Today in History, December 20th
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. Plus the Louisiana handover and the first nuclear electricity.
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December 20 is best known as the day in 1860 when South Carolina voted to leave the Union, the first state to secede before the Civil War. The date also saw the Louisiana Territory formally handed to the United States in 1803 and the first electricity made from nuclear power in 1951.
The big story: South Carolina Secedes (1860)
Abraham Lincoln had won the presidency in November, and South Carolina did not wait for him to take office. A special convention met in Charleston, and on the afternoon of December 20, 1860, its delegates approved an ordinance of secession at St. Andrew’s Hall by a vote of 169 to 0. The roll call took less than 10 minutes. Church bells rang, cadets at The Citadel fired salutes, and the Charleston Mercury rushed out an extra announcing that the Union was dissolved. That evening the delegates paraded to Institute Hall, renamed Secession Hall for the occasion, and spent about two hours signing the document before a cheering crowd of thousands. A companion declaration of causes from the same convention made the motive plain: it centered on slavery, Northern resistance to fugitive slave laws, and Lincoln’s victory. Within weeks, other Deep South states followed, and the country slid toward war.
More events on December 20
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1803 | France formally transferred the Louisiana Territory to the United States in a ceremony at the Cabildo in New Orleans. |
| 1880 | Brush arc lamps lit a stretch of Broadway in New York, one of the first electrically lit streets in the U.S. and the root of the “Great White Way” nickname. |
| 1946 | Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life premiered. |
| 1951 | Experimental Breeder Reactor-I in Idaho produced the first usable electricity from nuclear energy. |
| 1957 | Elvis Presley received his draft notice for the U.S. Army. |
| 1960 | North Vietnam announced the formation of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam, better known in the U.S. as the Viet Cong. |
| 1989 | U.S. forces invaded Panama in Operation Just Cause to oust military ruler Manuel Noriega. |
| 1995 | NATO took over peacekeeping duties in Bosnia, clearing the way for about 60,000 troops under its command. |
| 1999 | Portugal handed Macau to China, which made it a special administrative region. |
| 2019 | President Donald Trump signed the defense bill that created the U.S. Space Force. |
Born on December 20
- 1868: Harvey Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company.
- 1898: Irene Dunne, film star of The Awful Truth and I Remember Mama.
- 1917: David Bohm, physicist known for his hidden-variables interpretation of quantum mechanics.
- 1927: Kim Young-sam, president of South Korea from 1993 to 1998.
Keep reading
Sources
- Charleston at War: A Simple Ordinance of Secession, The Post and Courier
- Declaration of the Causes of Seceding States, American Battlefield Trust
- What Happened on December 20, Britannica
- December 20: This Day in History, History.com
- Louisiana Territory Officially Transferred, National Park Service
- Experimental Breeder Reactor-I, Idaho National Laboratory
- Harvey Firestone, National Inventors Hall of Fame
- Irene Dunne, Britannica
- David Bohm, Britannica
- Kim Young-Sam, Britannica
