| Confederate States of America |
| Unrecognized state[1][2] |
| ↓ |
1861–1865 |
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Motto
Deo Vindice (Latin)
"Under God, our Vindicator" |
Anthem
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States in the CSA
States and territories claimed by the CSA without formal secession and/or control
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| Capital |
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| Language(s) |
English (de facto) |
| Government |
Confederal Republic |
| President |
| - 1861–1865 |
Jefferson Davis |
| Vice President |
| - 1861–1865 |
Alexander Stephens |
| Legislature |
Congress |
| - Upper house |
Senate |
| - Lower house |
House of Representatives |
| Historical era |
American Civil War |
| - Confederacy formed |
February 4, 1861 |
| - Constitution created |
March 11, 1861 |
| - Battle of Fort Sumter |
April 12, 1861 |
| - Siege of Vicksburg |
May 18, 1863 |
| - Military collapse |
April 9, 1865 |
| - Confederacy dissolved |
May 5, 1865 |
| Area |
| - 18601 |
1,995,392 km2 (770,425 sq mi) |
| Population |
| - 18601 est. |
9,103,332 |
| Density |
4.6 /km2 (11.8 /sq mi) |
| - slaves2 est. |
3,521,110 |
| Currency |
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The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, the CSA, and the South) was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern slave states that had declared their secession from the United States. Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution was a compact among states, an agreement which each state could abandon without consultation. The U.S. government (the Union) rejected secession as illegal. Following a Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, a federal fort in the Confederate state of South Carolina, the U.S. used military action to defeat the Confederacy. No foreign nation officially recognized the Confederate States of America as an independent country,[1] but several did grant belligerent status.
The Confederate Constitution of seven state signatories — South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas — formed a "permanent federal government" in Montgomery, Alabama. In response to a call by Lincoln for troops from each state to recapture Sumter and other lost federal properties in the South, four additional slave-holding states — Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina — declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions from those states. Also aligned with the Confederacy were the Five Civilized Tribes and a new Confederate Territory of Arizona. Efforts to secede in Maryland were halted by martial law, while Delaware, though of divided loyalty, did not attempt it. West Virginia separated from the Confederate state of Virginia in 1863 and aligned with the Union. The Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia had an uneasy relationship with its member states because of issues related to control of manpower, although the South mobilized nearly its entire white male population for war.[3]
Confederate control over its claimed territory and population steadily shrank from 73% to 34% during the course of the American Civil War due to successful Union overland campaigns, their control of inland waterways into the South, and the seacoast Union blockade. These created an insurmountable disadvantage in men, supplies and finance. Public support of the Jefferson Davis administration eroded over time with repeated military reverses, economic hardship, and charges of autocratic government. Richmond fell after four years of Union campaigns in April 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, and the Confederacy effectively collapsed.
The U.S. Congress began a decade-long process known as Reconstruction which some scholars treat as an extension of the Civil War. It lasted through the administrations of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Grant, and saw the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to free slaves, the Fourteenth to guarantee dual U.S. and state citizenship to all, and the Fifteenth to guarantee the right to vote in states. The war left the South economically devastated by military action, ruined infrastructure and exhausted resources. The region remained well below national levels of prosperity until after World War II.[4]
The Confederacy was formed, and a civil war followed its establishment. A sufficient number of whites had considered themselves more Southern than American and would fight for their state and their section to be apart from the larger nation. That sectionalism became Southern nationalism, the "Cause". For the duration of its existence, the Confederacy underwent trial by war.[5] The Southern Cause transcended ideology of "states rights" concerning tariff policy or internal improvements to include lifestyle, values, and belief system. Its “way of life” became sacred to its adherents. Everything of the South became a moral question, commingling love of things Southern and hate of things Yankee. Not only did national political parties split, but national churches and interstate families also divided along sectional lines as the war approached.[6]
In no states were the whites unanimous. There were minority views everywhere and the upland plateau regions in every state had strongholds of Unionist support, especially western Virginia and eastern Tennessee. Leaving aside Texas which at the time had five percent of the population, south of the Mason–Dixon Line voter support for the three pro-Union candidates in 1860 ranged from 37% in Florida to 71% in Missouri.[7] It was an American tragedy, The Brother's War according to some scholars, "brother against brother, father against son, kith against kin of every degree".[8]
Nevertheless, historians argue that several thousand large-scale planters formed a landed "aristocracy". They believed in a landed aristocratic ideal and they acted on their belief.[9] The Confederacy had a much larger middle class of whites of small planters, farmers, merchants and artisans, which held to a “persistent folk culture in the Old South”. Otherwise as the historian Emory Thomas notes, there would have been Confederate armies of planter generals with no soldiers.[10]
The Confederate States of America was created by secessionists in Southern slave states who refused to remain in a nation that they believed was turning them into second class citizens. The agent of the change was seen as abolitionists and anti-slavery elements in the Republican Party who used repeated insult and injury to subject them to intolerable "humiliation and degradation".[11] The "Black Republicans" and their allies now threatened a majority in the United States House, Senate and Presidency, and on the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney was 83 and ailing.
