Address to the Slaveholding States. "The Southern States now stand exactly in the same position toward the Northern States that our ancestors in the colonies did toward Great Britain. The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British Parliament. The general welfare' is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British Parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation this general welfare' requires. Thus the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government, and the people of the Southern States are compelled to meet the very despotism their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776. "The consolidation of the Government of Great Britain over the colonies was attempted to be carried out by the taxes. The British Parliament undertook to tax the colonies to promote British interests. Our fathers resisted this pretension. They claimed the right of self-taxation through their Colonial Legislatures. They were not represented in the British Parliament, and therefore could not rightfully be taxed by its Legislature. The British Government, however, offered them a representation in the British Parliament; but it was not sufficient to enable them to protect themselves from the majority, and they refused it. Between taxation without any representation, and taxation without a representation adequate to protection, there was no difference. By neither would the colonies tax themselves. Hence they refused to pay the taxes laid by the British Parliament. "The Southern States now stand in the same relation toward the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, that our ancestors stood toward the people of Great Britain. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation, and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parlisment for their benefit. For the last forty years the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures. "There is another evil in the condition of the Southern toward the Northern States, which our ancestors refused to bear toward Great Britain. Our ancestors not only taxed themselves, but all the taxes collected from them were expended among them. Had they submitted to the pretensions of Address to the Slave holding States. the British Government, the taxes collected from them weuld have been expended on other parts of the British Empire. They were fully aware of the effect of such a policy in impoverishing the people from whom taxes are collected, and in enriching those who receive the benefit of their expenditure. To prevent the evils of such a policy was one of the motives which drove them on to revolution. Yet this British policy has been fully realized toward the Southern States by the Northern States. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected three-fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others connected with the operation of the General Government, has provincialized the cities of the South. Their growth is paralyzed, while they are the mere suburbs of Northern cities. The basis of the foreign commerce of the United States are the agricultural productions of the South; yet Southern cities do not carry it on. Our foreign trade is almost annihilated. In 1740 there were five ship-yards in South Carolina to build ships to carry on our direct trade with Europe. Between 1740 and 1779 there were built in these yards twenty-five square-rigged vessels, besides a great number of sloops and schooners, to carry on our coast and West India trade. In the half century immediately preceding the Revolution, from 1725 to 1775, the population of South Carolina increased seven-fold. "No man can for a moment believe that our ancestors intended to establish over their posterity exactly the same sort of government they had overthrown. The great object of the Constitution of the United States, in its internal operation, was, doubtless, to secure the great end of the Revolution-a limited free government-a government limited to those matters only which were general and commor to all portions of the United States. All sectional or local interests were to be left to the States. By no other arrangement would they obtain free government by a Constitution common to so vast a Confederacy. Yet by gradual and steady encroach ments on the part of the North, and submission on the part of the South, the limitations in the Consti tution have been swept away, and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations. "It is not at all surprising, while such is the charac ter of the Government of the United States, that it should assume to possess power over all the insti tutions of the country. The agitations on the subject of Slavery in the South are the natural results of the consolidation of the Government. Responsi bility follows power; and if the people of the North ADDRESS TO THE SLAVE HOLDING Address to the Slaveholding States. Address to the Slave holding States. hend that seeming paradox, that have the power by Congress to promote the general welfare of the United States' by any means they deem expedient, why should they not assail and overthrow the institution of Slavery in the South? They are responsible for its continuance or existence, in proportion to their power. A majority in Congress, according to their interested and perverted views, is omnipotent. The inducements to act upon the subject of Slavery, under such circumstances, were so imperious as to amount almost to a moral necessity. To make, however, their numerical power available to rule the Union, the North must consolidate their power. It would not be united on any matter common to the whole Unionin other words, on any constitutional subject for on such subjects divisions are as likely to exist in the North as in the South. Slavery was strictly a sectional interest. If this could be made the criterion of parties at the North, the North could be united in its power, and thus carry out its measures of sectional ambition, encroachment, and aggrandizement. To build up their sectional predominance in the