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SOUTH CAROLINA SECEDES FROM THE UNION.

WHEN enough returns from the election had been received to render it certain that Abraham Lincoln would be the next President, public meetings were held in the city of Charleston, and in other places in the State of South Carolina, at which resolutions were adopted in favor of the Secession of the State from the Union. A. G. Magrath, district judge of the United States Court, resigned his office, as did the United States Marshal, and the other judicial officers by federal appointment. Messrs. Hammond and Chesnut resigned their seats in the United States Senate, and M. L. Bonham his seat in the

House. The Collector of Customs and Postmaster at Charleston signified their intention to resign, but continued to discharge the duties of their respective offices. The Legislature, which met on the 27th day of November, immediately provided for a State Convention, to meet on the 17th of December. The election of delegates took place on the 11th. Meanwhile much interest arose in regard to the forts in Charleston harbor, only one of which-Fort Moultrie-was garrisoned, she having between sixty and seven

ty men; Brevet Major Rob't Anderson was the officer in command. Threats to seize them were freely made by the secessionists, who took steps to arm nearly the entire population of Charleston capable of bearing arms. At the same time, the work of strengthening Fort Moultrie, and, to some extent, Forts Sumter and Castle Pinckney, was vigorously prosecuted. The Convention met at Columbia on the day appointed. General D. F. Jamison was chosen president. In consequence of the prevalence of the small pox at Columbia, the Convention adjourned to meet in Charleston the next day. On the 20th, the following ordinance passed the Convention unanimously:

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 Caro
lina, 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 thou-
sand 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.

The next day, Messrs. R.W. Barnwell, J. H. Adams, and James L. Orr, were elected by the Convention Commissioners to be accredited to Washington, charged with the duty of negotiating for a division of the public property and the surrender of the forts of Charleston. On the 24th of December, the Convention adopted the following declaration of causes which induced and justified the secession of South Carolina from the Union :

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF
SOUTH CAROLINA,

Done in Convention, December 24, 1860.

The State of South Carolina, having determined

to resume her separate and equal place among
nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining
United States of America, and
to the nations of the
world, that she should declare the causes which

have led to this act.

In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration by the Colonies, "that they are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, to conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do."

laws for the government of that portion composed

They further solemnly declared, that whenever any "form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." Deeming the government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends,

they declared that the Colonies "are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the States of Great Britain is, and ought to be totally dissolved.”

In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments-legislative, executive, and judicial. For purposes of defence, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a league, known as the articles of confederation, whereby they agreed to intrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, first article, "that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, by this confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."

Under this confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3d of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definitive treaty was

signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms:

Article 1.-His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz.: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free, sovereign, and independent States; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, proprietary and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

Thus was established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely the right of a State to govern itself, and the right of a people to abolish a government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was Instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles was the fact, that each colony became and was recognized by the mother country as a free, sovereign and independent State.

In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the articles of confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adpotion of the States the articles of union known as the Constitution of the United States.

The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed, the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the general government, as the common agent, was then to be invested with their authority.

If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were-separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they exercised the functions of an independent nation.

By this Constitution, certain duties were charged on the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But, to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers 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 after ward 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 left 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 agreement entirely releases the obligation 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 dellberately refused for years past to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its 4th 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 of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on due," claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be

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 cession of the territory which now compose the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for the rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

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. But an increasing 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 tranquillity, 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 taxes for threefifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years, and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this government was instituted have been defeated, and the government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. These States have assumed 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 recognized by the Constitution; 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 and to eloin the property of the citizens of 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 has 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 intrusted with the administration of the common government, because he has declared that that "government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the subversion 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, and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy hostile to the South, and destructive of its peace and safety.

On the 4th 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 tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against

slavery until it shall cease throughout the United

States.

lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government or self-protection, and the federal government will have become their enemies.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions 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 free, sovereign 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.

And, for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection, of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

On the same day, the remaining representatives in Congress from South Caro lina vacated their seats and returned

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be home.

SMITHSONIAN

TABLE OF MEAN TEMPERATURES FOR NORTH AMERICA,

Prepared from the reductions of Observations at more than One Thousand Places, for an aggregate period of Several Thousand Years, by the Smithsonian Institution,

Washington, D. C., 1860.

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ELECTION RETURNS.

BY STATES, CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS, AND COUNTIES.

MAINE.

Counties.

