Sunday in the South: Secession Day in SC

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Secession Day in SC

On this day in 1860, government of South Carolina in a convention of the people formally re-assumed its sovereignty as a republic among the nations by adopting the Ordinance of Secession at Charleston. South Carolina had originally been a proprietary colony (owned by businessmen), but the South Carolinians threw them off in 1719 to be a Royal Colony. Then in 1776, they did it again, and that time formed the Republic of South Carolina with John Rutledge as first president. In 1788, they gave up some sovereignty and joined with 12 other states to form the United States under the Constitution. In 1860, South Carolina invoked the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution and took back that sovereignty as a nation in the Ordinance of Secession. A few weeks later they issued their reasoning for such a revolutionary move.

THE SOUTH CAROLINA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION

AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved.

Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.

SOME SOUTH CAROLINA FLAGS