Confederate States of America

Confederate States of America ← 1861 – 1865 → Flag (1865) Confederate Seal Motto Deo Vindice  (Latin) "With God our Vindicator" Anthem (none official) "God Save the South" (unofficial) "The Bonnie Blue Flag" (popular) "Dixie" (traditional)      States under CSA control      States and territories claimed by CSA without formal secession and/or control Capital Montgomery, Alabama (until May 29 1861) Richmond, Virginia (May 29 1861–April 2 1865) Danville, Virginia (from April 3 1865) Language(s) English (de facto) Government Republic President Jefferson Davis (D) Vice President Alexander Stephens (D) Legislature Congress of the Confederate States Historical era American Civil War  - Confederacy formed February 4 1861  - Start of Civil War April 12 1861  - Military collapse[1] April 11 1865 Area  - 18601 1,995,392 km² (770,425 sq mi) Population  - 18601 est. 9,103,332       Density 4.6 /km²  (11.8 /sq mi)  - slaves2 est. 3,521,110  Currency CSA dollar State Currencies 1 Area and population values do not include Missouri and Kentucky nor the Territory of Arizona. Water area: 5.7%. 2 Slaves included in above population count 1860 Census

The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, and CSA) formed as the government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven southern states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S. The CSA's de facto control over its claimed territory varied during the course of the American Civil War, depending on the success of its military in battle.

Seven states declared their independence from the United States before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President on March 4, 1861; four more did so after the Civil War began at the Battle of Fort Sumter (April 1861). The United States of America ("The Union") held secession illegal and refused recognition of the Confederacy. Although British and French commercial interests sold the Confederacy warships and materials, no European nation officially recognized the CSA as an independent country.

The CSA effectively collapsed when Generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston surrendered their armies in April 1865. The last meeting of its Cabinet took place in Georgia in May. Union troops captured the Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irwinsville, Georgia on May 10, 1865. Nearly all remaining Confederate forces surrendered by the end of June. A decade-long process known as Reconstruction temporarily gave civil rights and the right to vote to the freedmen, expelled ex-Confederate leaders from office, and re-admitted the states to representation in Congress.

History

Seceding states

Confederate States in the American Civil War
South Carolina Mississippi Florida Alabama Georgia Louisiana Texas Virginia Arkansas North Carolina Tennessee
Dual governments
Kentucky Missouri
Border states
Delaware Maryland West Virginia
Claimed territories
Indian Territory New Mexico Arizona

Seven states declared their secession before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861:

1. South Carolina (December 20, 1860)^[2]
2. Mississippi (January 9, 1861)^[3]
3. Florida (January 10, 1861)^[4]
4. Alabama (January 11, 1861)^[5]
5. Georgia (January 19, 1861)^[6]
6. Louisiana (January 26, 1861)^[7]
7. Texas (February 1, 1861)^[8]

After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops on April 15, four more states declared their secession:^[9]

1. Arkansas (May 6, 1861)^[10]
2. Virginia (April 17, 1861)^[11]
3. Tennessee (May 7, 1861)^[12][13]
4. North Carolina (May 20, 1861)^[14]

Two more slave states had rival secessionist governments. The Confederacy admitted them, but the pro-Confederate state governments soon went into exile and never controlled the states:

1. Missouri did not secede but a rump group proclaimed secession (October 31 1861).^[15][16]
2. Kentucky did not secede but a rump, unelected group proclaimed secession (November 20 1861).^[17][18]

Although the slave states of Maryland and Delaware did not secede, many citizens from those states joined the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

Seceding territories

The Confederacy also claimed the portion of the New Mexico Territory (modern New Mexico and Arizona) south of the 34th parallel as the Confederate Arizona Territory, on February 14, 1862,^[19] with Mesilla serving as the territory capital.^[20] The Union regained military control of the area, and on February 24, 1863 set up the Arizona Territory with Fort Whipple as the capital.

Confederate supporters claimed portions of modern-day Oklahoma as Confederate territory after the Union abandoned and evacuated the federal forts and installations in the territory. On July 12, 1861 the newly formed Confederate States government signed a treaty with both the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian nations in the Indian Territory.^[21][22]

Causes of secession

Main article: Origins of the American Civil War

By 1860 sectional disagreements between North and South revolved primarily around the maintenance or expansion of slavery. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust observed that, "leaders of the secession movement across the South cited slavery as the most compelling reason for southern independence."^[23] Related and intertwined secondary issues also fueled the dispute; these secondary differences (real or perceived) included tariffs, agrarianism vs. industrialization, and states' rights. The immediate spark for secession was the victory of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. Civil War historian James M. McPherson wrote:

To southerners the election’s most ominous feature was the magnitude of Republican victory north of the 41st parallel. Lincoln won more than 60 percent of the vote in that region, losing scarcely two dozen counties. Three-quarters of the Republican congressmen and senators in the next Congress would represent this “Yankee” and antislavery portion of the free states. The New Orleans Crescent saw these facts as “full of portentous significance”. “The idle canvas prattle about Northern conservatism may now be dismissed,” agreed the Richmond Examiner. “A party founded on the single sentiment... of hatred of African slavery, is now the controlling power.” No one could any longer “be deluded... that the Black Republican party is a moderate” party, pronounced the New Orleans Delta. “It is in fact, essentially, a revolutionary party.”^[24]

