Talk:South Carolina Declaration of Secession

Shorter title

Can't someone make a shorter title

• Not really. The document that's the subject of the article may have a long title, but that is its title. What else would you call it? MK2 (talk) 18:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

We could. We use "Ordinance of Secession", which is an abbreviation of the full title, albeit one that has more currency than any abbreviation for this declaration. Names like "South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession" are used in some sources.

Alternatively we could re-title this article to more broadly cover SC's secession convention, including the Ordinance, the Declaration, the people they sent to negotiate federal property, and whatnot. —Mrwojo (talk) 02:21, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

"Declaration of Immediate Causes" or some such might work. I agree that the title is incredibly and unnecessarily long. Referring to the "official" name within the article is fine. Red Harvest (talk) 22:45, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Clarification

I made a couple changes that I think were justified by the actual text of the declaration. I clarified that the text itslef centered more around Constitutional provisions than the Fugitive Slave Act (which was simply an act of Congress upholding the Constitutional requirement).

Also, the paragraph on states' rights seemed misleading and biased. I hope my revision isn't seen as distorting anything. I tried to summarize the argument made in the declaration itself. I don't see anywhere in the declaration that actually complains that the federal government failed to compel states to return slaves. I also don't see an explicit contradiction in the text. Primarily it states that the Constitution was a compact among sovereign states. That compact required certain things of the states. The northern states failed to fulfill their obligations, so SC was reclaiming its sovereignty by withdrawing from the compact.

I think the wording of the paragraphs is still a little clumsy and could stand some more revision. But overall, I think my revision more accurately explains the actual text of the declaration than did the original.

Pilby (talk) 23:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Probably need text of actual document

A major weakness of this article is that the text of the actual document is not in it or directly linked. A synopsis is fine, but this sort of document is short enough to be attached in some fashion. A few quotes to illustrate/reinforce the synopsis would likely help as well. Red Harvest (talk) 19:45, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I added some quotes from the text into the article. Hope this helps. Regards, Illegitimate Barrister 04:29, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

On the question of who issued the "Declaration of immediate causes..."

The article states that the "declaration of immediate causes..." was a proclamation issued by the government. This is correct, in a general sense, but there's a better term than government here: convention or secession convention or South Carolina's convention of 1860. It was the convention that met and adopted the ordinance of secession and it was the convention that promulgated the "declaration of immediate causes..." and the "address...to the slaveholding states." Yes, the convention was an institution and creation of the state government, but saying government, rather than convention makes one wonder whether we mean the legislative, the executive, or the judicial. Tangible-outcome (talk) 23:15, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

Ambiguous title

The title is unclear and does not reflect what is being written about. Tangible-outcome (talk) 17:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)