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. Adopted by the Convention
of Virginia on April 17th, 1861. Richmond, Virginia.
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the
United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth
day of June in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the 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 slaveholding 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
twenty-fifth day of June in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred
and eighty-eight, 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or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed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 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 seventeenth day
of April in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one,
and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
