South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860, and was one of the founding member states of the Confederacy in February 1861. The bombardment of the beleaguered U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, is generally recognized as the first military engagement of the war. The retaking of Charleston in February 1865, and raising the flag (the same flag) again at Fort Sumter, was used for the Union symbol of victory.
South Carolina provided around 60,000 troops for the Confederate Army. As the war progressed, former slaves and free blacks of South Carolina joined U.S. Colored Troops regiments for the Union Army[1] (most Blacks in South Carolina were enslaved at the war's outset). The state also provided uniforms, textiles, food, and war material, as well as trained soldiers and leaders from The Citadel and other military schools. In contrast to most other Confederate states, South Carolina had a well-developed rail network linking all of its major cities without a break of gauge.
Relatively free from Union occupation until the very end of the war, South Carolina hosted a number of prisoner of war camps. South Carolina also was the only Confederate state not to harbor pockets of anti-secessionist sentiment strong enough to send regiments of white men to fight for the Union, as every other state in the Confederacy did.[2] However, the Upstate region of the state would serve as a haven for Confederate Army deserters and resisters, as they used the Upstate topography and traditional community relations to resist service in the Confederate ranks.[3]
The white population of the state had strongly supported the institution of slavery since the 18th century. Political leaders such as Democrats John Calhoun and Preston Brooks had inflamed regional and national passions in support of the institution, and many pro-slavery voices had cried for secession.
For decades, South Carolinian political leaders had promoted regional passions with threats of nullification and secession in the name of southern states' rights and protection of the interests of the slave power.
Alfred P. Aldrich, a South Carolinian politician from Barnwell, stated that declaring secession would be necessary if a Republican candidate were to win the 1860 U.S. presidential election, stating that it was the only way for the state to preserve slavery and diminish the influence of the anti-slavery Republican Party, which, were its goals of abolition realized, would result in the "destruction of the South":
If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule – it is a question of political and social existence.[4]
—Alfred P. Aldrich
In a January 1860 speech, South Carolinian congressman Laurence Massillon Keitt, summed up this view in an oratory condemning the "anti-slavery party" (i.e. the Republican Party) for its views against slavery. He claimed that slavery was not morally wrong, but rather, justified:
The anti-slavery party contends that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right...
In December 1860, amid the secession crisis, former South Carolinian congressman John McQueen wrote to a group of civic leaders in Richmond, Virginia, regarding the reasons as to why South Carolina was contemplating secession from the United States. In the letter, McQueen claimed that U.S. president-elect Abraham Lincoln supported equality and civil rights for African Americans as well as the abolition of slavery, and thus South Carolina, being opposed to such measures, was compelled to secede:
I have never doubted what Virginia would do when the alternatives present themselves to her intelligent and gallant people, to choose between an association with her sisters and the dominion of a people, who have chosen their leader [Abraham Lincoln] upon the single idea that the African is equal to the Anglo-Saxon, and with the purpose of placing our slaves on equality with ourselves and our friends of every condition! and if we of South Carolina have aided in your deliverance from tyranny and degradation, as you suppose, it will only the more assure us that we have performed our duty to ourselves and our sisters in taking the first decided step to preserve an inheritance left us by an ancestry whose spirit would forbid its being tarnished by assassins. We, of South Carolina, hope soon to great you in a Southern Confederacy, where white men shall rule our destinies, and from which we may transmit to our posterity the rights, privileges and honor left us by our ancestors.
—John McQueen, Correspondence to T.T. Cropper and J.R. Crenshaw (December 24, 1860)[8][9]
South Carolinian Presbyterian minister James Henley Thornwell also espoused a similar view to McQueen's, stating that slavery was justified under the Christian religion, and thus, those who viewed slavery as being immoral were opposed to Christianity:
The parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders. They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground – Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.[9]
And again, the Southern Presbyterian of S.C. declared that:
Anti-slavery is essentially infidel. It wars upon the Bible, on the Church of Christ, on the truth of God, on the souls of men.[9]
—Southern Presbyterian of S.C.
