ANSWER: C) Slavery. On December 24, 1860, following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. The “Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” clearly states their reason as “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery.” Southern school districts have disseminated the idea in school textbooks that the South seceded from the Union because of the federal government’s violations of state’s rights, but these attempts to lessen the severity of the truth are being reversed.