Dispatches from the Rebellion

Looking back 150 years.

General David F. Jamison, President of the South Carolina Secession Convention gave this speech before the South Carolina Secession Convention providing the rationale behind Secession:

I trust that the door now is forever closed from any further connection with our Northern Confederacy. What guarantees can they offer us more binding, more solemn, and with a higher sanction, than the present written compact between us? Has that sacred instrument protected us from the jealousy and aggressions of the Northern people, which commenced forty years ago, and which ended in the Missouri Compromise? Has it protected us from the cupidity and avarice of the Northern people, who, for 35 years, have imposed upon us the burden of sustaining this government, chiefly upon the South? Has it saved us from Abolition petitions, intended to annoy and insult us on the very floors of Congress? Has that instrument enabled us to acquire one foot of the territory of Mexico, where the South furnished three-fourths of the men and four-fifths of their graves? Has it thrown any obstacle around us to the conversion of California into a free-soil State, without any previous territorial existence, without any defined boundaries? Did it throw any protection around the Southern settlers of Kansas, when the soil of that Territory was invaded by emigrants, armed in a crusade against the South by the Northern people; when even their women contributed Colt's revolvers to put down the slaveholder? Has not that instrument been trodden under their very feet by every Northern State by placing on their books statutes nullifying the laws for the recovery of fugitive slaves?

Reprinted in the Richmond Dispatch the morning of December 20, 1860.

Summing this speech up we find these five reasons for secession.

1) Tariffs, i.e., Taxation on imported Goods. Tariffs protected industry (which is largely limited to the northern states) from being driven out of business by low cost foreign made goods. This in turn reduced trade which had the effect of making products such as Cotton (grown exclusively in the south through plantation slavery) more difficult to export.

2) Criticism from abolitionists. This about the concept of honor prevalent amongst some in the Southern States.

3) Territorial Expansion. The urge for expansion of slavery into new lands is a constant pressure during this period. California’s entry as a single free state enraged many slavery advocates. See also the tale of William Walker.

4) Bloody Kansas. The effort to export Slavery into Kansas was rebuffed.

5) Personal Liberty Laws. A state’s right approach to the Fugitive Slave Act adopted by Northern States that denied State and Local Tax dollars from financing the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act.

As you can see from this speech, the common denominator behind all these reasons is Slavery and the exportation of Slavery.

South Carolina would act upon the reasons presented by people like General Jamison. And coincidentally, it would vote to secede from the Union on this day in history 150 years ago.