South Carolina Withdraws from the Union

 

The people of South Carolina saw the Union broken by several Northern States nullifying the United States Constitution with their personal liberty laws, the same States which railed against South Carolina in 1832 over tariff nullification. The incessant abolitionist agitation which threatened violent slave insurrection, and the election of a purely sectional president settled the matter for South Carolina as it chose to peacefully form a more perfect union
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com    The Great American Political Divide

South Carolina Withdraws from the Union

“On November 13, the General Assembly in joint session ratified and act calling for a convention in Columbia on December 17. The election of delegates was set for December 6. Five former United States senators, the chief officers of Furman University and Limestone College, two railroad presidents, and a dozen clerics were among the 169 men elected as delegates to the convention. The majority were college graduates. More than one hundred were planters, and many of these planters had also passed the bar. More than forty had served in the State Senate, more than one hundred in the House of Representatives.

The convention assembled in Columbia’s First Baptist Church and, on its first day, unanimously resolved that “the State of South Carolina should forthwith secede from the Federal Union.” John A. Inglis introduced the resolution. Before the convention adjourned . . . [a committee was formed] to draft an ordinance and appointed John A. Inglis as chairman. By the next evening, the committee had agreed on the text that they would introduce for South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession.

On November 29, the [Charleston] Mercury printed a draft ordinance contributed by a “W.F.H.,” who noted that “the speedy secession of the State may be considered a fixed fact” and offered “a sort of diagram on which the problem can be worked.” The draft took nearly one hundred lines of newsprint.

On December 4, the Mercury responded to the draft submitted by its “esteemed correspondent.” Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr., son of the secessionist leader and editor of the newspaper . . . objected to the “batch of details” which blurred the draft’s “force and dignity.”

We do not know how many drafts the committee had to consider in the few hours in which it did its work, but besides the draft printed in the Mercury, a manuscript document containing two other drafts, both unsigned, survives.

The longest of these additional drafts, “An Ordinance to withdraw from the Confederacy heretofore existing under the name of the United States of America,” is dated December 11. Its preamble cites tariffs, the obstruction of the recovery of fugitive slaves, “hostile agitation against the Southern institution of Slavery,” and the election of Abraham Lincoln as its justification and notes the declaration of 1852.

Eleven sections follow. They declare “the Confederacy heretofore existing between the State of South Carolina and the other States” dissolved, amend the State constitution, direct the governor to send a commissioner to President [James] Buchanan, provide for [foreign] trade, and empower the governor to appoint postmasters.

Ingliss’s committee, doubtless to satisfy those who wanted no further delay in officially leaving the Union, chose to present a much shorter and simpler text. [In] the afternoon of December 20 [1860], Chairman Inglis rose to present the committee’s [Ordinance of Secession]. There was no need for debate. Behind closed doors, a roll call vote was taken, alphabetically by surname, ending with “Mr. President.” It began at 1:07 P.M. and ended eight minutes later, at 1:15 when [convention President] David F. Jamison said “aye.” South Carolina had seceded by unanimous vote.”

(Relic of The Lost Cause, The Story of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession, Charles H. Lesser, South Carolina Department of Archives & History, 1990, pp. 4-5)

South Carolina Injected with a Foreign Poison

 

Newspaper editor William Watts Ball of South Carolina could painted a vivid picture of life in the postwar South, and railed at the “foreign poison of democracy” injected into his State by Northern radicals. The Founders’ erected barriers to democracy in their Constitution; historian Charles Beard tells us that “When the Constitution was framed, no respectable person called himself or herself a democrat.” John C. Calhoun’s greatest fear was that democracy in the United States would evolve into a class warfare system with taxpayers perpetually looted by the tax consuming class. Alexis de Tocqueville also noted the evil powers of this “strange new democratic monster with its tyranny of public opinion and numerical majority dwelling in perpetual self-applause.”
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com    The Great American Political Divide

South Carolina Injected with a Foreign Poison

“The State That Forgot” is a historical sketch of South Carolina from colonial days to the turn of the twentieth century, generously adorned with “local color” and autobiographical anecdotes. But the heart is [W.W.] Ball’s political philosophy; everything else is embellishment. South Carolina had surrendered to democracy, he said, and as surrender implies defeat, so had she induced her own decline when rule by the aristocracy gave way to rule by the masses. Ball traced the democratic curse back to Reconstruction:

“My political thesis is that the Federal Government, by means of armed forces, placed South Carolina on the operating table in 1867, that in 1868 the Carpetbaggers made an incision in its body, and, by the constitution they adopted, injected into it the deadly and foreign poison of democracy, which, after causing the loathsome ulcers of Reconstruction, subtly spread through the bloodstream of the white people and killed for ever in it the inherited corpuscles of political and social health.”

