Difference between revisions of "Confederate States of America"

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{| border="1" align="right" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="250" style="margin-left:5px"
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{{Country
|align="center" colspan="2"|[[Image:Cwlogo.png|200px]]
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|name          =Confederate States of America
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|map         =
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|map2          =
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|established    =February 4, 1861
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|dissolved      =May 10, 1865
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|flag         =CSAnational3.png
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|arms         =ConfederateStatesofAmericaSeal.jpg
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|capital =Richmond, Virginia
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|capital-raw =
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|government =Republic
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|government-raw =
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|language =
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|king         =
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|queen         =
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|monarch-raw =
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|governor general=
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|governor general-raw=
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|president =Jefferson Davis
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|president-raw =
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|chancellor =
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|chancellor-raw =
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|pm         =
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|pm-raw         =
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|chairman      =
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|general secretary=
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|governor      =
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|governor-raw  =
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|premier        =
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|premier-raw    =
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|area         =770,425 sq mi
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|pop         =9,103,332
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|pop-basis =1860
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|gdp         =
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|gdp-year =
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|gdp-pc         =
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|currency =Confederate dollar
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|idd =
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|tld            =
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}}
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The '''Confederate States of America''' (informally, the ''Confederacy'') was a government created from an alliance of eleven southern states which had seceded from the [[United States]] between December 1860 and April 1861.  The [[American Civil War]] that was begun by the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter proved disastrous; four years of savage fighting ended with the fledgling government defeated and dissolved, and left the southern states a financial and industrial wreck.  The main reason for secession was to preserve slavery—but all the slaves were emancipated with no compensation to the owners. After the war, the states were later readmitted during [[Reconstruction]].
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For the social, political, economic and diplomatic history see [[American Civil War homefront]]
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 +
==Beginnings==
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Seven southern states seceded from the [[United States of America]] over the winter of 1860-61 and joined together as the "Confederate States of America" to protect their sovereignty and economic status.  They saw that the antislavery forces in the North were gaining strength, typified by the election as president of [[Abraham Lincoln]] in 1860. The political future for slavery and for Southern commerce was bleak, as the South was losing relative strength in Congress.  Arguing that their Constitutional [[states' rights]] protected the extension of slavery into America's western territories, they saw that issue rejected in the North. The Union government rejected the claims that a state had a right to secede.
 +
 
 +
When fighting began in April Lincoln called on all states to send troops; at this point four more states broke away and joined the Confederacy, Virginia, North Cariolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.
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 +
Of the 15 slave states, four remained in the United States: [[Delaware]], [[Kentucky]], [[Maryland]] and [[Missouri]].  Residents of the latter three states raised [[regiment]]s for the Confederacy, although not as an official act of their governments.  In addition, Kentucky and Missouri saw the establishment of Confederate legislatures within their borders which sent delegates to the Confederate Congress. [[West Virginia]] broke away from Virginia during the war and joined the Union as a state.
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The president of the Confederate States of America was [[Jefferson Davis]], a former [[Secretary of War]] under President [[Franklin Pierce]] and Senator from [[Mississippi]].  [[Richmond, Virginia]] became the capital of the Confederacy after that state seceded. It was a poor choice for a war capital because it was hard to supply and hard to defend.
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Starting in 1862 General [[Robert E. Lee]] led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia against the Union armies, which were led by various generals appointed by [[Abraham Lincoln]], with the last, and most successful being General [[Ulysses S. Grant]].  Lee proved a tenacious defender of Richmond, which had an exposed position and a long, difficult supply line.  Grant wore down Lee's army, which was unable to replace its casualties, supplies, and desertions.
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 +
==Geography==
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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 referred to as the Trans-Mississippi.
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 +
===Climate===
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Much of the area claimed by the CSA 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 enemy action.
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===River system===
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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 fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, it became impossible for units of any size to cross the Mississippi since Union gunboats constantly patrolled it. The South thus lost use of its western regions.
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===Rural areas===
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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 such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, and Washington, as well as Wheeling, West Virginia, and Alexandria, Virginia (both located in territory that had officially seceded), were never under the control of the Confederate government.
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{{clear}}
 +
{| class="wikitable" align="center"
 +
|- style="background: #efefef;"
 +
! # !! City !! 1860 Population !! [[List of United States metropolitan statistical areas by population|US Rank]]
 +
| return to USA control
 
|-
 
|-
!colspan="2" align="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: gray  no-repeat scroll top left;"|The Civil War
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 1.
1861 - 1865
+
| [[New Orleans]], Louisiana
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 168,675
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 6
 +
| 1862
 
|-
 
|-
!colspan="2" align="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: gray  no-repeat scroll top left;"|Confederate States of America
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 2.
 +
| [[Charleston]], South Carolina
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 40,522
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22
 +
| 1865
 
|-
 
|-
|Created
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 3.
|February 4, 1861
+
| [[Richmond, Virginia]]
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 37,910
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 25
 +
| 1865
 
|-
 
|-
|Ended
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 4.
|April 9, 1865
+
| [[Mobile]], Alabama
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 29,258
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 27
 +
| 1865
 
|-
 
|-
|President
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 5.
|[[Jefferson Davis]]
+
| [[Memphis]], Tennessee
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,623
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 38
 +
| 1862
 
|-
 
|-
|Secretary of War
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 6.
|Leroy Pope Walker, Judah P. Benjamin, George W. Randolph, James Seddon, John C. Breckinridge
+
| [[Savannah]], Georgia
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,292
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 41
 +
| 1864
 
|-
 
|-
|Secretary of the Navy
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 7.
|Stephan Mallory
+
| [[Petersburg]], Virginia
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 18,266
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 50
 +
| 1865
 
|-
 
|-
|Secretary of State
+
| style="background: #efefef;" | 8.
|Robert Toombs, Robert M.T. Hunter, Judah P. Benjamin
+
| [[Nashville]], Tennessee
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 16,988
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 54
 +
| 1862
 +
|-
 +
| style="background: #efefef;" | 9.
 +
| [[Norfolk]], Virginia
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 14,620
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 61
 +
| 1862
 +
|-
 +
| style="background: #efefef;" | 10.
 +
| [[Augusta]], Georgia
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 12,493
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 77
 +
| 1865
 +
|-
 +
| style="background: #efefef;" | 11.
 +
| [[Columbus]], Georgia
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,621
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 97
 +
| 1865
 +
|-
 +
| style="background: #efefef;" | 12.
 +
| [[Atlanta]], Georgia
 +
| 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
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,553
 +
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 100
 +
| 1865
 
|}
 
|}
The '''Confederate States of America''' (informally, the ''Confederacy'') was a government created from an alliance of eleven southern states which had seceeded from the [[United States]] between December 1860 and April 1861.  The [[American Civil War]] that was begun by the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter proved disasterous; four years of savage fighting ended with the fledgling government defeated and dissolved, and left the southern states a financial and industrial wreck.
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{{-}}
 
