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Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,

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Speaker 1: here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you

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Speaker 1: missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's December twenty.

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Speaker 1: South Carolina seceded from the Union on the state in

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, and this is marked as a turning point

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Speaker 1: on the way to the US Civil War, and it was,

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Speaker 1: but disputes between northern and southern states, between free and

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Speaker 1: slave states have been going on for decades. By that point,

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Speaker 1: there had been a whole series of compromises meant to

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Speaker 1: try to preserve the balance of power between free states

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Speaker 1: and slave states. As one example, there was the Missouri Compromise,

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Speaker 1: which allowed Missouri to be admitted into the Union as

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Speaker 1: a slave state, while May was split off for Massachusetts

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Speaker 1: and admitted as a free state. But by eighteen sixty,

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Speaker 1: even after all of these compromises, things had grown progressively

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Speaker 1: more tense. Northern states had started abolishing slavery and passing

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Speaker 1: laws to prevent the return of escaped slaves to the

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Speaker 1: states where they had been held in bondage. There was

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Speaker 1: increasing pressure on slave states to start abolishing slavery slave states.

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Speaker 1: Dissatisfaction with all this increased dramatically in eighteen fifty when California,

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Speaker 1: which was a free state, was admitted into the Union

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Speaker 1: without a corresponding slave state to preserve this balance of

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Speaker 1: power in Congress between slave and free. As the eight

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Speaker 1: teen sixty election approached, the prevailing wisdom was that the

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Speaker 1: election of a Republican president would guarantee that slaveholding states

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Speaker 1: would start breaking away from the Union. The Republican Party

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Speaker 1: had been founded six years earlier by anti slavery Whigs,

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Speaker 1: and the Republican president who was elected was Abraham Lincoln.

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Speaker 1: He was elected on November six, and on December twentieth,

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Speaker 1: South Carolina became the first state to secede. On December

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Speaker 1: twenty four, South Carolina adopted a Declaration of the Immediate

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Speaker 1: Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina

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Speaker 1: from the Federal Union. It begins quote the people of

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Speaker 1: the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled on the

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Speaker 1: twenty six day of April a. D. Eighteen fifty two,

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Speaker 1: declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the

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Speaker 1: United States by the federal government and its encroachments upon

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Speaker 1: the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this state

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Speaker 1: and then withdrawing from the Federal Union. But in deference

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Speaker 1: to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding states,

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Speaker 1: she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since

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Speaker 1: that time, these encroachments have continued to increase send further

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Speaker 1: forbearance ceases to be a virtue. In other words, we

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Speaker 1: said we had the right to succeed back in eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty two, but because the other slaveholding states asked us

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Speaker 1: not to, we did not. But now we are. It

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Speaker 1: goes on about the idea of free, sovereign and independent

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Speaker 1: states before it gets around to what freedoms specifically we're

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Speaker 1: talking about. One of these is outlined an Article four

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Speaker 1: of the Constitution. Quote, no person held in service or

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Speaker 1: labor in one state under the laws thereof escaping into another, shall,

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Speaker 1: in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged

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Speaker 1: from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up

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Speaker 1: on claim of the party to whom such service or

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Speaker 1: labor maybe do. In other words, if you're enslaved in

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Speaker 1: one state and you run away to another, you can't

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Speaker 1: be just kept there. You have to be sent back.

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Speaker 1: That was in the Constitution. This document then goes on

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Speaker 1: to talk about the hostility of the non slaveholding states

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Speaker 1: to the slaveholding states, which quote led to a disregard

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Speaker 1: of their obligations, and the document goes on to condemn

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Speaker 1: abolition societies which have quote encouraged and assisted thousands of

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Speaker 1: our slaves to leave their homes, and those who remain

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Speaker 1: have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

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Speaker 1: Towards the end, the statement says, quote the slaveholding states

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Speaker 1: will no longer have the power of self government or

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Speaker 1: self protection, and the federal government will have become their enemy.

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Speaker 1: A total of eleven states seceded from the Union, several

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Speaker 1: others repeatedly citing slavery as their reason for doing so,

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Speaker 1: and they formed the Confederate States of America. The Civil

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Speaker 1: War began on April twelfth of eighteen sixty one. Thanks

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Speaker 1: to Casey Pegram and Chandler Maye for their audio work

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Speaker 1: on this show. You can subscribe to the Stay in

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Speaker 1: History Class on Apple podcast, Google podcast, us, I Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio app and where else you get podcast, and you

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Speaker 1: can tune in tomorrow for an infamous bombing h