennsylvania code is denied by the citizens of that State. I myself have very great doubts about the propriety of the fugitive slave law. The Constitution was, in the first place, a compact between the several States, and in the second a treaty between the sections; and, I believe the fugitive slave law was a treaty between sections. It was the act of sovereign States as sections; and I believe, therefore, and have very great doubts whether it ought not to have been left to the execution of the several States, and, failing of enforcement, I believe it should have been regarded as casus belli. I go for the address because I believe it does present succinctly and conspicuously what are the main primary causes.

Mr. GREGG. If this address was to be a declaration of the immediate causes which produced the secession of South Carolina, what the gentleman had said might be applicable, but its title does not say so. Another document has been submitted to this body-an Address to the Southern States. This is inconsistent with the other. In the latter address all the causes are stated in full. If we wish to find the immediate cause of the secession of South Carolina, the immediate cause of all is the election of Lincoln.

Mr. MAXCY GREGG. The gentleman who just resumed his seat, has pointed out in detail the various questions referred to in this report. He has shown that things have been said there which ought not to to have been said, and of the correctness of which we have not sufficient evidence. But my objection to the paper is greater than this. It is that, as a State paper, to go out as a new Declaration of Independence, it is entirely defective and imperfect. It purports to be a declaration of the causes which justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. The causes! And yet in all this declaration not one word is said about the tariff, which for so many years caused a contest in this State against the Federal Government. Not one word is said about the violations of the Constitution in expenditures not authorized by that instrument; but the main stress is laid upon an incomparably unimportant point relative to fugitive slaves, and the laws passed by Northern States obstructing the recovery of fugi-a tive slaves. Mr. President, if we undertake to set forth a declaration of the causes which justify our Secession, we ought to publish a complete document -a document which might vie in its completeness with that which was adopted in 1776-not that I mean to say that that is a model cause! that would be to asy a good deal too much. This declaration might be put forth by gentlemen who had no objection whatever to the lavish and unconstitutional expenditures which have been made by the Federal Government for forty years past. This is not the sort of paper which, in my opinion, ought to go forth to justify our action. A correct designation of this paper would be a declaration of some of the causes which justify the secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. If it is proper to set forth in a solemn declaration some of the causes, why let the title be altered, and, if the Convention think proper, let it go forth; but if we undertake to set forth all the causes, do we not dishonor the memory of all the statesmen of South Carolina, now departed, who commenced forty years ago a war against the tariff and against internal improvements, saying nothing of the United States Bank and other measures which may now be regarded as obsolete. Many of the acts of the non-slaveholding States obstructing the recovery of fugitive slaves have been passed since 1852-I think the majority of them; but I do not regard it as a matter of any importance. But when the people of South Carolina, eight years since, declared that the causes then existing fully justified the State in seceding, did they confine themselves to these miserable fugitive elave laws? No! Sir, I regard it as unworthy of the State of South Carolina to send forth a new declaration now, and in it to say nothing about any other cause justifying their action but fugitive slaves. I am in favor of laying this report on the table, or recommitting it.

Mr. KEITT. I agree with the gentleman that the power of taxation is the central power of all Governments. If you put that into my hands, I do not care what the form of Government may be, I will control your people through it. But that is not the question in this address. We have instructed the Committee to draw up a statement of the reasons which influenced us in the present case in our withdrawal. My friend suggests that sufficient notice has not been paid to the tariff. Your late Senators, and every one of your members of the House of Representatives voted for

the present tariff. If the gentleman had been there he would also have voted for it. (Laughter.] The question of the tariff did agitate us in 1832, and did array this State against the Federal Government. And I main

2

Mr. INGLIS. Will the gentleman inform us whether the statutes of Virginia do not contain a paragraph relating to kidnapping, precisely similar to that of Pennsylvania?

A VOICE. It is the case with Georgia.

Mr. KEITT. It may be so, sir, but I do not know. Mr. INGLIS. I say, Mr. President, I make no attack upon this report; but I propose to amend it by striking out the word "fifteen" and inserting "many" instead; and then to strike out the sentence which contains the enumeration of States. It will not disturb the order to omit that.

Mr. DARGAN. I confess my difficulty results from the same sources as the gentleman from Richland. Let me express also my earnest conviction of the eminent propriety of obtaining a concurrence and symmetry in the declaration of the causes which led to the secession of South Carolina, and in the senti ments enunciated in the Address to the Southern States; and as the Address to the Southern States, which was read here to-day, was made the special order for to-morrow, I move that this document be also made the special order at the same time and in connection with that subject.

