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{{Infobox Former Country|native_name =|conventional_long_name = Confederate States of America|common_name = Confederate States of America|ag|continent = North America|region = South USA|country = USA|era = American Civil War|status = Confederation|status_text =|empire =|government_type = Republic||p1 = United States|flag_p1 = US flag 33 stars.svg|s1 = United States|flag_s1 = US flag 35 stars.svg||event_start = Confederacy formed|date_start = February 4 1861 [1865|date_event1 = [April 12 1861 (until [May 29 1861)Richmond, Virginia (May 29 1861–April 2 1865)Danville, Virginia (from April 3 1865)] (4 February 1861–May 1 1862) (captured)Richmond, Virginia (May1 1862–surrender)]: Under God, Our Vindicator)|national_anthem = (none official)"God Save the South" (unofficial)"The Bonnie Blue Flag" (unofficial)"Dixie (song)" (unofficial)|common_languages = English language (de facto)|religion = Mostly Protestant(only notes issued)|legislature = [Congress of the Confederate States (D)|year_leader1 =|title_leader = President|deputy1 = [Alexander Stephens (D)].Water area:5.7%²Slaves included in above population count. 1860 Census-->The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, and CSA) was the government formed by eleven Southern United States U.S. state of the United States of America between 1861 and 1865.

Seven states declared their independence from the United States before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President of the United States; four more did so after the American Civil War began at the Battle of Fort Sumter. The United States of America ("Union (American Civil War)") held secession illegal and refused recognition of the Confederacy. Although no European powers officially recognized the CSA, British commercial interests sold it warships and operated blockade runners to help supply it.

The CSA effectively collapsed when Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals surrendered their armies in April of 1865. The last meeting of its Cabinet took place in Georgia in May. 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 freedman#United States, expelled ex-Confederate leaders from office, and re-admitted the states to representation in United States Congress.

History Causes for secession Historians phrase the cause of secession as either the threat to restrict or end slavery by the Republicans, or that a restriction on states' rights regarding slave ownership in the territories prompted southern states to withdraw from the Union.

Some southern religious leaders preached the cause of secession. Benjamin M. Palmer (1818-1902), pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, 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" abolitionismThe text of Benjamin Palmer's "Thanksgiving Sermon".. His sermon was widely distributed across the region.

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 upon the great truth that the Black people is not equal to the White people 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"The text of Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech".. Four of the seceding states, the Deep South states of South CarolinaThe text of the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union., MississippiThe text of A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union., GeorgiaThe text of Georgia's secession declaration., and TexasThe text of A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union., 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.

By contrast, C.S. President Jefferson Davis made no explicit reference to slavery in his inaugural address, instead emphasizing states' rights as the reason for secessionThe text of s:Jefferson Davis' Inaugural Address..

C.S. Vice President Alexander Stephens declared that, in the longest portion of the Cornerstone Speech, how this constitution eliminated the tariff and removed the Commerce Clause, taking away congressional power to regulate any aspect of commerce.Stephens believed that the new country would have a clear delineation between Federal and State responsibilities, and took the position similar to that of South Carolina during the nullification crisis that the Federal government should not pay for internal improvements.

Seceding states Seven states seceded by February 1861: After Lincoln called for troops, four more states seceded: Two more states had rival (or rump) governments. The Confederacy admitted them but they never controlled these states and the pro-Confederate state governments were soon in exile: Both states allowed slavery and both had strong Unionist and Confederate counties, including some Unionist slave-owners. The legalities of the matter remain in dispute to the present day.

Rise and fall of the Confederacy The American Civil War broke out in April of 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 their secession. U.S. President Buchanan had attempted to resupply 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, in case of an attack on the fort." In response, the Confederate cabinet decided at a meeting in Montgomery to open fire on Fort Sumter in an attempt to force its surrender 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 Lincoln's proclamation calling for troops from the remaining states (bottom of page); Department of War details to States (top) 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. 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 for a total of 11. Once Virginia joined the Confederate States, the Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. All but two major battles took place in Confederate territory.

