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government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which obligations, and the laws of the General Governments, 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, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress, or render useless any attempts to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from the service of labour claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution.
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 her obligation.
The ends for which this Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
These ends it endeavoured to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognised as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognised by giving to free persons distinct political rights : by giving them the right to represent, and burden them with direct taxes for,
three-fifths of their slaves; by authorising the importation of slaves for 20 years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labour.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assured the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognised by the Constitutions ; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace of and eloin the property of the citizens of the other States. 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.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it bas now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that article establishing the Executive Department the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line 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. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
On the fourth 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 tribunal shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guarantees 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.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation; and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of a more erroneous religious belief.
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.”
When the Union was made slaves were governed by laws made by slaveholders in all the Slave States. These laws were recognised as a fact in the Constitution, but never intended to be enforced by the Federal Government, or they would not so carefully have excluded the idea of property in man from all its grand clauses. Had they, however, have been left entirely to State Government control, as they were intended, when the Union was formed, the original charters might have been preserved intact for freedom ; but they were taken up and enforced by the Federal Government, thus introducing a wedge of compromise, and making the Government at Washington a slaveholding oligarchy and responsible for the calamities which have befallen us.
The unconstitutional acts referred to are the speech made by Lincoln at Springfield, Illinois, Personal Liberty Bills made in five of the Free States, so called, which conflicted with the Congressional Fugitive Slave Law, &c.
A number of Southern States formed themselves into a new Confederacy, determined to stand or fall
together; and when an attempt was made by General Sherman to detach Georgia from her sister states, we see from the following article published in the Confederate Union, how he most signally failed :
As much has been said about the informal message sent by General Sherman to Governor Brown, Vice-President Stephens and Senator Johnston, inviting them to visit the General at Atlanta, for a conference in reference to the state of the country, with a view to negotiations for peace, and as the public mind has been much excited upon the subject, some saying that it is the duty of these gentlemen to accept the general's invitation and make an effort to settle our difficulties by negotiation; others contending that it was the duty of the governor to have seized the general's messenger and to have ordered him to be hung as a traitor, we have, for the gratification of our own and the curiosity of our readers, called upon the governor and inquired after the facts.
The Governor, in reply to our inquiries, stated that Mr. William King, who represented himself as the bearer of a message from General Sherman, called upon him and stated, in substance, that General Sherman had requested him to say to the Governor that he would be pleased to receive a visit from him and other distinguished Georgians, with a view to a conference upon the state of the country and the settlement of our difficulties; that he