THE START OF THE CIVIL WAR SECESSION AND SUMTER

SECESSION To Secede - withdraw formally from membership in a union, alliance, or organization. Tensions between North and South had been building for more than a decade. The South was convinced that they were going to be forced to give up their “way of life” December 20, 1860 – South Carolina is the first state to officially secede from the United States 10 more Southern states would join them and form “The Confederate States of America”

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Capitol: Washington D.C. President: Abraham Lincoln Congressman from Illinois Would allow slavery in the South but not in the West Does not want war, but will do anything to protect and preserve the Union “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.“ I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature”.

THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA Capitol: Richmond, Virginia President: Jefferson Davis Congressman from Mississippi Claimed the North was trying to take away the Southern peoples Constitutional right to own property. Knows the South will have to fight to win independence. Knows their chances of winning are small “I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came”.

ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER After South Carolina seceded from the United States, they ordered the U.S. Army to leave. The U.S. Army retreated to Fort Sumter, South Carolina The Fort guarded the entrance to Charleston Harbor April 12, 1861: The Confederate Army opens fire on Fort Sumter They bombard the fort for 34 hours before the U.S. Army surrenders No one dies The Civil War had begun “A bloodless opening to the bloodiest war in American History”

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” ~ Abraham Lincoln 1838