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: My info comes from: : University of Georgia Economics paper called : "Economics of the Ante-Bellum South" : prepared by: : This dataset was prepared by Robert W. Fogel (the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester) and Stanley L. Engerman (the University of Rochester) : Dataset date:March 12, 1975 : Did you ever see a copy of the South Carolina : Secession Acts?? : Here is a copy below: : SOUTH CAROLINA : "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 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 are 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 umption that power would yield to faith -- that integrity would be stronger than interest, and that thus the limitations of the Constitution would be observed. The experiment has been fairly made. The Southern States, from the commencement of the Government, have striven to keep it within the orbit prescribed by the Constitution. The experiment has failed" : "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 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 rightly be taxed by its Legislation. The British Government, however, offered them a representation in 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. In neither case would the Colonies tax themselves. Hence, they refused to pay the taxes laid by the British Parliament." : "And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. 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 Parliament 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 towards the Northern States, which our ancestors refused to bear towards Great Britain. Our ancestors not only taxed themselves, but all the taxes collected from them, were expended amongst them. Had they submitted to the pretensions of the British Government, the taxes collected from them would have been expended in 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 towards 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 made the cities of the South provincial. Their growth is paralyzed; they are mere suburbs of Northern cities.".....South Carolina Secession Declaration Act - December 24, 1860 : [South Carolina] AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America." We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention embled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General embly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved. Done at Charleston the twentifourth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty. : -------------------------------------------------- : This is altogether different from the so-called : "Articles of Secession" or "Declaration of : Causes of Secession" that historians keep trotting : out for observation. : -------------------------------------------------- : The above copy of the Secession Act for South : Carolina is on display at 19 Abercromby Square : in Liverpool, England. The mansion there is called : St. George's Hall and it is preserved along with : all the papers of the period, by a "British : Heritage Order" as it was the official Confederate : Consul's residence, who was from South Carolina, : and a delegate to the South Carolina Secession : Convention when these Acts were ped, and as : such he received a copy. : -------------------------------------------------- : It has always amazed me, how ALL these official : Acts of Secession seem to have been LOST somehow : in the U.S., but every dog and his brother seems : to always be able to quickly produce a paper : called "Articles of Secession" or "Declaration : of Causes of Secession." : -------------------------------------------------- : I have NO proof and the proof probably does not : exist, but when the Confederacy fell in April, : 1865, the Inspector General of the Confederate : Army, a gentleman by the name of General Samuel : Copper, had the following written in his biography: : "During the evacuation of Richmond in April 1865, General Samuel Cooper accompanied the President and the cabinet, when they went South to Danville and on into North Carolina. When the party broke up near Charlotte, North Carolina, he surrendered himself, and turned over to his captors, all the records of the Confederacy. These records were promptly forwarded to Washington, D.C. for "review." : -------------------------------------------------- : It has greatly puzzled me for sometime, as to how : all the Secession Acts became lost. I hope that : someday, I will discover the truth. : -------------------------------------------------- : Below is an interested viewpoint by Professor : Walter Williams, a very prominent African American : that has studied the Civil War from an Economic : angle for many years: : "Northern big business had every reason to fight on forever. Businessmen hired substitutes, or paid the bounty to escape the draft. The poor were sent to fight the businessman's battles. And businessmen stood to gain hundreds of millions of dollars a year, ed out of the Southern cotton-export industry by federal government tariffs and northern business practices. With so much to gain, and nothing to lose but scores of thousands of "cannon-fodder" workers, there was no hope of discouraging the northeastern business community. They would fight on to the last drop of Irish immigrant blood. : My own belief is that the economic interpretation of the Civil War is the correct one. Ideals are certainly important, but the individual persons is taught his ideals by the social and economic system in which he/she is brought up, eg, through churches, schools, voluntary groups, work sites, military organization, etc. When the society is working well, and when everyone feels that they are getting ahead materially and economically, they come to "believe in" the society and the values that surround them. When things go to pieces, people begin to question what they have been taught. Kids even begin to gun down their teachers, rather than listen to and believe what they say. Beliefs matter for the individual, but economics underlies society. It's the economy, stupid, as the politicians say. : But getting "the economy" right in terms of its causative role in the Civil War is no easy matter. And historians, sad to say, have no real interest in getting it right. They are paid to provide a biased viewpoint, and they offer the viewpoint desired by those who pay the salaries and provide the research grants for their universities. Honesty is as hard to find today as it was in Ancient Greece. : The war was fought over money and power. The war was not a means by which an 'enlightened' North 'isted' the stupid South in changing its 'inefficient' agriculture. This was a northern excuse for conquest, just as when the U.S. invaded the Phillipines in 1898, it claimed to be doing so in order to 'help' the Philipinos become more prosperous. Imperial powers ALWAYS say, when they are conquering a resistant population, that they are only invading to "help" the indigenous people, who are too stupid to do things right on their own. We should be wary of such excuses for imperialist expansion." : Walter Williams - Professor of Economics - George Mason University - ia

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