Georgia |
Georgia's Declaration of Causes for Secession
(Full Text) "The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization...For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us...Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere...we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity." |
MissiPPi |
Mississipi's Declaration of Causes for Secession
(Full Text) "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery...none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun...a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization...There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union...it (abolitionism) denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right...It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union...It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law...It advocates negro equality, socially and politically...It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists. |
South
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South Carolina's Declaration of Causes for Secession (Full Text)
"...the action of the non-slaveholding States...have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery...They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection...(they) have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery...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..." |
Texas |
Texas's Declaration of Causes for Secession (Full Text)
"She (Texas) was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time....In all the non-slave-holding States... the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party...based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States...they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress...They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture...sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection...hired emissaries among us to... distribute arms and poison to our slaves...And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States....We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable...That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations..." |
Florida |
Florida's Declaration of Causes for Secession (Full Text)
"A President has recently been elected... mainly if not exclusively on account of a settled and often proclaimed hostility to our institutions and a fixed purpose to abolish them... it is the purpose of the party soon to enter into the possession of the powers of the Federal Government to abolish slavery...it has been announced by all the leading men and presses of the party that the ultimate accomplishment of this result is its settled purpose and great central principle. That no more slave States shall be admitted into the confederacy and that the slaves from their rapid increase the highest evidence of the humanity of their owners will become value less. Nothing is more certain than this and at no distant day. What must be the condition of the slaves themselves when their number becomes so large that their labor will be of no value to their owners. Their natural tendency every where shown where the race has existed to idleness vagrancy and crime increased by an inability to procure subsistence. Can any thing be more impudently false than the pretense that this state of things is to be brought about from considerations of humanity to the slaves....It is in so many words saying to you we will not burn you at the stake but we will torture you to death by a slow fire we will not confiscate your property and consign you to a residence and equality with the african but that destiny certainly awaits your children..." |