Mr. Hubbard asked that we look at the declaration South Carolina made on the occasion of its seceding from the Union.
For those who believe that the Civil War wasn't primarily about slavery and that the doctrine of State's Rights had no application to the maintenance of racism, here is an excerpt from that declaration. Please note that a) employed is the link Mr. Hibbard cited; b) this is the section in which Carolina is explaining its reason for seceding. The commentary in brackets is this writer's.
"The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." "
{i.e., Carolina is complaining that a) the Union is violating that part of the Constitution which legitimated slavery, and that b) the Dred Scott decision isn't being honored. The State is claiming its legal right to enforce perpetual slavery, and to track down escaped slaves wherever they may be.}
"This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River."
{Carolina is arguing that slavery is essential to its interpretation of the Constitution, and integral to the construction of most States in the Union.}
"The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States."
{Again, their point is that the Constitution legitimates pursuing escaped slaves, and asserts that--for example--Abolitionists who harbor slaves are criminals.}
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
{The State is arguing that the growing anti-slavery movement in the North has been aided and abetted by the courts and governments of the northern States, and claiming that this dissolves the Constitution.}
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
{As mentioned elsewhere on this thread, the idea is that such phrases as, "ourselves and our posterity," apply only to whites, as do the other provisions of the Constitution. Slaves are considered something other than full human beings, since they are excluded from such considerations as obtaining, "justice--" or more precisely, slavery is considered to be the natural and just condition of the slave. In denying this and claiming that black people are fully human entitled to the same rights as anyone, the suggestion goes, the North has attacked the natural and theological underpinnings of the Constitution.}
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
{Here, the doctrine of State's Rights guaranteed by the Constitution is asserted. Noteworthily, such Rights are specifically linked to the right to own slaves within states. Indeed, no other considerations are even mentioned.}
We affirm that these ends for which this 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 assume the right of deciding upon the propriety 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 disturb the peace and to eloign 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.
{The North has already destroyed the Union, because it has a) claimed the right to define slaves as something other than property; b) denied the legitimacy of the institution of slavery; c) claimed that slavery is in fact an evil; d) encouraged the Abolitionist movement; e) helped slaves escape; f) encouraged Southern slaves towards freedom.}
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
{The Northern attacks upon slavery have grown worse; the current President--Lincoln--claims that a) the country cannot continue, "half slave, half free," and b) the public increasingly believes that slavery must be abolished. Note: England had abolished slavery in 1832.}
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
{The partisan politicians of the North have let too many of what we would now call, "minorities," including immigrant Irish and slaves, vote. None of these, "by the supreme law of the land"--the Constitution, and God--should ever be permitted to vote, being, "incapable of becoming citizens."}
Somehow, one believes them: the complaint is that slavery is under attack, and must be defended as an institution that is fundamental to a) the Constitution; b) the identity of the slave-owning States; c) the legitimacy of American democracy.
One can see their point. The Constitution--to our national shame--did indeed legitimate slavery. However--and here's what's dumb about the, "strict constructionist," argument--the Constitution, and the country, evolved.
It's often pointed out that the trend of law in this country has been to extend democracy and its benefits to a wider and wider population. (Indeeed, that's one of the legitimations Bush & Co. rely upon for our current little adventures--it is the mission of the United States to extend liberty worldwide.) Against that, the 1860 Declaration by South Carolina stands as a document that will live in, "the annals of infamy."