Alexander H. Stephens maintained that Lincoln's attempt to resupply Sumter had provoked the war.Alexander H. Stephens A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (1870), Vol. 2, p. 36. 75 MB PDF file "I maintain that it was inaugurated and begun, though no blow had been struck, when the hostile fleet, styled the "Relief Squadron," with eleven ships, carrying two hundred and eighty-five guns and two thousand four hundred men, was sent out from New York and Norfolk, with orders from the authorities at Washington, to reenforce Fort Sumter peaceably, if permitted "but forcibly if they must."

Kentucky was a Border states (Civil War) during the war and, 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 a rival faction from that state was accepted as a member of the Confederate States of America; it did not control any territory. A more complex situation surrounds the Missouri Secession, but, in any event, 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 13; 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. It was represented in the Congress of the Confederate States after 1863 by Elias Cornelius Boudinot representing the Cherokee, and Samuel Benton Callahan representing the Seminole and Creek people.

Citizens at Mesilla, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona in the southern part of New Mexico Territory formed a secession convention and 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 (CSA) 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, New Mexico, they were defeated at Glorietta Pass in March and retreated, never to return.

The northernmost slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) were contested territory, but the Union won control 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, West Virginia seceded from Virginia, claiming 48 counties, and joined the United States in 1863 as the state of West Virginia 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 ""Marx and Engels on the American Civil War", Army of the Cumberland and George H. Thomas source page "Background of the Confederate States Constitution", The American Civil War Home Page.

The surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia by General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, is generally taken 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
President 1861-1865The Confederate States Constitution reveals much about the motivations for secession from the Union. Although much of it was copied verbatim from the United States Constitution, it contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery, though international slave trading was prohibited. It also reflected a stronger philosophy of states' rights, curtailing the power of the central authority: the Confederate government was prohibited from instituting protective tariffs or from using revenues collected in one state for funding internal improvements in another state. In contrast with the largely secular language of the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution overtly asked God's blessing ("invoking the favor of Almighty God.")

The 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". The Southern leaders met in Montgomery, Alabama, to write their constitution.

The President of the Confederate States of America was to be elected to a six-year term, but could not be re-elected. (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 Congress of the United States. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of 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 minting.

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 the full list was much longer. They arrested at about the same rate as the Union arrested Confederate loyalists. Neely concludes:

Capital
Served as the Confederate Capitol buildingThe capital of the Confederate States of America was Montgomery, Alabama, from February 4, 1861, until May 29, 1861. Richmond, Virginia, was named the new capital on May 6, 1861. Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, planning to relocate further south. Little came of these plans before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. Danville, Virginia, served as the last capital of the Confederate States of America, from April 3 to April 10, 1865.

International diplomacy Once the war with the United States began, the best hope for the survival of the Confederacy was military intervention by United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 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 "King Cotton" — that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton — were proven wrong. The war and Union blockade of the South caused Lancashire Cotton famine, which depended heavily on cotton exports from the seceding states International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, UK; however, abolitionist sentiment among English workers ran counter to this economic interest in Confederate victory See text of inscription on the Abraham Lincoln statue in Manchester, UK.

During its existence, the Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe; historians do not give them high marks for diplomatic skills. James M. Mason was sent to London as Confederate minister to Victoria of the United Kingdom, and John Slidell was sent to Paris as minister to Napoleon III of France. Both were able to obtain private meetings with high British and French officials, but they failed to secure diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy. Britain and the United States were at sword's point during the Trent Affair in late 1861. Mason and Slidell had been illegally seized from a British ship by an American warship. Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, helped calm the situation, and Lincoln released Mason and Slidell, so the episode was no help to the Confederacy.

Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary John Russell, 1st Earl Russell and Napoleon III, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount 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 Province of 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 general public wanted no war with such high costs and meager benefits. Recognition was considered following the Second Battle of Manassas 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 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, p. 1015..For the remainder of the war, Confederate commissioners continued meeting with Giacomo Antonelli, the Vatican City 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 England. Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism's description of Kenner's diplomatic mission 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 there is no evidence that Saxe officials 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. British North America allowed both Confederate and Union agents to work openly within its borders, and 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." Frank L. Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy (Chicago, 1925), 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 E. 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." Rable (1994) 257; however Wallace Hettle in The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War (2001) p. 158 says Owsley's "famous thesis...is overstated." 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. John Moretta; "Pendleton Murrah and States Rights in Civil War Texas," Civil War History, Vol. 45, 1999 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. Albert Burton Moore,Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. (1924) p. 295.

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." Rable (1994) 258-9

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. 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. Rable (1994) p 265

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 provinces 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 were to be sharply warned, 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." The Union government never declared war but conducted its war efforts under a proclamation of Union blockade and rebellion. 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 Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Texas v. White that secession was unconstitutional and Void (law). 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 Image:CSA FLAG 4.3.1861-21.5.1861.svg|1st National Flag
"Stars and Bars"Image:Confederate National Flag since Mai 1 1863 to Mar 4 1865.svg|2nd National Flag
"Stainless Banner"Image:Confederate National Flag since Mar 4 1865.svg|3rd National Flag
"Blood Stained Banner"Image:Jack of the CSA Navy 1861 1863.svg| CSA Naval Jack
1861-1863Image:Conf Navy Jack (light blue).svg| CSA Naval Jack
1863-1865Image:Battle flag of the US Confederacy.svg|Battle Flag
"Southern Cross"

The official flag of the Confederate States of America, and the one actually called the "Stars and Bars", has seven stars, for the seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. This flag was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the Flag of the United States#Historical star patterns under battle conditions, so the Confederate battle flag, the "Southern Cross", became the one more commonly used in military operations. The Southern Cross has 13 stars, adding the four states that joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, and the two divided states of Kentucky and Missouri.

As a result of its depiction in 20th century popular media, 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, also known as the Naval Jack because it was first used by the Confederate Navy.

Political leaders Executive . L-R: Judah P. Benjamin, Stephen Mallory, Christopher Memminger, Alexander Stephens, LeRoy Pope Walker, Jefferson Davis, John Henninger Reagan and Robert Toombs.{]||align="left" |Jefferson Davis]||align="left" |Alexander Stephens]||align="left"|Robert Toombs]||align="left"|1861-1862|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|Judah P. Benjamin]||align="left"|Christopher Memminger]||align="left"|1864-1865|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|John H. Reagan]||align="left"|Leroy Pope Walker]||align="left"|1861-1862|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|George W. Randolph]||align="left"|1862-1865|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|John C. Breckinridge]||align="left"|Stephen Mallory]||align="left"|John H. Reagan]||align="left"|Judah P. Benjamin]||align="left"|1861-1862|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|Thomas H. Watts]||align="left"|1864-1865|-|}


Legislative The legislative branch of the Confederate States of America was the Confederate Congress. Like the United States Congress, the Confederate Congress consisted of two houses: the Confederate Senate, whose membership included two senators from each state (and chosen by the state legislature), and the Confederate House of Representatives, with members popularly elected by residents of the individual states.

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

President of the Provisional Congress

Presidents pro tempore of the Provisional Congress

Sessions of the Confederate Congress

Tribal Representatives to Confederate Congress

Judicial A Judicial branch of the government was outlined in the constitution, but the "Supreme Court of the Confederate States" was never created or seated because of the ongoing war; the state and local courts generally continued to operate as they had been, simply recognizing the CSA, rather than the U.S., as the national government "Legal Materials on the Confederate States of America in the Schaffer Law Library", Albany Law School.. 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 Records of District Courts of the United States, National Archives..

Supreme court - not established

District Court

Geography The Confederate States of America claimed a total of 2,919 miles (4,698 km) of coastline. A large part of this territory lay on the sea coast with level and sandy ground. The interior portions were 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 Theater of the American Civil War. The highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was Guadalupe Peak in Texas at 8,750 feet (2,667 m).

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 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 did U.S. military action.

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. But the Union Navy seized most of the navigable rivers by 1862, making its own logistics easy and Confederate movements difficult. After the Battle 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.

Rural areas The area claimed by the Confederate States of America was overwhelmingly rural. Small towns of more than 1,000 were few — the typical county seat had a population of less than 500 people. Cities were rare. New Orleans was the only Southern city in the list of top 10 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, Maryland, St. Louis, Missouri, Louisville, Kentucky, and Washington, as well as Wheeling, West Virginia, West Virginia, and Alexandria, Virginia, Virginia) were never under the control of the Confederate government.

{]| Return to U.S. control|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 1.| New Orleans, Louisiana, Louisiana, [South Carolina, [Virginia, [Alabama, [Tennessee, [Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,292| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 41| 1864|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 7.| Petersburg, Virginia, Virginia, [Tennessee, [Virginia, [Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 12,493| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 77| 1865|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 11.| Columbus, Georgia, Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,621| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 97| 1865|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 12.| Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,554| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 99| 1864|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 13.| Wilmington, North Carolina, North Carolina, [Charleston, SC in the Civil War, Nashville in the Civil War, New Orleans in the Civil War, and Richmond in the Civil War).

Economy 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. The CSA adopted a low tariff of 15 per cent, but imposed it on all imports from the rest of the United States Tariff of the Confederate States of America, May 21, 1861.. 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.

Armed forces The military armed forces of the Confederacy were composed of three branches:

The Confederate military leadership included many veterans from the United States Army and United States Navy who had resigned their Federal commissions and had been appointed 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 United States Military Academy 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 (military college) and Virginia Military Institute) maintained cadet corps that were seen as a training ground for Confederate military leadership. A naval academy was established in 1863, but no midshipmen had graduated by the time the Confederacy collapsed.

The rank and file of the Confederate armed forces consisted of white males with an average age between 16 and 28. Many thousands of slaves served as laborers, cooks, pioneers and in other non-combat roles. The Confederacy adopted conscription in 1862. Depleted by casualties, the military suffered chronic manpower shortages. After agitation from the Army, and at the demand of General Lee, slaves were enrolled in new combat units in the spring of 1865, with the promise of emancipation; they were in training when the war ended and did not serve in actual combat. Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (1995)

Military leaders Military leaders of the Confederacy (with their state of birth and highest rankEicher, Civil War High Commands) included:



Table of CSA States {| class="wikitable"|- style="background: #efefef; vertical-align: top;"! State! Flag! Secession ordinance! Admitted C.S.A.! Under predominant
Union control! Readmitted to the Union|-| style="text-align:left;" | South Carolina, [1860, [1861, [1868|align="center"|| [January 9, 1861| {{Infobox Former Country|native_name =|conventional_long_name = Confederate States of America|common_name = Confederate States of America|ag|continent = North America|region = South USA|country = USA|era = American Civil War|status = Confederation|status_text =|empire =|government_type = Republic||p1 = United States|flag_p1 = US flag 33 stars.svg|s1 = United States|flag_s1 = US flag 35 stars.svg||event_start = Confederacy formed|date_start = February 4 1861 [1865|date_event1 = [April 12 1861 (until [May 29 1861)Richmond, Virginia (May 29 1861–April 2 1865)Danville, Virginia (from April 3 1865)] (4 February 1861–May 1 1862) (captured)Richmond, Virginia (May1 1862–surrender)]: Under God, Our Vindicator)|national_anthem = (none official)"God Save the South" (unofficial)"The Bonnie Blue Flag" (unofficial)"Dixie (song)" (unofficial)|common_languages = English language (de facto)|religion = Mostly Protestant(only notes issued)|legislature = [Congress of the Confederate States (D)|year_leader1 =|title_leader = President|deputy1 = [Alexander Stephens (D)].Water area:5.7%²Slaves included in above population count. 1860 Census-->The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, and CSA) was the government formed by eleven Southern United States U.S. state of the United States of America between 1861 and 1865.

