 The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede, but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama, while the majority of slave states were in the Union.Congress voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4, 1861, but it was never ratified.Even before secession, the governor of Alabama defied the United States government by seizing the two federal forts at the Gulf Coast (forts Morgan and Gaines) and the arsenal at Mount Vernon in January 1861 to distribute weapons to Alabama towns.