Seven companies of militia from Florida and Alabama appeared at the Pensacola Navy Yard and demanded its commander Commodore Armstrong surrender the base to the independent state of Florida.  With little means to resist, Armstrong complied. Fort Barrancas was seized at the same time leaving the vitally strategic Fort Pickens, with eighty-one men under Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer as the only federal installation in United States hands. (By John Osborne)

Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi gave a final speech in the U.S. Senate explaining Mississippi's reasons for seceding from the Union almost two weeks before and then himself resigned his seat. On February 18, 1861, he was inaugurated as the President of the Confederate States of America.  (By John Osborne)

With the secession of Florida underway, the senior army officer present at Pensacola, First Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer, sought to secure the forts that controlled the harbor.  With a limited resources, he opted to concentrate his forces on Fort Pickens, an island installation in the harbor that effectively controlled the approaches to Pensacola Bay.  Moving from Fort Barracas, spiking the guns there, he held the vital fort with eighty-one men till he was reinforced when hostilities broke out in April.  (By John Osborne)

The 296 delegates to Georgia's secession convention had assembled three days before in the state capital of Milledgeville, with former governor George W. Crawford in the chair.  On this day the convention voted in a final vote of  208 to 89 on an ordinance of secession. An attempt from A. H. Stephens, Hershel V. Johnson, and others to postpone action failed and Georgia was proclaimed officially to have left the Union.  (By John Osborne)