Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, long the locus of southern separatism, declared itself out of the Union on December 20, 1860, and by the time Lincoln delivered his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, six additional states had joined the movement to create a separate nation committed to the perpetuation of slavery. In mid-April, a crisis at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, marked the formal beginning of military hostilities. The Lincoln administration had refused to surrender the US forts in Charleston Harbor but now faced the question of how to deliver rations to the soldiers stationed there. Lincoln dispatched ships carrying provisions, but just as they arrived, Confederate forces attacked the fort. After a day and a half of bombardment, the US soldiers surrendered. Two days later, on April 15, Lincoln called up seventy-five thousand state militiamen, signaling that the government would not passively accept this outcome.