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
Constitution 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amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the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
[ratified by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451 on 23 May 1861]
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