Four of the seceding states, the Deep South states of South Carolina,^[25] Mississippi,^[26] Georgia,^[27] and Texas,^[28] issued formal declarations of causes, each of which identified the threat to slaveholders’ rights as the cause of, or a major cause of, secession; Georgia also claimed a general Federal policy of favoring Northern over Southern economic interests. In what later came to be known as the Cornerstone Speech, C.S. Vice President Alexander Stephens declared that the "cornerstone" of the new government "rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth".^[29]

Historian William J. Cooper Jr., in his biography of the Confederate president Jefferson Davis, wrote, “From at least the time of the American Revolution white southerners defined their liberty, in part, as the right to own slaves and to decide the fate of the institution without any outside interference.”^[30] Speaking specifically of Davis, Cooper wrote:

For his entire life he believed in the superiority of the white race. He also owned slaves, defended slavery as moral and as a social good, and fought a great war to maintain it. After 1865 he opposed new rights for blacks. He rejoiced at the collapse of Reconstruction and the reassertion of white superiority with its accompanying black subordination.^[31]

In his farewell speech to the United States Congress, Davis made clear his view that the secession crisis had stemmed from the Republican Party's failure "to recognize our domestic institutions [an acknowledged euphemism for slavery] which pre-existed the formation of the Union -- our property which was guarded by the Constitution."^[32]

Religion, slavery, and secession

Historian C. C. Goen summarized the relationship between Christianity and the coming of the Civil War. He noted that in the early decades religion had acted as a unifying force, but ultimately the sectional division over slavery “exacerbated the national struggle over slavery.” Goen wrote:

The churches were critical agents in a reciprocal process of cumulating alienation. In the onrushing tragedy it became evident that the Christian religion, a powerful cultural force in both sections, had been turned to the purposes of regional identity and defense, that equally earnest expositors could draw from the same scriptures diametrically opposite conclusions about the most distinctive feature of the southern way of life, and that the common faith that had once undergirded national unity had itself become an instrument of division.^[33]

Around the turn of the century southern Methodists and Baptists demonstrated significant antislavery sentiment.^[34] However, in 1816, Methodists resolved that, despite their opposition, "little can be done to abolish the practice." In 1818 the Presbyterian General Assembly (PCUSA) condemned slavery but at the same time declared “hasty emancipation to be a greater curse” than slavery itself and upheld the removal of Reverend George Bourne in Lexington, Kentucky for preaching antislavery.^[35] By the 1850s, as sectional tensions over slavery became exacerbated, more and more ministers in the South “who openly resisted southern evangelicals’ accommodation with slavery found themselves silenced or driven out of the South.”^[36]

In 1837 the Presbyterian Church USA (the largest of the six Presbyterian denominations in the United States at the time) split over largely non-slavery issues into “Old School” and “New School” affiliates. The South sided with the Old School “in reaction to the spread of antislavery sentiment among northern New School adherents.”^{[37] [38]} In 1850 the New School formally denied “that God sanctioned human bondage”, and by 1857 this church had split into northern and southern factions.^[39] In 1844-45 both the Methodists and Baptists attempted to prohibit church leaders from owning slaves, leading to the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and of the Southern Baptist Convention.^[40] John Calhoun wrote in 1850 that “already three great evangelical churches had been torn asunder” over slavery.^[41]

In 1848 Henry B. Bascom, who would shortly become a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, identified northern Methodists as a leader in the "invasion of southern rights" and stated:

It is so mixed up with the whole machinery of abolition and anti-slavery agitation and invasion ... that its own chosen colors will not allow us any longer to distinguish it from the common enemy.... [Its members] have no fixed principles or settled views. They are the victims of a mania, constantly involving them in contradiction and inconsistency.... The firmness, consistency, moderation, and dignity of strong moral conviction -- of fixed religious principle -- are no where to be found among them; all is agitation, caprice, passion, and resentment.^[42]

In the years after these splits, preachers began to identify a need for southern secession. With the passage of the Compromise of 1850, Iveson L. Brookes, a South Carolina Baptist, protested the inequity of the legislation which had "put the South into a predicament, where she must either leave the Union or be ruined."^[43] The leader of southern Presbyterians (PCUSA), James Henley Thornwell, wrote:

But the Union is the creature of the Constitution. The destruction of one is, and must be, sooner or later, the destruction of the other. The guilt of dissolving it must rest on those who trample the Constitution in the dust.^[44]

Benjamin M. Palmer (1818-1902), pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans (PCUSA), thundered his support for secession in a Thanksgiving sermon in 1860, arguing that white Southerners had a right and duty to maintain slavery out of economic and social self-preservation, in order to act as "guardians" to the "affectionate and loyal" but "helpless" blacks, to safeguard global economic interests, and to defend religion against "atheistic" abolitionism.^{[45] [46]} Copies of his sermon became widely distributed across the region.