Union, the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions; but, that being done, the consoli-petuity. dation of the North to rule the South, by the tariff and Slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things. "Under such a government there must, of course, be many and endless irrepressible conflicts,' between the two great sections of the Union. The same faithlessness which has abolished the Constitution of the United States, will not fail to carry out the sectional purposes for which it has been abolished. There must be conflict; and the weaker section of the Union can only find peace and liberty in an independence of the North. The repeated efforts made by South Carolina, in a wise conservatism, to arrest the progress of the General Government in its fatal progress to consolidation, have been unsupported and denounced as faithless to the obligations of the Constitution by the very men and States who were destroying it by their usurpations. It is now too late to reform or restore the Government of the United States. All confidence in the North is lost in the South. The faithlessness of half a century has opened a gulf of separation between them which no promises or engagements can fill. "The Constitution of the United States was an experiment. The experiment consisted in uniting under one Government different peoples, living in different climates, and having different pursuits of industry and institutions. It matters not how carefully the limitations of such a government be laid down in the Constitution-its success must at least depend upon the good faith of the parties to the constitutional compact in enforcing them. It is not in the power of human language to exclude false inferences, constructions, and perversions, in any constitution; and when vast sectional interests are to be subserved, involving the appropriation of countless millions of money, it has not been the usual experience of mankind that words on parchment can arrest power. The Constitution of the United States, irrespective of the interposition of the States, rested on the assumption that power would yield to faith- "It cannot be believed that our ancestors would that integrity would be stronger than interest, and have assented to any union whatever with the peothat thus the limitations of the Constitution would ple of the North if the feelings and opinions now exbe observed. The experiment has been fairly made. isting among them had existed when the Constitution The Southern States, from the commencement of was framed. There was then no tariff-no Negro the Government, have striven to keep it within the fanaticism. It was the delegates from New England orbit prescribed by the Constitution. The experi- who proposed, in the Convention which framed the ment has failed. The whole Constitution, by the con- Constitution, to the delegates from South Carolina structions of the Northern people, has been swal- and Georgia, that if they would agree to give Conlowed up by a few words in its preamble. In their gress the power of regulating commerce by a majoreckless lust for power they seem unable to compre-rity, that they would support the extension of the Address to the Slaveholding States. African slave-trade for twenty years. African Slavery existed in all the States but one. The idea that they would be made to pay that tribute to their Northern Confederates which they had refused to pay to Great Britain, or that the institution of African Slavery would be made the grand basis of a sectional organization of the North to rule the South, never crossed their imaginations. The Union of the Constitution was a Union of Slaveholding States. It rests on Slavery, by prescribing a representation in Congress for three-fifths of our slaves. There is nothing in the proceedings of the Convention which framed the Constitution to show that the Southern States would have formed any other Union, and still less that they would have formed a Union with more powerful non-Slaveholding States, having a majority in both branches of the Legislature of the Government. They were guilty of no such folly. Time and the progress of things have totally altered the relations between the Northern and Southern States since the Union was first established. That identity of feeling, interests and institutions which once existed is gone. They are now divided between agriculture, and manufacturing, and commercial States-between Slaveholding and non-Slaveholding States. Their institutions and industrial pursuits have made them totally different peoples. That equality in the Government between the two sections of the Union which once existed no longer exists. We but imitate the policy of our fathers in dissolving a Union with non-Slaveholding Confederates, and seeking a Confederation with Slaveholding States. "Experience has proved that Slaveholding States cannot be safe in subjection to non-Slaveholding States. Indeed, no people ever expect to preserve their rights and liberties unless they are in their own custody. To plunder and oppress where plunder and oppression can be practiced with impunity, seems to be the natural order of things. The fairest portions of the world have been turned into wildernesses, and the most civilized and prosperous communities have been impoverished and ruined by Anti-Slavery fanaticism. The people of the North have not left us in doubt as to their designs and policy. United as a section in the late Presidential election, they have elected as the exponent of their policy one who has openly declared that all the States of the United States must be made Free States or Slave States. It is true that among those who aided in this election there are various shades of Anti-Slavery hostility. But if African Slavery in the Southern States be the evil their political combinations affirm it to be, the requisitions of an inexorable .ogic must lead them to emancipation. If it is right Address to the Slaveholding States. to preclude or abolish Slavery in a Territory, why should it be allowed to remain in the States? The one is not