Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[103] the Committee appointed to prepare an ordinance of secession reported. This was on the 20th of December. Their report, submitted by Mr. Inglis, was very brief, and embodied the draft of an ordinance, in the following words:--

“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 was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of the State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and the Union now Subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.”

Signatures of the Committee on Secession Ordinance.

This ordinance was immediately adopted by the unanimous voice of the Convention. The hour when the important event occurred was a quarter before one o'clock. The number of votes was one hundred and sixty-nine. W. F. De Saussure immediately moved that the Convention should march in procession from St. Andrew's Hall,¹ where they had held their sessions since the 19th, to Institute Hall, and there, at seven o'clock in the evening, in the presence of the constituted authorities of the State and of the people, sign the ordinance. The Governor, both branches of the Legislature, and several clergymen were specially invited to be present at the solemn act--“the great act of deliverance and Liberty.”

The cry at once went out:--“The Union is dissolved! The Union is ”