The Louisana Ordinance of Secession - photo 1
The Louisana Ordinance of Secession - photo 2

The Louisana Ordinance of Secession

Starting price
$ 200 000
Auction dateClassic
17.01.2024 11:00UTC -04:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
USA, New York
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ID 1119108
Lot 144 | The Louisana Ordinance of Secession
The Louisana Ordinance of Secession

Alexandre Mouton, 25 January 1861

LOUISIANA SECESSION – MOUTON, Alexandre (1804-1885). Manuscript document signed (“A. Mouton”) as President of the Convention, Baton Rouge, 25 January 1861. “The State of Louisiana. An Ordinance To dissolve the Union between the State of Louisiana and the other States united with her under the compact entitled ‘the Constitution f the United States.’”



Three pages, 472 x302mm bifolium, (partial fold separation at center left margin affecting both leaves) Countersigned by John Thomas WHEAT, Jr. (1830-1862), (“J. Tho: Wheat”) as Secretary of the Convention.



James Buchanan’s copy of the Louisiana Ordinance of Secession. An exceptionally important document, it declares: “That the Ordinance passed by us in Convention of the 22d day of November, in the year Eighteen hundred and eleven whereby the Constitution of the United States of America, and the amendments of said Constitution were adopted. . . and that the Union now subsisting between Louisiana and other States under the name of the ‘The United States of America’ is hereby dissolved. . .”



Louisiana's push toward secession began in earnest on 10 December 1860, when governor Thomas Moore, called for a special session of the state legislature which approved his call for an election of delegates on 7 January 1861 to select delegates for a convention to consider the question. On 26 January 1861, Louisiana's Secession Convention voted 113 to 17 to adopt the present ordinance, making it the sixth state to exit the Union. That night the streets of New Orleans were filled with parading citizens carrying pine torches and the Governor called for homes to place lights in their windows in a show of support.



Louisiana's departure from the Union left only Texas among the states of the Deep South remaining in the Union. A week later that state declared for secession—a move ratified by popular referendum on 23 February. The states of the upper South, including Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, did not move to secede until after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861.



Extremely rare. While printings of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession have appeared at auction, we are unaware of any original, signed document of this type ever coming to market from South Carolina or any other seceding state.

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