First to Leave, South Carolina and Secession

On December twentieth, eighteen sixty, one hundred sixty-nine delegates gathered in Institute Hall in Charleston and signed an ordinance dissolving South Carolina's union with the United States. They did it unanimously. South Carolina was the first state to secede, and the speed of the vote, just six weeks after Abraham Lincoln's election, reflected a political culture that had been rehearsing this moment for thirty years.

The arguments for secession were not subtle about their purpose. The Declaration of Causes that the convention issued four days later named the issue plainly: the Northern states had elected a president who opposed the expansion of slavery, and South Carolina's leaders believed that an institution essential to their economy and social order was under threat. The document cited the refusal of Northern states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

It cited abolitionist agitation. It did not speak of tariffs or abstract states' rights. It spoke of slavery, directly and at length.

Four months later, on April twelfth, eighteen sixty-one, Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and the Civil War began. The fort held a Federal garrison that had refused to surrender. The bombardment lasted thirty-four hours.

There were no fatalities from the shelling itself, the Union garrison surrendered, saluted their flag, and departed by ship, but the guns that opened on Sumter started a war that would kill approximately six hundred twenty thousand Americans over the next four years. South Carolina paid a steep price. General William Sherman's army burned a wide swath through the state in eighteen sixty-five, including much of Columbia, the capital.

The state had been the instrument that struck the first blow. It would not be spared the consequences.