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South Carolina seceded from the Union in December of 1860, roughly three months before Abraham Lincoln took office.

In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, Lincoln begged the South for peace, famously saying, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

The first shots of the war, fired at Fort Sumter, were fired by the Confederacy.

In March 1862, President Lincoln asked Congress to pay Southern slave owners for emancipating their slaves. Congress adopted this measure, but the Southern states refused to comply.