<P> Voices demanding separation from the south were beginning (again). In The Liberator of May 1844 with his "Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States," William Lloyd Garrison called for disunion (secession). Garrison wrote: the Constitution was created "at the expense of the colored population of the country"; southerners were dominating the nation--especially representation in Congress--because of the Three - Fifths Compromise; now it was time "to set the captive free by the potency of truth" and to "secede from the government". Coincidentally, the New England Anti-Slavery Convention endorsed the principles of disunion by a vote of 250--24 . </P> <P> From 1846, after introduction of the Wilmot Proviso into the public debate, talk in favor of secession shifted to southern voices . Southern leaders' increasing perceptions of helplessness in confronting a powerful political group attacking their interests (and survival) were reminiscent of Federalist alarms at the beginning of the century . </P> <P> During the presidential term of Andrew Jackson, South Carolina had its own semi-secession movement due to the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations" which threatened both South Carolina's economy and the Union . Andrew Jackson also threatened to send federal troops to put down the movement and to hang the leader of the secessionists from the highest tree in South Carolina . Also due to this, Jackson's vice president, John C. Calhoun, who supported the movement and wrote the essay "The South Carolina Exposition and Protest", became the first US vice-president to resign . On May 1, 1833, Jackson wrote of nullification, "the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object . The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question ." South Carolina also threatened to secede in 1850 over the issue of California's statehood . It became the first state to declare its secession from the Union on December 20, 1860, with the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union and later joined with the other southern states in the Confederacy . </P> <Dl> <Dd> See main articles Origins of the American Civil War, Confederate States of America and American Civil War . </Dd> </Dl>

Who was the first state to secede from the union