South Carolina Articles Of Incorporation: Fill & Download for Free

Here’s why:A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.The Declaration of Causes of Seceding StatesAnd here:Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal UnionWe 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 assume 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; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. 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. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.Also here:A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.Or maybe here:The new constitution [of the Confederate States of America] has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”Our new government [of the Confederate States] is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, March 21, 1861“Corner Stone” SpeechI could go on, as there are many more examples, but I think the point is made.People don’t believe Southerners when they say the Confederacy seceded over states’ rights because nobody said that until years after the Civil War was over. The idea that it was about States’ Rights was an example of Post-Civil War revisionist history on the part of Southern leaders; it’s commonly known among historians as “the Myth of the Lost Cause”, and was a (highly successful) attempt to recast the cause of the war as a noble struggle that had little or nothing to do with slavery.It is also absolutely and utterly without historical evidence from before and during the war to support it. The South was not shy about why it was seceding, as the excerpts from the documents I’ve posted above indicate.In fact, rather than violating the rights of the states, many of the Southern states accused the federal government of not doing enough to rein in the behavior of the Northern states, specifically in regard to the recovery of fugitive slaves. Here’s another excerpt from South Carolina’s declaration of secession, which I have already quoted from above:The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States [the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850]. For many years these laws were executed. 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, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress [the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850] or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.The target of South Carolina’s anger is not the federal government, except insofar as it was too weak to stop the non-slaveholding states from resisting the return of fugitive slaves to the South. In fact, you can’t find anything in South Carolina’s declaration of secession that points to specific actions by the federal government infringing on the rights of the Southern states at all. It was the non-slaveholding states they were angry at.EDIT: The section of South Carolina’s declaration I quoted above is referring to something called the Personal Liberty Laws, which were laws passed by Northern states to provide legal protection for blacks living in the North who were accused of being fugitive slaves. Under the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, all that was required to prove someone was a fugitive slave was a written or verbal statement from their alleged owner, or a representative appointed by the owner (such as a slave hunter) that the person in question was an escaped slave. Personal Liberty Laws required anyone seeking to reclaim an escaped slave in a free state to first obtain a warrant from a state judge, which could be denied with insufficient evidence that the person in question was in fact the fugitive being sought. They also provided some opportunity for the accused fugitive to face their accusers in court, which the federal acts expressly denied. This was a source of great controversy between the Northern and Southern states, and from the Southern perspective was evidence that the federal government was too weak to defend their interests, rather than so strong that it was infringing on their rights. Other states mentioned this in their declarations of secession as well.Here’s Texas:The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.The Supreme Court actually ruled Personal Liberty Laws unconstitutional, as a violation by the Northern States of the federal government’s authority to determine how the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution (Article IV Section 3) would be enforced. This ruling was handed down in 1844 in the case of Prigg v Pennsylvania, but Northern states continued to pass and enforce Personal Liberty Laws after that ruling.Personal Liberty LawsPrigg v. PennsylvaniaThe Southern States were angry because the Northern States were sheltering escaped slaves, in defiance of federal law, as part of what they saw (correctly) as a larger effort to undermine the institution of slavery in the South. The problem they had with the federal government was not that it was taking their rights away, but that it was not doing enough to stop this behavior by the Northern states. In other words, rather than being tyrannical, they saw the federal government as largely ineffective. Added to this was their concern with Lincoln’s election that the federal government would now join the Northern states in their effort to undermine slavery, specifically by limiting it to those states in which it already existed, while barring slavery from the vast territories acquired from France in 1803 and Mexico in 1848. This would ensure the slaveholding states would become a small minority of the overall nation, placing (it was thought) slavery on a path to eventual extinction. The South wanted to prevent this from happening.So in response to the question, people do not believe it, because it is not true.

