Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

The  was a document agreed to by representatives of the people of the state of South Carolina in the city of Charleston on 24 December 1860. As the title suggested, it gave reasons for the state to withdraw from the Constitution of the United States, and therefore the United States of America. As noted by Paul LeVal in an unsent 14 February 1861 letter to Will Johnson, it allowed South Carolina to be the first state to secede, and was a necessary precondition to forming the Confederate States of America.

Of particular note was the fact that it was a reaction to the election — and not the actual government — of Abraham Lincoln. Specifically, it found that the election of Lincoln was a kind of geographic coup in which a "sectional party" dominant in "all the states north of a [geographical] line [had] united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes [were] hostile to slavery." (PROSE: Blood and Hope)

Behind the scenes
The novella prints extended passages from the real world document.