“I do not pretend to sleep,” wrote Mary Chesnut of the night of April 12, 1861.  “How can I?” Hours earlier her husband, former South Carolina senator James Chesnut, had gone by rowboat to Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor.  He was delivering an ultimatum to U.S.  Army Major Robert Anderson to surrender the fort by four o’clock in the morning or be fired upon by the South Carolina militia.

Through the long night Mary Chesnut lay awake, until she heard chimes from a local church ring four times.  The hour of surrender had arrived, and, she confessed, “I beg[a]n to hope.” Her hopes of a peaceful outcome faded when, a half-hour later, she heard the cannons begin to boom.  “I sprang out of bed.  And on my knees ...I prayed as I never prayed before.”

She ran to the roof, where others had gathered to watch the bombardment of Fort Sumter.  Mary Chesnut shivered and felt the first terrifying evidence of the horrors to come.  “The regular roar of the cannon—there it was.  And who could tell what each volley accomplished of death and destruction.”
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The Election of 1860

John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry was a turning point for the South.  The possibility of an African American uprising had long haunted many Southerners, but they were frightened and angered by the idea that Northerners would deliberately try to arm enslaved people and encourage them to rebel.

Although the Republican leaders quickly denounced Brown’s raid, many Southerners blamed Republicans.  To them, the key point was that both the Republicans and John Brown opposed slavery.  As one Atlanta newspaper noted:  “We regard every man who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing as an enemy to the institutions of the South.”

In the Senate, Robert Toombs of Georgia warned that the South would “never permit this Federal government to pass into the traitorous hands of the Black Republican party.” In April 1860, with the South in an uproar, Democrats headed to Charleston, South Carolina, to choose their nominee for president.

The Democrats Split

In 1860 the debate over slavery in the western territories finally tore the Democratic Party apart.  Their first presidential nominating convention ended in dispute.  Northern delegates wanted to support popular sovereignty, while Southern delegates wanted the party to uphold the Dred Scott decision and endorse a federal slave code for the territories.  Stephen Douglas was not able to get the votes needed to be nominated for president, but neither could anyone else.

In June 1860, the Democrats met again, this time in Baltimore, to select their candidate.  Douglas’s supporters in the South had organized rival delegations to ensure Douglas’s endorsement.  The original Southern delegations objected to these rival delegates and again walked out.  The remaining Democrats then chose Douglas as their candidate for president.

The Southern Democrats who had walked out organized their own convention and nominated the current vice president, John C.  Breckinridge of Kentucky, for president.  Breckinridge supported the Dred Scott decision and agreed to endorse the idea of a federal slave code for the western territories.

The split in the Democratic Party greatly improved Republican prospects, which was what some of the more radical Southern delegates had intended all along.  They hoped that a Republican victory would be the final straw that would convince the Southern states to secede.

Other people, including many former Whigs, were greatly alarmed at the danger to the Union.  They created another new party, the Constitutional Union Party, and chose former Tennessee senator John Bell as their candidate.  The Constitutional Unionists campaigned on a position of upholding both the Constitution and the Union.

TURNING POINT
Lincoln Is Elected

With no possibility of winning electoral votes in the South, the Republicans needed a candidate who could sweep the North.  Delegates at the Republicans’ Chicago convention did not think their first choice, William Seward, had a wide enough appeal.  Instead they nominated Lincoln, whose debates with Douglas had made him very popular in the North.

During the campaign, the Republicans tried to persuade voters they were more than just an antislavery party.  They denounced John Brown’s raid and reaffirmed the right of the Southern states to preserve slavery within their borders.  They also supported higher tariffs, a new homestead law for western settlers, and a transcontinental railroad.

The Republican proposals greatly angered many Southerners.  Nevertheless, with Democratic votes split between Douglas and Breckinridge, Lincoln won the election without Southern support.  For the South, the election of a Republican president represented the victory of the abolitionists.  The survival of Southern society and culture seemed to be at stake.  For many, there was now no choice but to secede.

Secession

The dissolution of the Union began with South Carolina, where anti-Northern secessionist sentiment had long been intense.  Shortly after Lincoln’s election, the state legislature called for a convention.  Amid a frenzy of fireworks and drills, the convention unanimously voted for the Ordinance of Secession.  By February 1, 1861, six more states in the Lower South—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—had voted to secede.  Many Southerners felt secession was in the Revolutionary tradition and that they were fighting for American rights.
 

Mississippi’s Declaration of Secesssion 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 hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory. The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France. The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico. It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction. It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion. It tramples the original equality of the South under foot. It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain. It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst. It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice. It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists. It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better. It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives. It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security. It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system. It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause. It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood. Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England. Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it. .

Identifying
What main event triggered the secession of Southern states?
 

Compromise Fails

As the states of the Lower South seceded one after another, Congress tried to find a compromise to save the Union.  Ignoring Congress’s efforts, the secessionists seized all federal property in their states, including arsenals and forts.  Only the island strongholds of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and Fort Pickens in Pensacola Harbor, as well as a few other islands off the coast of Florida, remained out of Southern hands.

Although the confiscation of property horrified Northern members of Congress, they were willing to compromise.  To that end, Kentucky senator John J.  Crittenden proposed several amendments to the Constitution.  One would guarantee slavery where it already existed.  Another would also reinstate the Missouri Compromise line, extending it to the California border.  Slavery would be prohibited north of the line and protected south of it.

