Video: 'Florida in the Civil War'

(Thursday, January 10, 1861; nine weeks after the 1860 United States presidential election) — 65 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, Florida became the third state to secede today when a special secession convention formally known as the “Convention of the People of Florida” meeting in Tallahassee voted to leave the Union.

Florida followed South Carolina and Mississippi. By February, four more cotton states would follow (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas), forming the Confederate States of America.