Southern states

between December 1860 and March 1861, seven states in the Deep South left the Union. After the southern attack on Fort Sumter, a union installation in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1861, another four states seceded.

Why did they these states decided to withdraw from the United States? Was it over slavery? Over states rights? Or was it for some other reason?The easiest way to answer this question is to look at the arguments that the Confederate states advanced. Read the proclamations from the southern states in the header above and then describe why the Confederate states seceded.

The South was already angry and upset about the compromises and decisions that had been made earlier regarding slavery. For example, the Dred Scott Decision, Compromise of 1850, Compromise of 1820, Kansas Nebraska Act, Raid at Harpers Ferry, Three Fifths Compromise, and Missouri Compromise were some of the compromises and decisions made at the time to try to deal with disagreements over slavery.

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During the presidential election of 1860, Southern leaders told the South to secede from the Union if Lincoln were to win the election because they believed Lincoln was an abolitionist. Abolitionists were people who worked to get rid of slavery. The South was afraid that Lincoln would outlaw slavery while in office. This would have created a problem for the South since its way of life depended on slaves. It would have prevented the South from thriving. Southern farmers would be forced to pay their former slaves in return for working on the farms. Plantation owners would make less money since most of the people working on the plantations would have to be paid. In other words, the main reason the Southern states seceded from the Union was to escape what they felt was a threat to their right to own slaves.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/south_secede/south_secede_menu.cfm

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An enlargeable map of the United States after the ...

Southern United States