Ordinance of Secession

An Ordinance of Secession is the name given to multiple resolutions drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861, at or near the beginning of the American Civil War, by which each seceding Southern slave-holding state or territory formally declared secession from the United States. South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas also issued separate documents purporting to justify secession.

Adherents of the Union side in the Civil War regarded secession as illegal by any means and President Abraham Lincoln, drawing in part on the legacy of President Andrew Jackson, regarded it as his job to preserve the Union by force if necessary. However, President James Buchanan, in his State of the Union Address of December 3, 1860, stated that the Union rested only upon public opinion and that conciliation was its only legitimate means of preservation; President Thomas Jefferson had also suggested, after his presidency but in official correspondence in 1816, that the secession of some states might be desirable.

Beginning with South Carolina in December 1860, eleven Southern states and one territory each ratified an ordinance of secession and effected de facto secession by some regular or purportedly lawful means, including by state legislative action, special convention, or popular referendum, as sustained by state public opinion and mobilized military force. Both sides in the Civil War regarded these eleven states and territory as de facto seceded.

Two other Southern states, Missouri and Kentucky, attempted secession ineffectively or only by irregular means. These two states remained within the Union, but were regarded by the Confederacy as having seceded. Two remaining Southern states, Delaware and Maryland, rejected secession and were not regarded by either side as having seceded. No other state considered secession. In 1863 a Unionist government in western Virginia created a new state from 50 western counties which entered the Union as West Virginia. The new state included 24 counties that had ratified Virginia's secession ordinance.