150 Years Ago -- Tennessee and Kentucky

Although Tennessee was technically still in the Union until a referendum on a declaration of independence on June 8, on Thursday, May 16, 1861, the state was formally admitted to the Confederacy in a ceremony in Montgomery.

In Kentucky, the legislature passed a declaration of neutrality, stating "that this State and the citizens thereof should take no part in the civil war now being waged, except as mediators and friends to the belligerent parties."

150 Years Ago -- Tennessee

On Tuesday, May 7, 1861, the state of Tennessee, technically still in the Union until a referendum on June 8, moved closer to secession with the legislature approving of a league with the Confederacy.  Clashes erupted between Unionists and secessionists in Knoxville, leaving one man dead.

150 Years Ago -- Arkansas Secedes

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On Monday, May 6, 1861, Arkansas seceded.

In March, a convention had discussed secession, but declined to act.  They adjourned, but could reconvene if events warranted.

Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops put Arkansas in an uproar.  Governor Henry Rector sent the militia to capture federal arsenals in the state and allowed the Confederacy to put artillery in Helena to command the Mississippi.

The convention reassembled on May 6.  An ordinance of secession was introduced.  A vote was held to put it up to the voters in a referendum.  It was a test of Unionist strength and failed mightily.  The majority voted it down; they wanted to vote on the ordinance themselves.  They voted for secession 65 to 5.


Also on this date, in Montgomery, Alabama, Confederate President Jefferson Davis announced that he had signed an act "recognizing the existence of war between the United States and the Confederate States."  Congress had passed the act on May 3.

There was no talk of rebellion in the act.  This was one nation issuing a declaration of war against another nation.

150 Years Ago: Virginia Secedes

On Wednesday, April 17, 1861, the Virginia state convention passed an ordinance of secession 88 to 55.  The ordinance would not be official until a majority of voters ratified it in a statewide referendum on May 23, but there was no chance this would not happen.  Virginia was, for all intents and purposes, out of the Union.

The loss of Virginia was a big blow to the Union as historian Bruce Catton explains, "Without Virginia the Southern Confederacy could not have hoped to win its war for independence; with Virginia the Confederacy's hopes were not half bad, and they would get even better when people realized that Virginia would come equipped with Robert E. Lee.  American history has known few events more momentous than the secession of Virginia, which turned what set out to be the simple suppression of a rebellion into a four-year cataclysm that shook America to the profoundest depths of its being."

Virginia state troops were already on the way to Harper's Ferry to seize the U.S. Arsenal there.

Also on this date, Confederate President Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation "inviting all those who may desire, by service in private armed vessels on the high seas, to aid this government in resisting so wanton and wicked an aggression, to make application for commissions or letters of marque and reprisal to be issued under the seal of these Confederate States."

This was either a noble calling combining patriotism and profit or piracy, depending on your point of view.  Later, the Union would charge the officers and crew of the Savannah with piracy, claiming that their Letter of Marque was invalid since the Confederacy was not a sovereign nation.  Davis threatened to hang a Union officer for each executed Confederate privateer.  Thereafter, the Union treated privateers honorably as prisoners of war.

At Galveston, Texas, the Star of the West, which had tried unsuccessfully in January to reinforce and resupply the garrison at Fort Sumter, was captured by Confederate troops.

February 1, 1861

On Friday, February 1, 1861, a state convention in Texas voted to take that state out of the Union 166 to 7.  The measure still had to be approved by the voters in a referendum on February 23.

Texas's secession brought the first round to an end.  Six states, all in the deep South, had followed South Carolina out of the Union.  The border states -- Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and especially Virginia -- would wait for further developments before deciding what to do.

The state leaders did the revolutionary act of breaking up the Union in a very legalistic way.  With some slight variations, it usually began with governor calling for a special session of the legislature.  The legislature, if secession seemed appropriate to them, would call for a state convention to consider the matter with the voters electing the delegates to the convention.

January 6, 1861: The Start of a Busy Week

On Sunday, January 6, 1861, in New York, Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that New York City should secede and become a free city, trading freely with both the North and South. Nothing ever became of the proposal.