Rise and fall of the Confederacy

The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with the Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Federal troops of the U.S. had retreated to Fort Sumter soon after South Carolina declared its secession on 20 December 1860. U.S. President Buchanan had attempted to re-supply Sumter by sending the Star of the West, but Confederate forces fired upon the ship, driving it away. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln also attempted to resupply Sumter. Lincoln notified South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, [except] in case of an attack on the fort." However, suspecting that just such an attempt to reinforce the fort would be made, the Confederate cabinet decided at a meeting in Montgomery to capture Fort Sumter before the relief fleet arrived.

On April 12 1861, Confederate troops, following orders from Davis and his Secretary of War, fired upon the federal troops occupying Fort Sumter, forcing their surrender.

Following the Battle of Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for the remaining states in the Union to send troops to recapture Sumter and other forts and customs-houses^[47] in the South that Confederate forces had claimed, some by force. This proclamation was made before Congress could convene on the matter, and the original request from the War Department called for volunteers for only three months of duty.^[47] Lincoln's call for troops resulted in four more states voting to secede, rather than provide troops for the Union. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the Confederacy, bringing the total to eleven states. Once Virginia joined the Confederate States, the Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. All but two major battles (Antietam and Gettysburg) took place in Confederate territory.

Alexander H. Stephens maintained that Lincoln's attempt to reinforce Sumter had provoked the war.^[48]

Kentucky, a border state during the war, for a time had two state governments: one supporting the Confederacy and one supporting the Union. The original government remained in the Union after a short-lived attempt at neutrality, but the Confederate States of America accepted a rival faction from that state as a member; it did not control any territory. A more complex situation surrounds the Missouri Secession. Although the Confederacy considered Missouri a member of the Confederate States of America; it did not control any territory. With Kentucky and Missouri, the number of Confederate states can be counted as thirteen; later versions of Confederate flags had thirteen stars, reflecting the Confederacy's claims to those states.

The five tribal governments of the Indian Territory — which became Oklahoma in 1907 — also mainly supported the Confederacy, providing troops and one General officer. After 1863 they sent representatives to the Confederate Congress: Elias Cornelius Boudinot representing the Cherokee and Samuel Benton Callahan representing the Seminole and Creek people. The Cherokee, in their declaration of causes, gave as reasons for aligning with the Confederacy the similar institutions and interests of the Cherokee nation and the Southern states, alleged violations of the Constitution by the North, claimed that the North was waging war against Southern commercial and political freedom and for the abolition of slavery in general and in the Indian Territory in particular, and that the North intended to seize Indian lands as had been done in the past^[49].

Citizens at Mesilla and Tucson in the southern part of New Mexico Territory formed a secession convention, which voted to join the Confederacy on March 16 1861 and appointed Lewis Owings as the new territorial governor. In July, Mesilla appealed to Confederate troops in El Paso, Texas, under Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor for help in removing the Union Army under Major Isaac Lynde that was stationed nearby. The Confederates defeated Lynde at the Battle of Mesilla on July 27. After the battle, Baylor established a territorial government for the Confederate Arizona Territory and named himself governor. In 1862, a New Mexico Campaign was launched under General Henry Hopkins Sibley to take the northern half of New Mexico. Although Confederates briefly occupied the territorial capital of Santa Fe, they were defeated at Glorietta Pass in March and retreated, never to return.

West Virginia counties approving Virginia's secession from the U.S.

The Union had gained control of the contested northernmost slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) by 1862. In 1861, martial law was declared in Maryland (the state which borders the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., on three sides) to block attempts at secession. Delaware, also a slave state, never considered secession, nor did Washington, D.C. In 1861, a Unionist legislature in Wheeling, Virginia seceded from Virginia, eventually claiming 50 counties for a new state. However, 24 of those counties had voted in favor of Virginia's secession, and control of these counties, as well as some counties that had voted against secession, remained contested until the end of the war.^[50] West Virginia joined the United States in 1863 with a constitution that gradually abolished slavery.

Attempts to secede from the Confederate States of America by some counties in East Tennessee were held in check by Confederate declarations of martial law.^[51][52].

Historians generally regard the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia by General Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9 1865 as the end of the Confederate States. President Davis was captured at Irwinville, Georgia, on May 10, and the remaining Confederate armies surrendered by June 1865. The last Confederate flag was hauled down from CSS Shenandoah on November 6 1865.

Government and politics

Constitution

Jefferson Davis
President 1861-1865

The Southern leaders met in Montgomery, Alabama, to write their constitution. The Confederate States Constitution reveals much about the motivations for secession from the Union. Although much of it replicated the United States Constitution verbatim, it contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery, though it maintained the existing ban on international slave-trading. In certain areas, the Confederate Constitution gave greater powers to the states (or curtailed the powers of the central government more) than the U.S. Constitution of the time did, but in other areas, the states actually lost rights they had under the U.S. Constitution. Although the Confederate Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, contained a commerce clause, the Confederate version prohibited the central government from using revenues collected in one state for funding internal improvements in another state. The Confederate Constitution's equivalent to the U.S. Constitution's general welfare clause prohibited protective tariffs (but allowed tariffs for domestic revenue), and spoke of "carry[ing] on the Government of the Confederate States" rather than providing for the "general welfare". State legislatures were given the power to impeach officials of the Confederate government in some cases. On the other hand, the Confederate Constitution contained a necessary-and-proper-clause and a supremacy clause that were essentially identical to those of the U.S. Constitution.

