The British, after decisive defeats at King's Mountain and Cowpens, South Carolina, retreated through North Carolina, to surrender at Norfolk, Virginia. It was in these southern states where separation from Great Britain was made permanent.
More battles were fought in South Carolina than in any other state (13). Moreover, it was on South Carolina soil where the tides of war turned decisively against the enemy.
The United States, therefore, owes a substantial debt to South Carolina. Thirty thousand enemy troops still handily occupied New York when Cornwallis was forced to surrender at Yorktown, Virginia.
No matter where the right of South Carolina to declare herself independent of Great Britain is thought to have originated, if this right is held to have existed at all, than South Carolina retains that same right to this day, for the agreement signed by representatives of the government of South Carolina, through which the federated system was established, did not yield, to any organ of that creation, the authority to ban South Carolina from reasserting her right to resume her independence at some future date.
It is unreasonable to interpret South Carolina's signing of the constitution as indicating any intent on her part to abrogate her right of secession at some later date, not only because nowhere in the document is that claim made, but also because, at the time South Carolina signed that document, she had only recently proven the right of secession against bloody disputation.
In contrast, it was the tyrant Lincoln's war against South Carolina that was unlawful. In its bloody execution Lincoln betrayed the principle of voluntary association that had been established by the founders of the federation known as the United States.
He betrayed South Carolina. He betrayed North Carolina. He betrayed Virginia and he betrayed Maryland.
In fact, Lincoln betrayed the the northern states, as well. In leading the (voluntarily) united states down the false path of despotism, Lincoln suborned the noble principles of federalism, upon which their amicable association had been founded.
In short, in 1865 a federated republic of free states was violently transformed into a centralizing empire, destined, in time, to die an empire's sordid death.
Aikhe
SOUTH CAROLINA LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH
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