The long answer is yes, with an if, and the short answer is no, with a but.The relevant enabling sections of the Constitution are in:the Tax and Spend Clause, (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1,) which also contains the requirements oforiginating with the House of Representatives,must be spent on paying for either the debts of the Federal government, for the “common defense,” (military that defends all of the individual States collectively,) and “general welfare of the United States,” andmust be uniform throughout the States (so, no taxing California residents higher than Florida residents).The 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, which permits an income tax. Specifically, it states: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”The Necessary and Proper Clause, (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18), which has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819 as “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.”Additionally, the Constitution puts some limitations on this taxing power:Article I, Section 2 requires direct taxes to be apportioned to the States according to respective numbers; how those numbers are determined was modified by the 14th Amendment, Section 2 to fix the whole “black people are only 60% human” problem.This same concept is reiterated against in Article I, Section 9, Clause 4, which reads: “No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 prohibits the Federal government from taxing “Articles” moving around between the States; essentially, Congress can’t take a cut of interstate commerce. Free trade between the States.I can never stress enough the concept of the nation at the time that the original Constitution was drafted to be a weak federation, essentially slightly more centralized than say, the European Union. The individual States saw themselves as little independent countries unto themselves, not as provinces of a single nation. The “Anti-Federalist” faction was deeply against the proposed Constitution for that very reason — they saw it as a step towards losing their individual national sovereignty towards a centralized government.There is still tension today between the same two factions: one who sees our form of government as barely one step above confederacy, with the individual States basically in a loose coalition with a mutual defense pact, and another that prefers the concept of strong federation, with a more centralized national government and weaker individual sub-unit States.Based on these enabling sections of the Constitution, their limitations, and the document’s history, it would depend on precisely how the Federal government would tax that wealth.If the Federal government is taxing wealth in the form of capital gains, carried income, or the passing of wealth to subsequent generations, the 16th Amendment plainly enables such laws as constitutional, because these are income “from whatever source derived.” They are income because wealth is transferring hands; someone is literally receiving money as income.Indirect taxes are also fine. Indirect taxes are things that depend on some event or transaction taking place. That’s why there can be a national sales tax, such as the gasoline tax. Right now, every time you buy a gallon of gasoline, 18.4 cents goes to the Feds. 24.4 cents if you buy diesel.The Feds can levy tariffs on out-of-country things you want to import, and excise taxes on things you want to ship back out again. If you want your wealth to go anywhere, Uncle Sam can (and will) take a cut.So, if some hypothetical representative or Senator in Congress, let’s call her Lizzie Nerraw for no actual reason whatsoever I swear, were to propose a 14,000% tax on luxury yachts that cost more than $1,000,000 apiece every time one is sold, serviced, refueled, inherited, or imported from Dubai, that would probably be constitutional, and a way of capturing wealth from certain very wealthy individuals.A marginal income tax of 150% on all income carried from interest-bearing accounts that exceeds $1,000,000 per year in income would probably be constitutional, and a way of capturing wealth from certain very wealthy individuals who receive most of their income from carried interest.These might not be good ideas, but they’re arguably not unconstitutional, at least.Direct taxes, on the other hand, are taxes on present wealth that do not depend on some event or transaction from taking place. Taxing someone’s net worth, for example, would be a direct tax. Property taxes are the most common form of direct tax.And direct taxes at the Federal level, as it turns out, are where the excrement impacts the atmospheric mass mover.This is where it’s helpful to go back to the Constitutional Convention and the drafting of these provisions limiting Congress’ power to tax.Understand, one of the primary reasons that the predecessor document to the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, completely failed was that the Continental government had almost zero power to actually raise any revenue. It was flat broke in 1787. It could request money from the States, who were under no obligation to send it. You can guess how many of them voluntarily did.To make this new proposed federalized system work, Congress had to have more power to raise revenues. That’s where the whole Tax and Spend Clause itself came in.Then a bunch of Southern plantation owners just about lost their minds over this, because they had a lot fewer people owning a lot more property individually than their more populous Northern neighbors. A national property tax could mean that Southern land-and-slaveowners might get nailed with a huge individual tax bill; one slaveowning guy in North Carolina might end up paying fifty times as much as some non-slaveowning guy in Massachusetts, because his property would be worth fifty times as much.So, they got Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 put in to make sure that they had to be taxed in direct proportion to their population. Plus, they got that whole 3/5ths “Compromise” thrown in for good measure. All the power of having tons of population with only a handful of people actually owning things! Once