Aug. 22, 1862: President Lincoln told a New York newspaper that preserving the Union was his main goal of the Civil War — not abolishing slavery. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all slaves I would do it," Lincoln said.
South Carolina was the first to leave the Union and form a new nation called the Confederate States of America. Four months later, six other states seceded. They were Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana. Later Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee joined them.
To form a new nation called the Confederate States of America.
The residents of the border were torn between their close cultural ties with the ... In none of the border states did slavery approach the importance it had in the Deep .... Lincoln unquestionably would have used force to keep the state in the Union.