South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession (1860)

South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession (1860)
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution . . .
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing. . . . A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery . . .
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Adopted December 24, 1860
-South Carolina's decision to secede from the Union

A) was reminiscent of the colonists' protests against taxation without representation.
B) was based on the unresolved constitutional issues surrounding states' rights.
C) demanded a restructuring of the existing governmental system.
D) was made possible by the failure of the Compromises of 1820 and 1850.