Virginia Secedes from Empire
04-17-1861
AN ORDINANCE to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United
State 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 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 said Constitition 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 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 and
adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and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 voter 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.
Adopted by the convention of Virginia April 17,1861.
Source: Official Records, Ser. IV, vol. 1, p. 223.
[ratified by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451 on May 23, 1861]
