Federalism, Secession, and the American State: Divided, We Secede by Lawrence M. Anderson

Author:Lawrence M. Anderson [Anderson, Lawrence M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History & Theory, General, Political Science, American Government, Local
ISBN: 9781136215247
Google: JPcBM8CeVYAC
Goodreads: 17121455
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE CONVENTION MEETS: SECESSION IS ACCOMPLISHED

While the legislature of South Carolina cleared the way for unilateral secession by voting for an early convention, it was the convention that actually had to carry it out. Shortly before the secession convention assembled, John Elmore, commissioner from Alabama, and C.E. Hooker, commissioner from Mississippi, arrived in South Carolina with instructions to advise South Carolina to secede without waiting for action from other states.127 Both commissioners addressed the convention on the first day of its meeting, publicly promising its members that their home states would secede. as soon as their conventions were held,128 Thanks to the actions of these individuals, members of the South Carolina convention felt confident that the actions of their state would be duplicated in other states of the South.

Soon after the convention convened in Columbia on 17 December 1860, a smallpox scare compelled its members to move it to Charleston for the formal declaration of secession. On 20 December 1860, South Carolina repealed the 1788 ordinance that ratified the Constitution, and, by doing so, seceded from the US. In typical South Carolinian fashion, the secession ordinance was passed unanimously, and the citizens of the state were not given the opportunity to approve the actions of the convention in referendum. UJsing the distinction discussed by James Madison in Federalist 10, South Carolina was a republic—not a democracy; that is, the population of South Carolina, including slaves and women (who together constituted the vast majority of the state's population) were represented, but they did not rule directly.

South Carolina's promise to defend Southern rights and institutions to the last extremity, first made in 1828, then in 1832, and again in 1852, was finally kept. What South Carolinians now needed to do was to defend their actions to themselves, the South, the UU.S., and the world. They hoped that such a defense would drive the other Southern states out of the Union and prevent the federal government from attempting to coerce them. (Despite the strategic benefits of coercion, South Carolinians undoubtedly preferred that a Southern Confederacy be created without the use of federal force.)

South Carolina's official justification for its actions was contained in two documents produced by different forces within the convention. One document, tided the “Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” and written in a committee headed by C.G. Memminger, outlined the immediate causes of secession. The justification for secession outlined in this document presented a familiar argument. It stated:

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