During the campaign for president in 1860, some secessionists threatened disunion at Lincoln’s election, most notably by William L. Yancey touring the north as Stephen A. Douglas toured the South calling for Union if Lincoln were elected.[12] But to Secessionists, the Republican intent was clear. A Lincoln victory forced them to a formidable choice even before his inauguration, "The Union without slavery, or slavery without the Union."[13]
Historian Emory Thomas reconstructed the Confederacy's self image by studying the correspondence sent by the Confederate government in 1861–62 to foreign governments. He found that the C.S.A. had multiple self images:
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."
[14]
By 1860, sectional disagreements between North and South revolved primarily around the maintenance or expansion of slavery. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust observed that "leaders of the secession movement across the South cited slavery as the most compelling reason for southern independence."[15] Although this may seem strange, given that the majority of white Southerners did not own slaves, virtually every single white Southerner supported slavery because they did not want to be at the bottom of the social ladder.[16] Related and intertwined secondary issues also fueled the dispute; these secondary differences included issues of free speech, runaway slaves, expansion into Cuba, and states' rights. The immediate spark for secession came from the victory of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 elections. Civil War historian James M. McPherson wrote:
To southerners the election’s most ominous feature was the magnitude of Republican victory north of the
41st parallel. Lincoln won more than 60 percent of the vote in that region, losing scarcely two dozen counties. Three-quarters of the Republican congressmen and senators in the next Congress would represent this "Yankee" and antislavery portion of the free states. The
New Orleans Crescent saw these facts as "full of portentous significance". "The idle canvas prattle about Northern conservatism may now be dismissed," agreed the
Richmond Examiner. "A party founded on the single sentiment... of hatred of African slavery, is now the controlling power." No one could any longer "be deluded... that the Black Republican party is a moderate" party, pronounced the
New Orleans Delta. "It is in fact, essentially, a revolutionary party."
[17]
In what later became known as the Cornerstone Speech, C.S. Vice President Alexander Stephens declared that the "cornerstone" of the new government "rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth".[18] In later years, however, Stephens made efforts to qualify his remarks, claiming they were extemporaneous, metaphorical, and never meant to literally reflect "the principles of the new Government on this subject."[19][20]
Four of the seceding states, the Deep South states of South Carolina,[21] Mississippi,[22] Georgia,[23] and Texas,[24] issued formal declarations of causes, each of which identified the threat to slaveholders’ rights as the cause of, or a major cause of, secession. Georgia also claimed a general Federal policy of favoring Northern over Southern economic interests. Texas mentioned slavery 21 times, but also listed the failure of the federal government to live up to its obligations, in the original annexation agreement, to protect settlers along the exposed western frontier.
Texas further stated:
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
And again:
That in this free government
all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
[24]
The Fire-Eaters, calling for immediate secession, were opposed by two elements. "Cooperationists" in the Deep South would delay secession until several states went together, maybe in a Southern Convention. Under the influence of men such as Texas Governor Sam Houston, delay had the effect of sustaining the Union.[25] "Unionists", especially in the Border South, often former Whigs, appealed to sentimental attachment to the United States. Their favorite was John Bell of Tennessee.