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==Beginnings==
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The various southern states seceded from the [[United States of America]], and joined together as the "Confederate States of America" for a number of reasons, including a Northern state favored balance of power in Congress, Free Trade, and, after Lincoln's triumph in the [[1860 Presidential election]], the threat of [[abolitionism|abolitionists]] to end [[slavery]], which Southerners viewed as a matter of [[states' rights]] that should not be enforced at the federal level, rather than as a moral issue. It can be argued that the issue of slavery was only the flash point for the conflict, and that resentment in the South about the more centralised federal government that undermined [[states' rights]] to uphold [[slavery]].
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Only four states where slavery was legal at that time failed to secede -- [[Delaware]], [[Kentucky]], [[Maryland]] and [[Missouri]].  It was a near thing in the latter three states, which all wound up raising [[regiment]]s for the Confederacy as well as the [[Union]], although not as an official act of their governments.
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The president of the Confederate States of America was [[Jefferson Davis]], a former [[Secretary of War]] under [[President]] [[Franklin Pierce]] and later [[Senator]] from [[Mississippi]].  [[Richmond, Virginia]] was the capital of the Confederacy after that state seceded in mid-April of 1861 following the surrender of [[Fort Sumter]] and [[Lincoln's call for volunteers]], and one day before the [[Pratt Street riot]] in [[Baltimore, Maryland]], the first battle of the Civil War to kill Americans on both sides. 
+
  
General [[Robert E. Lee]] led the Confederate forces into battle against the Union armies, led by various generals appointed by [[Abraham Lincoln]], with the last, and most successful being General Ulysses S. Grant.  
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==Economy==
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Before the war the states that formed the Confederacy had an agrarian economy with exports, to a world market, of cotton, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco and sugar.  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%, but imposed it on all imports from the rest of the United States—thus making one of the greatest tax increases in American history.<ref>[http://docsouth.unc.edu/tariff/tariff.html See]</ref> 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.
  
 
== Ideology ==
 
== Ideology ==
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Historian Emory Thomas compared the correspondence sent by the Confederate government in the first year of its existence to different governments.  He writes, "The Southern nation was by turns a guileless people attacked by a voracious neighbor, an 'established' nation in some temporary difficulty, a collection of bucolic aristocrats making a romantic stand against the banalities of industrial democracy, a cabal of commercial farmers seeking to make a pawn of [[King Cotton]], an apotheosis of nineteenth-century nationalism and revolutionary liberalism, or the ultimate statement of social and economic reaction." <ref>Emory M. Thomas, ''The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865'' (1979), pp. 83-84.</ref>
  
Professor [[Emory Thomas]] of [[Virginia]] found it instructive to compare the correspondence sent by the Confederate government in the first year of its existence to different governmentsHe writes, "The Southern nation was by turns a guileless people attacked by a voracious neighbor, an 'established' nation in some temporary difficulty, a collection of bucolic [[aristocrats]] making a romantic stand against the banalities of [[industry|industrial]] [[democracy]], a [[cabal]] of commercial farmers seeking to make a pawn of [[King Cotton]], an [[apotheosis]] of nineteenth-century [[nationalism]] and revolutionary [[liberalism]], or the ultimate statement of social and economic [[reaction]]." <ref> [Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865.  New York: Harper & Row, 1979, pp. 83-84.] </ref> Certainly some of the leaders of the Confederacy could be found to believe in any one of these incarnations of their country, but probably none to believe in all at onceThe aspect of resistance to [[industrialization]] has most captured the imagination of future generations of Southerners.
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The example of the [[U. S. Constitution]] clearly guided the drafters of the [[Full Text of the Confederate States Constitution|Confederate Constitution]], enabling the latter group to complete their work in less than half as much time.<ref>Thomas, p. 63.</ref> However, this Confederate Constitution contained a provision banning efforts to end de jure slavery, found at Article I, Section 9, clause 4, lumped in with the provisions banning [[ex post facto laws]] and [[bills of attainder]]Another clause banned the international [[slave trade]], but permitted the importation of slaves from the United States; this clause was consistent with the United States' banning of Atlantic slave trading in 1808, which had the effect of improving the domestic slave market, benefiting states such as [[Virginia]].  The wording of this clause demonstrates that the drafters clearly anticipated that not all slave states would secede, although they also included a provision for accepting new states into the Confederacy. This proved essential when [[Virginia]], [[Arkansas]], [[Tennessee]] and [[North Carolina]] seceded from the United States after the Confederate Constitution was in effect.  Although the Confederate document includes no [[bill of rights]], the [[Ninth Amendment]] and [[Tenth Amendment]] of the U.S. Bill of Rights are reproduced in Article VI as Sections 5 and 6.  The Confederate Constitution implemented a ban on a [[religious test for office]] in Section 4, notwithstanding the preamble's invocation of God's blessing on the Confederate experiment.<ref>Thomas, Appendix, pp. 306-322.</ref> Other differences had to do with the [[appropriations]] process in CongressNot only was a [[line-item veto]] expressly included, but Congress required a two-thirds [[supermajority]] to appropriate any funds not specifically requested by the President, giving Jefferson Davis in a real sense more Constitutional power than Abraham Lincoln possessed - an irony, given the Confederate states' putative objection to centralized power.
  
The example of the [[U. S. Constitution]] clearly guided the drafters of the Confederate Constitution, enabling the latter group to complete their work in less than half as much time. <ref> [Thomas, p. 63.] </ref> The predictable provision banning efforts to end de jure slavery is found at Article I, Section 9, clause 4, lumped in with the provisions banning [[ex post facto laws]] and [[bills of attainder]].  It is three clauses down from a most unexpected clause banning the [[Atlantic Ocean|Atlantic]] [[slave trade]], but permitting the importation of slaves from the Union. The wording of this clause demonstrates that the drafters clearly anticipated that not all slave states would secede, although they also included a provision for accepting new states into the Confederacy, which proved essential when [[Virginia]], [[Arkansas]], [[Tennessee]] and [[North Carolina]] seceded from the United States after the Constitution was in effect. Although the Confederate document includes no [[bill of rights]] as such, the [[Ninth Amendment]] and [[Tenth Amendment]] are reproduced in Article VI as Sections 5 and 6. The Confederate ban on a [[religious test for office]] is Section 4, notwithstanding the fact that the preamble invokes the blessing of almighty [[God]] on the Confederate experiment. <ref> [Thomas, Appendix, pp. 306-322.] </ref> Perhaps the most significant differences had to do with the [[appropriations]] process in Congress.  Not only was a [[line-item veto]] expressly included, but Congress required a two-thirds [[supermajority]] to appropriate any funds not specifically requested by the President, giving Jefferson Davis in a real sense more Constitutional power than Abraham Lincoln possessed.
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Despite the later romanticization of the Confederate cause, the perpetuation of Southern conceptions of race and slavery was of prime importance to the new nation. In his "Cornerstone Speech," Vice President Alexander Stephens argued that a major difference between the Confederate Constitution and the United States Constitution was the belief that blacks were not inherently equal. In describing this fundamental difference, Stephens said, "The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." <ref>[http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76]</ref> The rejection of slavery as a dominant ideology of the Confederate States began after the Civil War, as Confederate leaders sought to legitimize their failed rebellion.
  
 
==Leadership==
 
==Leadership==
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'''Speaker of the House of Representatives'''  
 
'''Speaker of the House of Representatives'''  
 
:Thomas Stanhope Bobcock, 18 Feb 1862 - 18 Mar 1865   
 
:Thomas Stanhope Bobcock, 18 Feb 1862 - 18 Mar 1865   
===Executive branch===  
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===Executive branch===
 
'''President of the Confederate States'''  
 
'''President of the Confederate States'''  
 
:Jefferson Finis Davis, 18 Feb 1861 - 10 May 1865 (provisional president to 6 Nov 1861)  
 
:Jefferson Finis Davis, 18 Feb 1861 - 10 May 1865 (provisional president to 6 Nov 1861)  
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:A federal court system with a chief justice was not created during the 1861-1865 Confederacy.
 
:A federal court system with a chief justice was not created during the 1861-1865 Confederacy.
  