Seven states declared their independence from the United States before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President of the United States; four more did so after the American Civil War began at the Battle of Fort Sumter. The United States of America ("Union (American Civil War)") held secession illegal and refused recognition of the Confederacy. Although no European powers officially recognized the CSA, British commercial interests sold it warships and operated blockade runners to help supply it.

The CSA effectively collapsed when Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals surrendered their armies in April of 1865. The last meeting of its Cabinet took place in Georgia in May. 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 freedman#United States, expelled ex-Confederate leaders from office, and re-admitted the states to representation in United States Congress.

History Causes for secession Historians phrase the cause of secession as either the threat to restrict or end slavery by the Republicans, or that a restriction on states' rights regarding slave ownership in the territories prompted southern states to withdraw from the Union.

Some southern religious leaders preached the cause of secession. Benjamin M. Palmer (1818-1902), pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, 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" abolitionismThe text of Benjamin Palmer's "Thanksgiving Sermon".. His sermon was widely distributed across the region.

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 upon the great truth that the Black people is not equal to the White people 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"The text of Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech".. Four of the seceding states, the Deep South states of South CarolinaThe text of the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union., MississippiThe text of A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union., GeorgiaThe text of Georgia's secession declaration., and TexasThe text of A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union., 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.

By contrast, C.S. President Jefferson Davis made no explicit reference to slavery in his inaugural address, instead emphasizing states' rights as the reason for secessionThe text of s:Jefferson Davis' Inaugural Address..

C.S. Vice President Alexander Stephens declared that, in the longest portion of the Cornerstone Speech, how this constitution eliminated the tariff and removed the Commerce Clause, taking away congressional power to regulate any aspect of commerce.Stephens believed that the new country would have a clear delineation between Federal and State responsibilities, and took the position similar to that of South Carolina during the nullification crisis that the Federal government should not pay for internal improvements.

Seceding states Seven states seceded by February 1861: After Lincoln called for troops, four more states seceded: Two more states had rival (or rump) governments. The Confederacy admitted them but they never controlled these states and the pro-Confederate state governments were soon in exile: Both states allowed slavery and both had strong Unionist and Confederate counties, including some Unionist slave-owners. The legalities of the matter remain in dispute to the present day.

Rise and fall of the Confederacy The American Civil War broke out in April of 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 their secession. U.S. President Buchanan had attempted to resupply 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, in case of an attack on the fort." In response, the Confederate cabinet decided at a meeting in Montgomery to open fire on Fort Sumter in an attempt to force its surrender 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 Lincoln's proclamation calling for troops from the remaining states (bottom of page); Department of War details to States (top) 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. 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 for a total of 11. Once Virginia joined the Confederate States, the Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. All but two major battles took place in Confederate territory.

Alexander H. Stephens maintained that Lincoln's attempt to resupply Sumter had provoked the war.Alexander H. Stephens A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (1870), Vol. 2, p. 36. 75 MB PDF file "I maintain that it was inaugurated and begun, though no blow had been struck, when the hostile fleet, styled the "Relief Squadron," with eleven ships, carrying two hundred and eighty-five guns and two thousand four hundred men, was sent out from New York and Norfolk, with orders from the authorities at Washington, to reenforce Fort Sumter peaceably, if permitted "but forcibly if they must."

Kentucky was a Border states (Civil War) during the war and, 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 a rival faction from that state was accepted as a member of the Confederate States of America; it did not control any territory. A more complex situation surrounds the Missouri Secession, but, in any event, 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 13; 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. It was represented in the Congress of the Confederate States after 1863 by Elias Cornelius Boudinot representing the Cherokee, and Samuel Benton Callahan representing the Seminole and Creek people.

