Confederate States of America

For other meanings of confederate and confederacy, see confederacy (disambiguation)

Confederate States of America

(Confederate Flag) (Confederate Seal)
National Motto Deo Vindice (Latin: Under God our Vindicator)
Official language	English de facto nationwide Various European and Native American languages regionally
Capital	Montgomery, Alabama February 4, 1861–May 29, 1861 Richmond, Virginia May 29, 1861–April 9, 1865 Danville, Virginia April 3–April 10, 1865
Largest city	New Orleans February 4, 1861 until captured May 1, 1862
President	Jefferson Davis
Area  - Total  - % water	(excl. MO & KY) 1,995,392 km² 5.7%
Population  - 1860 Census  - Density	(excl. MO & KY) 9,103,332 (including 3,521,110 slaves) 4.5/km²
Independence  - Declared  - Recognized    - Surrender	see Civil War February 4, 1861 only by the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha April 9, 1865
Currency	CSA dollar (only notes issued) US dollar
National anthem	God Save the South (Unofficial) Dixie (Popular)

The Confederate States of America (CSA, also known as the Confederacy) was the political entity originally formed on February 4, 1861 by six Southern slave states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana) after confirmation of the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. Jefferson Davis was selected as its first President the next day.

A month later, on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President of the United States. In his inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, that it was a binding contract, and called the secession "legally void". He stated he had no intent to invade southern states, but would use force to maintain possession of federal property. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union. The South, particularly South Carolina, ignored the plea, and on April 12, the South fired upon the Federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina until the troops surrendered. Lincoln called for all of the states in the Union to send troops to recapture the forts and preserve the Union. Most Northerners believed that a quick brutal victory for the Union would crush the nascent rebellion, and so Lincoln only called for volunteers for 90 days. This resulted in four more states voting to secede. Once Virginia seceded, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond, Virginia.

Texas joined early in March and then replaced its governor, Sam Houston, when he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. These seven states seceded¹ from the United States and took control of military/naval installations, ports, and custom houses within their boundaries, triggering the American Civil War. Following the Battle of Fort Sumter four more states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the Confederacy for a total of 11. The governments of Missouri and Kentucky remained in the Union, but rival factions from those two states were also accepted as members of the Confederacy. The number of Confederate states is thus sometimes considered to be 13. For most of its duration the Confederacy was engaged in the Civil War, mostly in defense against attacks by Union forces. However, the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee, also made limited incursions into Union territory.

The five tribal governments of the Indian Territory—which became Oklahoma in 1907—also mainly supported the Confederacy. The Gadsden Purchase became Arizona Territory. These first settlers petitioned the Confederate government for annexation of their lands, prompting an expedition in which territory south of the 34th parallel was governed by the Confederacy. Arizona troops were also officially recognized within the armies of the Confederacy.

Not all jurisdictions where slavery was still legal joined the Confederacy. In 1861 martial law was declared in Maryland (the state which surrounds the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C.) to block attempts at secession. Delaware, also a slave state, never considered secession, nor did the capital of the U.S., Washington, D.C.. In 1863, during the war, a unionist rump legislature in Wheeling, Virginia seceded from Virginia, claiming 48 counties, and joined the United States as the state of West Virginia, with a constitution that would have gradually abolished slavery[1]. Similar attempts to secede from the Confederacy in parts of other states (notably in eastern Tennessee) were held in check by Confederacy declarations of martial law[2][3].

Structure and government

The Confederate States Constitution provides much insight into the motivations for secession from the Union. Based to a certain extent on both the Articles of Confederation and on the United States Constitution, it reflected a stronger philosophy of states' rights, curtailing the power of the central authority, and also contained explicit protection of the institution of slavery, though international slave trading was prohibited. It differed from the US Constitution chiefly by addressing the grievances of the secessionist states against the federal government of the United States. For example, the Confederate government was prohibited from instituting protective tariffs, making southern ports more attractive to international traders. Prior to the declarations of secession, most southerners regarded protective tariffs as a measure that enriched the northern states at the expense of the south. The Confederate government was also prohibited from using revenues collected in one state for funding internal improvements in another state. At the same time, however, much of the Confederate constitution was a word-for-word duplicate of the US one.