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==Flags of the Confederacy==
 +
:''For more detail, see [[Confederate flag]]''
 
{| class="wikitable"
 
{| class="wikitable"
 
|-bgcolor=#cccccc
 
|-bgcolor=#cccccc
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|  [[Image:Starsand bars1.png|125px]] ||Called the ''Stars and Bars'', it was first flown over Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861. || 1861
 
|  [[Image:Starsand bars1.png|125px]] ||Called the ''Stars and Bars'', it was first flown over Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861. || 1861
 
|-
 
|-
| [[Image:CSAnational1.png|125px]] ||The First National Flag of the Confederacy.  Like the flag before, it was also called the ''Stars and Bars''; this flag incorporated the 11 stars which symbolized the states that had seceeded from the Union by March, 1861.|| March 4, 1861 to May 26, 1863
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| [[File:Confederate States of America 1st official flag thirteen stars.png|125px]] ||The First National Flag of the Confederacy.  Like the flag before, it was also called the ''Stars and Bars''; this flag incorporated a different number of stars depending on the time. At the most, and for the longest period of time, the flag had 13 stars, representing the 11 states of the C.S.A. as well as Kentucky and Missouri.|| March 4, 1861 to May 1, 1863
 
|-
 
|-
| [[Image:CSAnational2.png|125px]] ||The Second National Flag; also known as the ''Stainless Banner'' due to the large white field.  It was also referred to as the ''Stonewall Flag'', as its first official use was to cover the casket of Lieutenant General [[Thomas J. Jackson]] in 1863.|| May 26, 1863 to March 3, 1865
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| [[Image:CSAnational2.png|125px]] ||The Second National Flag; also known as the ''Stainless Banner'' due to the large white field.  It was also referred to as the ''Stonewall Flag'', as its first official use was to cover the casket of Lieutenant General [[Thomas J. Jackson]] in 1863.|| May 1, 1863 to March 3, 1865
 
|-
 
|-
|[[Image:CSAnational3.png|125px]] ||The Third National Flag.  The red stripe was added to the fly to correct a major drawback of the previous flag: the appearence of a flag of surrender when it hung limp.|| March 4, 1865 to April 26, 1865
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|[[Image:CSAnational3.png|125px]] ||The Third National Flag.  The red stripe was added to the fly to correct a major drawback of the previous flag: the appearance of a flag of surrender when it hung limp.|| March 4, 1865 to April 26, 1865
 
|-
 
|-
 
| [[Image:CSAbattleflag.png|125px]] ||The flag of General [[Robert E. Lee]]'s Army of Northern Virginia, called the ''Southern Cross''; the design became so popular that is was used as the canton of the Confederate national flag.|| November 28, 1861 to the fall
 
| [[Image:CSAbattleflag.png|125px]] ||The flag of General [[Robert E. Lee]]'s Army of Northern Virginia, called the ''Southern Cross''; the design became so popular that is was used as the canton of the Confederate national flag.|| November 28, 1861 to the fall
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|}
 
|}
  
== Economics ==
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==Diplomacy==
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===Relations with the United States===
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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 Sr.]], the new minister to Great Britain:
 +
<blockquote>You will indulge in no expressions of harshness or disrespect, or even impatience concerning the seceding States, their agents, or their people. But you will, on the contrary, all the while remember that those States are now, as they always heretofore have been, and, notwithstanding their temporary self-delusion, they must always continue to be, equal and honored members of this Federal Union, and that their citizens throughout all political misunderstandings and alienations, still are and always must be our kindred and countrymen.<ref>William Seward to Charles Francis Adams Sr., April 10, 1861 in Marion Mills Miller, Ed. ''Life And Works Of Abraham Lincoln'' (1907) Vol 6.</ref></blockquote>
  
While ideology would provide much of the motivation to go to war, the economics of the Northern and Southern states made it impossible for anything but a clash to come about{{fact}}. While the Northern States had modernized and embraced the industrial revolution, incorporating new technology and rebuilding infrastructure to support it, the South had remained agrarian, and reliant on slave labor to boost productivity.
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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:
 +
<blockquote>[if Britain is] tolerating the application of the so-called seceding States, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to suppose for a moment that they can grant that application and remain friends with the United States. You may even assure them promptly, in that case, that if they determine to recognize, they may at the same time prepare to enter into alliance with the enemies of this republic."<ref>Seward to Adams April 10, 1861 ibid</ref></blockquote>
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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|blockade]] and rebellion. Mid-war negotiations between the two sides occurred without formal political recognition, though the laws of war governed military relationships.
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Four years after the war, in 1869, the United States Supreme Court ruled in ''[[Texas v. White]]'' that secession was unconstitutional and legally null. The court's opinion was authored by Chief Justice [[Salmon P. Chase]]. Jefferson Davis and his vice president Alexander Stephens both wrote long books expounding their theories of secession's legality.
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===International diplomacy===
 +
Once the war with the United States began, the best hope for the survival of the Confederacy was military intervention by Britain and France. The U.S. realized that too 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 in "[[King Cotton]]" — that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton for its industries— were proven wrong. Britain, in fact, had ample stores of cotton in 1861 and depended much more on grain from the U.S.
 +
 
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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 Queen Victoria, and [[John Slidell]] was sent to Paris as minister to Napoleon III. Both were able to obtain private meetings with high British and French officials, but they failed to secure official 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, 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 Lord Russell and Napoleon III, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, explored the risks and advantages 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, loss 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.
 +
 
 +
 
 +
No country appointed any diplomat officially to the Confederacy, but several maintained their consuls in the South who had been appointed before the war.<ref>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; Saxe was a firm supporter of the U.S. It is false to state that Saxe (or the Pope) recognized the Confederacy. No country did so.  On the Pope see [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?root=%2Fmoa%2Fofre%2Fofre2003%2F&tif=01042.TIF&cite=http%3A%2F%2Fcdl.library.cornell.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmoa%2Fsgml%2Fmoa-idx%3Fnotisid%3DANU4547-2003&coll=moa&frames=1&view=50]</ref>
 +
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 [[belligerent]]s. Canada 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."<ref>Frank L. Owsley, ''State Rights in the Confederacy'' (Chicago, 1925),</ref> That is, strong-willed governors and state legislatures 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.  Historians agree that northern governors were much more supportive of Lincoln's policies.  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." <ref>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."</ref>  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.<ref>John Moretta; "Pendleton Murrah and States Rights in Civil War Texas," ''Civil War History,'' Vol. 45, 1999</ref>  [[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.<ref>Albert Burton Moore,''Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy.'' (1924) p. 295.</ref>
 +
 
 +
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."<ref>Rable (1994) 258-9</ref>
 +
 
 +
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 instead. 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.<ref>Rable (1994) p 265</ref>
 +
 
 +
== Economics ==
 +
While the Northern States had modernized and embraced the industrial revolution, incorporating new technology and rebuilding infrastructure to support it, the South had remained agrarian, and reliant on slave labor to boost productivity.
  
 
The southern economic model was challenged by its lack of access to capital.  When a businessman in the North wanted to build a factory, he could obtain a loan from the bank or from a group of investors, pay the labor and material costs to erect it, maintain the factory as collateral, paying back the loan with cash flow from the business. The capital was constantly liquid, changing hands from one individual to another.
 
The southern economic model was challenged by its lack of access to capital.  When a businessman in the North wanted to build a factory, he could obtain a loan from the bank or from a group of investors, pay the labor and material costs to erect it, maintain the factory as collateral, paying back the loan with cash flow from the business. The capital was constantly liquid, changing hands from one individual to another.
  
