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Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of “The United States of America,” is hereby dissolved.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!
Fort Sumter and the Coming of War, 1861
The headline in the Charleston Mercury summed it up aptly. After decades of sectional conflict, South Carolinians responded to the election of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, by voting unanimously in convention on December 20, 1860, to secede from the Union. Within six weeks five other States—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana—followed her example. Early in February 1861 they met in Montgomery, Alabama, adopted a constitution, set up a provisional government—the Confederate States of America—and elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as President. By March 2, when Texas joined the Confederacy, nearly all the forts and naval yards in the seceded States had been seized by the new power. Fort Sumter was one of the handful that remained in Federal possession.
When South Carolina left the Union, the only post in Charleston Harbor garrisoned in strength by United States troops was Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island. There, Maj. Robert Anderson commanded two companies of the First U.S. Artillery—about 85 officers and men. But six days after the secession ordinance was passed, Anderson, believing Moultrie to be indefensible, transferred his command to Fort Sumter. Unaware of an apparent pledge to maintain the harbor status quo, given by President James Buchanan some weeks before, Anderson acted in accordance with verbal instructions he received December 11 to hold possession of the forts in this harbor, and if attacked ... to defend yourself to the last extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but an attack on or attempt to take possession of any of them will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.
President James Buchanan, who sought to maintain peace between the North and South during his final weeks in office. His uncharacteristically firm stand against South Carolina over the Sumter situation, however, risked the very conflict he sought to avoid.