Secession Winter

CHAPTER 2 · NOV 1860–MAY 1861 · The American Civil War, 1861–1865

Between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration lie four months in which the Union dissolves while a lame-duck government watches. South Carolina goes first (20 December, by 169 votes to 0), and its declaration is refreshingly free of later euphemism: it lists the free states’ “increasing hostility… to the institution of slavery,” their refusal to return fugitives, their toleration of abolition societies. Six states follow by February; delegates at Montgomery write a constitution that forbids their own congress ever to impair slavery. The last grand compromise — Crittenden’s constitutional ame

The turn: Fort Sumter, 12–14 April 1861.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.