When a plantation or farm owner in the South wanted to expand, he could only borrow against his own land or other property. And while new goods from Northern factories were in increasing demand, the South found itself having to compete with agricultural products grown elsewhere. The south's inability to adapt its economic model to changing times, coupled with its steadfast adherence to a cruel, inhumane, and immoral labor system (slavery), led to economic ruin, which furthered the case for succession in their minds.
+
Banks were fewer in the South, and most plantation profits went to purchases of more slaves and more land.
  
== Legacy - Physical/Military ==
+
== Legacy of destruction==
 +
The principal physical legacy of the Confederacy was mass destruction.  Four years of Civil War killed at least 620,000 soldiers (counting deaths from disease as well as in battle), of whom approximately 260,000 were from the Confederacy.  This represented a much larger fraction (slightly over one quarter) of the Confederacy's military age free men than was lost by the Union.
  
The principal physical legacy of the Confederacy was mass fratricidal destruction.  Four years of Civil War killed at least 620,000 soldiers (counting deaths from disease as well as in battle), of whom approximately 260,000 were from the Confederacy.  This represented a much larger fraction (slightly over one quarter) of the Confederacy's military age white men than was lost by the Union.
+
An unknown number of civilians also died, in part as a result of the campaign of systematic destruction of the infrastructure in late 1864 and early 1865 by Union General [[William Tecumseh Sherman]] which helped not only to destroy the will of the Confederacy to fight, but literally to destroy the parts of the civilian economy useful to the war effort. Severe damage was inflicted on both urban and rural communities in the South, and hundreds of thousands of people became refugees.  The exigencies of [[total war]] had led to the destruction of much Southern infrastructure, in particular [[railroads]], long before 1864.
  
An unknown number of [[civilians]] also died, in part as a result of the campaign of organized plunder in late 1864 and early 1865 by the troops of [[Union]] [[General]] [[William Tecumseh Sherman]] which helped not only to destroy the will of the Confederacy to fight, but literally to destroy the [[infrastructure]] of the Confederacy. Severe damage was inflicted on both urban and rural communities in the South, and hundreds of thousands of people became refugees.  The exigencies of [[total war]] had led to the destruction of Southern infrastructure, in particular [[railroads]], long before 1864, but never on such a scale.
+
Upon the Confederate defeat, General Lee on April 9, 1865 ruled out continuing to fight on as [[insurgents]]. To have done otherwise would have been folly. The Union was prepared to use techniques it had learned in Missouri: move all the hostile civilians into concentration camps, thus cutting off supplies to the insurgents, and then hunt down the rebels bands one by one.  
  
[[Total war]] based on modern technology was confirmed as the mode in which [[nation-states]] would fight each other throughout the industrial age. Simultaneously with the Union, the Confederacy launched the first seagoing [[ironclad]] warships.  With the possible exception of the [[Prussia]]ns and [[Great Britain|British]], it is unlikely that any country of comparable population and technology in the 1860s could have resisted the Union onslaught for as long as the Confederacy did.  Upon the Confederate defeat, General Lee on April 9, 1865 ruled out continuing to fight as [[insurgents]]; although it can be argued that this only delayed the inevitable failure of [[Reconstruction]], it also made physical rebuilding possible in a way it would not be in the latter stages of civil wars in other countries in the [[20th century]].
+
===Extent of wartime destruction===
 +
Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every state was affected. There was little military action in Texas and Florida. Of 645 counties in 9 Confederate states (exclusing Texas and Florida), there was Union military action in 56%, containing 63% of the whites and 64% of the slaves in 1860; however when the action took place, some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.<ref>Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy,"  ''Civil War History'' 54.1 (2008) 35-62</ref>
  
== Legacy - Political/Ideological ==
+
===Towns and cities===
 +
The Confederacy in 1861 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,554), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,522, at least 8,052, and 37,910, respectively); the eleven contained 115,916 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated their population when they were invaded. The number of people who lived in the destroyed places represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's population.  In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830).<ref>Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy,"  ''Civil War History'' 54.1 (2008) 35-62</ref>
  
Given [[Article Five]] of the [[U. S. Constitution]], it would have been difficult to abolish slavery via Constitutional Amendment without secession in the 15 established states with the 35 free states which later existed.  As it actually happened, the [[Thirteenth Amendment]] was ratified by a 26-state [[Union]] containing only four slave states. The most likely solution in the absence of secession would have been to admit smaller Western states, possibly even turning what became [[Indian reservations]] into states.
+
===Rural areas===
 +
The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, of $48 million worth. Many old tools had broken through heavy use and could not be replaced; even repairs were difficult.
  
After the war and subsequent reconstruction, [[Radical Republicans]] were forced in the [[Compromise of 1877]] to concede the failure of Reconstruction and withdraw the U. S. Army from the South, or at least from its mission of guaranteeing the rights of African-Americans.  In a process known as [[Redemption]], the rights of former slaves were crushed out of existence across the South by a system which came to be known as [[Jim Crow]].  
+
Railroad mileage was of course mostly in rural areas. The war followed the rails, and over two-thirds of the rails and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what it could. The South had 9400 miles of track and 6500 miles was in areas reached by the Union armies. About 4400 miles were in areas where Sherman and other Union generals adopted a policy of systematic destruction of the rail system. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate movement of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone guaranteed the system would be virtually ruined at war's end.<ref>Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy,"  ''Civil War History'' 54.1 (2008) 35-62</ref>
  
The association of the [[Democratic Party]] with the South grew in strength after the Civil War.  However, only with the election of [[Woodrow Wilson]] in 1912 was a Southerner able to return to the [[White House]].  Whenever Democrats held a majority of either house of [[Congress]], Southerners would immediately become the chairmen of all committees, giving that region a disproportionate influence on national politics. Because of their [[Thomas Jefferson|Jeffersonian]] roots, Southern Democrats were a party of [[small government]] and lower [[taxes]] (radically cutting back spending on [[public schools]] among other things during [[Redemption]]), and were hostile to organized labor. Many of these qualities are considered [[Republican]] characteristics today, illustrating the shifting winds of national politics.
+
== Legacy ==
 +
Slavery was abolished in the Confederacy—but not in the four slave states that had not seceded—by Lincoln's [[Emancipation Proclamation]], by the U.S. Army, and by the [[Thirteenth Amendment]] which became law in late 1865.  
  
[[American politics]] have been defined in part by the conflict between the [[Alexander Hamilton|Hamiltonian]] and Jeffersonian schools of the role of government, particularly the [[Federal government]].  The Confederacy can be seen as the [[last stand]] of the Jeffersonians, who favored a system in which state policy and sovereignty would trump that of the Federal government. To this way of thinking, subsequent American politics have actually been a competition between more and less radical Hamiltonians. The Confederacy can also be seen as the [[last stand]] of an outdated economic system that rested on an immoral foundation ([[slavery]]), and its failure as evidence that the true spirit of the American Revolution was at last realized, and all men were recognized as [[Declaration of Independence | equal]].
+
The seceding states all rescinded their ordinances of secession and were admitted, one-by-one, back into the Union by a government that had previously maintained that it was not possible to secede from the Union. This was done by the process of [[Reconstruction]].  Reconstruction began during the war and ended in 1877.  
  
== See also ==
+
There was never an effort to revive the Confederacy, but nostalgia for the Lost Cause, poisoned relations from the war and the destruction of Southern property, and by the vengeful administration of Reconstruction soured North-South relations until at least the 1890s. Some Southerners insisted on white supremacy.
  
