The Withdrawal of the South

• South Carolina, long the hotbed of Southern separatism, seceded first.

• It called a special convention, which voted unanimously on December 20, 1860, to withdraw the state from the Union

• By the time Lincoln took office, six other states from the lower South—Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10), Alabama (January 11), Georgia (January 19), Louisiana (January 26), and Texas (February 1)—had seceded.

• In February 1861, representatives of the seven seceded states met at Montgomery, Alabama, and announced the formation of a new nation: the Confederate States of America.

• The response from the North was confused and indecisive. President James Buchanan told Congress in December 1860 that no state had the right to secede from the Union but suggested that the federal government had no authority to stop a state if it did.

• The seceding states immediately seized the federal property—forts, arsenals, government offices—within their boundaries

• Confederate guns on shore fired at the vessel—the first shots between North and South— and turned it back.

• Still, neither section was yet ready to concede that war had begun.

• And in Washington, efforts began once more to forge a compromise.