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South Carolina was a site of a major political and military importance for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The white population of the state strongly supported the institution of slavery long before the war. Political leaders such as John C. Calhoun and Preston Brooks had inflamed regional (and national) passions, and for years before the eventual start of the Civil War in 1861, voices cried for secession. The Civil War began in South Carolina. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to declare its secession from the Union. The first shots of the Civil War (January 9, 1861) were fired in Charleston by its Citadel cadets upon a civilian merchant ship, the Star of the West, bringing supplies to the beleaguered U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter. The April 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter by South Carolina forces under the command of General Beauregard—the Confederacy did not yet have a functioning army—is commonly taken as the beginning of the war. South Carolina was a source of troops for the Confederate army, and as the war progressed, also for the Union, as thousands of ex-slaves flocked to join the Union forces. The state also provided uniforms, textiles, food, and war material, as well as trained soldiers and leaders from The Citadel and other military schools. In contrast to most other Confederate states, South Carolina had a well-developed rail network linking all of its major cities without a break of gauge. Relatively free from Union occupation until the very end of the war, South Carolina hosted a number of prisoner of war camps. South Carolina also was the only Southern state not to harbor pockets of anti-secessionist fervor strong enough to send large amounts of white men to fight for the Union, as every other state in the Confederacy did. Among the leading generals from the Palmetto State were Wade Hampton III, one of the Confederacy's leading cavalrymen, Maxcy Gregg, killed in action at Fredericksburg, Joseph B. Kershaw, whose South Carolina infantry brigade saw some of the hardest fighting of the Army of Northern Virginia and James Longstreet who served in the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee and in the Army of Tennessee under Gen. Braxton Bragg. ==Secession== For decades, South Carolinian political leaders had promoted regional passions with threats of nullification and secession in the name of southern states rights and protection of the interests of the slave power. Alfred P. Aldrich, a South Carolinian politician from Barnwell, stated that declaring secession would be necessary if a Republican candidate were to win the 1860 U.S. presidential election, stating that it was the only way for the state to preserve slavery and diminish the influence of the anti-slavery Republican Party, which, were its goals of abolition realized, would result in the "destruction of the South": In a January 1860 speech, South Carolinian congressman Laurence Massillon Keitt, summed up this view in an oratory condemning the Republican Party for its anti-slavery views, claiming that slavery was not morally wrong, but rather, justified: Later that year, in December, Keitt would state that South Carolina's declaring of secession was the direct result of slavery: On November 9, 1860 the South Carolina General Assembly passed a "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act" and stated its intention to declare secession from the United States.〔"Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act and to Communicate to Other Southern States South Carolina's Desire to Secede from the Union." 9 November 1860. Resolutions of the General Assembly, 1779-1879. S165018. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, S.C.〕 In December 1860, amid the secession crisis, former South Carolinian congressman John McQueen wrote to a group of civic leaders in Richmond, Virginia, regarding the reasons as to why South Carolina was contemplating secession from the Union. In the letter, McQueen claimed that U.S. president-elect Abraham Lincoln supported equality and civil rights for African Americans as well as the abolition of slavery, and thus South Carolina, being opposed to such measures, was compelled to secede: South Carolinian religious leader James Henley Thornwell also espoused a similar view to McQueen's, stating that slavery was justified under the Christian religion, and thus, those who viewed slavery as being immoral were opposed to Christianity: On November 10, 1860 the S.C. General Assembly called for a "Convention of the People of South Carolina" to consider secession. Delegates were to be elected on December 6.〔Cauthen, Charles Edward; Power, J. Tracy. ''South Carolina goes to war, 1860-1865.'' Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Originally published: Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1950. ISBN 978-1-57003-560-9. p. 60.〕 The secession convention convened in Columbia on December 17 and voted unanimously, 169-0, to declare secession from the United States. The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. James Buchanan, the United States president, declared the ordinance illegal but did not act to stop it. A committee of the convention also drafted a ''Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina'' which was adopted on December 24. The secession declaration stated the primary reasoning behind South Carolina's declaring of secession from the Union, which was described as: The declaration also claims that secession was declared as a result of the refusal of free states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts. Although the declaration does argue that secession is justified on the grounds of federal "encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States," the grievances that the declaration goes on to list are mainly concerned with the property of rights of slave holders. Broadly speaking, the declaration argues that the U.S. Constitution was framed to establish each State "as an equal" in the Union, with "separate control over its own institutions", such as "the right of property in slaves." A repeated concern is runaway slaves. The declaration argues that parts of the U.S. Constitution were specifically written to ensure the return of slaves who had escaped to other states, and quotes the 4th Article: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." The declaration goes on to state that this stipulation of the Constitution was so important to the original signers, "that without it that compact (Constitution ) would not have been made." Laws from the "General Government" upheld this stipulation "for many years," the declaration says, but "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations." Because the constitutional agreement had been "deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States," the consequence was that "South Carolina is released from her obligation" to be part of the Union. A further concern was Lincoln's recent election to the presidency, whom they claimed desired to see slavery on "the course of ultimate extinction": The South Carolinian secession declaration of December 1860 also channeled some elements from the U.S. Declaration of Independence from July 1776. However, the South Carolinian version omitted the phrases that "all men are created equal" and "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". Professor and historian Harry V. Jaffa noted these omissions as significant in his 2000 book, ''A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War'': The following day, on December 25, a South Carolinian convention delivered an "Address to the Slaveholding States": "Slavery, not states' rights, birthed the Civil War," argues sociologist James W. Loewen. Writing of South Carolina's Declaration of Secession, Loewen writes that The state adopted the palmetto flag as its banner, a slightly modified version of which is used as its current state flag.〔Edgar, Walter. ''South Carolina: A History,'' Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press:1998. ISBN 978-1-57003-255-4. p. 619〕 South Carolina after secession was frequently called the "Palmetto Republic".〔Cauthen, Charles Edward; Power, J. Tracy. ''South Carolina goes to war, 1860-1865.'' Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Originally published: Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1950. ISBN 978-1-57003-560-9. p. 79.〕 After South Carolina declared its secession, former congressman James L. Petigru famously remarked, "South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."〔 Paragraph 4〕 Soon afterwards, South Carolina began preparing for a presumed Federal military response while working to convince other southern states to secede as well and join in a confederacy of southern states. On February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, a convention consisting of delegates from South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana met to form a new constitution and government modeled on that of the United States.〔Lee, Jr., Charles Robert. ''The Confederate Constitutions''. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963, 60.〕 On February 8, 1861, South Carolina officially joined the Confederacy. According to one South Carolinian newspaper editor: South Carolina's declaring of secession was supported by the state's religious figures, who claimed that it was consistent with their religion: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「South Carolina in the American Civil War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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