The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Editorial Board
• Alphabetical List of Authors
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• Organization of the Work
• Note On the Texts
• Part One: the Civil War
• The Crittenden Compromise
• South Carolina Ordinance of Secession
• South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession
• Mississippi Ordinance of Secession
• Mississippi Declaration of Causes of Secession
• Virginia Ordinance to Repeal the Ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America
• Missouri Act Declaring the Political Ties Heretofore Existing Between the State of Missouri and the United States of America Dissolved
• Ordinance of the Kentucky Convention
• Constitution of the Confederate States of America
• Farewell Speech to the United States Congress
• Inaugural Address
• First Inaugural Address
• Proclamation Calling the Militia and Convening Congress
• Proclamation of Blockade Against Southern Ports
• Message to Congress In Special Session
• Proclamation Suspending Writ of Habeas Corpus
• Message to Congress On Gradual Abolishment of Slavery
• Proclamation Revoking General Hunter’s Emancipation Order
• Emancipation Proclamation
• Emancipation Proclamation
• The Gettysburg Address
• Message to the Congress of Confederate States
• Act to Increase the Military Force of the Confederate States
• Last Order
• Part Two: Reconstruction
• Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
• Veto Message With Wade-davis Proclamation and Bill
• Wade-davis Manifesto
• Special Field Order No. 15
• Second Inaugural Address
• Last Public Address
• Constitution of Indiana, Article Xiii
• Black Code of Mississippi
• U.s. Constitution, Thirteenth Amendment
• Freedmen’s Bureau Bill
• Second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill
• Veto of the Second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill
• Civil Rights Act
• First Reconstruction Act of 1867
• Veto of the First Reconstruction Act
• First Supplement to the First Reconstruction Act of 1867
• Second Supplement to the First Reconstruction Act of 1867
• Articles of Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
• Debate On Proposed Fourteenth Amendment
• U.s. Constitution, Fifteenth Amendment
• Enforcement Act of 1870
• Enforcement Act of 1871
• Enforcement Act of 1875
• The Constitution of the State of Mississippi, As Adopted In Convention
• Inaugural Address
• Civil Rights Cases
• Constitution of the State of Mississippi
• Part Three: Consolidating Markets
• The Homestead Act
• The Pacific Railway Act
• The Morrill Act
• The Gospel of Wealth
• Cross of Gold Speech
• First Inaugural Address
• First Annual Message
• Lochner V. New York
• Part Four: Consolidating Culture?
• Twelfth Annual Report of the Massachusetts State School Board
• Address On Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes
• Address of Booker T. Washington, Principal Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., At the Opening of the Exposition
• Plessy V. Ferguson
• The Talented Tenth
• Treaty Between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians; Concluded June 1, 1868; Ratification Advised July 25, 1868; Proclaimed August 12, 1868.
• Dawes Act
• Proposed Constitutional Amendment
• Massachusetts Constitutional Provision
• Reynolds V. United States
• The Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Et Al. V. United States
• Immigration Policy
• The Principles of Scientific Management
• Carrie Buck, By R. G. Shelton, Her Guardian and Next Friend, Plff. In Err., V. J. H. Bell, Superintendent of the State Colony For Epileptics and Feeble Minded
• Introduction to I’ll Take My Stand
• Part Five: Reform Movements
• National People’s Party Platform, Adopted At Omaha, Neb., July 4, 1892
• Coin’s Financial School
• Lecture II: What Pragmatism Means
• The Socialist Party and the Working Class
• Preamble
• The Subjective Necessity For Social Settlements
• Why the Ward Boss Rules
• Declaration of Principles of the Progressive Party
• The Income Tax
• Speech On Constitutionality of an Income Tax
• U.s. Constitution, Sixteenth Amendment
• Direct Election of U.s. Senators
• Resolution Opposing Direct Election of Senators
• U.s. Constitution, Seventeenth Amendment
• First Annual Meeting of the Woman’s State Temperance Society
• Prohibition Debate
• U.s. Constitution, Eighteenth Amendment
• U.s. Constitution, Twenty-first Amendment
• Women’s Suffrage
• The Fundamental Principle of a Republic
• Debate On Women’s Suffrage
• U.s. Constitution, Nineteenth Amendment
• Part Six: Consolidating Government
• The Pendleton Act
• Interstate Commerce Act
• Veto Message—distribution of Seeds
• Sherman Antitrust Act
• President’s Message to the Senate and House of Representatives
• Federal Trade Commission Act
• The Place of the Independent Commission
• Radio Address On Unemployment Relief
• Commonwealth Club Address
• Inaugural Address
• Federal Emergency Relief Act
• National Industrial Recovery Act
• Redistribution of Wealth
• A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. Et Al. V. United States
• Fireside Chat On the Reorganization of the Judiciary
• National Labor Relations Board V. Jones & Laughlin Steel
• Part Seven: America In the World
• Monroe Doctrine—seventh Annual Message
• Roosevelt Corollary to Monroe Doctrine
• The Fallacy of Territorial Extension
• The Star of Empire
• Open Door Note
• Woodrow Wilson On Neutrality and War
• Statement On American Neutrality
• Address to the Senate
• Dissent In Wartime
• Espionage Act
• Free Speech In Wartime
• Sedition Act
• Schenck V. United States
• Fourteen Points Speech
• Covenant of the League of Nations
• Speech Against the League of Nations
• Kellogg-briand Pact
• Note On Chinchow
• Neutrality and War
• The Atlantic Charter
• The Four Freedoms
• Pearl Harbor Speech
• Sources

Mississippi Ordinance of Secession

January 9, 1861

AN ORDINANCE

TO DISSOLVE THE UNION BETWEEN THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI AND OTHER STATES UNITED WITH HER UNDER THE COMPACT ENTITLED “THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

Section 1st. That all the laws and ordinances by which the said State of Mississippi became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America be, and the same are hereby repealed, and that all obligations on the part of the said State or the people thereof to observe the same, be withdrawn, and that the said State doth hereby resume all the rights, functions and powers which, by any of said laws or ordinances, were conveyed to the government of the said United States, and is absolved from all the obligations, restraints and duties incurred to the said Federal Union, and shall from henceforth be a free, sovereign and independent State.

Section 2nd. That so much of the first section of the seventh article of the Constitution of this State as requires members of the Legislature, and all officers, executive and judicial, to take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution of the United States, be, and the same is hereby abrogated and annulled.

Section 3rd. That all rights acquired and vested under the Constitution of the United States, or under any act of Congress passed, or treaty made, in pursuance thereof, or under any law of this State, and not incompatible with this Ordinance, shall remain in force and have the same effect as if this Ordinance had not been passed.

Section 4th. That the people of the State of Mississippi hereby consent to form a Federal Union with such of the States as may have seceded or may secede from the Union of the United States of America, upon the basis of the present Constitution of the said United States, except such parts thereof as embrace other portions than such seceding States.

Thus ordained and declared in Convention the 9th day of January, in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty-one.

W. S. BARRY, President.

F. A. Pope,Secretary.

IN TESTIMONY of the passage of which, and the determination of the members of this Convention to uphold and maintain the State in the position she has assumed by said Ordinance, it is signed by the President and Members of this Convention this the fifteenth day of January, ad 1861.

Adams County—A. K. Farrar, J. Winchester.

Attala—E. H. Sanders.

Amite—D. W. Hurst.

Bolivar—M. H. McGehee.

Carroll—J. Z. George, W. Booth.

Claiborne—H. T. Ellett.

Coahoma—J. L. Alcorn.

Copiah—P. S. Catching, B. King.

Clarke—S. H. Terral.

Choctaw—W. F. Brantley, W. H. Witty, J. H. Edwards.

Chickasaw—J. A. Orr, C. B. Baldwin.

Covington—A. C. Powell.

Calhoun—W. A. Sumner, M. D. L. Stephens.

DeSoto—J. R. Chalmers, S. D. Johnston, T. Lewers.

Franklin—D. H. Parker.

Green—T. J. Roberts.

Hinds—W. P. Harris, W. P. Anderson, W. B. Smart.

Holmes—J. M. Dyer, W. L. Keirn.

Harrison—D. C. Glenn.

Hancock—J. B. Deason.

Issaquena—A. C. Gibson.

Itawamba—R. O. Beene, A. B. Bullard, W. H. H. Tison, M. C. Cummings.

Jasper—O. C. Dease.

Jackson—A. E. Lewis.

Jefferson—J. S. Johnston.

Jones—J. H. Powell.

Kemper—O. Y. Neely, T. H. Woods.

Lawrence—W. Gwin.

Lowndes—George R. Clayton.

Leake—W. B. Colbert.

Lauderdale—J. B. Ramsey, F. C. Semmes.

Lafayette—L. Q. C. Lamar, T. D. Isom.

Marshall—A. M. Clayton, J. W. Clapp, S. Benton, H. W. Walter, W. M. Lea.

Madison—A. P. Hill.

Monroe—S. J. Gholson, F. M. Rogers.

Marion—H. Mayson.

Noxubee—Israel Welsh.

Neshoba—D. M. Backstrom.

Newton—M. M. Keith.

Oktibbeha—T. C. Bookter.

Perry—P. J. Myers.

Pike—J. M. Nelson.

Panola—J. B. Fiser, E. F. McGehee.

Pontotoc—C. D. Fontaine, J. B. Herring, H. R. Miller, R. W. Flournoy.

Rankin—Wm. Denson.

Sunflower—E. P. Jones.

Simpson—W. J. Douglas.

Smith—W. Thompson.

Scott—C. W. Taylor.

Tallahatchie—A. Patterson.

Tishomingo—A. E. Reynolds, W. W. Bonds, T. P. Young, J. A. Blair.

Tunica—A. Miller.

Tippah—O. Davis, J. H. Berry, J. S. Davis, D. B. Wright.

Washington—J. S. Yerger.

Wilkinson—A. C. Holt.

Wayne—W. J. Eckford.

Warren—W. Brooke, T. A. Marshall.

Winston—J. Kennedy, W. S. Bolling.

Yallobusha—F. M. Aldridge, W. R. Barksdale.

Yazoo—H. Vaughan, G. B. Wilkinson.