Bristol..
Kent...
Newport

PRESIDENT, 1860. PRESIDENT, 1856.
Counties. Rep. Dem. Un. Dem. Rep. Dem.Am.
Lincoln. Doug. Bell. Breck. Frem, Buch. Fill.
Androscoggin 3526 1838 50 65.. 3388 1699 186
Aroostook*.. 1142 414 7 167.. 837 795 8 Providence
Cumberland. 7934 4815 345 345.. 8211 5258 605 Washington
Franklin..... 2281 1358 3 56..2529 1358 21
Hancock..... 3322 932 189 1062.. 3667 2142 161
Kennebec... 6599 2353 200 156.. 7320 2487 340
Knox

2520 1825 68 183.. With Lincoln.
Lincoln
2510 1073 267 210.. 4935 3598 392
Oxford..... 4244 2523 16 199.. 4364 3116 28
Penobscot... 6997 1555 185 2018.. 7861
Piscataquis.. 1656 401 14 374.. 1734
Sagadahoc... 2257 630 276 142.. 2956
Somerset..... 4048 1833 174 212.. 4283

Waldo

3793 341
915 97
934 397
1926 417

3800 1434 84 537.. 5159 3138 114 Washington.. 3515 2320 75 348.. 3299 2867 64 York......... 6460 4389 93 294.. 6636 5054 154

Total.... 62811 29693 2046 6368..67179 39080 3325
Lincoln over Douglas, 33118; over all, 24704;
Fremont over Buchanan, 28099; over all, 24774.
• The returns of this County are incomplete,

GOVERNOR, 1860. GOVERNOR, 1859.
Rep. Dem. Union. Rep. Dem.

Counties. Washburn Smart Barnes. Morrill.Smith.Scat.

Androscoggin.. 3774 2543
Aroostook..... 1577 1355

Cumberland... 8574 7055

Franklin

33.. 3090

2261 1

974 1226

2

Total

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Maj. for Sprague, 1460; do. for Turner, 5392.

LEGISLATURE.

SENATE.. Republicans, 17; Fusion, 15.
HOUSE... Republicans, 29; Fusion, 42.

Counties.

VERMONT.

PRESIDENT, 1860. PRESIDENT, 1856.
Rep. Dem. Un. Dem. Rep. Dem. Am.
Lincoln.Doug. Bell. Breck. Frem. Buch. Fill.
2626 344 47 17.. 3362 334 68

Addison
Bennington.... 1937 710 94 12.. 2120 785 70
Caledonia...... 2139 581 189 20.. 2540
Chittenden. 2241 545 25.. 2844

Essex....
Franklin.

Grand Isle.
Lamoille
Orange....
Orleans

Rutland

Washington

346.. 6894

5837

Hancock.

2530 2077
3632 2520

2.. 2365 177.. 2950

1944

Kennebec... 7395 4135

89.. 5297

1892
3288 5

Windham.
Windsor

Knox

Lincoln

3020 3142
2804 2589

63.. 2491

57.. 2235

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2388 5

2338

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Total...... 33808 8649 1969 218..39563 10569 545 Lincoln over Douglas, 25159; Fremont over

8104 4953 214 6285 4569 3 Buchanan, 28994.

CONGRESS. Gov., 1860. Gov. 1859. 19.. 1563 1143 2 Districts. Rep. Dem. Rep. Doug. Br'ck. Rep. Dem. 267.. 1938 1033 I. Walton. Wilcox. F'rb'ks. Saxe. Harvey Hall.Saxe. 163.. 3909 3035 66 215.. 3760 2604 1 Addison 2440 294.. 3057 448 45.. 3042 543 41. 3217 2831 2 Bennington.. 1671 693.. 1974 897 114.. 1866 1253 6950 6007 34.. 6036 5448 4 Rutland

1680 1106 2456 1052 4333 3034 4327 3133 Washington. 3912 3213 York.....

Total...... 69469 51378 1720..57221 45307 94 Washburn over Smart, 18091; Morrill over Smith, 12914.

CONGRESS, 1860.

Democrat. Majty.

Dist. Republican.
L-Goodwin... 12018; Hayes... 10556...1462
II.-Walton.... 12806; Record... 10192....2614
III.-Fessenden.. 10062; Johnson.. 9090.... 972
IV.-Morrill ... 12660; Fuller.... 7244....5416
V-Rice......... 12314; Blake.... 7983...4331
VL-Pike..
9426; Bradbury 7768....1658

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3182 827.. 3309 1089 158.. 3006 1070 Washington. 2975 1575.. 3207 1696 34.. 2997 1676

Total.... 10268 3389..11547 4130 351..10911 4542 Robinson for Cong., 295. Walton o'r Wilcox, 6879; Fairbanks over Saxe, 7417; Hall over Saxe, 6369.

IL Morrill.Dav'rt. Fairb's. Saxe. Harvey.Hall.Sare. Caledonia... 2300 363.. 2381 884 262.. 2217 1337 Orange..... 2951 1630.. 3091 1998 152.. 3052 2185 Windham... 3133 487.. 3356 544 478.. 3137 950 Windsor.... 4171 815.. 4464 1116 278.. 3428 1320

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