On November 10, 1860, the S.C. General Assembly called for a "Convention of the People of South Carolina" to consider secession. Delegates were to be elected on December 6.[10] The secession convention convened in Columbia on December 17 and voted unanimously, 169–0, to declare secession from the United States. The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States.[11][12]James Buchanan, the United States president, declared the ordinance illegal but did not act to stop it.
The declaration also claims that secession was declared as a result of the refusal of free states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts. Although the declaration does argue that secession is justified on the grounds of U.S. "encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States," the grievances that the declaration goes on to list are mainly concerned with the property of rights of slave holders. Broadly speaking, the declaration argues that the U.S. Constitution was framed to establish each State "as an equal" in the Union, with "separate control over its own institutions", such as "the right of property in slaves."
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
A repeated concern is runaway slaves. The declaration argues that parts of the U.S. Constitution were specifically written to ensure the return of slaves who had escaped to other states, and quotes the 4th Article: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." The declaration goes on to state that this stipulation of the Constitution was so important to the original signers, "that without it that compact [the Constitution] would not have been made." Laws from the "General Government" upheld this stipulation "for many years," the declaration says, but "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations." Because the constitutional agreement had been "deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States," the consequence was that "South Carolina is released from her obligation" to be part of the Union.
A further concern was Lincoln's recent election to the presidency, whom they claimed desired to see slavery on "the course of ultimate extinction":
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.[14]
The South Carolinian secession declaration of December 1860 also channeled some elements from the U.S. Declaration of Independence from July 1776. However, the South Carolinian version omitted the phrases that "all men are created equal", "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", and mentions of the "consent of the governed". Professor and historian Harry V. Jaffa noted these omissions as significant in his 2000 book, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War:
South Carolina cites, loosely, but with substantial accuracy, some of the language of the original Declaration. That Declaration does say that it is the right of the people to abolish any form of government that becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established. But South Carolina does not repeat the preceding language in the earlier document: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"...
—Harry Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000)[15]
Jaffa states that South Carolina omitted references to human equality and consent of the governed in its secession declaration, as due to their racist and pro-slavery views, secessionist South Carolinians did not believe in those ideals:
[G]overnments are legitimate only insofar as their "just powers" are derived "from the consent of the governed." All of the foregoing is omitted from South Carolina's declaration, for obvious reasons. In no sense could it have been said that the slaves in South Carolina were governed by powers derived from their consent. Nor could it be said that South Carolina was separating itself from the government of the Union because that government had become destructive of the ends for which it was established. South Carolina in 1860 had an entirely different idea of what the ends of government ought to be from that of 1776 or 1787. That difference can be summed up in the difference between holding slavery to be an evil, if possibly a necessary evil, and holding it to be a positive good.
—Harry Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), emphasis added.[15]
On December 25, the day following South Carolina's declaration of secession, a South Carolinian convention delivered an "Address to the Slaveholding States":
We prefer, however, our system of industry, by which labor and capital are identified in interest, and capital, therefore, protects labor–by which our population doubles every twenty years–by which starvation is unknown, and abundance crowns the land–by which order is preserved by unpaid police, and the most fertile regions of the world, where the white man cannot labor, are brought into usefulness by the labor of the African, and the whole world is blessed by our own productions. ... We ask you to join us, in forming a Confederacy of Slaveholding States.
—Convention of South Carolina, Address of the people of South Carolina to the people of the Slaveholding States (December 25, 1860)[16]
"Slavery, not states' rights, birthed the Civil War,"[17] argues sociologist James W. Loewen. Writing of South Carolina's Declaration of Secession, Loewen writes that
South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer allowed "slavery transit." In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and South Carolina's delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies. According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery. Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world," proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. "Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth. ... A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."
