<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (August 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union was a proclamation issued on December 24, 1860, by the government of South Carolina to explain its reasons for seceding from the United States (Full text of the declaration). It followed the brief Ordinance of Secession that had been issued on December 20 . The declaration is a product of a convention organized by the state's government in the month following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President, where it was drafted in a committee headed by Christopher Memminger . The declaration stated the primary reasoning behind South Carolina's declaring of secession from the U.S., which was described as "increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery". </P> <P> An official secession convention met in South Carolina following the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, on a platform opposing the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories . On December 20, 1860, the convention issued an ordinance of secession announcing the state's withdrawal from the union . The ordinance was brief and legalistic in nature, containing no explanation of the reasoning behind the delegates' decision: </P> <P> 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 twenty - third day of May 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 also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendment of the said Constitution, are here by repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of "The United States of America," is hereby dissolved . </P>

Who wrote the south carolina ordinance of secession