Commander in Chief & Great Emancipator

Charleston Mercury Extra....The Union is Dissolved! Charleston: Charleston Mercury, 1860. Broadside.

• Complete Image

Lincoln was elected president on 6 November 1860.  On 20 December, almost seven weeks later, South Carolina became the first Southern state to secede from the United States. This broadside, announcing the secession ordinance, was the first publication of what would soon become the Confederate States of America. Within a month of South Carolina’s decision, five more Southern states, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, seceded.  Eventually, eleven states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America.

*AB85.L384.Z860c   The William Whiting Nolen Collection of Lincolniana.