Page:American Boy's Life of William McKinley.djvu/52

26 the South would secede from the Union and set up a Confederacy of its own. Washington had fought for this Union and so had hundreds of other famous men, and he could not bear to think of the states being divided and of their making war upon each other.

The crisis was reached on Tuesday, November 6, 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. He was bitterly opposed by the South, and his election took from that section of our country the power it had before held in national affairs. As the telegraph flashed the news everywhere there was intense excitement, for all felt that the South must either submit to the contentions of the North or go into open rebellion.

Deeming herself fully justified in her course of action, South Carolina took the lead in seceding from the Union, on December 20, and called upon her sister states of the South to do likewise and aid in forming one great slave-holding Confederacy. Other states were not long in coming to the front, and early in the year 1861 the Southern Confederacy was formed, with