Video: 'Tennessee in the Civil War'

(Tuesday, May 7, 1861; during the American Civil War) — Three weeks and four days after the beginning of the Battle of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, which triggered the American Civil War, the Tennessee legislature ratified an agreement today to enter a military league with the Confederate States, becoming the tenth southern state to secede to preserve the enslavement of black people.

Tennessee formally proclaimed its secession from the Union after voters approved the agreement in a referendum held June 8, 1861.

Tennessee was the third (after Virginia and Arkansas) 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.

North Carolina would become the 11th and final slave state to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861.