Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas
to Secede from the Federal Union
...Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented
to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare,
insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the
blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received
into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee
of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that
she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth
holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro
slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within
her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement
of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended
should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical
position established the strongest ties between her and other
slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been
strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the
government of the United States, and of the people and authorities
of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various
pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude
the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional
restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by
all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of
acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it
as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister
Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these
our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely
failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas
against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against
the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory
of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts
for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement
therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing
than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan
and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately,
directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section
of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal
constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling
a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to
perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and
to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic
institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and
without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish
the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed
high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens
or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of
the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith
and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations,
the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party,
now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of
those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to
these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system
of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality
of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war
with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in
violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand
the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the
recognition of political equality between the white and negro
races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade
against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing
the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal
congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between
the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding
States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered
representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against
their exactions and encroachments.
have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary
doctrine that there is a 'higher law' than the constitution and
laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard
their oaths and trample upon our rights.
have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations
to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly
murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.
have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens,
and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit
have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes,
while the governors of several of their States have refused to
deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such
offenses, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.
have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets
and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring
blood and carnage to our firesides.
have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute
arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial
legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against
ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding
finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding
States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the
whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions
are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges
to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for
the ruin of the slave-holding States.
view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views
should be distinctly proclaimed.
hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various
States, and of the confederacy 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; that the servitude
of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually
beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized
and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will
of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations;
while the destruction of the existing relations between the two
races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable
calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding