150-Year Anniversary ยท January 1861
Through January 1861 the Deep South followed South Carolina out of the Union. Mississippi seceded on January 9, Florida on January 10, Alabama on January 11, Georgia on January 19, and Louisiana on January 26. Conventions across the cotton belt acted with startling speed.
On January 9, South Carolina batteries fired on the unarmed merchant steamer Star of the West as it tried to carry provisions and reinforcements to Fort Sumter. The ship turned back. Though little remembered, these were among the first shots fired in anger of the secession crisis.
As state after state departed, federal arsenals, forts, and customs houses across the South passed into the hands of the seceding governments, often without a shot. The machinery of a new southern confederacy was already taking shape.
January 1861 was only the first month of a four-year struggle. The later campaigns are surveyed from the American Civil War front page.