 +
After Reconstruction, the [[Redeemers]] (white Democrats) took full control and slowly removed the voting rights and some of the legal rights  of the Freedmen, installing  a system of segregation known as [[Jim Crow]].  The region became a [[Democratic Party]] stronghold for a century. 
 +
 +
Economically the South was badly damaged and fell far behind the North in terms of prosperity; it took 100 years for the South to catch up.
 +
 +
==Bibliography==
 +
 +
===Surveys and textbooks===
 +
* Coulter, E. Merton. ''The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865'' (1950), highly detailed overview; strong Southern accent
 +
* Current, Richard N., et al. eds. ''Encyclopedia of the Confederacy'' (1993) (4 Volume set; also 1 vol abridged version), comprehensive excellent reference work
 +
* Davis, William C. ''Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America'' (2003)
 +
* Donald, David ''et al.'' ''The Civil War and Reconstruction'' (latest edition 2001); 700 page survey
 +
* Eaton, Clement. ''A History of the Southern Confederacy'' (1954).
 +
* Fellman, Michael et al. ''This Terrible War: The Civil War and its Aftermath'' (2nd ed. 2007), 544 page survey
 +
* Heidler, David Stephen, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History'' (2002), 1600 entries in 2700 pages in 5 vol or 1-vol editions; very good basic reference
 +
* McPherson, James M. ''Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era'' (1988), 900 page survey; Pulitzer prize
 +
* [[Allan Nevins|Nevins, Allan]]. ''[[Ordeal of the Union]]'', an 8-volume set (1947-1971). the most detailed political, economic and military narrative; by Pulitzer Prize winner
 +
** vol 4. Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861; 5. The Improvised War, 1861-1862; 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863; 7. The Organized War, 1863-1864; 8. The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865
 +
* Rhodes, James Ford. [http://www.bartleby.com/252/ ''History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1918)], Pulitzer Prize; a short version of his 5-volume history
 +
* Roland, Charles P. ''The Confederacy'', 1960. old brief survey
 +
* Rubin, Anne Sarah.  ''A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868.'' (2005). 319 pp. 
 +
* Thomas, Emory M. ''Confederate Nation: 1861-1865'' (1979). Standard political-economic-social history
 +
 +
===Specialized studies===
 +
* Beringer, Richard E., Archer Jones, and Herman Hattaway, ''Why the South Lost the Civil War'' (1986) influential analysis of factors; ''The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims, and Religion'' (1988), abridged version
 +
* Boritt, Gabor S., et al., ''Why the Confederacy Lost'', (1992).
 +
*  Davis, William C. and Robertson, James I., Jr., eds.  ''Virginia at War, 1861.'' (2007). 241 pp. 
 +
* Goldin, Claudia D., and Frank D. Lewis, "The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications," ''Journal of Economic History'' 35#2 (June 1975), pp.&nbsp;299–326  [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2119410 in JSTOR]
 +
* Owsley, Frank Lawrence. ''King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign relations of the Confederate States of America'' (1931)
 +
* Ransom, Roger L. "The Economics of the Civil War," ''EH.Net Encyclopedia,'' ed. Robert Whaples (Aug. 25, 2001), [http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ransom.civil.war.us online edition]
 +
* Rable, George C., ''The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics'', (1994). [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=10417084 online edition]
 +
* Thomas, Emory M. ''The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience'', (1992) short interpretive essay
 +
* Wallenstein, Peter and Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, eds.  ''Virginia's Civil War.'' (2005). 303 pp. [http://www.amazon.com/Virginias-Civil-War-Peter-Wallenstein/dp/0813923158/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196544677&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
 +
* Wiley, Bell Irvin. ''Southern Negroes: 1861-1865'' (1938)
 +
====Women====
 +
* Faust, Drew. ''Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War'' (2004) [http://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Invention-Slaveholding-American-Morrison/dp/0807855731/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231241330&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
 +
* Harper, Judith E.  ''Women during the Civil War: An Encyclopedia.'' (2004). 472 pp. 
 +
* Massey, Mary. ''Bonnet Brigades: American Women and the Civil War (1966), excellent overview
 +
* Rable, George C. ''Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism'' (1989), excellent
 +
* Roberts, Giselle.  ''The Confederate Belle.'' (2003). 245 pp. 
 +
* Wiley, Bell Irvin. ''Confederate Women'' (1975), good survey
 +
* Woodward, C. Vann, Ed., ''Mary Chesnut's Civil War'', (1981) Pulitzer Prize; primary source
 +
 +
== See also ==
 +
*[[American Civil War homefront]]
 
*[[American Civil War: 1861]]
 
*[[American Civil War: 1861]]
 
*[[American Civil War: 1862]]
 
*[[American Civil War: 1862]]
Line 183: Line 385:
 
*[[American Civil War: 1865]]
 
*[[American Civil War: 1865]]
 
*[[American Civil War: Aftermath]]
 
*[[American Civil War: Aftermath]]
 +
*[[Reconstruction]]
 +
*''[[C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America]]'' - A 2004 film set in an alternate world where the Confederacy won the [[American Civil War]]
 +
 +
===Primary sources===
 +
* Carter, Susan B., ed. ''The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition'' (5 vols), 2006; online at many universities
 +
* Davis, Jefferson, ''The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government '' (2 vols), 1881.
 +
* Harwell, Richard B. ed. ''The Confederate Reader'' (1957) 389 pp. [http://www.questia.com/read/13580975?title=The%20Confederate%20Reader online edition]
 +
* Jones, John B. ''A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital'', edited by Howard Swiggert, [1935] 1993. 2 vols.
 +
* Richardson, James D., ed. ''A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence 1861-1865'', 2 volumes, 1906.
 +
* Yearns, W. Buck and Barret, John G.,eds. ''North Carolina Civil War Documentary'', 1980.
 +
* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/confdocs.html Confederate official government documents] major online collection of complete texts in HTML format, from U. of North Carolina
 +
*'' Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865'' (7 vols), 1904. [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwcc.html online]
 +
*[http://fax.libs.uga.edu/AP2xC84/ ''The Countryman'', 1862-1866], published weekly by Turnwold, Ga., edited by J.A. Turner; primary source
 +
 +
==External links==
 +
*[http://politicalgraveyard.com/offices/confed1.html#ZY4102y1862 Confederate offices Index of Politicians by Office Held or Sought]
 +
*[http://fax.libs.uga.edu/ccsus/ ''The Federal and the Confederate Constitution Compared'']
 +
*[http://fax.libs.uga.edu/F206xS727xv9/ ''The Making of the Confederate Constitution''], by A. L. Hull, 1905.
 +
*[http://fax.libs.uga.edu/E468x7xM647/ ''Photographic History of the Civil War'', 10 vols., 1912.]
 +
*[http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html DocSouth: Documenting the American South] - numerous online text, image, and audio collections.
 +
*[http://docsouth.unc.edu/moore1/moore1.html ''The Geographical Reader for the Dixie Children''] - a Confederacy textbook written in 1863.
 +
*[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?faid/faid:@field(DOCID+ms003052) ''Confederate States of America: A Register of Its Records in the Library of Congress'']
  
 +
====Notes====
 +
<references/>
 
[[Category:American Civil War]]
 
[[Category:American Civil War]]
 
[[Category:United States History]]
 
[[Category:United States History]]
 
[[Category:Former Countries]]
 
[[Category:Former Countries]]
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[[Category:The South]]
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[[Category:Black History]]
 +
[[Category:Reconstruction]]

Revision as of 21:49, December 31, 2016

Confederate States of America
February 4, 1861- May 10, 1865


CSAnational3.png
ConfederateStatesofAmericaSeal.jpg
Flag Coat of Arms
Capital Richmond, Virginia
Government Republic


President Jefferson Davis
Area 770,425 sq mi
Population 1860 9,103,332
Currency Confederate dollar

The Confederate States of America (informally, the Confederacy) was a government created from an alliance of eleven southern states which had seceded from the United States between December 1860 and April 1861. The American Civil War that was begun by the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter proved disastrous; four years of savage fighting ended with the fledgling government defeated and dissolved, and left the southern states a financial and industrial wreck. The main reason for secession was to preserve slavery—but all the slaves were emancipated with no compensation to the owners. After the war, the states were later readmitted during Reconstruction.

