Arkansas followed, approving secession 65 to 5; a public vote ratified it on May 6. North Carolina and Tennessee acted next. One delegate to North Carolina’s convention wrote, “This furor, this moral epidemic, swept over the country like a tempest, before which the entire populations seemed to succumb.” The border states—Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware—did not leave the Union, but they balked at Lincoln’s demand for volunteers.