The state adopted the palmetto flag as its banner, a slightly modified version of which is used as its current state flag.[18] South Carolina after secession was frequently called the "Palmetto Republic".[19]
After South Carolina declared its secession, former congressman James L. Petigru famously remarked, "South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."[20] Soon afterwards, South Carolina began preparing for a presumed U.S. military response while working to convince other southern states to secede as well and join in a confederacy of southern states.
On February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, a convention consisting of delegates from South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana met to form a new constitution and government modeled on that of the United States.[21] On February 8, 1861, South Carolina officially joined the Confederacy. According to one South Carolinian newspaper editor:
The South is now in the formation of a Slave Republic...
—L.W. Spratt, The Philosophy of Secession: A Southern View (February 13, 1861).[22]
South Carolina's declaring of secession was supported by the state's religious figures, who claimed that it was consistent with the tenets of their religion:
The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South... This war is the servant of slavery.
—John T. Wightman, The Glory of God, the Defence of the South (1861).[23]
Fort Sumter, 1861, flying the Confederate flag after the fort's capture from the U.S. by the Confederacy.
Six days after secession, on the day after Christmas, Major Robert Anderson, commander of the U.S. troops in Charleston, withdrew his troops to the island fortress of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. South Carolina militia swarmed over the abandoned mainland batteries and trained their guns on the island. Sumter was the key position for preventing a naval attack upon Charleston, so secessionists were determined not to allow U.S. forces to remain there indefinitely. More importantly, South Carolina's claim of independence would look empty if U.S. forces controlled its largest harbor. On January 9, 1861, the U.S. ship Star of the West approached to resupply the fort. Cadets from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina fired upon the Star of the West, striking the ship three times and causing it to retreat back to New York.
Mississippi declared its secession several weeks after South Carolina, and five other states of the lower South soon followed. Both the outgoing Buchanan administration and President-elect Lincoln had denied that any state had a right to secede. Upper Southern slave states such as Virginia and North Carolina, which had initially voted against secession, called a peace conference, to little effect. Meanwhile, Virginian orator Roger Pryor barreled into Charleston and proclaimed that the only way to get his state to join the Confederacy was for South Carolina to instigate war with the United States. The obvious place to start was right in the midst of Charleston Harbor.
On April 10, the Mercury reprinted stories from New York papers that told of a naval expedition that had been sent southward toward Charleston. Lincoln advised the governor of South Carolina that the ships were sent to resupply the fort, not to reinforce it. The Carolinians could no longer wait if they hoped to take the fort before the U.S. Navy arrived. About 6,000 men were stationed around the rim of the harbor, ready to take on the 60 men in Fort Sumter. At 4:30a.m. on April 12, after two days of intense negotiations, and with Union ships approaching the harbor, the firing began. Students from The Citadel were among those firing the first shots of the war, though Edmund Ruffin is usually credited with firing the first shot. Thirty-four hours later, Anderson's men raised the white flag and were allowed to leave the fort with colors flying and drums beating, saluting the U.S. flag with a 50-gun salute before taking it down. During this salute, one of the guns exploded, killing a young soldier—the only casualty of the bombardment and the first casualty of the war.
In December 1861, South Carolina received $100,000 from Georgia after a disastrous fire in Charleston.