Secessionists were active politically. Governor William Henry Gist of South Carolina corresponded secretly with other Deep South governors, and most governors exchanged clandestine commissioners.[26] Charleston’s secessionist "1860 Association" published over 200,000 pamphlets to persuade the youth of the South. The top three were South Carolina’s John Townsend’s “The Doom of Slavery”, “The South Alone Should Govern the South”, and James D.B. De Bow’s “The Interest of Slavery of the Southern Non-slaveholder.[27]
Developments in South Carolina started a chain of events. The foreman of a jury refused the legitimacy of federal courts, so Federal Judge Andrew Magrath ruled that U.S. judicial authority in South Carolina was vacated. A mass meeting in Charleston celebrating the Charleston and Savannah railroad and state cooperation led to the South Carolina legislature to call for a Secession Convention. U.S. Senator James Chesnut, Jr. resigned, and U.S. Senator James Henry Hammond followed.[28]
Elections for Secessionist conventions were heated to “an almost raving pitch, no one dared dissent” Even once respected voices, including the Chief Justice of South Carolina, John Belton O’Neall, lost election to the Secession Convention on a Cooperationist ticket. Across the South mobs lynched Yankees and (in Texas) Germans suspected of loyalty to the United States.[29] Generally, seceding conventions which followed did not call for a referendum to ratify, although Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee did, also Virginia’s second convention. Missouri and Kentucky declared neutrality.
The first secession state conventions from the Deep South sent representatives to meet at the Montgomery Convention in Montgomery, Alabama on February 4, 1861. There the fundamental documents of government were promulgated, a provisional government was established, and a representative Congress met for the Confederate States of America.[30]
The new Confederate President Jefferson Davis, a former "Cooperationist" who had insisted on delaying secession until a united South could move together, issued a call for 100,000 states' militia to defend the newborn nation.[30] Previously John B. Floyd, U.S. Secretary of War under President James Buchanan, had moved arms south out of northern U.S. armories. To economize War Department expenditures, Floyd and Congressional elements persuaded Buchanan not to put the armaments for southern forts into place. These were now appropriated to the Confederacy along with bullion and coining dies at the U.S. mints in Charlotte, North Carolina; Dahlonega, Georgia; and New Orleans.[30]
In his first Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln tried to contain the expansion of the Confederacy. To quiet the rising calls for secession in additional slave-holding states, he assured the Border States that slavery would be preserved in the states where it existed, and he entertained a proposed Thirteenth "Corwin Amendment" under consideration to explicitly protect slavery in the Constitution.[31]
The newly inaugurated Confederate Administration pursued a policy of national territorial integrity, continuing earlier state efforts in 1860 and early 1861 to remove U.S. government presence from within their boundaries. These efforts included taking possession of U.S. courts, custom houses, post offices, and most notably, arsenals and forts. But at the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called up 75,000 of the states’ militia to muster under his command. The stated purpose was to re-occupy U.S. properties throughout the South, as the U.S. Congress had not authorized their abandonment. The resistance at Fort Sumter signaled his change of policy from that of the Buchanan Administration. Lincoln's response ignited a firestorm of emotion. The people both North and South demanded war, and young men rushed to their colors in their hundreds of thousands. Four more states (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) declared secessions, while Kentucky tried to remain neutral.[30]
Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution was a compact among states that could be abandoned at any time without consultation and that each state had a right to secede. After intense debates and statewide votes, seven Deep South cotton states passed secession ordinances by February 1861 (before Abraham Lincoln took office as president), while secession efforts failed in the other eight slave states. Delegates from those seven formed the C.S.A. in February 1861, selecting Jefferson Davis as the provisional president. Unionist talk of reunion failed and Davis began raising a 100,000 man army.[32]
Initially, secessionists hoped for a peaceful departure, including all slave-holding states in the Union. Moderates in the Confederate Constitutional Convention included a provision against importation of slaves from Africa to appeal to the Upper South. Non-slave states might join, but the radicals secured a two-thirds hurdle for them.[33]
Seven states declared their secession from the United States before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter April 12, 1861 and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops on April 15, four more states declared their secession:[34]
Kentucky declared neutrality but after Confederate troops moved in, the state government asked for Union troops to drive them out. Confederate state government relocated to accompany western Confederate armies and never controlled state population.
