Confederate Declarations of Independence: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery”

This poster (called a “broadside”), based on an article in the Charleston Mercury newspaper, announces that South Carolina has “dissolved” its connection to the United States
Image Source: The Rail Splitter.com

In 1776, so-called “Patriots” (some might call them rebels) in thirteen British American colonies declared themselves politically independent from Great Britain. The colonies, which now called themselves independent states, believed that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Thus, on July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which said that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive” of the “ends” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The declaration, issued by what the colonists called the United States of America, has become iconic both here in the US and abroad, for its language and values, and for the example it set for so many other nations that sought separation from (what they claimed were) tyrannical and despotic governments.

After Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, seven slaveholding states — the so-called Deep South or Cotton Seven states — declared that they were “dissolving the Union.” They “seceded” from the USA to form the Confederate States of America (CSA). Eventually, circumstances led the USA and CSA to go to war, after which four other slave states joined the the fledgling Confederacy. That war between the USA and CSA would last more than four bloody years.

The seceding states, desiring to uphold the declarative tradition of the American colonists, issued their own declarations of independence, which many refer to today as secession declarations. These declarations offer valuable insight into why the breakaway states sought to form a separate nation.

A review of the secession declarations  from the original seceding states discovers a common theme: they dissolved the Union over concerns that the incoming Lincoln administration was a sectional party (that is, a party that was partial to people in the Northern free states) which threatened the institution of slavery, racial supremacy, and the very future of white civilization in the South.

The Mississippi secession declaration says outright that “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.” South Carolina says that the incoming Lincoln administration seeks to “(wage) war…against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.” Texas makes the serious claim that the free states “have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages (Indians), for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.” Georgia says “The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party… is admitted to be an anti-slavery party… their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our (slave) property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides.”

The Declaration of Independence says that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The state of Texas asserted an important clarification: “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy (i.e., United States) itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable… in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original].”

Their statements, in today’s thinking, seem paradoxical: how could people at once say that they value freedom and independence, while simultaneously claiming the necessity of keeping other humans in bondage? Perhaps the following excerpts from the secession declarations can offer some answers. The full text of the declarations can be found here and here. I add more comments further below.

This is from the state of Mississippi: A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. (Adopted around January 9, 1861)