The Confederate Constitution did not specifically include a provision allowing states to secede; the Preamble spoke of each state "acting in its sovereign and independent character" but also of the formation of a "permanent federal government". During the debates on drafting the Confederate Constitution, one proposal would have allowed states to secede from the Confederacy. The proposal was tabled with only the South Carolina delegates voting in favor of considering the motion.^[53] States were also explicitly denied the power to bar slaveholders from other parts of the Confederacy from bringing their slaves into any state of the Confederacy or to interfere with the property rights of slave owners traveling between different parts of the Confederacy. In contrast with the secular language of the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution overtly asked God's blessing ("invoking the favor of Almighty God.")

The Constitution provided for a President of the Confederate States of America, elected to serve a six-year term, but without the possibility of re-election. (The only president was Jefferson Davis; the Confederacy was defeated by the Union before he completed his term.) One unique power granted to the Confederate president was his ability to subject a bill to a line item veto, a power held by some state governors. The Confederate Congress could overturn either the general or the line item vetoes with the same two-thirds majorities that are required in the U.S. Congress. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress.

Executive

The original Confederate Cabinet. L-R: Judah P. Benjamin, Stephen Mallory, Christopher Memminger, Alexander Stephens, LeRoy Pope Walker, Jefferson Davis, John H. Reagan and Robert Toombs.

Legislative

Main article: Confederate Congress

As its legislative branch, the Confederate States of America instituted the Confederate Congress. Like the United States Congress, the Confederate Congress consisted of two houses:

1. the Confederate Senate, whose membership included two senators from each state (and chosen by the state legislature)
2. the Confederate House of Representatives, with members popularly elected by properly enfranchised residents of the individual states

Provisional Congress
For the first year, the unicameral Provisional Confederate Congress functioned as the confederacy's legislative branch.

President of the Provisional Congress

• Howell Cobb, Sr. of Georgia - February 4 1861-February 17 1862

Presidents pro tempore of the Provisional Congress

• Robert Woodward Barnwell of South Carolina - February 4 1861
• Thomas Stanhope Bocock of Virginia - December 10-21, 1861 and January 7-8, 1862
• Josiah Abigail Patterson Campbell of Mississippi - December 23-24, 1861 and January 6 1862

Sessions of the Confederate Congress

• Provisional Confederate Congress
• First Confederate Congress
• Second Confederate Congress

Tribal Representatives to Confederate Congress

• Elias Cornelius Boudinot 1862-65 - Cherokee
• Burton Allen Holder 1864-1865 - Chickasaw
• Robert McDonald Jones 1863-65 - Choctaw

Judicial

The constitution outlined a judicial branch of the government, but the ongoing war prevented the creation or seating of the "Supreme Court of the Confederate States"; the state and local courts generally continued to operate as they had been, simply recognizing the CSA as the national government^[54]. Some Confederate district courts were, however, established within some of the individual states of the Confederate States of America; namely, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia (and possibly others). At the end of the war, U.S. district courts resumed jurisdiction^[55].

Supreme court - not established

District Court

• Asa Biggs 1861-1865
• John White Brockenbrough 1861
• Alexander Mosby Clayton 1861
• Jesse J. Finley 1861-1862

Civil liberties

The Confederacy actively used the military to arrest people suspected of loyalty to the United States. Historian Mark Neely found 2,700 names of men arrested and estimated a much larger total. The CSA arrested suspects at about the same rate as the Union arrested Confederate loyalists. Neely concludes:

Capital

Virginia State House
Served as the last Confederate Capitol building.

Montgomery, Alabama served as the capital of the Confederate States of America from February 4 until May 29 1861. Richmond, Virginia, was named the new capital on May 30 1861. Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, planning to relocate farther south. Little came of these plans before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Danville, Virginia, served as the last capital of the Confederate States of America, from April 3 to April 10 1865.

Financial instruments

Both the individual Confederate states and (later) the Confederate government printed Confederate States of America dollars as paper currency, much of it signed by the Treasurer Edward C. Elmore. During the course of the war these severely depreciated in value, eventually becoming worthless. Many bills still exist, although in recent years copies have proliferated.

The Treasury also issued paper bonds in large numbers, and the Post Office produced a considerable number of postage stamps; both stamps and bonds (and especially bond coupons) remain readily available. The philatelic market regards as far more valuable the stamps placed on envelopes that were actually used during the war.

At the time of their secession the states (and later the Confederate government) took over the national mints in their territories: the Charlotte Mint in North Carolina, the Dahlonega Mint in Georgia, and the New Orleans Mint in Louisiana. During 1861 the first two produced small amounts of gold coinage, the latter half dollars. Based on current dies on hand, these issues remain indistinguishable from those minted by the Union.

Also in 1861 plans originated to produce Confederate coins. The New Orleans Mint produced dies and four specimen half dollars, but a lack of bullion prevented any further minting. Under contract a jeweler in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, manufactured a dozen pennies, but did not deliver them for fear of arrest. Over the years copies of both denominations have been made. More details and pictures of the original issues appear in A Guide Book of United States Coins.