Robert Smalls
Congressman Robert Smalls
Robert Smalls (1839 – 1915) was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina. On May 13, 1863, he freed himself, his crew, and their families by commandeering a Confederate transport ship, CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor, and sailing it from Confederate-controlled waters of the harbor to the U.S. blockade that surrounded it. He then piloted the ship to the Union-controlled enclave in Beaufort–Port Royal–Hilton Head area, where it became a Union warship. His example and persuasion helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the Union Army. After the war Smalls helped found the Republican Party in South Carolina and was elected five times to the U.S. Congress.[24]
Fort Wagner
Fort Wagner was the scene of two battles. The First Battle of Fort Wagner, occurred on July 11, 1863. Only 12 Confederate soldiers were killed, as opposed to the Union's 339 losses.[25]
Although a tactical defeat, the publicity of the battle of Fort Wagner led to further action for black troops in the Civil War, and it spurred additional recruitment that gave the Union Army a further numerical advantage in troops over the South.[25]
The Union besieged the fort after the unsuccessful assault. By August 25, Union entrenchments were close enough to attempt an assault on the Advanced Rifle Pits, 240 yards in front of the Battery, but this attempt was defeated. A second attempt, by the 24th Mass. Inf., on August 26 was successful. After enduring almost 60 days of heavy shelling, the Confederates abandoned it on the night of September 6–7, 1863. withdrawing all operable cannons and the garrison.[25][26]
Port Royal experiment
The Port Royal Experiment was a program in which former slaves successfully worked on the land abandoned by planters. In 1861 the Union captured the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and their main harbor, Port Royal. The white residents fled, leaving behind 10,000 black slaves. Several private Northern charity organizations stepped in to set up schools and help the former slaves become self-sufficient. The result was a model of what Reconstruction could have been. The African Americans demonstrated their ability to work the land efficiently and live independently of white control. They assigned themselves daily tasks for cotton growing and spent their extra time cultivating their own crops, fishing and hunting. By selling their surplus crops, the locals acquired small amounts of property.[27]
The Mills House Hotel and nearby ruined buildings in Charleston, with a shell-damaged carriage and the remains of a brick chimney in the foreground (1865)
The city under siege took control of Fort Sumter, became the center for blockade running. It was the site of the first successful submarine warfare on February 17, 1864, when the H.L. Hunley made a daring night attack on the USSHousatonic.[28]
In 1865, Union troops moved into the city, and took control of many sites, such as the United States Arsenal, which the Confederate army had seized at the outbreak of the war.
The Confederates were at a disadvantage in men, weaponry, and supplies. Union ships sailed south and blocked off one port after another. As early as November, Union troops occupied the Sea Islands in the Beaufort area, establishing an important base for the men and ships who would obstruct the ports at Charleston and Savannah. Many plantation owners had already gone off with the Confederate Army; those still at home and their families fled. In a type of reparation long discussed in abolitionist literature, the abandoned plantations were confiscated by the Union Army and then given to the African Americans who had done the work of them. The Sea Islands became the laboratory for Union plans to educate the African Americans for their eventual role as full American citizens.
Despite South Carolina's important role in the beginning of the war, and a long unsuccessful attempt to take Charleston from 1863 onward, few military engagements occurred within the state's borders until 1865, when Sherman's Army, having already completed its March to the Sea in Savannah, marched to Columbia and leveled most of the town, as well as a number of towns along the way and afterward. South Carolina lost 12,922 men to the war, 23% of its male white population of fighting age, and the highest percentage of any state in the nation. Sherman's 1865 march through the Carolinas resulted in the burning of Columbia and numerous other towns. The destruction his troops wrought upon South Carolina was even worse than in Georgia, because many of his soldiers bore a particular grudge against the state and its citizens, whom they blamed for starting the war. One of Sherman's men declared, "Here is where treason began and, by God, here is where it shall end!"[29] Deprived of the free labor of the formerly enslaved, poverty would mark the state for generations to come.
In January 1865, the Charleston Courier newspaper condemned suggestions that the Confederacy abandon slavery were it to help in gaining independence, stating that such suggestions were "folly":
To talk of maintaining our independence while we abolish slavery is simply to talk folly.
After meeting the requirements of Reconstruction, including ratifying amendments to the US Constitution to abolish slavery and grant citizenship to former slaves, South Carolina's representatives were readmitted to Congress. The state was fully restored to the United States on July 9, 1868.
