150 Years Ago -- North Carolina Secedes

North Carolina had a pro-Union majority until Lincoln's call for troops after the fall of Fort Sumter.  Virtually overnight the state started moving toward secession.  Jonathan Worth, a Unionist leader in the state, declared, "Lincoln prostrated us.  He could have devised no scheme more effectual that the one he has pursued to overthrow the friends of the Union here."

On May 20, 1861, North Carolina's secession was officially complete.  A state convention in Raleigh voted unanimously to repeal the state's ratification of the Constitution.  North Carolina became the eleventh and final state to join the Confederacy.

Also on this date, Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin signed the declaration of neutrality passed by the legislature on May 16.  The declaration forbade the movement of troops on both sides on state soil.  In order to woo the state, both sides played along, but quickly gave it up.  For the two sides to get at each other west of Virginia, Kentucky would have to be crossed.

In Montgomery, Alabama, the Confederate Congress voted to move the capital to Richmond, Virginia.

And throughout the North, U.S. Marshals raided telegraph offices and confiscated all files of telegrams sent throughout the year in order to uncover spy sources and other pro-secessionist evidence.

150 Years Ago: Friday, May 17,1861

On May 17, 1861, Joseph Hooker and Nathaniel Lyon were both promoted to brigadier general in the Union army.  Hooker was assigned to defend Washington.  Lyon was in the midst of a campaign to drive pro-Southern forces out of Missouri.

Also on this date, North Carolina was admitted to the Confederacy contingent upon the state's ratification of the Confederate Constitution.

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150 Years Ago -- North Carolina and Tennessee

On Wednesday, May 1, 1861, the four soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment killed in the Baltimore riot were buried with full military honors in Boston.

Also on this date, North Carolina began the process of leaving the Union.  The governor, John Ellis, called for a special session of the legislature soon after Fort Sumter.  They convened on this date and set an election for May 13 for a convention that was to convene on May 20 to consider a secession ordinance.

Tennessee was also taking steps to leave the Union.  On this date, the General Assembly authorized Governor Isham Harris to appoint commissioners to conclude a military league with the Confederacy.  The commissioners were quickly appointed and just as quickly drew up an agreement with Henry Hilliard, Jefferson Davis's envoy to Nashville.  The agreement was submitted to the legislature for approval on May 7.

February 28, 1861

On Thursday, February 28, 1861, Congress voted to form the Territory of Colorado.

In North Carolina, voters narrowly rejected secession.  Out of over 90,000 votes cast, a majority of 651 voted against holding a state convention to debate the matter.

January 10, 1861

On Thursday, January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.  A state convention voted for secession 62 to 7.

At Pensacola, the Federal troops under Lieutenant A. G. Slemmer abandoned Fort Barrancas and moved to Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island.

In Louisiana, Braxton Bragg and the state militia seized Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the arsenal at Baton Rouge.  William Tecumseh Sherman, then the head of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy (later Louisiana State University), called Bragg's actions "an act of war and a breach of common decency."  He resigned his post in protest but agreed to stay on until he could turn the school over to a successor.

In one of the more comic episodes of these final prewar days, the citizens of Smithville and Wilmington, North Carolina came down with secession fever and seized Forts Johnson and Caswell.  A few days later Governor John W. Ellis ordered the forts returned; North Carolina had not seceded and was not really even considering it.  The two caretakers, who had demanded receipts for the property, told the citizens they would take the forts back "if there was none of it broken, or none of the ammunition expended."