Difference between revisions of "Confederate States of America"

The '''Confederate States of America''' were an alliance of 11 southern [[America]]n states who fought against the Union states in the [[American Civil War]] (1861 to 1865). General [[Robert E. Lee]] led the Confederate forces into battle against the armies of the Northern states, led by various generals appointed by [[Abraham Lincoln]], only the last of whom, [[Ulysses S. Grant]], ultimately proved able to defeat Lee's [[Army of Northern Virginia]]. The confederate states seceded from the North after threats of ending [[slavery]], which they viewed as a matter of states' rights that should not be enforced at the federal level.   

 

What is frequently forgotten is that prior to Lincoln's call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion, the Confederacy only consisted of seven states -- [[Alabama]], [[Florida]], [[Georgia]], [[Louisiana]], [[Mississippi]], [[South Carolina]] and [[Texas]].  All of these had seceded between the [[1860 Presidential election]] and Lincoln's first inauguration on March 4, 1861 -- South Carolina was first, in December.  There was a strong debate in Lincoln's [[Cabinet]] as to whether [[Fort Sumter]] in [[South Carolina]] and [[Fort Pickens]] in [[Florida]], the only two U. S. military bases in the Confederacy not abandoned prior to March 4, were worth sparking a war, or whether a political [[compromise]] would be arrived at in the absence of war to reunite the Union.  Lincoln was completely unwilling to amend the [[U. S. Constitution]] as Southern [[firebrands]] demanded to waive any Federal influence over slavery or permanently enshrine the result in [[Dred Scott v. Sandford]].  More significantly, he ultimately proved unwilling either to abandon the last two forts, or to exempt Southern states still in the Union from providing troops to suppress the rebels after they fired on Fort Sumter (despite this being an action in which no one was killed on either side).

 

Following Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers from all 27 states still in the Union on April 15, [[Arkansas]], [[North Carolina]], [[Tennessee]] and [[Virginia]] seceded.  Strictly speaking, therefore, Lincoln's predecessor [[James Buchanan]] presided over the secession of seven states while Lincoln presided over that of four.  The rhetoric of the young Confederacy before it moved its capital to Richmond indicates it is highly unlikely that even pro-slavery amendments to the Constitution would have enticed the seven seceded states back into the Union.  Had Lincoln listened to the warnings of some timid members of his Cabinet not to make more enemies by leaving U. S. troops at Fort Sumter, he might have lost his chance to defeat the already declared enemies of the United States.

[[Category:politics]]