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1 The Main Reason the Southern States Seceded from the Union Was States’ Rights What People Think Happened The antislavery North dominated the election of 1860. Abraham ­ Lincoln, a Republican from Illinois, was elected president of the United States without winning a single electoral college vote from a slave state. The North controlled both the Congress and the presidency and now technically possessed the power to put the institution of slavery on the ultimate road to extinction. The results of the election of 1860 were not lost on Southern politi- cians, newspaper editors, and slaveholders. They believed that Northern, antislave control of the central government threatened the existence of their peculiar institution of slavery. Southerners, who favored secession, argued that the best way to protect slavery was to secede from the Union and create a new government dedicated to the protection of that insti- tution. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to leave the Union. By March 1861, six more Southern states had seceded from the United States, and these states formed the Confederate States of America. What each of these seceded states shared in common was that they were all from the Deep South, where slavery was the strongest. After four years of horrific war, the North defeated the South, pre- served the Union, and ended slavery. Former Confederates faced a world