In Missouri, on October 31, 1861, a pro-CSA remnant of the General Assembly met and passed an ordinance of secession.[35] The Confederate's state government was unable to control Missouri territory, and it was subsequently driven out of the state.
Neither Kentucky nor Missouri were declared in rebellion in the Emancipation Proclamation, as Lincoln saw no military necessity to free slaves there. The Confederacy recognized the pro-Confederate claimants in both Kentucky and Missouri and laid claim to those states, granting them Congressional representation and adding two stars to the Confederate flag.
The order of secession resolutions and dates follow.
In Virginia the populous counties along the Ohio and Pennsylvania borders rejected the Confederacy. Unionists held a Convention in Wheeling in June 1861, establishing a "restored government" with a rump legislature, but sentiment in the region remained deeply divided. In the 50 counties that would make up the state of West Virginia, voters from 24 counties had voted for disunion in Virginia's May 23 referendum on the ordinance of secession.[47] In the 1860 Presidential election "Constitutional Democrat" Breckenridge had outpolled "Constitutional Unionist" Bell in the 50 counties by 1,900 votes, 44% to 42%.[48] Regardless of scholarly disputes over election procedures and results county by county, altogether they simultaneously supplied over 20,000 soldiers to each side of the conflict.[49][50] Representatives for most of the counties were seated in both state legislatures at Wheeling and at Richmond for the duration of the war.[51]
Attempts to secede from the Confederacy by some counties in East Tennessee were checked by martial law.[52] Although slave-holding Delaware and Maryland did not secede, citizens from those states exhibited divided loyalties. Maryland regiments fought in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.[53] Delaware never produced a full regiment for the Confederacy, but neither did it emancipate slaves as did Missouri and West Virginia. District of Columbia citizens made no attempts to secede and through the war years, Lincoln-sponsored referendums approved systems of compensated emancipation and slave confiscation from "disloyal citizens".[54]
Citizens at Mesilla and Tucson in the southern part of New Mexico Territory formed a secession convention, which voted to join the Confederacy on March 16, 1861, and appointed Lewis Owings as the new territorial governor. They won the Battle of Mesilla and established a territorial government with Mesilla serving as its capital.[55] The Confederacy proclaimed the Confederate Arizona Territory on February 14, 1862 north to the 34th parallel. Marcus H. MacWillie served in both Confederate Congresses as Arizona’s delegate. In 1862 the Confederate New Mexico Campaign to take the northern half of the U.S. territory failed and the Confederate territorial government in exile located in San Antonio, Texas.[56]
Confederate supporters in the trans-Mississippi west also claimed portions of United States Indian Territory after it evacuated the federal forts and installations. Over half the Native-American troops participating in the Civil War from the Indian Territory supported the Confederacy, troops and one general were enlisted from each tribe. On July 12, 1861, the Confederate government signed a treaty with both the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian nations. After several battles Northern armies moved back into the territory.
Indian Territory was never formally ceded into the Confederacy by Native-American councils, but like Missouri and Kentucky, the Five Civilized Nations received representation in the Confederate Congress and their citizens were integrated into regular Confederate Army units. After 1863 the tribal governments sent representatives to the Confederate Congress: Elias Cornelius Boudinot representing the Cherokee and Samuel Benton Callahan representing the Seminole and Creek people. The Cherokee Nation aligning with the Confederacy alleged northern violations of the Constitution, waging war against slavery commercial and political interests, abolishing slavery in the Indian Territory, and that the North intended to seize additional Indian lands.[57]
Montgomery, Alabama served as the capital of the Confederate States of America from February 4 until May 29, 1861. Six states created the Confederate States of America there on February 8, 1861. The Texas delegation was seated at the time, so it is counted in the "original seven" states of the Confederacy. But it had no roll call vote until after its referendum made secession "operative".[58] Two sessions of the Provisional Congress were held in Montgomery, adjourning May 21.[59] The Permanent Constitution was adopted there on March 12, 1861.[60]
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First Capitol, Montgomery AL
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Second Capitol, Richmond VA
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The permanent capital provided for in the Confederate Constitution called for a state cession of a ten-miles square (100 square mile) district to the central government. Atlanta, which had not yet supplanted Milledgeville, Georgia as its state capital, put in a bid noting its central location and rail connections, as did Opelika, Alabama, noting its strategically interior situation, rail connections and nearby deposits of coal and iron.[61]
Richmond, Virginia was chosen for the interim capital. The move was used by Vice President Stephens and others to encourage other border states to follow Virginia into the Confederacy. In the political moment it was a show of “defiance and strength”. The war for southern independence was surely to be fought in Virginia, but it also had the largest Southern military-aged white population, with infrastructure, resources and supplies required to sustain a war. The Davis Administration's policy was that, “It must be held at all hazards.”[62]
The naming of Richmond as the new capital took place on May 30, 1861, and the last two sessions of the Provisional Congress were held in the new capital. The Permanent Confederate Congress and President were elected in the states and army camps on November 6, 1861. The First Congress met in four sessions in Richmond February 18, 1862 – February 17, 1864. The Second Congress met there in two sessions, May 2, 1864 – March 18, 1865.[63]
As war dragged on, Richmond became crowded with training and transfers, logistics and hospitals. Prices rose dramatically despite government efforts at price regulation. A movement in Congress led by Henry S. Foote of Tennessee argued to remove the Capital from Richmond. At the approach of Federal armies in early summer 1862, the government’s archives were readied for removal. As the Wilderness Campaign progressed, Congress authorized Davis to remove the executive department and call Congress to session elsewhere in 1864 and again in 1865. Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, planning to relocate farther south. Little came of these plans before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865.[64]
During the four years of its existence under trial by war, the Confederate States of America asserted its independence and appointed dozens of diplomatic agents abroad. The United States government regarded the southern states in rebellion and so refused any formal recognition of their status.
Even before Fort Sumter, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward issued formal instructions to the American minister to Great Britain: Make “no expressions of harshness or disrespect, or even impatience concerning the seceding States, their agents, or their people, [those States] must always continue to be, equal and honored members of this Federal Union, [their citizens] still are and always must be our kindred and countrymen.”[66]
If the British seemed inclined to recognize the Confederacy, or even waver in that regard, they were to receive a sharp warning, with a strong hint of war: “[if Britain is] tolerating the application of the so-called seceding States, or wavering about it, [they cannot] remain friends with the United States … if they determine to recognize [the Confederacy], [Britain] may at the same time prepare to enter into alliance with the enemies of this republic.”[66]
The United States government never declared war on those “kindred and countrymen”, but conducted its military efforts beginning with a presidential proclamation issued April 15, 1861 calling for troops to recapture forts and suppress a rebellion.[67][68] Mid-war parlays between the two sides occurred without formal political recognition, though the laws of war predominantly governed military relationships on both sides of uniformed conflict.[69]
On the part of the Confederacy, immediately following Fort Sumter the Confederate Congress proclaimed “... war exists between the Confederate States and the Government of the United States, and the States and Territories thereof …” A state of war was not to formally exist between the Confederacy and those states and territories in the United States allowing slavery, although Confederate Rangers were compensated for destruction they could effect there throughout the war.[70]
Concerning the international status and nationhood of the Confederate States of America, in 1869 the United States Supreme Court in Texas v. White ruled Texas' declaration of secession was legally null and void.[71] Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy, and Alexander Stephens, its former Vice-President, both wrote postwar arguments in favor of secession's legality and the international legitimacy of the Government of the Confederate States of America, most notably Davis' The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.
Once the war with the United States began, the Confederacy pinned its hopes for survival on military intervention by Britain and France. The Confederates who had believed that "cotton is king" – that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton – proved mistaken. The British had ample stocks to last over a year, and had been developing alternative sources of cotton most notably India and Egypt. They were not about to go to war with the U.S. to acquire more cotton at the risk of losing the large quantities of food imported from the North.[72][73] The Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe; historians give them low marks for their poor diplomacy.[74] James M. Mason went to London and John Slidell traveled to Paris. They were unofficially interviewed, but neither secured official recognition for the Confederacy.