Lincoln, however, asked congressional Republicans to stand firm, and Crittenden’s Compromise did not pass.

A Last Attempt at Peace

Finally, Virginia—a slave state but still in the Union—proposed a peace conference in a last-ditch effort at peace.  Delegates from 21 states attended the conference in Washington, D.C.  The majority came from Northern and border states.  None came from the secessionist states.  The delegates met for three weeks but came up with little more than a modified version of Crittenden’s Compromise.  When presented to Congress, the plan went down in defeat.

Founding the Confederacy

On the same day the peace conference met, delegates from the seceding states met in Montgomery, Alabama.  There, in early February, they declared themselves to be a new nation—the Confederate States of America—or the Confederacy, as it became known.

Their convention drafted a constitution based largely on the U.S.  Constitution but with some important changes.  It declared that each state was independent and guaranteed the existence of slavery in Confederate territory.  It also banned protective tariffs and limited the presidency to a single six-year term.

The convention then chose former Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.  In his inaugural address, Davis declared, “The time for compromise has now passed.  The South is determined to ... make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel.”

Summarizing
What did Virginia do to try to reverse secession?
 

The Civil War Begins

In the months before Lincoln took office, he had watched the nation fall apart.  Preparing for his inauguration, he faced a splintered Union, a newly declared nation to the south, and the possibility that other states would soon secede.

Lincoln Takes Office

In his inaugural speech on March 4, 1861, Lincoln addressed the seceding states directly.  He repeated his commitment not to interfere with slavery where it existed but insisted that “the Union of these States is perpetual.” Lincoln did not threaten the seceded states, but he said he intended to “hold, occupy, and possess” federal property in those states.  Lincoln also encouraged reconciliation:

“In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war.  The government will not assail you.  You can have no conflict, without yourselves being the aggressors. ...  We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

TURNING POINT
Fort Sumter Falls

In April Lincoln announced that he intended to resupply Fort Sumter.  President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy now faced a dilemma.  To tolerate federal troops in the South’s most vital harbor seemed unacceptable for a sovereign nation, as the South now saw itself.  After Lincoln’s warning, however, firing on the supply ship would undoubtedly lead to war with the United States.

Davis decided to take Fort Sumter before the supply ship arrived.  If he was successful, peace might be preserved.  Confederate leaders then delivered a note to Major Robert Anderson demanding Fort Sumter’s surrender by the morning of April 12, 1861.

Anderson stood fast.  The fateful hour came and went, and cannon fire suddenly shook the air.  Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter for 33 relentless hours, wrecking the fort but killing no one, until Anderson and his exhausted men finally surren dered.  The Civil War had begun.

The Upper South Secedes

After the fall of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve in the military for 90 days.  The call for troops created a crisis in the Upper South.  Many people there did not want to secede, but faced with the prospect of civil war, they believed they had no choice but to leave the Union.  Virginia acted first, passing an Ordinance of Secession on April 17, 1861.  The Confederate Congress responded by moving the capital of the Confederacy to Richmond, Virginia.  By early June of 1861, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee had also seceded.

GEOGRAPHY
Hanging on to the Border States

With the Upper South gone, Lincoln was determined to keep the slaveholding border states from seceding.  Delaware seemed safe, but Lincoln worried about Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland.  Virginia’s secession had placed a Confederate state across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital.  If Maryland seceded, Washington would be surrounded by Confederate territory.

To prevent Maryland’s secession, Lincoln imposed martial law in Baltimore, where angry mobs had already attacked federal troops.  Under martial law, the military takes control of an area and replaces civilian authorities, and it suspends certain civil rights.  Anyone supporting secession could be arrested and held without trial.  Union Army officers imprisoned dozens of suspected secessionist leaders.

Lincoln knew that Kentucky was divided over whether to secede and that its control of the Ohio River’s south bank was strategically important.  When Kentucky declared itself neutral, Lincoln promised to leave the state alone so long as the Confederacy did the same.

Kentucky’s neutrality lasted until September 1861, when Confederate forces occupied the southwest corner of the state, prompting Union troops to move in as well.  The Confederate invasion angered many in the Kentucky legislature, who now voted to go to war against the Confederacy.  This decision led other Kentuckians who supported the Confederacy to create a rival government and secede.

The third border state Lincoln worried about was Missouri.  Although many people in the state sympathized strongly with the Confederacy, its convention voted almost unanimously against secession.  A struggle then broke out between the convention and pro-secession forces led by Governor Claiborne F.  Jackson.  In the end, Missouri was held to the Union’s cause with the support of federal forces.

From the very beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln had been willing to take political, even constitutional, risks to preserve the Union.  The issue of its preservation now shifted to the battlefield.

Describing
Why were the border states of Maryland and Kentucky important to the Union?
 

. Causes & Effects of the Civil War Causes Disagreement over the legality, morality, and politics of slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act sparked violence in Kansas. Dred Scott ruling voided any limitations on expansion of slavery. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry polarized North and South. Southern states seceded from the Union. Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Effects Slavery was outlawed in the United States. Southern states rebuilt their economy. African Americans gained citizenship and voting rights. The first U.S. civil rights laws were passed. .