South Carolina Declaration of Secession

[2] The declaration is a product of a convention organized by the state's government in the month following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president, where it was drafted in a committee headed by Christopher Memminger.

An official secession convention met in South Carolina following the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, on a platform opposing the expansion of slavery into U.S.

[6]The convention had previously agreed to draft a separate statement that would summarize their justification and gave that task to a committee of seven members comprising Christopher G. Memminger (considered the primary author[3]), F. H. Wardlaw, R. W. Barnwell, J. P. Richardson, B. H. Rutledge, J. E. Jenkins, and P. E.

[7] The document they produced, the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, was adopted by the convention on December 24.

[8] The opening portion of the declaration outlines the historical background of South Carolina and offers a legal justification for its secession.

But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding 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.

It asserts that South Carolina was a sovereign state that had delegated only particular powers to the federal government by means of the U.S. Constitution.

Declaration of Independence from 1776, however, it omitted the phrases that "all men are created equal", "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", and "consent of the governed".

Professor and historian Harry V. Jaffa noted this omission as significant in his 2000 book, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War: South Carolina cites, loosely, but with substantial accuracy, some of the language of the original Declaration.