International diplomacy

Once the war with the United States began, the Confederacy pinned its hopes for survival on military intervention by Britain and France. The United States realized this as well and made it clear that recognition of the Confederacy meant war with the United States — and the cutoff of food shipments into Britain. The Confederates who had believed that "cotton is king"^[57] — that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton — were proven wrong.^[58] The British instead focused more heavily on cotton and textile produced in India and Russia,^[59] with the French also ramping up production in Algeria.^[59] Notably, in the early years of the war, demand for textiles, and hence cotton, was weak.^[60] In time, the war and Union blockade of the South caused economic hardship in textile-producing areas of England such as Lancashire, which depended heavily on cotton exports from the seceding states;^[61] however, abolitionist sentiment among English workers ran counter to this economic interest in Confederate victory.^[62]

During its existence, while the Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe, historians do not give them high marks for diplomatic skills. James M. Mason went to London as Confederate minister to Queen Victoria, and John Slidell travelled to Paris as minister to Napoleon III. Each succeeded in obtaining private meetings with high British and French officials respectively, but neither secured official recognition for the Confederacy. When Britain and the United States came dangerously close to war during the Trent Affair, where two Confederate agents travelling on a British ship had been illegally seized by the U.S. Navy in late 1861, it seemed possible that the Confederacy would see its much vaunted recognition.^[63] When Lincoln released the two, however, tensions cooled, and in the end the episode was of no help to the Confederacy.^[64]

Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary Lord Russell, Napoleon III, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, were interested in the idea of recognition of the Confederacy, or at least of offering a mediation. Recognition meant certain war with the United States, loss of American grain, loss of exports to the United States, loss of huge investments in American securities, possible war in Canada and other North American colonies, much higher taxes, many lives lost and a severe threat to the entire British merchant marine, in exchange for the possibility of some cotton. Many party leaders and the public wanted no war with such high costs and meager benefits. Recognition was considered following the Second Battle of Bull Run when the British government was preparing to mediate in the conflict, but the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, combined with internal opposition, caused the government to back away.

In November 1863, Confederate diplomat A. Dudley Mann met Pope Pius IX and received a letter addressed "to the Illustrious and Honorable Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America." Mann, in his dispatch to Richmond, interpreted the letter as "a positive recognition of our Government," and some have mistakenly viewed it as a de facto recognition of the C.S.A. Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, however, interpreted it as "a mere inferential recognition, unconnected with political action or the regular establishment of diplomatic relations" and thus did not assign it the weight of formal recognition.^[65] For the remainder of the war, Confederate commissioners continued meeting with Cardinal Antonelli, the Vatican Secretary of State. In 1864, Catholic Bishop Patrick N. Lynch of Charleston traveled to the Vatican with an authorization from Jefferson Davis to represent the Confederacy before the Holy See. That same year, Davis sent Duncan Kenner to France and England with an offer to emancipate Southern slaves in exchange for recognition of the Confederacy from France and Great Britain.^[66] This attempt was unsuccessful.

No country appointed any diplomat officially to the Confederacy, but several maintained their consuls in the South who had been appointed before the war. In 1861, Ernst Raven applied for approval as the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha consul, but he was a citizen of Texas and no evidence exists that officials in Saxe-Coburg and Gotha knew what he was doing. In 1863, the Confederacy expelled all foreign consuls (all of them British or French diplomats) for advising their subjects to refuse to serve in combat against the U.S.

Throughout the war, most European powers adopted a policy of neutrality, meeting informally with Confederate diplomats but withholding diplomatic recognition. None ever sent an ambassador or official delegation to Richmond. However, they applied international law principles that recognized the Union and Confederate sides as belligerents. Canada allowed both Confederate and Union agents to work openly within its borders. In Hamilton, Bermuda a Confederate agent openly worked to help blockade runners. Some state governments in northern Mexico negotiated local agreements to cover trade on the Texas border.

"Died of states' rights"

Historian Frank Lawrence Owsley argued that the Confederacy "died of states' rights."^[67] According to Owsley, strong-willed governors and state legislatures in the South refused to give the national government the soldiers and money it needed because they feared that Richmond was encroaching on the rights of the states. Georgia's governor Joseph Brown warned that he saw the signs of a deep-laid conspiracy on the part of Jefferson Davis to destroy states' rights and individual liberty. Brown declaimed: "Almost every act of usurpation of power, or of bad faith, has been conceived, brought forth and nurtured in secret session." To grant the Confederate government the power to draft soldiers was the "essence of military despotism."^[68] In 1863 governor Pendleton Murrah of Texas insisted that Texas troops were needed for self-defense (against Indians or a threatened Union invasion), and refused to send them East.^[69] Zebulon Vance, the governor of North Carolina was notoriously hostile to Davis and his demands. Opposition to conscription in North Carolina was intense and its results were disastrous for recruiting. Governor Vance's faith in states' rights drove him into a stubborn opposition.^[70]

