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Why Did the Confederate States Secede?
Between December 1860 and March 1861, seven states in the Deep
South left the Union. After the southern attack on Fort Sumter,
a union installation in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina,
in April 1861, another four states seceded.
Why
did they these states decided to withdraw from the United States?
Was it over slavery? Over states rights? Or was it for some other
reason?
The
easiest way to answer this question is to look at the arguments
that the Confederate states advanced. Read the proclamations from
the southern states in the header above and then describe why
the Confederate states seceded.
Click
to Enlarge |
A
political cartoon from 1861 shows Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
and Louisiana as men riding donkeys, following South Carolina's
lead toward a cliff.
Florida,
immediately behind South Carolina, cries, "Go it Carolina!
We are the boys to "wreck" the Union."
CREDIT:
"THE 'SECESSION MOVEMENT'." Currier & Ives
1861. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
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Documents
Timeline
of Secession (Link opens in a new window)
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