at all more unconstitutional than the other, according to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. And when it is considered that the Northern States will soon have the power to make that Court what they please, and that the Constitution never has been any barrier whatever to their exercise of power, what check can there be in the unrestrained counsels of the North to emancipation? There is sympathy in association, which carries men along without principle; but when there is principle, and that principle is fortified by long existing prejudices and feelings, association is omnipotent in party influences. In spite of all disclaimers and professions, there can be but one end to the submission by the South to the rule of a sectional Anti-Slavery Government at Washing. ton; and that end, directly or indirectly, must be the emancipation of the slaves of the South. The hypocrisy of thirty years-the faithlessness of their whole course from the commencement of our union with them-show that the people of the non-Slaveholding North, are not and cannot be safe associates of the Slaveholding South under a common Government. Not only their fanaticism, but their erro neous views of the principles of free Governments, render it doubtful whether, separated from the South, they can maintain a free Government amoug themselves. Brute numbers with them is the great element of free Government. A majority is infallible and omnipotent. The right divine to rule in kings' is only transferred to their majority. The very object of all constitutions, in free, popular governments, is to restrain the majority. Constitutions, therefore, according to their theory, must be most unrighteous inventions, restricting liberty. None ought to exist, but the body politic ought simply to have a political organizatlon, to bring out and enforce the will of a majority. This theory may be harmless in a small community, having an indentity of interests and pursuits; but over a vast State-still more, over a vast Confederacy, having various and conflicting interests and pursuits-it is a remorseless despotism. In resisting it, as applicable to ourselves, we are vindicating the great cause of free government, more important, perhaps, to the world than the existence of the United States. Nor in resisting it, do we intend to depart from the safe instrumentality the system of government we have established with them requires. In separating from them we invade no rights-no interest of theirs. We violate no obligation of duty to them. As separate, inde. pendent States in Convention, we made the Constitution of the United States with them; and as sepa ADDRESS TO THE SLAVE HOLDING STATES. 111 Address to the Slaveholding States. Address to the Slaveholding States. rate, independent States, each | and grandeur. You have loved State acting for itself, we adopt the Union, in whose service your ed it. South Carolina, acting in great statesmen have labored, her sovereign capacity, now thinks proper to secede and your great soldiers have fought and conquered from the Union. She did not part with her sovereignty not for the material benefits it conferred, but with in adopting the Constitution. The last thing a State the faith of a generous and devoted chivalry. You can be presumed to have surrendered is her sover- have long lingered and hoped over the shattered eignty. Her sovereignty is her life. Nothing but a remains of a broken Constitution. Compromise clear, express grant can alienate it. Inference after compromise, formed by your concessions, has should be dumb. Yet it is not at all surprising that been trampled under foot by your Northern Confedthose who have construed away all the limitations erates. All fraternity of feeling between the North of the Constitution should also by construction aud the South is lost, or has been converted into claim the annihilation of the sovereignty of the hate, and we, of the South, are at last driven together States. Having abolished all barriers to their om- by the stern destiny which controls the existnipotence by their faithless constructions in the ence of nations. Your bitter experience of the faith operations of the General Government, it is most lessness and rapacity of your Northern Confede natural that they should endeavor to do the same rates may have been necessary to evolve those great toward us in the States. The truth is, they having principles of free government, upon which the liberviolated the express provisions of the Constitution, ties of the world depend, and to prepare you for the it is at an end as a compact. It is morally obliga- grand mission of vindicating and re-establishing tory only on those who choose to accept its per- them. We rejoice that other nations should be satverted terms. South Carolina, deeming the comisfied with their institutions. Self-complacency is a pact not only violated in particular features, but great element of happiness, with nations as with invirtually abolished by her Northern Confederates, dividuals. We are satisfied with ours. If they prewithdraws herself as a party from its obligations. fer a system of industry in which capital and labor The right to do so is denied by her Northern Con- are in perpetual conflict-and chronic starvation federates. They desire to establish a despotism, not keeps down the natural increase of population-and only omnipotent in Congress, but omnipotent over a man is worked out in eight years-and the law orthe States; and, as if to manifest the imperious dains that children shall be worked only ten hours a necessity of our secession, they threaten us with day-and the saber and bayonet are the instruments the sword, to coerce submission to their rule. of order-be it so. It is their affair, not ours. We prefer, however, our system of industry, by which labor and capital are identified in interest, and capital, therefore, protects labor, by which our population doubles every twenty years; by which starvation is unknown, and abundance crowns the land; "Citizens of the Slaveholding States of the United States! Circumstances