As part of the Compromise of 1877, in which Southern Democrats would acknowledge RepublicanRutherford B. Hayes as president, Republicans would meet certain demands. One affecting South Carolina was the removal of all U.S. military forces from the former Confederate states.[32] At the time, U.S. troops remained in only Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, but the Compromise completed their withdrawal from the region.
Legacy
"I believe," said I, "there is but one State as proud as Virginia, and that is the fiery little State of South Carolina." "I have less respect for South Carolina," said he, "than for any other State in the Union. South Carolina troops were the worst troops in the Confederate army. It was South Carolina's self-conceit and bluster that caused the war." (So, State pride in another State than Virginia was only self-conceit.) "Yes," said I, "South Carolina began the war; but Virginia carried it on. If Virginia had thrown the weight of her very great power in the Union against secession, resort to arms would never have been necessary. She held a position which she has forfeited forever, because she was not true to it. By seceding she lost wealth, influence, slavery, and the blood of her bravest sons; and what has she gained?"
—J.T. Trowbridge, The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities (1866)
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 5, 1865. The Confederacy was composed of eleven U.S. states that declared secession; South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina; they warred against the United States during the American Civil War.
The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces to win the independence of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate States president, Jefferson Davis (1808-1889),. Davis was a graduate of the United States Military Academy, on the Hudson River at West Point, New York, colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War (1846-1848). He had also been a United States senator from Mississippi and served as U.S. Secretary of War under 14th President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the new Confederate States government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston Harbor in Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia had besieged the longtime Federal Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison under the command of Major Robert Anderson. (1805-1871). By March 1861, the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States meeting in the temporary capital of Montgomery, Alabama, expanded the provisional military forces and established a more permanent regular Confederate States Army.
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina, by the South Carolina militia. It ended with the surrender of the fort by the United States Army, beginning the American Civil War.
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
Robert Barnwell Rhett was an American politician who served as a deputy from South Carolina to the Provisional Confederate States Congress from 1861 to 1862, a member of the US House of Representatives from South Carolina from 1837 to 1849, and US Senator from South Carolina from 1850 to 1852. As a staunch supporter of slavery and an early advocate of secession, he was a "Fire-Eater", nicknamed the "father of secession".
William Porcher Miles was an American politician who was among the ardent states' rights advocates, supporters of slavery, and Southern secessionists who came to be known as the "Fire-Eaters." He is notable for having designed the most popular variant of the Confederate flag, originally rejected as the national flag in 1861 but adopted as a battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee before it was reincorporated.
Francis Wilkinson Pickens was a politician who served as governor of South Carolina when that state became the first to secede from the United States. A cousin of Senator John C. Calhoun, he was born into the Southern planter class. A member of the Democratic Party, Pickens became an ardent supporter of nullification of federal tariffs when he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives before he was elected to the United States House of Representatives.
The Cornerstone Speech, also known as the Cornerstone Address, was an oration given by Alexander H. Stephens, acting Vice President of the Confederate States of America, at the Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861.
James Chesnut Jr. was an American lawyer and politician, and a Confederate functionary.
The South Carolina Declaration of Secession, formally known as the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, was a proclamation issued on December 24, 1860, by the government of South Carolina to explain its reasons for seceding from the United States. It followed the brief Ordinance of Secession that had been issued on December 20. The declaration is a product of a convention organized by the state's government in the month following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president, where it was drafted in a committee headed by Christopher Memminger.
Alabama was central to the Civil War, with the secession convention at Montgomery, the birthplace of the Confederacy, inviting other slaveholding states to form a southern republic, during January–March 1861, and to develop new state constitutions. The 1861 Alabaman constitution granted citizenship to current U.S. residents, but prohibited import duties (tariffs) on foreign goods, limited a standing military, and as a final issue, opposed emancipation by any nation, but urged protection of African-American slaves with trials by jury, and reserved the power to regulate or prohibit the African slave trade. The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede, but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama, while the majority of slave states were in the Union at the time of the founding of the Confederacy. Congress had voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4, 1861, but it was never ratified.
Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.
The American Civil War significantly affected Tennessee, with every county witnessing combat. During the War, Tennessee was a Confederate state, and the last state to officially secede from the Union to join the Confederacy. Tennessee had been threatening to secede since before the Confederacy was even formed, but didn’t officially do so until after the fall of Fort Sumter when public opinion throughout the state drastically shifted. Tennessee seceded in protest to President Lincoln's April 15 Proclamation calling forth 75,000 members of state militias to suppress the rebellion. Tennessee provided the second largest number of troops for the Confederacy, and would also provide more southern unionist soldiers for the Union Army than any other state within the Confederacy.
Georgia was one of the original seven slave states that formed the Confederate States of America in February 1861, triggering the U.S. Civil War. The state governor, Democrat Joseph E. Brown, wanted locally raised troops to be used only for the defense of Georgia, in defiance of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who wanted to deploy them on other battlefronts. When the Union blockade prevented Georgia from exporting its plentiful cotton in exchange for key imports, Brown ordered farmers to grow food instead, but the breakdown of transport systems led to desperate shortages.
During the American Civil War, North Carolina joined the Confederacy with some reluctance, mainly due to the presence of Southern Unionist sentiment within the state. A popular vote in February, 1861 on the issue of secession was won by the unionists but not by a wide margin. This slight lean in favor of staying in the Union would shift towards the Confederacy in response to Abraham Lincoln's April 15 proclamation that requested 75,000 troops from all Union states, leading to North Carolina's secession. Similar to Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia, North Carolina wished to remain uninvolved in the likely war but felt forced to pick a side by the proclamation. Throughout the war, North Carolina widely remained a divided state. The population within the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state contained large pockets of Unionism. Even so, North Carolina would help contribute a significant amount of troops to the Confederacy, and channel many vital supplies through the major port of Wilmington, in defiance of the Union blockade.
The American state of Virginia became a prominent part of the Confederacy when it joined during the American Civil War. As a Southern slave-holding state, Virginia held the state convention to deal with the secession crisis and voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Opinion shifted after the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, and April 15, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union to put down the rebellion. For all practical purposes, Virginia joined the Confederacy on April 17, though secession was not officially ratified until May 23. A Unionist government was established in Wheeling and the new state of West Virginia was created by an act of Congress from 50 counties of western Virginia, making it the only state to lose territory as a consequence of the war. Unionism was indeed strong also in other parts of the State, and during the war the Restored Government of Virginia was created as rival to the Confederate Government of Virginia, making it one of the states to have 2 governments during the Civil War.
Charleston, South Carolina, played a pivotal role at the start of the American Civil War as a stronghold of secession and an important Atlantic port for the Confederate States of America. The first shots of the conflict were fired there by cadets of The Citadel, who aimed to prevent a ship from resupplying the U.S. Army soldiers garrisoned at Fort Sumter. Three months later, a large-scale bombardment of Fort Sumter ignited a nationwide call to quell the rebellion. U.S. Army and Navy troops made repeated, concerted efforts to degrade the city fortifications throughout the war. Still, they would only retake control over and liberate the city in the conflict's final months. The prolonged struggle substantially damaged the city.
Louisiana was a dominant population center in the southwest of the Confederate States of America, controlling the wealthy trade center of New Orleans, and contributing the French Creole and Cajun populations to the demographic composition of a predominantly Anglo-American country. In the antebellum period, Louisiana was a slave state, where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth-century French and Spanish dominations. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812), the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860, 47% of the state's population were enslaved, though the state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population, particularly in the cities, supported slavery, while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.
The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
↑ Channing, Steven. Crisis of Fear. pp.141–142. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
↑ Keitt, Lawrence M. (January 25, 1860). Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House. Taken from a photocopy of the Congressional Globe, supplied by Steve Miller. The anti-slavery party contends that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States.
