Secession and the Civil War
On April 12, 1861, South Carolina seceded from the United States to form the Confederate States of America, and the Civil War officially began. South Carolina was soon followed by Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and then by Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
The United States in 1864, during the Civil War.37
Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_states_%28American_Civil_War%29
Red represents the states that seceded from the United States to form the Confederate States of America: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Light blue represents the “border states”—slave states that remained in the Union (didn’t secede): Missouri Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, along with West Virginia which broke away from Virginia as a new state in order to remain in the Union.
Dark blue represents the Union (Northern) states.
White represents the western territories that were not yet states; the battle over outlawing slavery in the new territories was the primary reason for the Southern states’ decision to secede from the Union.
For the South, outlawing slavery in the territories they controlled would mean economic ruin. In the industrialized North, where slavery had been outlawed, the new capitalists who depended on low-wage workers to keep their mills and factories running saw the continuation of Southern slavery as a threat to their profits and the new, wage-based economic structure.
Related Pages:
The Civil War, the End of Slavery, and Reconstruction
A War for Money, Power & Territory
The Fallacy and Legacy of “Free Labor”
New Orleans
The End of Slavery in the North
The Facts of War