In the mid 1800’s, Southerners thought the government was becoming too strong. They did not think the government had the right to tell them how they should live. They felt that the individual states held certain rights that shouldn’t be dictated by the government.

Once Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, Southerners felt that if they stayed in the United States, the North would control them. Though President Lincoln said he would fight to keep the southern states as part of the United States, some states, beginning with South Carolina, decided to secede, or leave, the United States and form a new nation called the Confederate States of America. Four months after South Carolina, six other states seceded: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee eventually joined them as well. These states elected Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.

The northern states were called the Union. There were Union forts on Confederate land, and the Confederates wanted Union soldiers to leave these forts. One of these forts, Fort Sumter, was in Charleston. Union soldiers refused to leave this fort, so the Confederates fired cannons at the fort on April 12, l861. This was the beginning of the Civil War.

 

 

(Adapted from source)