“The new constitution,” said Ball, was a long step but not a plunge in democracy.” The State had not spurned the colonial constitution fashioned along semi-feudal lines by John Locke. “A more “numerous democracy” had been made but a “too numerous democracy” had been avoided.

South Carolina, however, was forced to scrap that constitution and devise another which would better satisfy the [Northern Republican] Radicals who had taken control of the federal Reconstruction program. Accordingly, a convention composed almost entirely of carpetbaggers, scalawags, and Negroes fashioned the constitution of 1868. Ball appraised the new constitution with these words:

“The finished product of the convention was a document copied from constitutions of Northern States . . . [T]hus at last the rash of democracy was spread by law, backed by bayonets, over the body of South Carolina . . .”

(Damned Upcountryman: William Watts Ball, John D. Stark, Duke University Press, 1968, pp. 144-146)

South Carolina Declares the Causes of Secession

 

In his “Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina,” Christopher Memminger, revisited the original American concept of self-government and restated 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.”  It should be noted that though reference is made below to “anti-slavery” feeling in the North, Republican Party doctrine held that African slavery must be kept within the borders of the South, not that the slaves must be freed. Republicans were a white supremacy party and the territories were for white settlers alone.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

South Carolina Declares the Causes of Secession

“Dr. J.H. Thornwell . . . [stated] immediately after secession [that] . . . ”The real cause of the intense excitement of the South, is not in vain dreams of national glory in a separate confederacy . . .; it is in the profound conviction that the Constitution . . . has been virtually repealed [by the North]; that the new [Lincoln] Government has assumed a new and dangerous attitude . . .”

In South Carolina [this] idea was repeatedly expressed in the secession period. For example, [Robert Barnwell] Rhett in a speech of November 20 said: We are two peoples, essentially different in all that makes a people.” [D.F.] Jamison in his opening speech to the [secession] convention said there was

“no common bond of sympathy or interest between the North and South.”

The “Declaration of Immediate Causes,” after defending the right of secession under the compact theory of the Union, justified the exercise of that right almost entirely on the point that Northern States had infringed and abrogated that compact by refusal to abide by their constitutional obligations . . . When [the Northern sectional] President should gain control of the government, constitutional guarantees would no longer exist, equal rights would have been lost, the power of self-government and self-protection would have disappeared, and the government would have become the enemy. Moreover, all hope of remedy was rendered in vain by the fact that the North had “invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief.”

Rhett . . . held that the one great evil from which all others had flowed was the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States.

The tariff, unequal distributions of appropriations, and attacks on slavery, were only manifestations of a broken faith and a constitution destroyed through construction for Northern aggrandizement at the expense of a weaker South.

The sections had grown apart; all identity of feeling, interest, and institutions were gone; they were divided between slaveholding and non-slaveholding, between agricultural and manufacturing and commercial States; their institutions and industrial pursuits had made them totally different peoples. The South was unsafe under a government controlled by a sectional anti-slavery party . . .”

Many South Carolinians, in the military service of the United States when war came, proved themselves Unionists by refusing to resign to enter the service of the State. Feeling against such men was violent. The [Charleston] Mercury thought that such refusal constituted “hideous moral delinquency, ingratitude, dishonor and treachery.”

The well-nigh complete unity after secession is no more striking than the universal belief that the cause was just . . . [and belief] that the future of republican government was involved in the struggle . . . Secession was endorsed by the synod of the Presbyterian church and by the annual conference of the Methodists. One need not question the sincerity of the legislature for appointing on the eve of secession a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer.”

