Video: 'Arkansas in the Civil War'

(Monday, May 6, 1861; during the American Civil War) — Three weeks and three days after the beginning of the Battle of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, which triggered the American Civil War, delegates to the Arkansas Secession Convention voted 69-1 to secede from the Union today in Little Rock, becoming the ninth southern state to secede to preserve the enslavement of black people.

Arkansas was the second (after Virginia) to join the seven “cotton” states of South Carolina (the first to secede on Dec. 20, 1860), Mississippi, Florida, Alabama Georgia, Lousiana and Texas, which had formed the Confederate States of America on Feb. 8, 1861.

Two more states will secede from the Union in the coming days, including Tennessee and North Carolina.