[Copied by Justin Sanders from J.A. May & J.R. Faunt, *South Carolina Secedes* (U. of S. Car. Pr, 1960), pp. 76-81.]
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

(after an exhaustive rendering of the events of 1776 and the meaning of states rights, the first of the \causes\ of secession is listed thus):

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

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 they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for 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 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.

Steve-O says: I do appreciate how there are multiple interpretive lenses with which to view the causes, events, and emotions leading up to the Civil War, but I most profoundly object to the bald assertion that slavery wasn't at the root of nearly every one of them, or that civil war would have occurred without it.

As General Washington stated: \It is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.\

[Copied by Justin Sanders from "Journal of the State Convention", (Jackson, MS: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1861), pp. 86-88]
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization….

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war….

This Free State-Slave State tension reached climax with the election of 1860, when Lincoln won the presidency. He had not been elected by any southern state, and yet he was to succeed Buchanan. To the South, this was proof they had lost all power and influence in Congress, and that to insure their liberty and the preservation of their precious institution, they must secede. Because although Lincoln had pledged to allow slavery to remain where it already existed, he was a Republican and, therefore, a Free Soiler. And if he had become President without Southern support, what would prevent him from extending a hand to end slavery in the South? I think, in the end, secession occurred, certainly for States' Rights, but I think specifically to protect their way of life and their economy.

However, I do respect your opinion and consider it to be an interesting one. :)