(South Carolina Goes to War, 1860-1865, Charles Edward Cauthen, UNC Press, 1950, excerpts, pp. 72-78)

No Submission to Northern Manufacturers

 

It is said that the tariff was the most contentious issue in the United States between 1808 and 1832, and this exploded with South Carolina threatening tariff nullification in that latter year. This was settled with Congress steadily lowering tariffs. Economist Frank Taussig wrote in 1931 that by 1857 the maximum duty on imports had been reduced to twenty-four percent and a relative free trade ideal was reached, due to Southern pressure. He also noted that the new Republican-controlled Congress increased duties in December 1861 and that by 1862 the average tariff rates had crept up to 47.06%.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

No Submission to Northern Manufacturers

“South Carolina had opposed the tariff from the earliest days of the republic. The very first Congress, in 1789, had included a group of Carolina representatives known as “anti-tariff men.” When the Washington administration sponsored a mild import measure, Senator Pierce Butler of the Palmetto State brought the charge that Congress was oppressing South Carolina and threatened a “dissolution of the Union, with regard to that State, as sure as God was in his firmament.”

The tariff of 1816, passed in a wave of American national feeling after the War of 1812, found six out of ten Carolina members voting against the bill. John C. Calhoun and the other three members who supported the measure were severely censured at home.

Almost the entire South opposed the tariff of 1824. The spreading domain of King Cotton now had a well-defined grievance: the Northeast and the Northwest were uniting to levy taxes on goods exchanged for exported cotton; their protective tariff policy, and concomitant program for internal improvements, was benefiting their entire section at the expense of the South.

The policy protected New England [cotton] mills and furnished funds for linking the seaboard States of the North with the new Northwest by means of canals and turnpikes. The Southern planters paid the bills: they were forced to buy their manufactured supplies in a high market and their chief article of exchange, cotton, had fallen from thirty cents a pound in 1816 to fifteen cents in 1824. In addition, the internal improvements program offered them no compensation; the rivers took their cotton to the shipping points.

When the “Tariff of Abominations” passed in 1828, all the Southeastern and Southwestern members of the house opposed it, except for three Virginians. In the Senate, only two Southerners supported “the legislative monstrosity.”

The opposition to Northern tariff policy was most vociferous in the Palmetto State. [English-born South Carolinian Thomas Cooper presented] Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy (1826) and other writings of the period [which] receive credit for doing much toward shaping opinion on the tariff.

In 1827, he told Senator Martin Van Buren of New York that if [Henry Clay’s] American system were pushed too far, the Carolina legislature would probably recall the State’s representatives from Washington.

Seven years after [Cooper’s] arrival in the Palmetto State, he made the famous declaration that it was time for South Carolina “to calculate the value of the Union.” This historic utterance of July 2, 1827, gave rise to shocked expressions of horror, even among some Carolina hotheads, but it had been indelibly burned into the thinking of a generation. It had a habit of cropping out down through the years. Webster and Hayne both alluded to it during their famous debate.

An English traveler, stopping at Columbia . . . in 1835, had the opportunity to hear Cooper expressing his opinions and to observe the attitude of those who surrounded the strong-minded college president [of South Carolina College]. After this occasion, he noted in his diary:

“I could not help asking, in a good-natured way, if they called themselves Americans yet; the gentleman who had interrupted me before said, “If you ask me if I am an American, my answer is No, Sir, I am a South Carolinian.” [These men] are born to command, it will be intolerable to them to submit to be, in their estimation, the drudges of the Northern manufacturers, whom they despise as an inferior race of men. Even now there is nothing a Southern man resents so much as to be called a Yankee.”

(Romanticism and Nationalism in the Old South, Rollin G. Osterweis, LSU Press, 1949, excerpts, pp. 139-141)

"Was the ousting of General Flynn planned all along in order to stop Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda? Seems likely."

Via Billy

Attention is turning to National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster as the situation with Syria heats up. McMaster replaced General Flynn as National Security Advisor after he was forced to resign in February.

President Trump ordered a missile strike on an airbase in Syria reportedly holding chemical weapons and said he is prepared to take further action if necessary in a letter released by the White House yesterday.

TGP also reported yesterday that McMaster is said to be working behind the scenes with Petraeus to put troops on the ground in Syria, a foreign policy decision many are saying is an about face from President Trump’s previous claims of how he would handle the Syrian conflict.

This news is on the heels of former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice being the person who unmasked General Flynn which ultimately led to his resignation, ushering in McMaster.

