The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was a republic in the Southern United States from 1861 to 1865, unrecognized as a sovereign nation by either foreign governments or the United States. It was formed by seven states that had seceded from the Union and were later joined by four more. The original seven were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas; the additional four were Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. These states fought against the United States during the American Civil War in the wake of the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president, with the principal aim of safeguarding slavery amid fears of northern abolitionist influence and federal interference in slave property. The South also feared that Lincoln's insistence that slavery not be permitted to expand into the Western territories would result in the admission of additional free states and the eventual demise of slavery.