For the social, political, economic and diplomatic history see American Civil War homefront

Beginnings

Seven southern states seceded from the United States of America over the winter of 1860-61 and joined together as the "Confederate States of America" to protect their sovereignty and economic status. They saw that the antislavery forces in the North were gaining strength, typified by the election as president of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The political future for slavery and for Southern commerce was bleak, as the South was losing relative strength in Congress. Arguing that their Constitutional states' rights protected the extension of slavery into America's western territories, they saw that issue rejected in the North. The Union government rejected the claims that a state had a right to secede.

When fighting began in April Lincoln called on all states to send troops; at this point four more states broke away and joined the Confederacy, Virginia, North Cariolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Of the 15 slave states, four remained in the United States: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri. Residents of the latter three states raised regiments for the Confederacy, although not as an official act of their governments. In addition, Kentucky and Missouri saw the establishment of Confederate legislatures within their borders which sent delegates to the Confederate Congress. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the war and joined the Union as a state.

The president of the Confederate States of America was Jefferson Davis, a former Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce and Senator from Mississippi. Richmond, Virginia became the capital of the Confederacy after that state seceded. It was a poor choice for a war capital because it was hard to supply and hard to defend.

Starting in 1862 General Robert E. Lee led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia against the Union armies, which were led by various generals appointed by Abraham Lincoln, with the last, and most successful being General Ulysses S. Grant. Lee proved a tenacious defender of Richmond, which had an exposed position and a long, difficult supply line. Grant wore down Lee's army, which was unable to replace its casualties, supplies, and desertions.

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 referred to as the Trans-Mississippi.

Climate

Much of the area claimed by the CSA 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 enemy 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 fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, it became impossible for units of any size 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 such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, and Washington, as well as Wheeling, West Virginia, and Alexandria, Virginia (both located in territory that had officially seceded), were never under the control of the Confederate government.

# City 1860 Population US Rank return to USA control
1. New Orleans, Louisiana 168,675 6 1862
2. Charleston, South Carolina 40,522 22 1865
3. Richmond, Virginia 37,910 25 1865
4. Mobile, Alabama 29,258 27 1865
5. Memphis, Tennessee 22,623 38 1862
6. Savannah, Georgia 22,292 41 1864
7. Petersburg, Virginia 18,266 50 1865
8. Nashville, Tennessee 16,988 54 1862
9. Norfolk, Virginia 14,620 61 1862
10. Augusta, Georgia 12,493 77 1865
11. Columbus, Georgia 9,621 97 1865
12. Atlanta, Georgia 9,554 99 1864
13. Wilmington, North Carolina 9,553 100 1865



Economy

Before the war the states that formed the Confederacy had an agrarian economy with exports, to a world market, of cotton, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco and sugar. 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%, but imposed it on all imports from the rest of the United States—thus making one of the greatest tax increases in American history.[1] 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.

Ideology

Historian Emory Thomas compared the correspondence sent by the Confederate government in the first year of its existence to different governments. He writes, "The Southern nation was by turns a guileless people attacked by a voracious neighbor, an 'established' nation in some temporary difficulty, a collection of bucolic aristocrats making a romantic stand against the banalities of industrial democracy, a cabal of commercial farmers seeking to make a pawn of King Cotton, an apotheosis of nineteenth-century nationalism and revolutionary liberalism, or the ultimate statement of social and economic reaction." [2]

The example of the U. S. Constitution clearly guided the drafters of the Confederate Constitution, enabling the latter group to complete their work in less than half as much time.[3] However, this Confederate Constitution contained a provision banning efforts to end de jure slavery, found at Article I, Section 9, clause 4, lumped in with the provisions banning ex post facto laws and bills of attainder. Another clause banned the international slave trade, but permitted the importation of slaves from the United States; this clause was consistent with the United States' banning of Atlantic slave trading in 1808, which had the effect of improving the domestic slave market, benefiting states such as Virginia. The wording of this clause demonstrates that the drafters clearly anticipated that not all slave states would secede, although they also included a provision for accepting new states into the Confederacy. This proved essential when Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina seceded from the United States after the Confederate Constitution was in effect. Although the Confederate document includes no bill of rights, the Ninth Amendment and Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights are reproduced in Article VI as Sections 5 and 6. The Confederate Constitution implemented a ban on a religious test for office in Section 4, notwithstanding the preamble's invocation of God's blessing on the Confederate experiment.[4] Other differences had to do with the appropriations process in Congress. Not only was a line-item veto expressly included, but Congress required a two-thirds supermajority to appropriate any funds not specifically requested by the President, giving Jefferson Davis in a real sense more Constitutional power than Abraham Lincoln possessed - an irony, given the Confederate states' putative objection to centralized power.

Despite the later romanticization of the Confederate cause, the perpetuation of Southern conceptions of race and slavery was of prime importance to the new nation. In his "Cornerstone Speech," Vice President Alexander Stephens argued that a major difference between the Confederate Constitution and the United States Constitution was the belief that blacks were not inherently equal. In describing this fundamental difference, Stephens said, "The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." [5] The rejection of slavery as a dominant ideology of the Confederate States began after the Civil War, as Confederate leaders sought to legitimize their failed rebellion.

Leadership

Legislative branch

President of the Congress

Robert Woodward Barnwell, 4 Feb 1861 (served for several hours)
Howell Cobb, 4 Feb 1861 - 18 Feb 1861

President Pro Tempore of the Senate

Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, 18 Feb 1862 - 18 Mar 1865

President Pro Tempore of the Provisional Congress

Robert Woodward Barnwell, 4 Feb 1861 - 16 Mar 1861
Thomas Stanhope Bobcock, Josiah A.P. Campbell, 18 Nov 1861 - 17 Feb 1862

Speaker of the House of Representatives

Thomas Stanhope Bobcock, 18 Feb 1862 - 18 Mar 1865

Executive branch

President of the Confederate States

Jefferson Finis Davis, 18 Feb 1861 - 10 May 1865 (provisional president to 6 Nov 1861)

Vice President of the Confederate States

Alexander Hamilton Stephens, 18 Feb 1861 - 11 May 1865 (provisional vice president to 6 Nov 1861)

Secretary of State

Robert Augustus Toombs, 21 Feb 1861 - 24 Jul 1861
Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, 25 Jul 1861 - 1 Feb 1862
William Montague Brown, 1 Feb 1862 - 17 Mar 1862
Judah Philip Benjamin, 18 Mar 1862 - 3 May 1865

Attorney General

Judah Philip Benjamin, 25 Feb 1861 - 17 Sep 1861
Wade Rutledge Keyes, 17 Sep 1861 - 21 Nov 1861
Thomas Bragg, Jr., 21 Nov 1861 - 17 Mar 1862
Thomas Hill Watts, 18 Mar 1862 - 1 Oct 1863
Wade Rutledge Keyes, 1 Oct 1863 - 2 Jan 1864
George Davis, 2 Jan 1864 - 24 Apr 1865

Commissioner of Patents

Rufus Randolph Rhodes, 31 May 1861 - Apr 1865

Postmaster General

Henry T. Ellet, 25 Feb 1861 - 6 Mar 1861 (nominated and confirmed; declined appointment)
John Henninger Reagan, 6 Mar 1861 - 5 May 1865

