Sep 30, 2010 - Sale 2223

Sale 2223 - Lot 65

Price Realized: $ 30,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
SOUTH CAROLINA'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) At a Convention of the People of the State of South Carolina. . . . An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States United with Her. Lithograph broadside, 34 x 26 3/4 inches; edge wear, several closed tears, minor foxing (mostly in margins); professionally conserved and stabilized with Japanese tissue backing. Charleston, SC: Evans & Cogswell, [late March or April 1861]
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

On 20 December 1860, the delegates to the South Carolina state convention voted unanimously to secede from the United States of America. Each of the 169 delegates then signed their names to the Ordinance of Secession, creating a document which was in effect the Confederacy's Declaration of Independence.
As war neared, the convention met again on 28 March 1861. Among the other pressing business of creating a new government, they considered how to distribute copies of this signed Ordinance of Secession, with the initial plan being to have the document photographed. However, the official printers, Evans & Cogswell, had already taken the liberty of lithographing the ordinance. The Committee on Printing described their work as "a style creditable to the art," and added that "by a careful comparison with the original, the Committee find it to bear a very notable similarity." Even the ink blots matched the original. Thus the convention voted to order 200 prints from this plate "for the use of the Convention" for a $200 fee. The resulting broadsides were presumably printed shortly after 28 March, quite possibly before the 12 April Battle of Fort Sumter, and were apparently distributed to the 169 signers and other state officials. The most recent census found only 11 of these copies surviving in libraries.
Crandall 1887; Parrish & Willingham 3794; Sabin 87444. See also Journal of the Convention of the People of South Carolina (Charleston, 1861), pages 216-7, 409. Provenance: from the estate of a great-grandson of original signer Edward McCrady (1802-1892).