who wrote the south carolina ordinance of secession
An official secession convention
title: South Carolina in the American Civil War text: and voted unanimously, 169-0, to declare secession from the United States. The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. James Buchanan, the United States president, declared the ordinance illegal but did not act to stop it. A committee of the convention also drafted a "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina" which was adopted on December 24. The secession declaration title: William Henry Gist text: William Henry Gist William Henry Gist (August 22, 1807 – September 30, 1874) was the 68th Governor of South Carolina from 1858 to 1860 and a leader of the secession movement in South Carolina. He was one of the signers of the Ordinance of Secession on December 20, 1860, which effectively launched the Confederacy. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, on August 22, 1807, Gist was the illegitimate child of merchant Francis Fincher Gist and Mary Boyden. He moved with his father to Union County, South Carolina, in 1811 and came under the guardianship of his uncle, Nathaniel Gist, upon the title: Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union text: The ordinance was brief and legalistic in nature, containing no explanation of the reasoning behind the delegates' decision: The convention had previously agreed to draft a separate statement that would summarize their justification and gave that task to a committee of seven members comprising Christopher G. Memminger (considered the primary author), F. H. Wardlaw, R. W. Barnwell, J. P. Richardson, B. H. Rutledge, J. E. Jenkins, and P. E. Duncan. The document they produced, the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, was adopted by the convention on December title: Ordinance of Secession text: Virginia. Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas also issued separate declarations of causes, in which they explained their reasons for secession. Ordinance of Secession The Ordinance of Secession is the general name given to documents drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861 by each of the thirteen southern states and the Territory of Arizona formally seceding from the United States of America. Each state and the Territory ratified its own ordinance of secession, typically by means of a special convention delegation or by a general referendum. The seceded states formed the Confederate States of America which also claimed the Territory title: Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union text: Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President, where it was drafted in a committee headed by Christopher Memminger. The declaration stated the primary reasoning behind South Carolina's declaring of secession from the U.S., which was described as "increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery". An official secession convention met in South Carolina following the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, on a platform opposing the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories. On December 20, 1860, the convention issued an ordinance of secession announcing the state's withdrawal from the union.