Video: 'Mississippi in the Civil War'

(Wednesday, January 9, 1861; nine weeks after the 1860 United States presidential election) — 64 days after Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the presidential election of 1860 on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories, Mississippi became the second state to secede today when a state convention meeting in Jackson voted 84-15 to leave the Union.

Mississippi followed South Carolina, which became the first state to secede on Dec. 20, 1860. By February, five more cotton states would follow (Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas), forming the Confederate States of America.