Upset with free States exercising their sovereignty by nullifying the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Secession Convention, of the Republic of Texas, votes (YEA, 166; NAY, 8) to submit its Ordinance of Secession from the voluntary Union to the Electorate, over the issues of state sovereignty:

We, the People of the State of Texas … do declare and ordain, that the Ordinance adopted … and afterwards ratified by us, under which the Republic of Texas was admitted into Union … is hereby repealed and annulled; That all the powers, which by said compact were delegated by Texas to the Federal Government, are revoked and resumed; That Texas is of right absolved from all restraints and obligations incurred by said compact, and is a separate Sovereign State, and that her citizens and people are absolved from all allegiance to the United States, or the Government thereof.       

       [updated 1/18/2025]

     Democratic (constitutionalist) President Buchanan signs the (protective) Morrill Tariff Act, raising import duties from between 15 and 24%, up to 47%.  For years the agricultural free trade, slave States had resisted high tariffs because they paid most of the tariffs; while the industrial protectionist, free States favored a higher tariff, because they would fund “interval improvements” (corporate welfare) in the northern States.  But now the southern States no longer have members of Congress there to vote against it.

     NOTE: The act passed the Senate by a vote of (YEA, 25; NAY, 14).  If the abstentions of the seven seceded Confederate States had been counted as NO votes, the act would have failed by a vote of (NAY, 28; YEA, 25).

       [updated 1/25/2025]

       A lawfully elected Senate (in accordance with Article I, Section 3 [Clause 1]) passes, and sends on to the States for ratification the Corwin Amendment which would prohibit Congress from proposing any amendment that would abolish slavery.

       NOTE: Had this amendment passed, and Gulf States returned to the Union they would have had an ironclad guarantee that slavery would not have been abolished without their consent.  There must have been some other factor (free trade?) that compelled them to secede.

      [updated 1/25/2025]