Union is Dissolved!
South Carolina was the first state to make good on its threat to secede from the United States after Lincoln was elected president in November 1860. A special secession convention met in Charleston to decide the issue and quickly passed an “Ordinance of Secession” with a vote of 169 to 0. Within minutes of the convention’s vote, Robert Barnwell Rhett Sr., owner of the Charleston Mercury, distributed printed broadsides on the city streets announcing the dissolution of the federal union. Four days later the South Carolina legislature passed a more formal “Declaration of Secession.”
South Carolina was the first state to make good on its threat to secede from the United States after Lincoln was elected president in November 1860. A special secession convention met in Charleston to decide the issue and quickly passed an “Ordinance of Secession” with a vote of 169 to 0. Within minutes of the convention’s vote, Robert Barnwell Rhett Sr., owner of the <em>Charleston Mercury</em>, distributed printed broadsides on the city streets announcing the dissolution of the federal union. Four days later the South Carolina legislature passed a more formal “Declaration of Secession.”