Slavery at South Carolina College, 1801–1865:

The Foundations of the University of South Carolina

Signers of the Ordinance of Secession

South Carolina’s secession convention held in December 1860 justified its Ordinance of Secession squarely in terms of threats to slavery. The “Declaration of Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina” stated:

“We affirm that these ends for which the Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the property of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disrupt the peace and to eloign [remove] the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”

Many signers of the Secession Ordinance graduated from South Carolina College: