Until the first volley of Confederate artillery was fired over the walls of Charleston’s Fort Sumter, many in the United States believed that civil war was avoidable. The events that led to this attack, however, had been set into motion months earlier when several southern states voted to break away from the Union. Published by the Charleston Mercury on 20 December 1860, this bold broadside reads: ‘We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain […] that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of "The United States of America," is hereby dissolved.’

Political tensions between North and South had been rising for decades. While the North was home to urban, industrialised cities, the South’s economy was predominantly rural and depended on enslaved labour. As early as 1828, the Tariff of Abominations had caused friction. Intended to protect northern industries from cheap imports, the act had a disastrous impact upon the southern economy which was reliant on foreign cotton buyers. A few years later, South Carolina – a state whose economy had been particularly hard hit – issued an Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the tariff unconstitutional. Though successful in lowering rates, the exercise was controversial and states’ rights became steadily more sacrosanct to secessionists. While southerners believed they should be able to carry their property, specifically their enslaved people, across state lines, northerners rejected the notion, as it would undermine a state’s ability to outlaw slavery. Despite clear differences, the two economies were fairly complimentary. However, during the financial panic of 1857, northern industries suffered while agriculture in the South continued to boom, leading one southern senator to brag, “Cotton is King”.

Meanwhile, abolitionism grew increasingly popular in northern cities, where many feared that expansion into unsettled lands in the West could tip the delicate political balance in favour of slaveholding states. In the South, hostility towards the abolitionist “fad” was entrenched. Famously, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln would comment that her “little book” had started the Civil War – indeed, in the North, the novel was particularly successful at hardening opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. Hostilities continued to build. Abolitionist politician Charles Sumner suffered a violent beating in the Senate days after denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a piece of legislation which ultimately reversed the Missouri Compromise and allowed settlers in new states to vote on the legality of slavery. In Kansas, an increasingly bloody border war was fought between pro- and anti-slavery gangs. One abolitionist believed he could lead a slave uprising in the South; though easily crushed, John Brown’s ill-fated rebellion inflamed southern tempers.

In November 1860, staunch Unionist, Abraham Lincoln, was elected. Fearing the extermination of slavery and the subsequent ascendancy of northern power, conventions were called across the South. South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, swiftly followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. As this broadside so plainly states, the Union was dissolved. Delegates from each state were sent to the city of Montgomery, Alabama to form a government and on 4 February, a new nation – the Confederate States of America – was born.

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