Citizens at Mesilla, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona in the southern part of New Mexico Territory formed a secession convention and 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 (CSA) 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, New Mexico, they were defeated at Glorietta Pass in March and retreated, never to return.

The northernmost slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) were contested territory, but the Union won control 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, West Virginia seceded from Virginia, claiming 48 counties, and joined the United States in 1863 as the state of West Virginia 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 ""Marx and Engels on the American Civil War", Army of the Cumberland and George H. Thomas source page "Background of the Confederate States Constitution", The American Civil War Home Page.

The surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia by General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, is generally taken 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
President 1861-1865The Confederate States Constitution reveals much about the motivations for secession from the Union. Although much of it was copied verbatim from the United States Constitution, it contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery, though international slave trading was prohibited. It also reflected a stronger philosophy of states' rights, curtailing the power of the central authority: the Confederate government was prohibited from instituting protective tariffs or from using revenues collected in one state for funding internal improvements in another state. In contrast with the largely secular language of the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution overtly asked God's blessing ("invoking the favor of Almighty God.")

The 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". The Southern leaders met in Montgomery, Alabama, to write their constitution.

The President of the Confederate States of America was to be elected to a six-year term, but could not be re-elected. (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 Congress of the United States. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of 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 minting.

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 the full list was much longer. They arrested at about the same rate as the Union arrested Confederate loyalists. Neely concludes:

Capital
Served as the Confederate Capitol buildingThe capital of the Confederate States of America was Montgomery, Alabama, from February 4, 1861, until May 29, 1861. Richmond, Virginia, was named the new capital on May 6, 1861. Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, planning to relocate further south. Little came of these plans before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. Danville, Virginia, served as the last capital of the Confederate States of America, from April 3 to April 10, 1865.

International diplomacy Once the war with the United States began, the best hope for the survival of the Confederacy was military intervention by United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 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 "King Cotton" — that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton — were proven wrong. The war and Union blockade of the South caused Lancashire Cotton famine, which depended heavily on cotton exports from the seceding states International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, UK; however, abolitionist sentiment among English workers ran counter to this economic interest in Confederate victory See text of inscription on the Abraham Lincoln statue in Manchester, UK.

During its existence, the Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe; historians do not give them high marks for diplomatic skills. James M. Mason was sent to London as Confederate minister to Victoria of the United Kingdom, and John Slidell was sent to Paris as minister to Napoleon III of France. Both were able to obtain private meetings with high British and French officials, but they failed to secure diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy. Britain and the United States were at sword's point during the Trent Affair in late 1861. Mason and Slidell had been illegally seized from a British ship by an American warship. Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, helped calm the situation, and Lincoln released Mason and Slidell, so the episode was no help to the Confederacy.

Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary John Russell, 1st Earl Russell and Napoleon III, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount 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 Province of 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 general public wanted no war with such high costs and meager benefits. Recognition was considered following the Second Battle of Manassas 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 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, p. 1015..For the remainder of the war, Confederate commissioners continued meeting with Giacomo Antonelli, the Vatican City 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 England. Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism's description of Kenner's diplomatic mission 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 there is no evidence that Saxe officials 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. British North America allowed both Confederate and Union agents to work openly within its borders, and 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." Frank L. Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy (Chicago, 1925), 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 E. 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." Rable (1994) 257; however Wallace Hettle in The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War (2001) p. 158 says Owsley's "famous thesis...is overstated." 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. John Moretta; "Pendleton Murrah and States Rights in Civil War Texas," Civil War History, Vol. 45, 1999 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. Albert Burton Moore,Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. (1924) p. 295.

