Part 2 The Civil War Years
A Confederate battery at Fort Johnson on James Island pounds away at a virtually defenseless Fort Sumter in this hand-colored contemporary engraving of the April 1861 bombardment.
The first notice of the adoption of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession appeared in a special edition of the Charleston Mercury.
CHARLESTON
MERCURY
EXTRA:
Passed unanimously at 1.15 o’clock, P. M. December 20th, 1860.
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 assembled, 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Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of “The United States of America,” is hereby dissolved.
THE
UNION
IS
DISSOLVED!