Title: Charleston in the American Civil War
Content:  whether it made sense for South Carolina to remain in the Union. her long dissatisfaction with the Federal government and many Northern citizens' views on slavery. They believed that the avowed views of the new President-elect made abolition a likely goal of his administration. On December 20, 1860, the Secession Convention voted for South Carolina to secede from the Union. As the first state to do so, they also issued a Declaration of the Immediate Causes which explained her decision to part company from her erstwhile sister states. Beginning with the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the defense of slavery, more than tariffs 
Title: History of South Carolina
Content:  South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. South Carolina adopted the [[s:South Carolina Declaration of the Causes of Secession|Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union]] on December 24, 1860, following a briefer Ordinance of Secession adopted December 20. All of the violations of the alleged rights of Southern states mentioned in the document are about slavery. President Buchanan protested but made no military response aside from a failed attempt to resupply Fort Sumter via the ship Star of the West, which was fired upon by South Carolina forces and turned back before it reached the fort.
Title: South Carolina Declaration of Secession
Content:  While later claims have been made after the war's end that the South Carolinian decision to secede was prompted by other issues such as tariffs and taxes, these issues were not mentioned at all in the declaration. The primary focus of the declaration is the perceived violation of the Constitution by Northern states in not extraditing escaped slaves (as the U.S. Constitution required in Article IV, Section 2) and actively working to abolish slavery (which South Carolinian secessionists saw as Constitutionally guaranteed and protected). The main thrust of the argument was that since the U.S. Constitution, being a contract, had been 
Title: South Carolina in the American Civil War
Content:  secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. James Buchanan, the United States president, declared the ordinance illegal but did not act to stop it. A committee of the convention also drafted a [[Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union|Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina]] which was adopted on December 24. The secession declaration stated the primary reasoning behind South Carolina's declaring of secession from the 
Title: South Carolina in the American Civil War
Content:  [the Constitution] would not have been made." Laws from the "General Government" upheld this stipulation "for many years," the declaration says, but "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations." Because the constitutional agreement had been "deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States," the consequence was that "South Carolina is released from her obligation" to be part of the Union. A further concern was Lincoln's recent election to the presidency, whom they claimed desired to see slavery on "the course of ultimate extinction": The South Carolinian secession declaration of December 1860 
Title: South Carolina Declaration of Secession
Content:   The Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, also known as the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, was a proclamation issued on December 24, 1860, by the government of South Carolina to explain its reasons for seceding from the United States. 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".
Title: History of South Carolina
Content:  the state vied with Virginia as the dominant political and social force in the South. It fought federal tariffs in the 1830s and demanded that its rights to practice slavery be recognized in newly established territories. With the 1860 election of Republicans under Abraham Lincoln, who vowed to prevent slavery's expansion, the voters demanded secession. In December 1860, the state was the first to secede from the Union, and in February 1861, it joined the new Confederate States of America. In April 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked the American fort at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. After the collapse of 
Title: History of South Carolina
Content:  enough in national standing and character to prevent action by those more militant South Carolinian factions who wanted to secede immediately. Andrew Pickens Butler argued against Charleston publisher Robert Barnwell Rhett, who advocated immediate secession and, if necessary, independence. Butler won the battle, but Rhett outlived him. When people began to believe that Abraham Lincoln would be elected president, states in the Deep South organized conventions to discuss their options. South Carolina was the first state to organize such a convention, meeting in December following the national election. On December 20, 1860, delegates convened in Charleston and voted unanimously to secede from the Union. President James Buchanan declared the secession illegal, but did not act to stop it. The first six states to secede with the largest slaveholding states in the South, demonstrating that the slavery societies were an integral part of the secession question.
Title: American Civil War
Content:  The election of Lincoln provoked the legislature of South Carolina to call a state convention to consider secession. Before the war, South Carolina did more than any other Southern state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws, and even to secede from the United States. The convention unanimously voted to secede on December 20, 1860, and adopted Declaration of a secession declaration. It argued for states' rights for slave owners in the South, but contained a complaint about states' rights in the North in the form of opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were 
Title: Lost Cause of the Confederacy
Content: Just as states had chosen to join the federal union, they can also choose to withdraw. ; Defense of states' rights, rather than the preservation of chattel slavery, was the primary cause that led eleven Southern states to secede from the Union, thus precipitating the War. ; Secession was a justifiable and constitutional response to Northern cultural and economic aggression against the superior, chivalric Southern way of life, which included slavery. The South was fighting for its independence. Many still want it. ; The North was not attacking the South out of a pure, though misguided motive: to end slavery. Its motives were economic and venal. ; Slavery was not 

Question: what was one reason south carolina gave for its decision to secede from the union?
Answer: to preserve slavery.