this clause got put in, some of these guys were really sold that this would be great for the South and totally worth the other downfalls of ratifying the Constitution.Take this piece of a letter recommending the new Constitution to the governor of North Carolina from three of the representatives to the Convention:We had many things to hope from a National Government and the chief thing we had to fear from such a Government was the Risque of unequal or heavy Taxation, but we hope you will believe as we do that the Southern States in general and North Carolina in particular are well secured on that head by the proposed system. It is provided in the 9th Section of Article the first that no Capitation or other direct Tax shall be laid except in proportion to the number of Inhabitants, in which number five blacks are only Counted as three. If a land tax is laid we are to pay the same rate, for Example: fifty Citizens of North Carolina can be taxed no more for all their Lands than fifty Citizens in one of the Eastern States. This must be greatly in our favour for as most of their Farms are small & many of them live in Towns we certainly have, one with another, land of twice the value that they Possess. When it is also considered that five Negroes are only to be charged the Same Poll Tax as three whites the advantage must be considerably increased under the proposed Form of Government.(Side note, we really tend to leave off just how much really shitty racism was incorporated into the Constitution by design and the reasons for a rather significant part of its provisions. Constitutional originalism conveniently forgets all about this when taking a textual interpretation approach. But I digress.)So, anyways, the only way the Feds can levy a direct tax on wealth is if it is directly levied proportional to each State based on population. That is, 50 people in New York can’t pay any more for all their wealth than 50 people in Mississippi. This will heavily favor states where there are reasonably high populations, but where only a handful control the bulk of the wealth.This has never been really litigated and is pretty poorly legally understood as a result. There is very little case law on the subject. Only two stand out as meaningful that I’m aware of.The first is Hyalton v. United States, 3 U.S. 191 (1796). That first number means it’s only in the third volume of the cases reported by the Supreme Court Reporter; in other words, it’s one of the very first cases ever decided by SCOTUS. Hyalton ruled that a tax on carriages was not a direct tax, but speculated that a tax on land would be.The second is Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), which held that taxes on income were direct taxes. This case caused an uproar in the legal field, who widely detested it and felt it was entirely wrongly decided. The case was overruled by the adoption of the 16th Amendment for that very reason.While the Congressional Research Service states that Pollock overruled Hyalton, Chief Justice John Roberts relied on Hyalton in 2012 in upholding the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act as a tax, so… there you have that.Extrapolating from Hyalton and assuming it’s still good law, as best I can figure, a tax on real property (typically how wealthy people hold their wealth,) or other asset-type propery is probably a direct tax that would only be constitutional if it were directly proportional to the States according to the most recent census.Parsing out what the hell that would mean in terms of who would get taxed and for how much would probably make Andrew Weill a very rich man.Thanks for the A2A, Habib Fanny.

I have a counter question…Will humanity support a change for media to “serve and improve humanity”…Neither is a likely outcome for the simple reason.Media is corporate interests and corporate interest is the bottom $ and not “humanity” . Media is not altruistic and today even less so than yesterday. If money followed the desire to “improve humanity” then media would alter a business model.Corporations have been given permission by you and the Supreme Court as Personhood..Humanity?When Did Companies Become People? Excavating The Legal EvolutionAre corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court says they are, at least for some purposes. And in the past four years, the high court has dramatically expanded corporate rights.It ruled that corporations have the right to spend money in candidate elections, and that some for-profit corporations may, on religious grounds, refuse to comply with a federal mandate to cover birth control in their employee health plans.These are personal rights accorded to corporations. To many, the concept of corporations as people seems odd, to say the least. But it is not new.The dictionary defines "corporation" as "a number of persons united in one body for a purpose." Corporate entities date back to medieval times, observes Columbia law professor John Coffee, an authority on corporate law. "You could think of the Catholic Church as probably the first entity that could buy and sell property in its own name," he says.Indeed, having an artificial legal persona was especially important to churches, says Elizabeth Pollman, an associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles."Having a corporation would allow people to put property into a collective ownership that could be held with perpetual existence," she says. "So it wouldn't be tied to any one person's lifespan, or subject necessarily to laws regarding inheriting property."Article continues after sponsor messageLater on, in the United States and elsewhere, the advantages of incorporation were essential to efficient and secure economic development. Unlike partnerships, the corporation continued to exist even if a partner died; there was no unanimity required to do something; shareholders could not be sued individually, only the corporation as a whole, so investors only risked as much as they put into buying shares.By the 1800s, the process of incorporating became relatively simple. But corporations aren't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, leaving the courts to determine what rights corporations have — and