Events in the 1850s culminated with the election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president on November 6, 1860. This provoked the first round of state secession as leaders of the cotton states of the Deep South were unwilling to remain in what they perceived as a second-class political status, with their way of life now threatened by the President himself. Initially, seven states seceded: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. After the Confederates attacked and captured Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for volunteers to march south and suppress the rebellion. This pushed four other states in the Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas) also to secede, completing the incorporation of the Confederate States of America by July 1861. Their contributions of territory and soldiers to the Confederacy ensured the war would be prolonged and bloody.