It was the start of a busy week. On successive days -- Wednesday, Thursday and Friday -- three states would follow South Carolina out of the Union.  On Wednesday, war would almost begin when the U. S. government attempted to reinforce and resupply the garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston.

As states moved toward secession, state authorities acted quickly to seize the Federal property, especially the arsenals and the forts that guarded the harbors.  Florida would be the state to secede on Thursday, but on this date in 1861, the Sunday before, state troops seized the U.S. Arsenal at Apalachicola with no resistance.

December 20, 1860: Secession

So now the nation was in a period of transition.  Abraham Lincoln would be the next president of the United States, but would not take office until March 4, 1861.  President James Buchanan's term was coming to an end.  He was a lame duck just marking time.

Even before the election, fire-eaters (and even much more moderate men) in the South recognized what Lincoln's election would mean and began threatening secession if the election did not go as they wanted.  Before the election, such talk was dismissed as mere idle threats.  Now, with Lincoln's election an accomplished fact, the talk of secession was taken more seriously.

From The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton:

But there was still deep confusion and bewilderment, and in such times men of intense singleness of purpose can often drive through to their chosen goal and compel their fellows to trail along after them. The Southern men who, in November of 1860, proposed secession and the creation of a new nation had the advantage of knowing precisely what they wanted and of standing for immediate, emotion-releasing action. Those who counseled delay and full exploration of the possibilities of compromise were using the kind of talk that should have been (but was not) voiced in the presidential campaign; now it came too late, it had no force in it, and state and regional patriotism were generating a pressure that made it sound empty.

Lincoln had not advocated interfering with slavery in the states where it already existed. What put him at odds with the South was his stance on slavery in the territories. Lincoln vehemently opposed any expansion of slavery; if it could be contained where it was, it would eventually wither and die.  Some of those who wanted secession envisioned a new nation that stretched across the South and on into Cuba and Central and South America.

Also, to quote Alexander Stephens, Lincoln's election would "put the institutions of nearly half the states under the ban of public opinion and natural condemnation."  The mere existence of an administration hostile to slavery would spell eventual doom for the institution.

It had reached the point where Lincoln was already considering how to maintain the Union:  "My own impression is, at present (leaving myself room to modify the opinion, if upon a further investigation I should see fit to do so) that this government possesses both the authority and the power to maintain its own integrity.  That however is not the ugly point of the matter.  The ugly part is the necessity of keeping the government together by force, as ours should be a government of fraternity."

Secession threats were nothing new.  They had come at various times as different crises had arisen.  The last serious threat of secession had come in 1850 when the proposed admission of California and New Mexico to the Union as free states had caused regional strife.  Southern states sent delegates to a convention in Nashville.  It came to nothing, defused by the Compromise of 1850, but South Carolina delegates left Nashville convinced that cooperative action with other slave states was not the answer.  At the next crisis they would act alone and the other slave states would be forced to follow their lead.

This was the crisis and South Carolina was ready to act.  On October 12, 1860, Governor William H. Gist called the South Carolina legislature into special session.  This was all routine.  South Carolina was the only state whose people did not vote in presidential elections; the legislature decided where the state's electoral vote would go.  But Governor Gist advised the legislature to remain in session until the result of the election was known.  If Lincoln was elected, the legislature was advised to summon a state convention to consider secession.

The convention was called to order on December 17 in the state capital, Columbia.  Smallpox was rampant in the city at the time and the delegates voted to reconvene in Charleston and adjourned.  They arrived in Charleston the following afternoon. On Thursday, December 20, 1860, the convention heard the report from the Committee to Prepare an Ordinance of Secession:

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention of the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts, of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved.

There was no debate. The motion was put to a vote and passed 169-0.

As predicted, the other Deep South states followed South Carolina's lead. Mississippi seceded on January 9, 1861. Florida seceded the following day, and Alabama the day after that. Georgia seceded on January 19, Louisiana on January 26 and Texas on February 1.