At the drafting of the Constitution of the Confederacy, a few radical proposals such as allowing only slave states to join and the reinstatement of the Atlantic slave trade were turned down. The Constitution specifically did not include a provision allowing states to secede, since the southerners considered this to be a right intrinsic to a sovereign state which the United States Constitution had not required them to renounce, and thus including it as such would have weakened their original argument for secession.

The President of the Confederacy was to be elected to a six-year term and could not be reelected. The only president was Jefferson Davis; the Confederacy was defeated by Union forces before he completed his term. One unique power granted to the Confederate president was the 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 US Congress.

Printed currency in the forms of bills and stamps was authorized and put into circulation, although by the individual states in the Confederacy's name. The government considered issuing Confederate coinage. Plans, dies and 4 "proofs" were created, but a lack of bullion prevented any public coinage.

Although the preamble refers to "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character", it also refers to the formation of a "permanent federal government". Also, although slavery was protected in the constitution, it also prohibited the importation of new slaves from outside the Confederacy.

Capital

The capital of the Confederacy was Montgomery, Alabama, from February 4, 1861, until May 29, 1861, when it was moved Richmond, Virginia (named the new capital on May 6, 1861). Shortly before the end of the war the Confederate government evacuated Richmond with plans to relocate further south to Atlanta, Georgia, or to Columbia, South Carolina, but little came of this before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House and Danville, Virginia, served from April 3 to April 10, 1865, as the last capital of the Confederacy.

International Diplomacy and Legal Status

The legal status of the Confederate Government was a subject of extensive debate throughout its existence and for many years after the war. During its existence, the Confederate government conducted negotiations with several European powers (including France and the United Kingdom), and it received material support from Britain. The Confederacy received formal diplomatic recognition only by Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the brother of Prince Albert and brother-in-law to Queen Victoria. The UK came close to recognizing the Confederacy during the Trent Affair and began preparations to offer mediation along with France (due to Emperor Napoleon III's project, the Mexican Empire), but both nations backed away after the Battle of Antietam and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Throughout the war most European powers adopted a policy of neutrality, meeting informally with Confederate diplomats but withholding diplomatic recognition. In its place, they applied international law principles that recognized the Northern and Southern sides of the war as belligerents. Canada allowed both Confederate and Union agents to work openly within its borders and some state governments in northern Mexico negotiated regional agreements to cover trade on the Texas border.

For the four years of its existence, the Confederacy asserted its independence and appointed dozens of diplomatic agents abroad. The Northern government, by contrast, asserted that the southern states were provinces in rebellion and refused any formal recognition of their status. Telling of this dispute, the Confederate Government responded to the hostilities by formally declaring war on the United States while the Union Government conducted its war efforts under a proclamation of blockade and rebellion by President Lincoln. 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 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that secession was unconstitutional and legally null. The court's opinion was rendered by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, the former Treasury Secretary under Lincoln. Chase's opinion was immediately attacked and remains controversial to this day. Critics such as Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens penned subsequent legal arguments in favor of secession's legality, most notably Davis' Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.

Confederate flag

Main article: Confederate flag

Stars and Bars

Southern Cross

The official flag of the Confederacy, and the one actually called the "Stars and Bars", was sometimes hard to distinguish from the Union flag under battle conditions, so the Confederate battle flag, the "Southern Cross", became the one more commonly used in military operations. As a result, the "Southern Cross" is a flag commonly associated with the Confederacy today. The actual "Southern Cross" is a square shaped flag, but the more commonly seen rectangular flag is actually the flag of the First Tennessee Army. The Stars and Bars had seven stars, for the seven states that initially formed the Confederacy; the Southern Cross had 13 stars, adding the four states that joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, and the two states of Kentucky and Missouri (See Missouri Secession) with competing unionist and secessionist governments that were admitted to the Confederacy.

