Editing Confederate States of America (section)

==Origins==
{{Main|Origins of the American Civil War}}
{{See also|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War}}

Historians who address the origins of the [[American Civil War]] agree that the preservation of the [[Slavery in the United States|institution of slavery]] was the principal aim of the eleven [[Southern United States|Southern states]] (seven states before the war and four states after its onset) that declared their secession from the United States (the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]]) and united to form the Confederacy.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Woods |first=M. E. |date=2012-08-20 |title=What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas272 |journal=[[Journal of American History]] |volume=99 |issue=2 |pages=415–439 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jas272 |issn=0021-8723}}</ref> While historians in the 21st century [[Scholarly consensus|agree]] on the centrality of slavery, they disagree on which aspects of this conflict (ideological, economic, political, or social) were most important, and on the [[Union (American Civil War)|North]]'s reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede.<ref>Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "A Book for Every Perspective: Current Civil War and Reconstruction Textbooks", ''Civil War History'' (2005) 51#3 pp. 317–324</ref> Proponents of the [[pseudohistory|pseudo-historical]] [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]] ideology have denied that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view that has been disproven by the overwhelming historical evidence against it, notably some of the seceding states' own [[Ordinance of Secession|secession documents]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Loewen |first=James W. |date=2011 |title=Using Confederate Documents to Teach About Secession, Slavery, and the Origins of the Civil War |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23210244 |journal=OAH Magazine of History |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=35–44 |doi=10.1093/oahmag/oar002 |jstor=23210244 |issn=0882-228X |quote=Confederate leaders themselves made it plain that slavery was the key issue sparking secession. |access-date=April 7, 2023 |archive-date=April 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407021438/https://www.jstor.org/stable/23210244 |url-status=live }}</ref>

The principal political battle leading to secession was over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially [[United States Congress|Congress]] had admitted new states into the Union in pairs, [[Slave states and free states|one slave and one free]]. This had kept a sectional balance in the [[United States Senate|Senate]] but not in the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]], as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.<ref name="O'Brien2002qs">{{cite book |author=Patrick Karl O'Brien |title=Atlas of World History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffZy5tDjaUkC&pg=PA184 |year=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-521921-0 |page=184 |access-date=October 25, 2015 |archive-date=September 5, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905202421/https://books.google.com/books?id=ffZy5tDjaUkC&pg=PA184 |url-status=live }}</ref> Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolition]] had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of [[white Southerners|white Southern]] nationalism in the preceding decades.<ref>John McCardell, ''The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860'' (1981)</ref> The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on [[American nationalism]].<ref>Susan-Mary Grant, ''North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era'' (2000)</ref>

[[Abraham Lincoln]] won the [[1860 United States presidential election|1860 presidential election]]. His victory triggered declarations of [[secession in the United States|secession]] by seven slave states of the [[Deep South]], all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor. They formed the Confederate States after Lincoln was elected in November 1860 but before [[First inauguration of Abraham Lincoln|he took office]] in March 1861. Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession. No foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The U.S. government, under President [[James Buchanan]], refused to relinquish its forts in territory claimed by the Confederacy. The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces [[Battle of Fort Sumter|bombarded the Union's Fort Sumter]], in the harbor of [[Charleston, South Carolina]].

Background factors in the run up to the war were [[Second Party System|partisan politics]], [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionism]], [[Nullification (U.S. Constitution)|nullification]] versus [[Secession in the United States|secession]], Southern and Northern nationalism, [[Manifest destiny|expansionism]], [[Panic of 1857|economics]], and modernization in the [[Antebellum South|antebellum period]]. "While slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."<ref>[[Elizabeth R. Varon]], Bruce Levine, Marc Egnal, and Michael Holt at a plenary session of the organization of American Historians, March 17, 2011, reported by David A. Walsh "Highlights from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Houston, Texas" [http://www.hnn.us/articles/137673.html HNN online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111204081355/http://hnn.us/articles/137673.html |date=December 4, 2011 }}</ref> Historian [[David M. Potter]] wrote: "The problem for Americans who, in the age of Lincoln, wanted slaves to be free was not simply that southerners wanted the opposite, but that they themselves cherished a conflicting value: they wanted the Constitution, which protected slavery, to be honored, and the Union, which was a fellowship with slaveholders, to be preserved. Thus they were committed to values that could not logically be reconciled."<ref>Potter, David M., ''The Impending Crisis'', pp. 44–45.</ref>