<P> Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three--Texas, Alabama, and Virginia--specifically mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of northern abolitionists . The rest make no mention of the slavery issue, and are often brief announcements of the dissolution of ties by the legislatures . However, at least four states--South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas--also passed lengthy and detailed explanations of their causes for secession, all of which laid the blame squarely on the movement to abolish slavery and that movement's influence over the politics of the northern states . The southern states believed slaveholding was a constitutional right because of the Fugitive slave clause of the Constitution . </P> <P> These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861 . They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries with little resistance from outgoing President James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4, 1861 . Buchanan said that the Dred Scott decision was proof that the South had no reason for secession, and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual", but that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress". One quarter of the U.S. Army--the entire garrison in Texas--was surrendered in February 1861 to state forces by its commanding general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the Confederacy . </P> <P> As Southerners resigned their seats in the Senate and the House, Republicans were able to pass bills for projects that had been blocked by Southern Senators before the war, including the Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges (the Morrill Act), a Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad (the Pacific Railway Acts), the National Banking Act and the authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act of 1862 . The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced the income tax to help finance the war . </P> <P> On December 18, 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of the line while guaranteeing it to the south . The adoption of this compromise likely would have prevented the secession of every southern state apart from South Carolina, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it . It was then proposed to hold a national referendum on the compromise . The Republicans again rejected the idea, although a majority of both Northerners and Southerners would have voted in favor of it . A pre-war February Peace Conference of 1861 met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to that of the Crittenden compromise, it was rejected by Congress . The Republicans proposed an alternative compromise to not interfere with slavery where it existed but the South regarded it as insufficient . Nonetheless, the remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy following a two - to - one no - vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4, 1861 . </P>

Who won in the civil war north or south