Secretary of the Treasury

Christopher Gustavus Memminger, 21 Feb 1861 - 18 Jul 1864
George Alfred Trenholm, 18 Jul 1864 - 27 Apr 1865
John Henninger Reagan, 28 Apr 1865 - 4 May 1865

Treasurer of the Confederate States

Edward Carrington Elmore, 6 Mar 1861 - 1865

Comptroller and Solicitor

Lewis Cruger, 1861 - 1865

Secretary of War

Leroy Pope Walker, 21 Feb 1861 - 16 Sep 1861
Judah Philip Benjamin, 17 Sep 1861 - 23 Mar 1862
George Wythe Randolph, 24 Mar 1862 - 17 Nov 1862
Gustavus Woodson Smith, 17 Nov 1862 - 21 Nov 1862
James Alexander Seddon, 21 Nov 1862 - 6 Feb 1865
John Cabell Breckenridge, 6 Feb 1865 - 5 May 1865

Chiefs of the Army Engineers Bureau (subordinated to Secretary of War)

Josiah Gorgas, 8 Apr 1861 - 3 Aug 1861
Danville Leadbetter, 3 Aug 1861 - 10 Nov 1861
Alfred Landon Rives, 13 Nov 1861 - 24 Sep 1862
Jeremy Francis Gilmer, 25 Sep 1862 - 17 Aug 1863
Alfred Landon Rives, 18 Aug 1863 - 9 Mar 1864
Martin Luther Smith, 9 Mar 1864 - Apr 1864
Alfred Landon Rives, Apr 1864 - Jun 1864
Jeremy Francis Gilmer, Jun 1864 - Apr 1865

Commissioner of Indian Territory (subordinated to Secretary of War)

Albert Pike, 16 Mar 1861 - 1862
Benjamin J. McCullough, 1862 - 7 Mar 1862
Albert Pike, 1862 - 5 Nov 1862
Douglas Hancock Cooper, Nov 1862 - Jan 1863
William Steels, Jan 1863 - Dec 1863

Commander of the Department of Indian Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs (subordinated to Secretary of War)

Samuel Ball Maxey, Dec 1863 - 1865
Douglas Hancock Cooper, 1865

Surgeon-general (subordinated to Secretary of War)

Samuel Preston Moore, 16 Mar 1861 - 1865

Secretary of the Navy

Stephan Russell Mallory, 4 Mar 1861 - 5 May 1865

Colonel-Commandant of the Confederate States Marine Corps (subordinated to Secretary of the Navy)

Lloyd J. Beall, 23 May 1861 - 10 May 1865

Superintendent of the Confederate States Naval Academy

William Parker, 23 Jul 1863 - 2 May 1865

Judicial branch

A federal court system with a chief justice was not created during the 1861-1865 Confederacy.

Flags of the Confederacy

For more detail, see Confederate flag
Seal and Flags Detail Dates of Use
ConfederateStatesofAmericaSeal.jpg Great Seal of the Confederate States of America. The Latin motto Deo Vindice reads either "Under God, Our Vindicator" or "With God as [our] Champion". 1862-1865
Bonnieblue.png The Bonnie Blue flag, unofficial first flag of the Confederacy. First flown January 9, 1861 over the state capitol building of Jackson, Mississippi. Originally, it was used by settlers of west Florida in a short, 74-day republic after they had revolted against the Spanish government, raising it at the Spanish fort in Baton Rouge on September 23, 1810. 1861
Starsand bars1.png Called the Stars and Bars, it was first flown over Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861. 1861
Confederate States of America 1st official flag thirteen stars.png The First National Flag of the Confederacy. Like the flag before, it was also called the Stars and Bars; this flag incorporated a different number of stars depending on the time. At the most, and for the longest period of time, the flag had 13 stars, representing the 11 states of the C.S.A. as well as Kentucky and Missouri. March 4, 1861 to May 1, 1863
CSAnational2.png The Second National Flag; also known as the Stainless Banner due to the large white field. It was also referred to as the Stonewall Flag, as its first official use was to cover the casket of Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson in 1863. May 1, 1863 to March 3, 1865
CSAnational3.png The Third National Flag. The red stripe was added to the fly to correct a major drawback of the previous flag: the appearance of a flag of surrender when it hung limp. March 4, 1865 to April 26, 1865
CSAbattleflag.png The flag of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, called the Southern Cross; the design became so popular that is was used as the canton of the Confederate national flag. November 28, 1861 to the fall
CSA Naval Ensign.png A variation of the Second National Flag, with a shorter 1.5:1 ratio instead of 2:1. This was the last flag hauled down in surrender, when CSS Shenandoah lowered it on November 7, 1865 in Liverpool, England. May 1, 1863 to the fall
1st CSAJack.png This 7-star jack was used on Confederate naval warships until 1863. 1861-1863
Conf Navy Jack.png Official Confederate naval jack for use on all warships from 1863, and patterned after the design of the battle flag. This flag was adopted in the years since as the de-facto flag of the South itself. 1863-1865

Diplomacy

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 Sr., the new minister to Great Britain:

You will indulge in no expressions of harshness or disrespect, or even impatience concerning the seceding States, their agents, or their people. But you will, on the contrary, all the while remember that those States are now, as they always heretofore have been, and, notwithstanding their temporary self-delusion, they must always continue to be, equal and honored members of this Federal Union, and that their citizens throughout all political misunderstandings and alienations, still are and always must be our kindred and countrymen.[6]

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:

[if Britain is] tolerating the application of the so-called seceding States, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to suppose for a moment that they can grant that application and remain friends with the United States. You may even assure them promptly, in that case, that if they determine to recognize, they may at the same time prepare to enter into alliance with the enemies of this republic."[7]

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 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 United States Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that secession was unconstitutional and legally null. The court's opinion was authored by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. Jefferson Davis and his vice president Alexander Stephens both wrote long books expounding their theories of secession's legality.

International diplomacy

Once the war with the United States began, the best hope for the survival of the Confederacy was military intervention by Britain and France. The U.S. realized that too 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 in "King Cotton" — that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton for its industries— were proven wrong. Britain, in fact, had ample stores of cotton in 1861 and depended much more on grain from the U.S.

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 Queen Victoria, and John Slidell was sent to Paris as minister to Napoleon III. Both were able to obtain private meetings with high British and French officials, but they failed to secure official 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, 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 Lord Russell and Napoleon III, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, explored the risks and advantages 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, loss 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.


No country appointed any diplomat officially to the Confederacy, but several maintained their consuls in the South who had been appointed before the war.[8] 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, 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."[9] That is, strong-willed governors and state legislatures 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. Historians agree that northern governors were much more supportive of Lincoln's policies. 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." [10] 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.[11] 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.[12]

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."[13]

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 instead. 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.[14]

Economics

While the Northern States had modernized and embraced the industrial revolution, incorporating new technology and rebuilding infrastructure to support it, the South had remained agrarian, and reliant on slave labor to boost productivity.

The southern economic model was challenged by its lack of access to capital. When a businessman in the North wanted to build a factory, he could obtain a loan from the bank or from a group of investors, pay the labor and material costs to erect it, maintain the factory as collateral, paying back the loan with cash flow from the business. The capital was constantly liquid, changing hands from one individual to another.

Banks were fewer in the South, and most plantation profits went to purchases of more slaves and more land.

Legacy of destruction

The principal physical legacy of the Confederacy was mass destruction. Four years of Civil War killed at least 620,000 soldiers (counting deaths from disease as well as in battle), of whom approximately 260,000 were from the Confederacy. This represented a much larger fraction (slightly over one quarter) of the Confederacy's military age free men than was lost by the Union.

