SECESSION
TRIGGERS WAR
1861
When Republicans won the 1860 presidential
election, many white Southerners envisaged
a threat to slavery, and some Southern states
seceded from the Union. Most Northerners
saw secession as treason and refused to accept
peaceful disunion—a rift that ended in civil war.
❮❮ Opening shots of the Civil War
The garrison at Fort Sumter replies to Confederate
shelling on April 12, 1861. Located in Charleston
harbor, South Carolina, the Union fort was seen as
an insult to the new Confederacy. The commander of
the fort, Major Robert Anderson (far left), agreed to
withdraw the garrison the next day.