Susan Rice wanted General Flynn out. After McMaster was brought in to replace Flynn, she took to her Twitter account to congratulate him and said,

Hope you will be able to choose your team, have direct reporting and daily access to POTUS, and can eliminate Strategic Initiatives Group.”

More @ The Gateway Pundit

Susan Rice Worth Almost 50 MILLION

Via Billy

A UN diplomat doesn’t seem to be a likely candidate for Lifestyles of the Super Rich. However, Susan Rice worked under the Obama Administration, so anything is possible.

In 2012 The Washington Post noted Rice wasn’t the typical diplomat. Her net worth hovered just above 20 million dollars. Now barely five years later that figure has more than doubled. Inquiring minds wonder how it’s possible.

Did she win the lottery? Or maybe she inherited a fortune from her long lost uncle? We can’t say, but what we do know is government paychecks don’t produce that kind of wealth

Actually, the truth should shock Obama lovers.

 

Remember the official energy policy of the Obama administration? Creating new “clean energy” jobs and technologies, making America more energy independent, and reducing carbon emissions. Susan Rice didn’t get the memo.

The Conservative website, Fire Andrea Mitchell, says:

More @ The Black Sphere

A Disaster for Trump’s Narrative: The White House's paranoia is undermining this administration.

Via Billy

The narrative that has been promoted by President Donald Trump and his allies over the last week has been thus: We are the victims here. According to the president, the congressional and FBI probes into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election is a “hoax.” Not a hoax, though, are the revelations that Obama administration officials—former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, among them—sabotaged the administration early on by suspiciously “unmasking” Trump advisors inadvertently swept up in surveillance of foreign assets. The president himself speculated that Rice’s actions might be criminal in nature. That’s their case, and it has just been dealt a hefty blow: The original source of that “unmasking” claim, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, has stepped aside from the investigation.

More @ Commentary

Sweet Home Alabama

Forty years ago today, Lynyrd Skynyrd released their second album titled Second Helping. The effort contained what has become the quintessential Southern rock anthem, Sweet Home Alabama.

Skynyrd, along with Georgia’s The Allman Brothers Band, Tennessee’s Charlie Daniels Band, and South Carolina’s Marshall Tucker Band, were part of a Southern music revival in the 1970s. Being Southern was chic. Everyone wanted to say “ya’ll” and cowboy hats, boots, and blue jeans were a fad. Even the Confederate Flag was cool (see the video below shot in Oakland, CA in 1977). The South had risen again, at least for a time, and the region experienced a revival after being beaten down and demonized by the media during the Civil Rights era.

More @ The Abbeville Institute

Richard Spencer punched in the face camera while doing interview

Jason Hanwel "Every time they punch Spencer a thousand people on the right begin preparing for conflict. It's easy to find leftists now calling for people's blood. What they don't understand is that they will be crushed."

Ben Rhodes: Trump's strike was only aimed at boosting his press coverage

Via Billy

President Obama's former deputy national security adviser indicated Saturday that he isn't very happy with President Trump's decision to hit a Syrian air base with missiles.

Trump's missile strike, which was retaliation for Syria's use of chemical weapons, drew instant comparisons to Obama, who warned the U.S. would act if Syria used chemical weapons.

Obama did nothing after Syria crossed that "red line" of Obama's, and many said Trump was the one to finally enforce Obama's ultimatum years later.

More @ Washington Examiner

WikiLeaks: Obama and Hillary ISSUED STAND DOWN ORDER in Benghazi: Liberal traitors admit they abandoned American citizens in Libya.

Via Billy

WikiLeaks’ latest document dump exposed the Obama administration’s deliberate desertion of Americans in Benghazi.

In an email from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Obama lackey and counselor John Podesta, Clinton admitted that she and the president issued a stand down order to America troops stationed 3 miles from the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi.

It seems Obama and Clinton didn’t want to upset radicalized Muslims in the small Libyan town by sending troops to protect Americans. Instead, Hillary went to bed while radical Islamic extremists attacked and killed Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

This nanny-state liberalism shows more concern for angry infantile people than holding them accountable for their criminal behavior. And it is treasonous.

The Clinton email in question explained to Podesta that a handful of lives were a small price to pay to maintain U.S. weapons deals with the Lebanese that flowed through Kurdistan and Caledonia:

More @ The Black Sphere