An unknown number of civilians also died, in part as a result of the campaign of systematic destruction of the infrastructure in late 1864 and early 1865 by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman which helped not only to destroy the will of the Confederacy to fight, but literally to destroy the parts of the civilian economy useful to the war effort. Severe damage was inflicted on both urban and rural communities in the South, and hundreds of thousands of people became refugees. The exigencies of total war had led to the destruction of much Southern infrastructure, in particular railroads, long before 1864.

Upon the Confederate defeat, General Lee on April 9, 1865 ruled out continuing to fight on as insurgents. To have done otherwise would have been folly. The Union was prepared to use techniques it had learned in Missouri: move all the hostile civilians into concentration camps, thus cutting off supplies to the insurgents, and then hunt down the rebels bands one by one.

Extent of wartime destruction

Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every state was affected. There was little military action in Texas and Florida. Of 645 counties in 9 Confederate states (exclusing Texas and Florida), there was Union military action in 56%, containing 63% of the whites and 64% of the slaves in 1860; however when the action took place, some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.[15]

Towns and cities

The Confederacy in 1861 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,554), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,522, at least 8,052, and 37,910, respectively); the eleven contained 115,916 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated their population when they were invaded. The number of people who lived in the destroyed places represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830).[16]

Rural areas

The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, of $48 million worth. Many old tools had broken through heavy use and could not be replaced; even repairs were difficult.

Railroad mileage was of course mostly in rural areas. The war followed the rails, and over two-thirds of the rails and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what it could. The South had 9400 miles of track and 6500 miles was in areas reached by the Union armies. About 4400 miles were in areas where Sherman and other Union generals adopted a policy of systematic destruction of the rail system. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate movement of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone guaranteed the system would be virtually ruined at war's end.[17]

Legacy

Slavery was abolished in the Confederacy—but not in the four slave states that had not seceded—by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, by the U.S. Army, and by the Thirteenth Amendment which became law in late 1865.

The seceding states all rescinded their ordinances of secession and were admitted, one-by-one, back into the Union by a government that had previously maintained that it was not possible to secede from the Union. This was done by the process of Reconstruction. Reconstruction began during the war and ended in 1877.

There was never an effort to revive the Confederacy, but nostalgia for the Lost Cause, poisoned relations from the war and the destruction of Southern property, and by the vengeful administration of Reconstruction soured North-South relations until at least the 1890s. Some Southerners insisted on white supremacy.

After Reconstruction, the Redeemers (white Democrats) took full control and slowly removed the voting rights and some of the legal rights of the Freedmen, installing a system of segregation known as Jim Crow. The region became a Democratic Party stronghold for a century.

Economically the South was badly damaged and fell far behind the North in terms of prosperity; it took 100 years for the South to catch up.

Bibliography

Surveys and textbooks

  • Coulter, E. Merton. The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (1950), highly detailed overview; strong Southern accent
  • Current, Richard N., et al. eds. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy (1993) (4 Volume set; also 1 vol abridged version), comprehensive excellent reference work
  • Davis, William C. Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America (2003)
  • Donald, David et al. The Civil War and Reconstruction (latest edition 2001); 700 page survey
  • Eaton, Clement. A History of the Southern Confederacy (1954).
  • Fellman, Michael et al. This Terrible War: The Civil War and its Aftermath (2nd ed. 2007), 544 page survey
  • Heidler, David Stephen, ed. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2002), 1600 entries in 2700 pages in 5 vol or 1-vol editions; very good basic reference
  • McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), 900 page survey; Pulitzer prize
  • Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union, an 8-volume set (1947-1971). the most detailed political, economic and military narrative; by Pulitzer Prize winner
    • vol 4. Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861; 5. The Improvised War, 1861-1862; 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863; 7. The Organized War, 1863-1864; 8. The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865
  • Rhodes, James Ford. History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1918), Pulitzer Prize; a short version of his 5-volume history
  • Roland, Charles P. The Confederacy, 1960. old brief survey
  • Rubin, Anne Sarah. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868. (2005). 319 pp.
  • Thomas, Emory M. Confederate Nation: 1861-1865 (1979). Standard political-economic-social history

Specialized studies

  • Beringer, Richard E., Archer Jones, and Herman Hattaway, Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986) influential analysis of factors; The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims, and Religion (1988), abridged version
  • Boritt, Gabor S., et al., Why the Confederacy Lost, (1992).
  • Davis, William C. and Robertson, James I., Jr., eds. Virginia at War, 1861. (2007). 241 pp.
  • Goldin, Claudia D., and Frank D. Lewis, "The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications," Journal of Economic History 35#2 (June 1975), pp. 299–326 in JSTOR
  • Owsley, Frank Lawrence. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign relations of the Confederate States of America (1931)
  • Ransom, Roger L. "The Economics of the Civil War," EH.Net Encyclopedia, ed. Robert Whaples (Aug. 25, 2001), online edition
  • Rable, George C., The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics, (1994). online edition
  • Thomas, Emory M. The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience, (1992) short interpretive essay
  • Wallenstein, Peter and Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, eds. Virginia's Civil War. (2005). 303 pp. excerpt and text search
  • Wiley, Bell Irvin. Southern Negroes: 1861-1865 (1938)

Women

  • Faust, Drew. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (2004) excerpt and text search
  • Harper, Judith E. Women during the Civil War: An Encyclopedia. (2004). 472 pp.
  • Massey, Mary. Bonnet Brigades: American Women and the Civil War (1966), excellent overview
  • Rable, George C. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (1989), excellent
  • Roberts, Giselle. The Confederate Belle. (2003). 245 pp.
  • Wiley, Bell Irvin. Confederate Women (1975), good survey
  • Woodward, C. Vann, Ed., Mary Chesnut's Civil War, (1981) Pulitzer Prize; primary source

See also

Primary sources

  • Carter, Susan B., ed. The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition (5 vols), 2006; online at many universities
  • Davis, Jefferson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols), 1881.
  • Harwell, Richard B. ed. The Confederate Reader (1957) 389 pp. online edition
  • Jones, John B. A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, edited by Howard Swiggert, [1935] 1993. 2 vols.
  • Richardson, James D., ed. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence 1861-1865, 2 volumes, 1906.
  • Yearns, W. Buck and Barret, John G.,eds. North Carolina Civil War Documentary, 1980.
  • Confederate official government documents major online collection of complete texts in HTML format, from U. of North Carolina
  • Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (7 vols), 1904. online
  • The Countryman, 1862-1866, published weekly by Turnwold, Ga., edited by J.A. Turner; primary source

External links

Notes

  1. See
  2. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865 (1979), pp. 83-84.
  3. Thomas, p. 63.
  4. Thomas, Appendix, pp. 306-322.
  5. [1]
  6. William Seward to Charles Francis Adams Sr., April 10, 1861 in Marion Mills Miller, Ed. Life And Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1907) Vol 6.
  7. Seward to Adams April 10, 1861 ibid
  8. 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; Saxe was a firm supporter of the U.S. It is false to state that Saxe (or the Pope) recognized the Confederacy. No country did so. On the Pope see [2]
  9. Frank L. Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy (Chicago, 1925),
  10. 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."
  11. John Moretta; "Pendleton Murrah and States Rights in Civil War Texas," Civil War History, Vol. 45, 1999
  12. Albert Burton Moore,Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. (1924) p. 295.
  13. Rable (1994) 258-9
  14. Rable (1994) p 265
  15. Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy," Civil War History 54.1 (2008) 35-62
  16. Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy," Civil War History 54.1 (2008) 35-62
  17. Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy," Civil War History 54.1 (2008) 35-62