which corporations have them. After all, Coca-Cola is a corporation, but so are the NAACP and the National Rifle Association, and so are small churches and local nonprofits."All these truly different types of organizations might come under the label 'corporation,' " Pollman observes. "And so the real difficulty is figuring out how to treat these different things under the Constitution."In the early years of the republic, the only right given to corporations was the right to have their contracts respected by the government, according to legal historian Eben Moglen.The great industrialization of the United States in the 1800s, however, intensified companies' need to raise money."With the invention of the railroad, you needed a great deal of capital to exploit its purpose, " Columbia professor Coffee says, "and only the corporate form offered limited liability, easy transferability of shares, and continued, perpetual existence."In addition, the end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 14th Amendment provided an opportunity for corporations to seek further legal protection, says Moglen, also a Columbia University professor."From the moment the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, lawyers for corporations — particularly railroad companies — wanted to use that 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection to make sure that the states didn't unequally treat corporations," Moglen says.Nobody was talking about extending to corporations the right of free speech back then. What the railroads sought was equal treatment under state tax laws and things like that.The Supreme Court extended that protection to corporations, and over time also extended some — but not all — of the rights guaranteed to individuals in the Bill of Rights. The court ruled that corporations don't have a right against self-incrimination, for instance, but are protected by the ban on warrantless search and seizure.Otherwise, as the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro puts it, "the police could storm down the doors of some company and take all their computers and their files."But for 100 years, corporations were not given any constitutional right of political speech; in fact, quite the contrary. In 1907, following a corporate corruption scandal involving prior presidential campaigns, Congress passed a law banning corporate involvement in federal election campaigns. That wall held firm for 70 years.The first crack came in a case that involved neither candidate elections nor federal law. In 1978 a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled for the first time that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money on state ballot initiatives.Still, for decades, candidate elections remained free of direct corporate influence under federal law. Only money from individuals and groups of individuals — political action committees — were permitted in federal elections.Then came Citizens United, the Supreme Court's 5-4 First Amendment decision in 2010 that extended to corporations for the first time full rights to spend money as they wish in candidate elections — federal, state and local. The decision reversed a century of legal understanding, unleashed a flood of campaign cash and created a crescendo of controversy that continues to build today.It thrilled many in the business community, horrified campaign reformers, and provoked considerable mockery in the comedian classes.The Daily ShowGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive"If only there were some way to prove that corporations were not people," lamented the Daily Show's Jon Stewart. Maybe, he mused, we could show "their inability to love."The Colbert ReportGet More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video ArchiveFellow Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert tried unsuccessfully to get the question of corporate personhood on the South Carolina ballot, and also formed a superPAC, which asked whether voters would be comfortable letting Mitt Romney date their daughters' corporations.But there are serious people on both sides of this issue.Cato's Shapiro sees all corporations, when they spend on political campaigns, as merely associations of like-minded people."Nobody is saying that corporations are living, breathing entities, or that they have souls or anything like that," he says. "This is about protecting the rights of the individuals that associate in this way."Countering that argument are those who note that individuals are perfectly free to give money to candidates with whom they agree, and to spend unlimited amounts independently supporting those candidates. They shouldn't need a corporation to express themselves, the argument goes.Some critics, like Pollman, see a difference between for-profit and nonprofit corporations. A nonprofit corporation formed to advance particular political views is one thing, she says. A large for-profit corporation is something else entirely."There's no reason to believe that the people involved — shareholders, employees, even the directors or managers — have come together for an expressive purpose related to anything other than really what the business is doing," she argues.And shareholders and employees, Pollman observes, have no real recourse if they disagree with how corporate money is spent in campaigns.And then there is the money-is-not-speech argument. The problem for First Amendment believers, Moglen says, arises not because they think corporations shouldn't have rights so much as they think money isn't equal to speech."And we are now winding up using constitutional rules to concentrate corporate power in a way that's dangerous to democracy," he says.That, of course, is not how the Supreme Court majority sees its decision. The court has said that because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, the First Amendment forbids discrimination against any class of speaker.It matters not, the court said just this year, that some speakers, because of the money they spend on elections, may have undue influence on public policy; what is important is that the First Amendment protects both speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.