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." Rable (1994) 258-9

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. 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. Rable (1994) p 265

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 provinces 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 were to be sharply warned, 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." The Union government never declared war but conducted its war efforts under a proclamation of Union blockade and rebellion. 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 Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Texas v. White that secession was unconstitutional and Void (law). 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 Image:CSA FLAG 4.3.1861-21.5.1861.svg|1st National Flag
"Stars and Bars"Image:Confederate National Flag since Mai 1 1863 to Mar 4 1865.svg|2nd National Flag
"Stainless Banner"Image:Confederate National Flag since Mar 4 1865.svg|3rd National Flag
"Blood Stained Banner"Image:Jack of the CSA Navy 1861 1863.svg| CSA Naval Jack
1861-1863Image:Conf Navy Jack (light blue).svg| CSA Naval Jack
1863-1865Image:Battle flag of the US Confederacy.svg|Battle Flag
"Southern Cross"

The official flag of the Confederate States of America, and the one actually called the "Stars and Bars", has seven stars, for the seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. This flag was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the Flag of the United States#Historical star patterns under battle conditions, so the Confederate battle flag, the "Southern Cross", became the one more commonly used in military operations. The Southern Cross has 13 stars, adding the four states that joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, and the two divided states of Kentucky and Missouri.

As a result of its depiction in 20th century popular media, 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, also known as the Naval Jack because it was first used by the Confederate Navy.

Political leaders Executive . L-R: Judah P. Benjamin, Stephen Mallory, Christopher Memminger, Alexander Stephens, LeRoy Pope Walker, Jefferson Davis, John Henninger Reagan and Robert Toombs.{]||align="left" |Jefferson Davis]||align="left" |Alexander Stephens]||align="left"|Robert Toombs]||align="left"|1861-1862|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|Judah P. Benjamin]||align="left"|Christopher Memminger]||align="left"|1864-1865|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|John H. Reagan]||align="left"|Leroy Pope Walker]||align="left"|1861-1862|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|George W. Randolph]||align="left"|1862-1865|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|John C. Breckinridge]||align="left"|Stephen Mallory]||align="left"|John H. Reagan]||align="left"|Judah P. Benjamin]||align="left"|1861-1862|-|align="left"| ||align="left"|Thomas H. Watts]||align="left"|1864-1865|-|}


Legislative The legislative branch of the Confederate States of America was the Confederate Congress. Like the United States Congress, the Confederate Congress consisted of two houses: the Confederate Senate, whose membership included two senators from each state (and chosen by the state legislature), and the Confederate House of Representatives, with members popularly elected by residents of the individual states.

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

President of the Provisional Congress

Presidents pro tempore of the Provisional Congress

Sessions of the Confederate Congress

Tribal Representatives to Confederate Congress

Judicial A Judicial branch of the government was outlined in the constitution, but the "Supreme Court of the Confederate States" was never created or seated because of the ongoing war; the state and local courts generally continued to operate as they had been, simply recognizing the CSA, rather than the U.S., as the national government "Legal Materials on the Confederate States of America in the Schaffer Law Library", Albany Law School.. 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 Records of District Courts of the United States, National Archives..

Supreme court - not established

District Court

Geography The Confederate States of America claimed a total of 2,919 miles (4,698 km) of coastline. A large part of this territory lay on the sea coast with level and sandy ground. The interior portions were 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 Theater of the American Civil War. The highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was Guadalupe Peak in Texas at 8,750 feet (2,667 m).

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 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 did U.S. military action.

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. But the Union Navy seized most of the navigable rivers by 1862, making its own logistics easy and Confederate movements difficult. After the Battle 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.

Rural areas The area claimed by the Confederate States of America was overwhelmingly rural. Small towns of more than 1,000 were few — the typical county seat had a population of less than 500 people. Cities were rare. New Orleans was the only Southern city in the list of top 10 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, Maryland, St. Louis, Missouri, Louisville, Kentucky, and Washington, as well as Wheeling, West Virginia, West Virginia, and Alexandria, Virginia, Virginia) were never under the control of the Confederate government.