beyond our control have placed us in the van of the great controversy between the Northern and Southern States. We would have preferred that other States should have assumed the position we now occupy. Independent by which order is preserved by an unpaid police, ourselves, we disclaim any design or desire to lead the councils of the other Southern States. Providence has cast our lot together, by extending over us an identity of pursuits, interests, and institutions. South Carolina desires no destiny separated from yours. To be one of a great Slaveholding Confederacy, stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe possesses-with population four times greater than that of the whole United States when they achieved their independence of the British Empire-with productions which make our existence more important to the world than that of any other people inhabiting it with common institations to defend, and common dangers to encounter, we ask your sympathy and confederation. While constituting a portion of the United States, it has been your statesmanship which has guided it in its mighty strides to power and expansion. In the field as in the Cabinet, you have led the way to its renown and the most fertile regions of the world where the Caucasian cannot labor are brought into usefulness by the labor of the African, and the whole world is blessed by our own productions. All we demand of other peoples is to be let alone to work out our own high destinies. United together, and we must be the most independent, as we are the most important, among the nations of the world. United together, and we require no other instrument to conquer peace than our beneficent productions. United together, and we must be a great, free, and prosperous people, whose renown must spread throughout the civilized world, and pass down, we trust, to the remotest ages. We ask you to join us in forming a confederacy of Slaveholding States." On Wednesday, Dec. 26th, among other resolutions offered, was one by Mr. Spain, that the Governor be requested to communicate to the Convention in secret session, any informa Resolution of point, by ballot, eight delegates to represent South Carolina in the Convention for the formation of a Southern Confederacy. "Lastly. That one Commissioner in each State be elected to call the attention of the people to this ordinance." Ordinance of Reve- The evening secret session was devoted to a consideration of the revenue laws and regulations. An ordinance was adopted defining in its preamble the necessity for some provisional arrangement, and declaring that South Carolina sought no ad tion he possesses in reference to the condition of Forts Moultrie and Sumter, and Castle Pinckney, the number of guns in each, the number of workmen and kind of labor en.ployed, the number of soldiers in each, and what additions, if any, have been made since the 20th instant; also, whether any assurance has been given that the forts will not be reinforced, and if so, to what extent; also, what police or other regulations have been made, if any, in reference to the defenses of the harbor of Charleston, vantage over her sister Slaveholding States the coast and the State. This was considered by commercial restrictions, and resolved that in secret session, the same day, and is said to all the customs officers of the United States have hastened Major Anderson's movements, "within the limits of South Carolina be, and being considered by him as indicative of a they are hereby, appointed to hold, under the design to seize Fort Sumter, and all other Government of this State exclusively, without forts except Moultrie, which he would be any further connection whatever with the called upon to evacuate. Federal Government of the United States, the same offices they now fill, until otherwise directed, and that they receive the same pay and emoluments for their services." Also, that "until it is otherwise provided by this Convention, or the General Assembly, the revenue collection and navigation laws of the United States, as far as may be practicable, be, and they are hereby, adopted and made laws of this State, saving that no duties shall be collected upon imports from the States forming the late Federal Union known as the United States of America, nor upon the tonnage of vessels owned in whole or in part by the citizens of said States," &c., &c. Ordinance for a South ern Confederacy. Mr. Rhett offered an ordinance looking to the future alliance of the Slave States. He wished the ordinance tabled with out reading, as it was thought best to await a response to the Address given above before the substance of the ordinance was made public. Mr. Memminger doubted if there was authority for receiving a paper without one reading, whereupon Mr. Rhett read it; it was as follows: First. That the Convention of the seceding Slaveholding States of the United States unite with South Carolina, and hold a Convention at Montgomery, Confederacy. "Second. That the said seceding States appoint, by their respective Conventions or Legislatures, as many delegates as they have Representatives in the present Congress of the United States, to the said Convention, to be held at Montgomery; and that, on the adoption of the Constitution of the Southern Confederacy, the vote shall be by States. "Third. That whenever the terms of the Constitution shall be agreed upon by the said Convention, the same shall be submitted at as early a day as practicable to the Convention and Legislature of each State, respectively, so as to enable them to ratify or reject the said Constitution. Fourth. That in the opinion of South Carolina, the Constitution of the United States will form a suitable basis for the Confederacy of the Southern States withdrawing. The 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th sections of the ordinance were as follows, viz. :— "Fourth.-All vessels built in South Carolina or "Sixth. All moneys hereafter collected by any Fifth. That the South Carolina Convention ap- State of South Carolina for the use of said State, |