150-Year Anniversary ยท May 1861
Through May 1861 the upper South cast its lot with the Confederacy. Arkansas seceded on May 6, Tennessee moved toward separation, and North Carolina would follow shortly after. The border was hardening into the line along which the war would be fought.
The Confederate Congress voted to move the capital from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia, placing the seat of the new government barely a hundred miles from Washington and ensuring that Virginia would become the war's bloodiest battleground.
In St. Louis the Camp Jackson affair on May 10 inflamed the divided state of Missouri, as Union forces seized a pro-secession militia camp and a deadly clash with civilians followed. The struggle for the border states had begun in earnest.