The people of the State of Florida
assembled in Convention having declared the separation of the
state from the confederacy of the United States of America and
resumed all the powers granted to the Government of that
Confederacy, it is due to ourselves to our – late –
confederates and to the civilized world that we should set forth
the causes which have forced us to adopt this extreme measure
fraught as it is with consequences the most momentous. We have
not acted in haste or in passion but with the utmost deliberation
and from what we regard as immeasurable necessity.
An incursion has been instigated and
actually perpetuated into a sister State the inevitable
consequences of which were murder rapine and crimes even more
horrible. The felon chief of that murderous band has been
canonized as a heroic martyr by public meetings by the press and
pulpit of all of the Northern States – others of the party
have been demanded by the Governor of the State they invaded and
their surrender refused by the Governors of two States of the
Confederacy, demanded not as fugitives from service but as
fugitives from justice charged with treason and murder.
Laws clearly constitutional and as
decided to be by the Federal Judiciary as well as by the Courts
of all the non slaveholding States where the question has been
presented for adjudication have been by counter legislation
rendered inoperative, laws without the power to pass which none
will deny that the Constitution would not have been adopted.
The nullification of these laws by
the Legislatures of two thirds of the non slaveholding States
important as it is in itself is additionally as is furnishing
evidence of an open disregard of constitutional obligation, and
of the rights and interests of the slaveholding States and of a
deep and inveterate hostility to the people of these States.
The Congressional halls where the
members should meet with fraternal feelings, a just regard for
the interests of all the States there represented and respect for
the feelings of all its members has been prostituted to the daily
denunciation and vituperation of the slave holding States as
sanctioning oppression robbery and all villainies, thus
subjecting the members from these States to the degradation of
gross and constantly repeated insults, and compelling the
exclusion from our public press of the debates of our national
Legislature or the circulation of the most incendiary matter.
By the agency of a large proportion
of the members from the non slaveholding States books have been
published and circulated amongst us the direct tendency and
avowed purpose of which is to excite insurrection and servile war
with all their attendant horrors. A President has recently been
elected, an obscure and illiterate man without experience in
public affairs or any general reputation mainly if not
exclusively on account of a settled and often proclaimed
hostility to our institutions and a fixed purpose to abolish
them. It is denied that it is the purpose of the party soon to
enter into the possession of the powers of the Federal Government
to abolish slavery by any direct legislative act. This has never
been charged by any one. But it has been announced by all the
leading men and presses of the party that the ultimate
accomplishment of this result is its settled purpose and great
central principle. That no more slave States shall be admitted
into the confederacy and that the slaves from their rapid
increase (the highest evidence of the humanity of their owners
will become value less. Nothing is more certain than this and at
no distant day. What must be the condition of the slaves
themselves when their number becomes so large that their labor
will be of no value to their owners. Their natural tendency every
where shown where the race has existed to idleness vagrancy and
crime increased by an inability to procure subsistence. Can any
thing be more impudently false than the pretense that this state
of things is to be brought about from considerations of humanity
to the slaves.
It is in so many words saying to you
we will not burn you at the stake but we will torture you to
death by a slow fire we will not confiscate your property and
consign you to a residence and equality with the african but that
destiny certainly awaits your children – and you must
quietly submit or we will force you to submission – men who
can hesitate to resist such aggressions are slaves already and
deserve their destiny. The members of the Republican party has
denied that the party will oppose the admission of any new state
where slavery shall be tolerated. But on the contrary they
declare that on this point they will make no concession or
compromise. It is manifest that they will not because to do so
would be the dissolution of the party.
Additional territory is generally
only acquired by conquest or purchase. In either case the
slaveholding States contribute at least this equal proportion of
men or money – we think much more than an equal proportion.
The revenues of the General Government are almost entirely
derived from duties on importations. It is time that the northern
consumer pays his proportion of these duties, but the North as a
section receiving back in the increased prices of the rival
articles which it manufactures nearly or quite as much as the
imposts which it pays thus in effect paying nothing or very
little for the support of the government. As to the sacrifice of
lives which recent acquisitions have caused how small is the
proportion of Northern blood shed or laurels won in the Mexican
war.
Last and not least it has been
proclaimed that the election of a President is an authoritative
approval of all the principles avowed by the person elected and
by the party convention which nominated him. Although that
election is made by little more than one third of the votes
given. But however large the majority may have been to recognize
such a principle is to announce a revolution in the government
and to substitute an aggregate popular majority for the written
constitution without which no single state would have voted its
adoption not forming in truth a federal union but a consolidated
despotism that worst of despotisms that of an unrestricted
sectional and hostile majority, we do not intend to be
misunderstood, we do not controvert the right of a majority to
govern within the grant of powers in the Constitution.
The representative principle is a
sufficient security only where the interest of the representative
and the Constituent are identical with the variety of climate
productions and employment of labor and capital which exist in
the different sections of the American Confederacy creating
interests not only diverse but antagonistic.
The majority section may legislate
imperiously and ruinously to the interests of the minority
section not only without injury but to great benefit and
advantage of their own section. In proof of this we need only
refer to the fishing bounties, the monopoly of the coast
navigation which is possessed almost exclusively by the Northern
States and in one word the bounties to every employment of
northern labor and capital such a government must in the nature
of things and the universal principles of human nature and human
conduct very soon lead as it has done to a grinding and degrading
despotism.
It is in no weak and imaginary fear
of the consequences but that we regard them as certain and
inevitable that we are prompted by every consideration of duty
and honor and of policy to meet the issue now instead of leaving
it to those who are to come after us who will be less able to
vindicate their rights and honor, nor is it without the sincerest
sorrow that we are about to separate from that noble band of
patriots in the nonslaveholding states who have faithfully
vindicated our Constitutional rights that we have been impelled
by every consideration which should have influence with honorable
men to declare our separation from the confederacy of the United
States of America trusting for the maintenance of that
declaration to the virtue courage and patriotism of our people
and to that God who guided our fathers through similar trials and
dangers.
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