federacy, the proper committee reported an ordinance of secession in the following words, in accordance with the theory of State supremacy:
"We, the people of the State of South
Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby
declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in convention, on the
23d day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of the
State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and
the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name
of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved."
It was noon on the 20th of December, 1860, when this ordinance was submitted. At a quarter before one o'clock, it was adopted by the unanimous voice of the Convention, one hundred  and sixtynine delegates voting in the affirmative. They were then assembled in St. Andrew's Hall. It was proposed that the members should walk in procession to Institute Hall, and there, at seven o'clock in the evening, in the presence of the constituted authorities of the State and of the people, to sign it - "the great Act of Deliverance and Liberty."
The cry at once went forth, "The Union is dissolved!" It was echoed and re-echoed in the streets of Charleston, and was sent upon the wings of lightning all over the Republic. Placards announcing the fact were posted throughout the city of Charleston, and again the people of that town were almost wild with excitement. All business was suspended, and huzzas for a "Southern Confederacy" filled the air. Women appeared in the streets with secession bonnets, the invention of a Northern milliner in Charleston. Flags waved, church-bells pealed merrily, and cannons boomed and some enthusiastic young men went to the grave of John C. Calhoun, in St. Philip's church-yard, and forming a circle around it, made a solemn vow to devote their "lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" to the cause of "South Carolina independence."
Before night the ordinance of secession was engrossed on a sheet of parchment and at the appointed time, in the evening, Institute Hall was crowded with eager spectators to witness the signing of the instrument. Back of the president's chair was suspended a banner of cotton cloth, on which was painted a significant device. At the bottom was a mass of broken and discolored blocks of hewn stones, on each of which were the name and arms of a free labor State. Rising from this mass were two columns made of perfect blocks of stone, each bearing the name and arms of a slave labor State. The keystone of an arch that crowned the two columns had the name and arms of South Carolina upon it, and it bore a figure of Calhoun. In the space between the columns was a palmetto tree, with a rattlesnake coiled around its trunk, and on a ribbon the words, "Southern Republic." Beneath all, in large letters, were the significant words, "Built from the Ruins."
This flag foreshadowed the designs of the
Secessionists to overthrow the Republic and build an empire
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