Vice President Stephens broke publicly with President Davis, saying any accommodation would only weaken the republic, and he therefore had no choice but to break publicly with the Confederate administration and the President. Stephens charged that to allow Davis to make "arbitrary arrests" and to draft state officials conferred on him more power than the English Parliament had ever bestowed on the king. "History proved the dangers of such unchecked authority." He added that Davis intended to suppress the peace meetings in North Carolina and "put a muzzle upon certain presses" (especially the antiwar newspaper Raleigh Standard) in order to control elections in that state. Echoing Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" Stephens warned the Southerners they should never view liberty as "subordinate to independence" because the cry of "independence first and liberty second" was a "fatal delusion." As historian George Rable concludes, "For Stephens, the essence of patriotism, the heart of the Confederate cause, rested on an unyielding commitment to traditional rights. In his idealist vision of politics, military necessity, pragmatism, and compromise meant nothing."^[71]

The survival of the Confederacy depended on a strong base of civilians and soldiers devoted to victory. The soldiers performed well, though increasing numbers deserted in the last year, and the Confederacy never succeeded in replacing casualties as the Union could. The civilians, although enthusiastic in 1861-62 seem to have lost faith in the nation's future by 1864, and instead looked to protect their homes and communities. As Rable explains, "As the Confederacy shrank, citizens' sense of the cause more than ever narrowed to their own states and communities. This contraction of civic vision was more than a crabbed libertarianism; it represented an increasingly widespread disillusionment with the Confederate experiment.^[72]

Relations with the United States

For the four years of its existence, the Confederate States of America asserted its independence and appointed dozens of diplomatic agents abroad. The United States government, by contrast, asserted that the Southern states were states in rebellion and refused any formal recognition of their status. Thus, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward issued formal instructions to Charles Francis Adams, the new minister to Great Britain:

However, if the British seemed inclined to recognize the Confederacy, or even waver in that regard, they would receive a sharp warning, with a strong hint of war:

The Confederate Congress responded to the hostilities by formally declaring war on the United States in May 1861 — calling it "The War between the Confederate States of America and the United States of America."^[75] The Union government never declared war but conducted its war efforts under a proclamation of blockade and rebellion. After the war the states were readmitted to representation in the US Congress. Mid-war negotiations between the two sides occurred without formal political recognition, though the laws of war governed military relationships.

Four years after the war, in 1869, the United States Supreme Court in Texas v. White ruled secession unconstitutional and legally null. The court's opinion was authored by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy, and Alexander Stephens, its former vice-president, both penned arguments in favor of secession's legality, most notably Davis' The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.

Confederate flags

Main article: Flags of the Confederate States of America

1st National Flag "Stars and Bars"	2nd National Flag "Stainless Banner"	3rd National Flag "Blood Stained Banner"	CSA Naval Jack 1861-1863
CSA Naval Jack 1863-1865	Battle Flag "Southern Cross"	Bonnie Blue Flag "Unofficial Southern Flag"

The first official flag of the Confederate States of America, called the "Stars and Bars", had seven stars, representing the seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. This flag was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the Union flag under battle conditions, so the flag was changed to the "Stainless Banner." The union of the Stainless Banner, known as the "Southern Cross", became the one more commonly used in military operations. The Southern Cross had 13 stars, adding the four states that joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, and the two divided states of Kentucky and Missouri. Due to similarities between the "Stainless Banner" and a white flag, a red stripe was appended vertically to the end of the flag, creating the third of the national flags.

Because of its depiction in 20th-century popular media, many people associate the "Southern Cross" flag with the Confederacy today^[update]. The actual "Southern Cross" flag had a square shape, while the Naval Jack (also used by the Army of Tennessee) had a rectangular form but used a lighter shade of blue. Popular media often depict an amalgam, taking the rectangular shape of the Naval Jack and the darker blue of the "Southern Cross" battle flag.

Geography

The Confederate States of America claimed a total of 2,919 miles (4,698 km) of coastline, thus a large part of its territory lay on the seacoast with level and often sandy or marshy ground. Most of the interior portion consisted of arable farmland, though much was also hilly and mountainous, and the far western territories were deserts. The lower reaches of the Mississippi River bisected the country, with the western half often referred to as the Trans-Mississippi. The highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was Guadalupe Peak in Texas at 8,750 feet (2,667 m).

Map of the states and territories claimed by the Confederate States of America.

Climate

Much of the area claimed by the Confederate States of America had a humid subtropical climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. The climate and terrain varied to semi-arid steppe and arid desert west of longitude 96 degrees west. The subtropical climate made winters mild but allowed infectious diseases to flourish. Consequently, disease killed more soldiers than died in combat.^[76]

River system

In peacetime, the vast system of navigable rivers allowed for cheap and easy transportation of farm products. The railroad system was built as a supplement, tying plantation areas to the nearest river or seaport. The vast geography made for difficult Union logistics, and Union soldiers were used to garrison captured areas and protect rail lines. Nevertheless, the Union Navy seized most of the navigable rivers by 1862, making its own logistics easy and Confederate movements difficult. After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, it became impossible for units to cross the Mississippi since Union gunboats constantly patrolled it. The South thus lost use of its western regions.

Railroad system

Main article: Confederate railroads in the American Civil War

The outbreak of war had a depressing effect on the economic fortunes of the Confederate railroad industry. The hoarding of the cotton crop in an attempt to entice European intervention left railroads bereft of their main source of income.^[77] Many were forced to lay off employees, and in particular, let go skilled technicians and engineers.^[77] For the early years of the war, the Confederate government had a hands off approach to the railroads. It wasn't until mid-1863 that the Confederate government initiated an overall policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort.^[78] With the legislation of impressment the same year, rail roads and their rolling stock, came under the defacto control of the military.