↑ "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act and to Communicate to Other Southern States South Carolina's Desire to Secede from the Union." 9 November 1860. Resolutions of the General Assembly, 1779–1879. S165018. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina.
↑ Cauthen, Charles Edward; Power, J. Tracy. South Carolina goes to war, 1860–1865. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Originally published: Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1950. ISBN978-1-57003-560-9. p. 60.
↑ Hall, Andy (December 22, 2013). "Not Surprising, Part Deux". Dead Confederates: A Civil War Era Blog. The states with the largest proportions of slaves and slave-holders seceded earliest.
↑ Cauthen, Charles Edward; Power, J. Tracy. South Carolina goes to war, 1860–1865. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Originally published: Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1950. ISBN978-1-57003-560-9. p. 79.
↑ Burger, Ken (February 13, 2010). "Too large to be an asylum". The Post and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina: Evening Post Publishing Co. Retrieved April 22, 2010. Paragraph 4
↑ Lee, Jr., Charles Robert. The Confederate Constitutions. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963, 60.
↑ Spratt, L.W. (February 13, 1861). "THE PHILOSOPHY OF SECESSION: A SOUTHERN VIEW". South Carolina. Retrieved September 13, 2015. Presented in a Letter addressed to the Hon. Mr. Perkins of Louisiana, in criticism on the Provisional Constitution adopted by the Southern Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, BY THE HON. L. W. SPRATT, Editor of the Charleston Mercury, 13th February, 1861.
Barrett, John G. Sherman’s March through the Carolinas (University of North Carolina Press, 1956). online
Billingsley, Andrew. Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families (2007); see Robert Smalls
Bostick, Douglas W. The Union is Dissolved!: Charleston and Fort Sumter in the Civil War (The History Press, 2009)
Burton, E. Milby. The Siege of Charleston, 1861–1865 (University of South Carolina Press, 1970)
Cauthen, Charles Edward; Power, J. Tracy. South Carolina goes to war, 1860–1865. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Originally published: Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1950. ISBN978-1-57003-560-9. online
Channing, Steven. Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (1970) online
Cisco, Walter Brian. States Rights Gist: a South Carolina general of the Civil War (1991) online
Drago, Edmund L. Confederate Phoenix: Rebel Children and Their Families in South Carolina (Fordham Univ Press, 2008).
Edgar, Walter, ed. The South Carolina Encyclopedia (University of South Carolina Press, 2006) ISBN 1-57003-598-9, comprehensive scholarly guide; details on Civil War in each locality.
Jenkins, Wilbert L. Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston (Indiana University Press, 2003) online.
Lager, Eric, "The Transformation of a Confederate State: War and Politics on the South Carolina Home Front, 1861-1862. " (PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2019) online
Lucas, Marion B. Sherman and the Burning of Columbia (Univ of South Carolina Press, 2021).
McDonnell, Lawrence T. Performing disunion: the coming of the Civil War in Charleston, South Carolina (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Marrs, Aaron W. "Desertion and Loyalty in the South Carolina Infantry 1861-1863." Civil War History 50.1 (2004): 47–65.
Otten, James T. "Disloyalty in the upper districts of South Carolina during the Civil War." South Carolina Historical Magazine 75.2 (1974): 95–110. online
Poole, W. Scott. South Carolina's Civil War: A Narrative History (Mercer University Press, 2005) online.
Powers Jr., Bernard E. Black Charlestonians (1994), covers 1822–1885.
Racine, Philip N. Living a Big War in a Small Place: Spartanburg, South Carolina, during the Confederacy (Univ of South Carolina Press, 2013).
Rose, Willie Lee. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (1964) online; farms for freed slaves.
Rowland, Lawrence S., and Stephen G. Hoffius, eds. The Civil War in South Carolina: Selections from the South Carolina Historical Magazine (Home House, 2001).
Saville, Julie. The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina 1860-1870 (Cambridge UP, 1994). excerpt
Schwalm, Leslie A. A Hard Fight for We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (University of Illinois Press, 1997).