Mr. MIDDLETON. They are very different matters -the one an address to the Southern people and the other an address to the world.

Mr. DARGAN. The subject-matter is the same.

The PRESIDENT. The question will be on making the report of the Committee declaring Secession the special order for one o'clock to-morrow, in connection with the report of the Committee on Slaveholding States upon the same subject.

The question was taken and the motion was agreed to.

On Monday, December 24th, 1860, the Convention proceeded to consider both the Address and the Declaration, when further debate ensued.

Many verbal amendments having been made to the latter,

Mr. J. J. P. Smith moved to adopt the former for the present, and table the latter. A DELEGATE. I second the motion, and call for the previous question.

Mr. Louis WARDLAW. I trust that this Convention is not going to act hastily. Whatever is done should be done well. This address will reach no one of the Southern States before the elections, unless it be the State of Georgia. There is, therefore, no special need of hurrying the reference. There is not one single sentence of that address to which I do not heartily subscribe. It is an able and admirable exposition of the structure of our Government and its general operation. And yet I do not think it is exactly that which an address to our Southern sisters should be. I think it treats too much upon some subjects, and does not touch others that are very important. From the beginning I have been very anxious that these two papers should be consistent one with the other, and contain all those matters which we confess should operate either upon the opinion of the Southern people or the opinion of the world. Now, sir, my objection to the address to the Southern people is that it does not dilate as it should upon matters connected with the immediate cause of our secession, but on matters connected with slavery. My objection to the other address is, that it dwells too much upon those fugitive slave laws and those personal liberty bills, which give it too much the appearance of special pleading. The address which we have under consideration does not set off to the Southern people, as it should, our defenceless condition. Already our adversaries have the House of Representatives; they will soon have the Senate, and then they can make the Judiciary what they please, and thus have entire power over the Government. It does not set forth, as I think it should, that the election of Lincoln is, in fact, an edict of emancipation. It does not set forth what would be the deleterious effects of emancipation; that emancipation would be destruction to the blacks and degradation to the whites. Nor does this address set forth the shameless hypocrisy of the North, who, whilst they cry out against what they call the sin of slavery, do not choose to relieve themselves of that which they assert is an evil by withdrawing from the Confederacy. When these addresses go forth, they go forth as solemn State papers, by which we must be able to stand. For this reason, every word should be most carefully considered, and nothing superfluous shonld be contained in them; nothing important should be omitted. Mr. MEMMINGER next took the floor and defended the address to the nations of the world, which was reported by himself. After reciting its points and the principles it enunciated, he said: We show by law of compact that we are entitled to leave this Government. My friend from Abbeville says, in this regard, he does not exactly approve this document. Allow me to say to the honorable gentlemen that when you take the position that you have a right to break your faith, to destroy an agreement which you have made, to tear off your seal from the document to which it is affixed, you are bound to justify your self fully to all the nations of the world; for there is nothing that casts such a stain upon the escutcheon of a nation as a breach of faith. Therefore the document shows fully that both in measure and in spirit our co-States have broken the Constitution and the Union. Not only in letter has this been done, but also in spirit. The common agent which should have acted for our common good has been converted into an instrument for our destruction. And now as a consummating act a section resident has been elected, whose chief recommendation was that he desires to see slavery abolished. The great objection that we raise is not to Abraham Lincoln himself, but because he is the representative of a hostile opinion, destructive of every interest of the South.

Mr. RHETT next spoke in explanation of the Address to the Southern States, which was reported by himself. This committee, he said, determined that. whilst setting forth the immediate cause which induced South Carolina to secede, it was not improper to go into previous causes which led to that result. The secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day. It is not any thing produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the fugitive slave law. It has been a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years. The election of Lincoln and Hamlin was the last straw on the back of the camel. But it was not the

