Secession and Fort Sumter
In the weeks following Lincoln’s election, talk of secession filled the air. A few senators
became so alarmed that they formed a committee to search for yet another compromise on
slavery. They knew this would not be easy. Still, they had to do something, and do it fast, if
they were to stop the South’s rush toward disunion and disaster.
On December 20, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was asked whether he could support some sort of
compromise on slavery. His answer was clear. He would not interfere with slavery in the
South. He would even support enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. But, Lincoln added:
Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery.
On that same day, delegates meeting at a state convention in Charleston, South Carolina,
voted in favor of secession. The city went wild. Church bells rang and cannons boomed.
Huge crowds filled the streets, roaring their enthusiastic approval. A South Carolina
newspaper boldly proclaimed, “THE UNION IS DISSOLVED!”
Six more states followed South Carolina’s lead.
On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was sworn in as President. In his inaguration speech, he said
that his first duty as president was to keep the nation together. He asked the rebellious
states to return to the union in peace, saying:
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous
issue of Civil War.
A month later, firebrands in Charleston, South Carolina, took this decision into their own
hands. On April 12 they opened fire on Fort Sumter, a federal fort in Charleston Harbor.
Fort Sumter was one of the last southern forts sill under Union control, and Southerners
were trying to push Northerners out. After 36 hours of heavy shelling, the defenders Fort
Sumter hauled down the United States flag and replaced it with the white flag of surrender.
The news that Southern rebels had fired on the flag unleased a wave of patriotic fury in the
North. All doubts people had about using force to save the union vanished. A New York
newspaper reported excitedly that:
There is no more thought of bribing or coaxing the traitors who have dared to aim
their cannon balls at the flag of the Union…Fort Sumter is temporarily lost, but the
country is saved.
Thus the Civil War began.