ORDINANCE OF SECESSION
AN ORDINANCE TO REPEAL THE RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE
STATE OF VIRGINIA, AND TO RESUME ALL THE RIGHTS AND
POWERS GRANTED UNDER SAID CONSTITUTION.
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the
United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the 25th
day of June, in the year of our Lord 1788, having declared that the
powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people
of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same
should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal
Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of
the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding
States:
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain,
That the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in convention
on the 25th of June, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution
of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of
the General Assembly of this State ratifying or adopting amendments
to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the
union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the
Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia
is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty
which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.
And they do further declare, That the said Constitution of the United
States of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this
State.
This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day, when ratified
by a majority of the votes of the people of this State cast at a poll
to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance
of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Done in Convention, in the city of Richmond, on the 17th day of
April, in the year of our Lord 1861, and in the eighty-fifth year of the
Commonwealth of Virginia.