In late 1861 illegal actions of the U.S. Navy in seizing a British ship outraged Britain and led to a war scare in the Trent Affair. Recognition of the Confederacy seemed at hand, but Lincoln released the two detained Confederate diplomats, tensions cooled, and the Confederacy gained no advantage.
Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary Lord John Russell, Emperor Napoleon III of France, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, showed interest in recognition of the Confederacy or at least mediation of the war. But the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, (Sharpsburg) combined with internal British abolitionist opposition, and Britain did nothing.[75] The cost to Britain of a war with the U.S. were high: the immediate loss of American grain shipments, the end of exports to the U.S., the seizure of billions of pounds invested in American securities. War meant higher taxes, another invasion of Canada, and full-scale worldwide attacks on the British merchant fleet. While outright recognition meant certain war with the United States, in the summer of 1862 fears of race war as had transpired in Haiti led to the British considering intervention for humanitarian reasons. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not lead to interracial violence let alone a bloodbath, but it did give the friends of the Union strong talking points in the arguments that raged across Britain.[76]
The British government did allow blockade runners to be built in Britain and operated by British seamen. Several European nations maintained diplomats in place who had been appointed to the U.S., but no country appointed any diplomat to the Confederacy. However those nations did recognize the Union and Confederate sides as belligerents. In 1863, the Confederacy expelled the European diplomatic missions for advising their resident subjects to refuse to serve in the Confederate army.[77] Both Confederate and Union agents were allowed to work openly in British territories. Some state governments in northern Mexico negotiated local agreements to cover trade on the Texas border.[78] Pope Pius IX wrote a letter to Jefferson Davis in which he addressed Davis as the "Honorable President of the Confederate States of America." but The Holy See never released a formal statement supporting or recognizing the Confederacy.[79]
The Confederacy was seen internationally as a serious attempt at nationhood, and European governments sent military observers to assess the ‘’de facto’’ establishment of independence. These included official and unofficial Arthur Freemantle of the British Coldstream Guards, Fitzgerald Ross of the Austrian Hussars, and Justus Scheibert of the Prussian army.[80] European travelers visited and wrote accounts for publication. Importantly in 1862, the Frenchman Charles Girard's “Seven months in the rebel states during the North American War” testified “this government . . . is no longer a trial government . . . but really a normal government, the expression of popular will”.[81]
Due to Lincoln’s support of Juarez, by late spring of 1863 France was in need of Confederate cotton and other Caribbean commerce to sustain the French conquest of Mexico. News of Lee’s decisive victory at Chancellorsville had reached the Continent, and French Emperor Napoleon III assured Confederate diplomat John Slidell that he would make “direct proposition” to England for joint recognition. The Emperor made the same assurance to Members of Parliament John A. Roebuck and John A. Lindsay.[82] Roebuck in turn publically prepared a bill to submit to Parliament June 30 supporting joint Anglo-French recognition of the Confederacy. Preparations for Lee’s incursion into Pennsylvania were underway to influence the midterm U.S. elections. Confederate independence and nationhood was at a turning point. “Southerners had a right to be optimistic, or at least hopeful, that their revolution would prevail, or at least endure”.[83]
Southern Civil War historian E. Merton Coulter noted that for those who would secure its independence, “The Confederacy was unfortunate in its failure to work out a general strategy for the whole war”. Aggressive strategy called for offensive force concentration. Defensive strategy sought dispersal to meet demands of locally minded governors. The controlling philosophy evolved into a combination “dispersal with a defensive concentration around Richmond”. The Davis administration considered the war purely defensive, a “simple demand that the people of the United States would cease to war upon us."[84]
As the Confederate government lost control of territory in campaign after campaign, it was said that “the vast size of the Confederacy would make its conquest impossible”. The enemy would be struck down by the same elements which so often debilitated or destroyed visitors and transplants in the South. Heat exhaustion, sunstroke, endemic diseases such as malaria and typhoid would match the destructive effectiveness of the Moscow winter on the invading armies of Napoleon.[85]
The Great Seal
symbols of an independent agricultural Confederacy surrounding an equestrian Washington, sword encased[86]
But despite the Confederacy's essentially defensive stance, in the early stages of the war there were offensive visions of seizing the Rocky Mountains or cutting the North in two by marching to Lake Erie. Then, at a time when both sides believed that one great battle would decide the conflict, the Confederate won a great victory at the "Battle of Manassas". It drove the Confederate people “insane with joy”, the public demanded a forward movement to capture Washington DC, relocate the Capital there, and admit Maryland to the Confederacy.[87] A council of war by the victorious Confederate generals decided not to advance against larger numbers of fresh Federal troops in defensive positions. Davis did not countermand it. Following the Confederate incursion halted at the Battle of Antietam, (Sharpsburg), in October 1862 generals proposed concentrating forces from state commands to re-invade the north. Nothing came of it.[88] Again in early 1863 at his incursion into Pennsylvania, Lee requested of Davis that Beauregard simultaneously attack Washington with troops taken from the Carolinas. But the troops there remained in place during the Gettysburg Campaign.