Seigler, Robert S. South Carolina’s Military Organization during the War Between the States. (4 vols., History Press, 2008).
Sinha, Manisha. "Revolution or Counterrevolution?: The Political Ideology of Seccession in Antebellum South Carolina." Civil War History 46.3 (2000): 205–226.
Stone, H. David. Vital Rails: The Charleston & Savannah Railroad and the Civil War in Coastal South Carolina (Univ of South Carolina Press, 2008).
Stokes, Karen. South Carolina civilians in Sherman's path: stories of courage amid Civil War destruction (2012) online
Verney, Kevern J. "Trespassers in the land of their birth: Blacks and landownership in South Carolina and Mississippi during the civil war and reconstruction, 1861–1877." Slavery and Abolition 4.1 (1983): 64–78.
West, Stephen A. “Minute Men, Yeomen, and the Mobilization for Secession in the South Carolina Upcountry.” Journal of Southern History 71#1 (2005): 75–104.
Wise, Stephen R., Lawrence S. Rowland, and Gerhard Spieler. Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861–1893: The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina (U of South Carolina Press, 2015).
Woody, Robert H. "Some Aspects of the Economic Condition of South Carolina After the Civil War." North Carolina Historical Review 7.3 (1930): 346–364. online
Wooster, Ralph. “Membership of the South Carolina Secession Convention.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 55 (1954): 185–97.
Zornow, William Frank. "State Aid for Indigent Families of South Carolina Soldiers, 1861-1865." South Carolina Historical Magazine 57 (1956): 82–87.
Historiography and memory
Brown, Thomas J. Civil War Canon: Sites of Confederate Memory in South Carolina (UNC Press Books, 2015).
Lees, William B. " 'The Best Ever Occupied...': Archaeological Investigations of a Civil War Encampment on Folly Island, South Carolina." (1995): 104–106. online
Miller, Richard F. States at War, Volume 6: The Confederate States Chronology and a Reference Guide for South Carolina in the Civil War (2018) excerpt; 855pp
Rogers Jr. George C. and C. James Taylor. A South Carolina Chronology, 1497-1992 2nd Ed. (1994).
Rogers, Jeffery J. A Southern Writer and the Civil War: The Confederate Imagination of William Gilmore Simms (Lexington Books, 2015).
Smith, Steven D., Christopher Ohm Clement, and Stephen R. Wise. "GPS, GIS and the Civil War battlefield landscape: A South Carolina low country example." Historical Archaeology 37.3 (2003): 14–30.
Primary sources
Jones, J. Keith, ed. The Boys of Diamond Hill: The Lives and Civil War Letters of the Boyd Family of Abbeville County, South Carolina (2011) online review
Lee, J. Edward, and Ron Chepesiuk, eds. South Carolina in the Civil War: The Confederate Experience in Letters and Diaries (McFarland, 2004).
McCaslin, Richard B. A Photographic History of South Carolina in the Civil War (U of Arkansas Press, 1994) online
Morris, J. Brent, ed. Yes, Lord, I Know the Road: A Documentary History of African Americans in South Carolina, 1526-2008 (University of South Carolina Press, 2017).
Simms, William Gilmore. A City Laid Waste: The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia (1865; reprinted 2011) online
Smith, Steven D. "Whom we would never more see: history and archaeology recover the lives and deaths of African American Civil War soldiers on Folly Island, South Carolina." (South Carolina State Documents Depository, 1993). online
Taylor, Susie King. A Black woman's Civil War memoirs: reminiscences of my life in camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, late 1st South Carolina Volunteers (1902, reprinted 1988) online
Taylor, Frances Wallace, Catherine Taylor Matthews, and J. Tracy Power, eds. The Leverett Letters: Correspondence of a South Carolina Family, 1851-1868 (Univ of South Carolina Press, 2000) online.
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