{]| Return to U.S. control|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 1.| New Orleans, Louisiana, Louisiana, [South Carolina, [Virginia, [Alabama, [Tennessee, [Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,292| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 41| 1864|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 7.| Petersburg, Virginia, Virginia, [Tennessee, [Virginia, [Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 12,493| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 77| 1865|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 11.| Columbus, Georgia, Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,621| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 97| 1865|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 12.| Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia (U.S. state)| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,554| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 99| 1864|-| style="background: #efefef;" | 13.| Wilmington, North Carolina, North Carolina, [Charleston, SC in the Civil War, Nashville in the Civil War, New Orleans in the Civil War, and Richmond in the Civil War).

Economy 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. The CSA adopted a low tariff of 15 per cent, but imposed it on all imports from the rest of the United States Tariff of the Confederate States of America, May 21, 1861.. 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.

Armed forces The military armed forces of the Confederacy were composed of three branches:

The Confederate military leadership included many veterans from the United States Army and United States Navy who had resigned their Federal commissions and had been appointed 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 United States Military Academy 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 (military college) and Virginia Military Institute) maintained cadet corps that were seen as a training ground for Confederate military leadership. A naval academy was established in 1863, but no midshipmen had graduated by the time the Confederacy collapsed.

The rank and file of the Confederate armed forces consisted of white males with an average age between 16 and 28. Many thousands of slaves served as laborers, cooks, pioneers and in other non-combat roles. The Confederacy adopted conscription in 1862. Depleted by casualties, the military suffered chronic manpower shortages. After agitation from the Army, and at the demand of General Lee, slaves were enrolled in new combat units in the spring of 1865, with the promise of emancipation; they were in training when the war ended and did not serve in actual combat. Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (1995)

Military leaders Military leaders of the Confederacy (with their state of birth and highest rankEicher, Civil War High Commands) included:



Table of CSA States {| class="wikitable"|- style="background: #efefef; vertical-align: top;"! State! Flag! Secession ordinance! Admitted C.S.A.! Under predominant
Union control! Readmitted to the Union|-| style="text-align:left;" | South Carolina, [1860, [1861, [1868|align="center"|| [January 9, 1861|

Confederate States of America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, and CSA) was the government formed by eleven southern states of the United States of America ...

Confederate States of America *Main* CSAgov.org - Offical Govnerment ...
This is the main page for the Government of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to Present, here you will find information on the Independence of the Confederate States and ...

The Confederate States of America
Provides details of the Confederacy from its beginning in 1861 to its end in 1865.

Confederate States of America
A New Birth of Freedom Greetings! What is the purpose of our cause it was recently ask of me and for what do you struggle? "There are some undeniable truths; that those who stand ...

The Avalon Project : Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America Government Documents during the initial four-month period from December 24, 1860 to April 29, 1861.

Amazon.com: CSA: The Confederate States of America: Charles Frank ...
Amazon.com: CSA: The Confederate States of America: Charles Frank, Evamarii Johnson, Rupert Pate, Larry Peterson, Matt Jacobson, Kelly Werts, Kevin Willmott, Sean Blake, David ...

Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America . . . Just what you were looking for! Welcome to the Confederacy History Site

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004)
Plot: Through the eyes of a british "documentary", this film takes a satirically humorous, and sometimes frightening, look at the history of an America where the South won the ...

The Confederate States of America — Infoplease.com
State Seceded from Union Readmitted to Union 1; 1. South Carolina : Dec. 20, 1860 : July 9, 1868: 2. Mississippi : Jan. 9, 1861 : Feb. 23, 1870: 3. Florida : Jan. 10, 1861 : June ...

C.S.A. The Movie Website
CSA: The Movie was created by director Kevin Willmott. The movie provides an answer to the question, 'What if the south won?' csathemovie.com was designed by nHouse Studios ...

 

Confederate States Of America



 
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