In the last year before the end of the war, the Confederate railroad system stood permanently on the verge of collapse. The impressment policy of Quarter-master's ran the rails ragged; feeder lines would be scraped in order to lay down replacement steel for trunk lines, and the continual use of rolling stock wore them down faster than they could be replaced.^[79]

Rural areas

The area claimed by the Confederate States of America consisted overwhelmingly of rural land. Small towns of more than 1,000 were few — the typical county seat had a population of fewer than 500 people. Cities were rare. New Orleans was the only Southern city in the list of the ten largest U.S. cities in the 1860 census, and it was captured by the Union in 1862. Only 13 Confederate cities ranked among the top 100 U.S. cities in 1860, most of them ports whose economic activities were shut down by the Union blockade. The population of Richmond swelled after it became the national capital, reaching an estimated 128,000 in 1864 (Dabney 1990:182). Other large Southern cities (Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, and Washington, as well as Wheeling, West Virginia, and Alexandria, Virginia) were never under the control of the Confederate government.

(See also Atlanta in the Civil War, Charleston, South Carolina, in the Civil War, Nashville in the Civil War, New Orleans in the Civil War, Wilmington, North Carolina, in the American Civil War, and Richmond in the Civil War).

Economy

Main article: Economy of the Confederate States of America

The Confederacy had an agrarian economy with exports, to a world market, of cotton, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco and sugarcane. Local food production included grains, hogs, cattle, and gardens. The 11 states produced $155 million in manufactured goods in 1860, chiefly from local grist mills, and lumber, processed tobacco, cotton goods and naval stores such as turpentine. By the 1830s, the 11 states produced more cotton than all of the other countries in the world combined. The CSA adopted a low tariff of 15 per cent, but imposed it on all imports from other countries, including the Union states^[80]. The tariff mattered little; the Confederacy's ports were blocked to commercial traffic by the Union's blockade, and very few people paid taxes on goods smuggled from the Union states. The government collected about $3.5 million in tariff revenue from the start of their war against the Union to late 1864. The lack of adequate financial resources led the Confederacy to finance the war through printing money, which led to high inflation.

Demographics

The United States Census of 1860^[81] gives a picture of the overall 1860 population of the areas that joined the Confederacy. Note that population-numbers exclude non-assimilated Indian tribes.

(Figures for Virginia include the future West Virginia.)

(Rows may not total to 100% due to rounding.)

In 1860 the areas that later formed the eleven Confederate States (and including the future West Virginia) had 132,760 (1.46%) free blacks. 49.2% of the total population were male and 50.8% were female (whites: 48.60% male, 51.40% female; slaves: 50.15% male, 49.85% female; free blacks: 47.43% male, 52.57% female).^[84]

Armed forces

Navy Jack of the CSA

The military armed forces of the Confederacy comprised three branches:

• Confederate States Army
• Confederate States Navy
• Confederate States Marine Corps

The Confederate military leadership included many veterans from the United States Army and United States Navy who had resigned their Federal commissions and had won appointment to senior positions in the Confederate armed forces. Many had served in the Mexican-American War (including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis), but others had little or no military experience (such as Leonidas Polk, who had attended West Point but did not graduate.) The Confederate officer corps was composed in part of young men from slave-owning families, but many came from non-owners. The Confederacy appointed junior and field grade officers by election from the enlisted ranks. Although no Army service academy was established for the Confederacy, many colleges of the South (such as the The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute) maintained cadet corps that were seen as a training ground for Confederate military leadership. A naval academy was established at Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia^[85] in 1863, but no midshipmen had graduated by the time the Confederacy collapsed.

The soldiers of the Confederate armed forces consisted mainly of white males with an average age between sixteen and twenty-eight. The Confederacy adopted conscription in 1862. Many thousands of slaves served as laborers, cooks, and pioneers. Some freed blacks and men of color served in local state militia units of the Confederacy, primarily in Louisiana and South Carolina, but their officers deployed them for "local defense, not combat."^[86] Depleted by casualties and desertions, the military suffered chronic manpower shortages. In the spring of 1865 the Confederate Congress, influenced by the public support by General Lee, approved the recruitment of black infantry units. Contrary to Lee’s and Davis’ recommendations, the Congress refused “to guarantee the freedom of black volunteers.” No more than two hundred troops were ever raised.^[87]

Military leaders

Military leaders of the Confederacy (with their state or country of birth and highest rank^[88]) included:

