Video: 'North Carolina in the Civil War'

(Monday, May 20, 1861; during the American Civil War) — Five weeks and four days after the beginning of the Battle of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, which triggered the American Civil War, delegates to a convention in Raleigh voted unanimously today to become the 11th Southern state to secede from the Union to preserve the enslavement of black people.

North Carolina was the fourth state (after Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee, which had informally seceded May 7, 1861, but would not formally secede until a June 8, 1861, referendum) 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.

The Confederacy later accepted the slave states of Missouri and Kentucky as members, although neither officially declared secession nor were they ever largely controlled by Confederate forces, despite the efforts of Confederate shadow governments, which were eventually expelled.

Also fighting for the Confederacy were two of the “Five Civilized Tribes” – the Choctaw and the Chickasaw – in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona.