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South Carolina is the First to Secede
A "Declaration of Immediate Causes Inducing and Justifying the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" was adopted by delegates at the South Carolina secession convention. It noted "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery" and protested that Northern states had failed to fulfill their constitutional obligations" by interfering with the institution of slavery. -
Anaconda Plan
The Anaconda Plan was called for a blockade of southern ports. The blockade did not clampdown all at once but it was extended by degrees. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The reason Abraham Lincoln wrote the Proclamation of Emancipation was to set the Southern States' slaves free. It decreed that freed slaves could be enlisted in the army of the Union, thus increasing the manpower available to the Union. In the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation led the way to the total abolition of slavery. -
Gettysburg Address
The significance of Lincoln's short but powerful speech in the Gettysburg Address places the Civil War in the historical context of the American struggle for freedom. Lincoln states that the war is, in a sense, a continuation of the American Revolution, a test of the ideals for which colonials fought in 1776. -
Lincoln's Assassination
Abraham Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth. Abraham Lincoln went to see a play at Ford's Theater. John Booth, who was an actor, came up and down the stairs behind him and shot Lincoln in the head. He fled, and the authorities eventually found him and killed him.