General Robert E. Lee, for many, the face of the Confederate army

• Robert E. Lee (Virginia) - General and General-in-Chief (1865)
• Albert Sidney Johnston (Kentucky) - General
• Joseph E. Johnston (Virginia) - General
• Braxton Bragg (North Carolina) - General
• P.G.T. Beauregard (Louisiana) - General
• Richard S. Ewell (Virginia) - Lieutenant General
• Samuel Cooper (New York) - General (Adjutant General and highest ranking general in the Army); not in combat
• James Longstreet (South Carolina) - Lieutenant General
• Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (Virginia now West Virginia)- Lieutenant General
• John Hunt Morgan (Kentucky) - Brigadier General
• A.P. Hill (Virginia) - Lieutenant General
• John Bell Hood (Kentucky) - Lieutenant General
• Wade Hampton III (South Carolina) - Lieutenant General
• Nathan Bedford Forrest (Tennessee) - Lieutenant General
• John Singleton Mosby, the "Grey Ghost of the Confederacy" (Virginia) - Colonel
• J.E.B. Stuart (Virginia) - Major General
• Edward Porter Alexander (Georgia) - Brigadier General
• Franklin Buchanan (Maryland) - Admiral
• Raphael Semmes (Maryland) - Rear Admiral (Brigadier General)
• Josiah Tattnall (Georgia) - Commodore
• Stand Watie (Georgia) - Brigadier General (last to surrender)
• Leonidas Polk (North Carolina) - Lieutenant General
• Sterling Price (Virginia) - Major General
• Jubal Anderson Early (Virginia) - Lieutenant General
• Richard Taylor (Kentucky) - Lieutenant General (Son of U.S. President Zachary Taylor)
• Lloyd J. Beall (South Carolina) - Colonel - Commandant of the Confederate States Marine Corps
• William Lamb (Virginia) - Colonel - Commandant of Fort Fisher
• Stephen Dodson Ramseur (North Carolina) Major General
• Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac (France) Major General
• John Austin Wharton (Tennessee) Major General
• Thomas L. Rosser (Virginia) Major General
• Patrick Cleburne (Ireland) Brigadier General

For more details on this topic, see History of Confederate States Army Generals.

Table of CSA states

State	Flag[89]	Secession ordinance	Admitted C.S.A.	Under predominant Union control	Readmitted to representation in Congress
South Carolina		December 20 1860	February 8 1861	1865	July 9 1868
Mississippi		January 9 1861	February 8 1861	1863	February 23 1870
Florida	(unofficial)	January 10 1861	February 8 1861	1865	June 25 1868
Alabama		January 11 1861	February 8 1861	1865	July 13 1868
Georgia		January 19 1861	February 8 1861	1865	1st Date July 21 1868; 2nd Date July 15 1870
Louisiana		January 26 1861	February 8 1861	1863	July 9 1868
Texas		February 1 1861	March 2 1861	1865	March 30 1870
Virginia		April 17 1861	May 7 1861	1865; (1862/63 for West Virginia)	January 26 1870
Arkansas		May 6 1861	May 18 1861	1864	June 22 1868
North Carolina		May 20 1861	May 21 1861	1865	July 4 1868
Tennessee		June 8 1861	July 2 1861	1863	July 24 1866
Missouri (exiled government)		October 31 1861	November 28 1861	1861	Unionist govt. appointed by Missouri Constitutional Convention 1861
Kentucky (Russellville Convention)		November 20 1861	December 10 1861	1861	Elected Union & unelected rump C.S.A. governments from 1861
Arizona Territory (Mesilla government)		March 16 1861	February 14 1862	1862	Not a state.

See also

• Burr conspiracy
• Triangular Trade
• Golden Circle (Slavery)
• Origins of the American Civil War
• Southern United States
• History of the Southern United States
• Flags of the Confederate States of America
• Seal of the Confederate States of America
• Confederate States of America dollar
• Stamps and postal history of the Confederate States
• Confederados
• Confederate colonies
• Confederate Patent Office
• United States presidential election, 1864
• 38th United States Congress

Notes

References

Bibliography

Economic and social history

see Economy of the Confederate States of America

Politics

Primary sources

External links

• A brief history of American Civil War
• The McGavock Confederate Cemetery at Franklin, TN
• Confederate offices Index of Politicians by Office Held or Sought
• Civil War Research & Discussion Group -*Confederate States of Am. Army and Navy Uniforms, 1861
• The Countryman, 1862-1866, published weekly by Turnwold, Ga., edited by J.A. Turner
• The Federal and the Confederate Constitution Compared
• The Making of the Confederate Constitution, by A. L. Hull, 1905.
• Confederate Currency
• Photographs of the original Confederate Constitution and other Civil War documents owned by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia Libraries.
• Photographic History of the Civil War, 10 vols., 1912.
• DocSouth: Documenting the American South - numerous online text, image, and audio collections.
• Confederate States of America: A Register of Its Records in the Library of Congress

Former Confederate States of America (CSA) Alabama · Arkansas · Florida · Georgia · Louisiana · Mississippi · North Carolina · South Carolina · Tennessee · Texas · Virginia

Cabinet of President Jefferson Davis (1861-1865) Vice President Alexander H. Stephens (1861-1865) Secretary of State Robert Toombs (1861) • Robert M. T. Hunter (1861-1862) • Judah P. Benjamin (1862-1865) Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Memminger (1861-1864) • George A. Trenholm (1864-1865) • John H. Reagan (1865) Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker (1861) • Judah P. Benjamin (1861-1862) • George W. Randolph (1862) • James A. Seddon (1862-1865) • John C. Breckinridge (1865) Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory (1861-1865) Postmaster General John H. Reagan (1861-1865) Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin (1861) • Thomas Bragg (1861-1862) • Thomas H. Watts (1862-1863) • George Davis (1864-1865)

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