Significant dates

Political leaders of the Confederacy

• Jefferson Davis (Mississippi) - President of the Confederate States
• Alexander Stephens (Georgia) - Vice-President
• Robert Toombs (Georgia) - (1st) Secretary of State
• Leroy Pope Walker (Alabama) - Secretary of War
• George W. Randolph (Virginia) - Brig. General, then Secretary of War (March - November 1862)
• John C. Breckinridge (Kentucky) - Secretary of War, and former V.P. of the U.S. under James Buchanan
• Judah P. Benjamin (Louisiana) - Attorney General, then Secretary of War, then Secretary of State
• Stephen R. Mallory (Florida) - Secretary of the Navy
• Christopher G. Memminger (South Carolina) - Secretary of the Treasury
• John H. Reagan (Texas) - Postmaster General
• John Tyler- Confederate Congressman-elect, and former U.S. President
• Howell Cobb (Georgia) - President of Congress, and former U.S. Speaker of the House
• William L. Yancey (Alabama) - Senator & Commissioner
• Robert Woodward Barnwell - Chairman of Congress (1861)

Armed Forces

The military armed forces of the Confederacy comprised the following three branches:

• Confederate Army
• Confederate Navy
• Confederate Marine Corps

The Confederate military leadership was almost entirely composed of veterans from the United States Army and U.S. Navy who had resigned their federal commissions and had been appointed to senior positions in the Confederate armed forces. The Confederate officer corps was composed mostly of southern gentry, and the Confederacy appointed junior and field grade officers by election from the enlisted ranks. There was no Army or Naval service academy for the Confederate armed forces; however, many colleges of the south (such as the Virginia Military Institute) maintained cadet corps which were seen as a breeding ground for Confederate military leadership.

The rank and file of the Confederate armed forces consisted of white males with an average age between 16 and 28. Towards the end of the Civil War, boys as young as 12 were fighting in combat roles and the Confederate Armed Forces had even sponsored an all black regiment with measures underway to offer freedom to slaves who voluntary served in the Confederate military.

Military leaders of the Confederacy

• Robert E. Lee (Virginia) - General and Military Commander-in-Chief
• Albert Sidney Johnston (Kentucky) - General
• Joseph E. Johnston (Virginia) - General
• Braxton Bragg (North Carolina) - General
• P.G.T. Beauregard (Louisiana) - General
• James Longstreet (South Carolina) - Lt. General
• Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (Virginia) - Lt. General
• A.P. Hill (Virginia) - Lt. General
• John Bell Hood (Texas) - Lt. General
• Wade Hampton (South Carolina) Lt. General
• Nathan Bedford Forrest (Tennessee) - Lt. General
• J.E.B. Stuart (Virginia) - Maj. General
• Edward Porter Alexander (Georgia) - Brig. General
• Franklin Buchanan (Maryland) - Admiral
• Raphael Semmes (Maryland) - Rear Admiral
• French Forrest (Maryland) - Acting Assistant Secretary of the Confederate Navy
• Josiah Tattnall (Georgia) - Commodore
• Stand Watie (Indian Territory, now Oklahoma) - General (last to surrender)
• Leonidas Polk (Tennessee & Louisiana) - Bishop & General
• Jubal Anderson Early (Virginia)- Lt. General

See also

• Flags of the Confederate States of America
• Seal of the Confederate States of America
• Military history of the Confederate States
• Stamps and postal history of the Confederate States
• Origins of the American Civil War
• Border states
• Racism in the Southern United States

Further reading

• William C. Davis (2003). Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-86585-8.

External links

• America's Caesar: The Decline and Fall of Republican Government in the United States of America, 2005, an online book detailing the events which led up to and followed the War Between the States
• The Confederate Reprint Company, offers the largest internet selection of paperback reprints of rare and out-of-print Confederate literature
• An Act to Prohibit the Importation of Luxuries, or of Articles not Necessary or of Common Use, 1864, a Confederate Congress document
• 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.
• Official Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Louisiana, November, 1861
• Photographic History of the Civil War, 10 vols., 1912.
• Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy
• DocSouth: Documenting the American South - numerous online text, image, and audio collections.
• Confederate States of America: Heads of State: 1861-1865