only one. The back was nearly broken before. point upon which I differ from my friend is thi says he thought it expedient for us to put this question before all the world upon this simple: of wrongs on the question of slavery, and that tion turned upon the fugitive slave law. Now, gard to the fugitive slave law, I myself doubt its tutionality, and I doubted it on the floor of the S when I was a member of that body. The S acting in their sovereign capacity, should be re sible for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Tha our best security. This report has proceeded the elaborate discussion of a constitutional que about which the very ablest men in this State doubted. When we go before the world, if we upon mere matter of this kind, we do not do j to our cause. Sir, to whom are we to speak' simply to the North? We are about to sunde relations with that section, and I trust forever. treaties, I suppose, will be with the nations o rope. Do you suppose the nations of Europe have any sympathy with us, or confidence, or tion, because of the violation of the fugitive law? Germany, and France, and England, wh they all say? Sir, in setting up our independen are not to narrow it down simply to the questi slavery, We do not do ourselves justice. aggression upon slavery is the last consequenc a great cause, and that great cause is the dissol of the Constitution of the United States by the a of the North. It is that which led them to th gressions upon the taxing power. It is that w led to the aggressions upon the appropriation po It is that which led to the aggressions on slave the District of Columbia. is, that we do not live in a free Government. And now the great Mr. MEMMINGER. The gentleman who has taken his seat is not as familiar with this docu as I am, or he would have been saved the nece of a good deal he has said. I entirely concur in opinion that the Constitution of the United S requires the rendition of slaves by the States and by the General Government; and if any one will this report he will perceive that that is precisel ground upon which it proceeds. We there com that the States have not fulfilled their constituti obligations-not that the Federal Government not done its duty. We there complain that v the Federal Government undertakes to do that w the States had obligated themselves to do, they i fere to prevent its faithful execution.

Judge WITHERS Said: I have not much to say to Convention, but the first thing which I desire to mit to them is this: that the addresses which are upon your table, and which are the subject-matte a motion for further reference to the two commit reporting them, are, in my understanding, diplom papers. I profess not to be much of a diplomst self, yet I profess to have a desire that this Con tion shall confine itself to the object which it scribes to itself.

People?
What is the object of the Address to the South
Is it not to conciliate the Southern St
towards the purposes of a Southern Confeders
and, as far as we can, to persuade them to enter
a compact with South Carolina? Is that the ol
of the Address to the Slaveholding States? If
why should it be issued?

It is said in the discussion that the Address to
Slaveholding States should descant upon the tax
power and the power to lay duties upon imports
well as the expenditures of money in undue prof
tion upon the part of the Federal Government am
the Free States, as matters of grievances of
greatest importance; that such topics ought to
found in this paper setting forth the causes of Se
sion. Well, in an Address to the People of the SI
holding States is it expedient to dwell and ins
upon a topic which will not find favor with all
Southern States? I submit to the experience of
able gentleman who prepared that address to
whether, if we declared that we separated from
Confederacy because of the tariff of protection
domestic manufactures, he will find that, be it e
in Louisiana, Missouri, or Kentucky?
so true, a sentiment corresponding to public opin

All this matter of the tariff has been enacted wh the Confederacy existed, and with South Carolina a party to the transaction. When it begun in 18 who was it voted for a tariff highly protective domestic manufactures? Did not that great m Mr. Calhoun-vote for this measure? whom we all reverence, both living and dead-I me Representative in the House from the Congression Did not

That the said instrument was the work of minds of in the formation with us of a Southern Confedthe first order in strength and accomplishment. eracy.

That its speedy adoption would work happily as a reviving agency in matters financial and commercial between the States adopting it, and between them as at the same time would combine, without delay, a power touching purse and sword, that might bring to a prudent issue the reflections of those who may perchance be contemplating an invasion, or to an issue disastrous to them, the attempted execution of such unholy design.

a united power and foreign commercial nations; and

Such are some of the considerations, very rapidly stated, which address themselves to this subject.

It is contended that the same limitation of the power to levy duties, and that to regulate commerce, (and perhaps other provisions of the said Constitution,) may be desirable, and are in fact so to some of the committee; yet these modifications may be safely left to a period when the articles of a permanent government may be settled; and that, meantime, the Constitution referred to will serve the purpose of temporary confederation, which the committee unite in believing ought to be sought, through all proper measures, most earnestly.

It is also submitted that if the tender of the said Constitution, even as a Provisional Government, should, in the opinion of the Convention, be accompanied by a condition that it be subject to specific limitations, expositions of ambiguities, or modifications, the committee would respectfully refer to the Convention itself such matters; and this is done, not because the committee would not willingly consider and report upon such subject, but because they deem it due to the Convention and the public interest that they should now lay before the Convention the substantial propositions contained in the following resolutions, which the majority of the committee recommend to the Convention as fit to be adopted, viz: Resolved, First, that this Convention do appoint a Commissioner to proceed to each of the slavehold ing States that may assemble in Convention, for the purpose of laying our Ordinance of Secession before the same, and respectfully invite their co-operation |