Without counting their enslaved men, eleven states of the Confederacy were outnumbered by the North about four to one in military population. It was overmatched far more in military equipment, ability to produce and procure it, railroads for transport, and wagons supplying the front. Big guns were out-ranged and small arms were less effective. Confederate military policy innovated to compensate. Booby-trapped land mines were laid in the path of invading armies. Harbors, inlets and inland waterways were laced with numbers of sunken “torpedo” mines and covered with mobile artillery batteries. Rangers were sent to disrupt and destroy supplies of invading armies until they were disbanded, then the “dashing cavalry”.[89]
The Confederacy relied on external sources for war materials. The first came from trade with the enemy. “Vast amounts of war supplies” came through Kentucky, and thereafter, western armies were “to a very considerable extent” provisioned with illicit trade via Federal agents and northern private traders.[90] But that trade was interrupted in the first year of war by Admiral Porter's river gunboats as they gained dominance along navigable rivers north-south and east-west.[91] Overseas blockade running then came to be of “outstanding importance”.[92] On April 17, President Davis called on privateer raiders, the “militia of the sea”, to make war on U.S. seaborne commerce.[93] Despite noteworthy effort, over the course of the war the Confederacy was found unable to match the Union in ships and seamanship, materials and marine construction.[94]
Perhaps the most implacable obstacle to success in the 19th century warfare of mass armies was the Confederacy's lack of manpower, sufficient numbers of disciplined, equipped troops in the field at the point of contact with the enemy. During the wintering of 1862–1863, Lee observed that none of his famous victories had resulted in the destruction of the opposing army. He lacked reserve troops to exploit an advantage on the battlefield as Napoleon had done. Lee explained, “More than once have most promising opportunities been lost for want of men to take advantage of them, and victory itself had been made to put on the appearance of defeat, because our diminished and exhausted troops have been unable to renew a successful struggle against fresh numbers of the enemy.”[95]
The military armed forces of the Confederacy comprised three branches: Army, Navy and Marine Corps.
The Confederate military leadership included many veterans from the United States Army and United States Navy who had resigned their Federal commissions and had won appointment to senior positions in the Confederate armed forces. Many had served in the Mexican-American War (including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis), but some such as Leonidas Polk (who had attended West Point but did not graduate) had little or no experience.
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Navy Jack – light blue cross
also square canton, white fly
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Battle Flag – square
also without center star
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The Confederate officer corps consisted of men from both slave-owning and non-slave-owning families. The Confederacy appointed junior and field grade officers by election from the enlisted ranks. Although no Army service academy was established for the Confederacy, some colleges (such as The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute) maintained cadet corps that trained Confederate military leadership. A naval academy was established at Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia[96] in 1863, but no midshipmen graduated before the Confederacy's end.
The soldiers of the Confederate armed forces consisted mainly of white males aged between 16 and 28. The median year of birth was 1838, so half the soldiers were 23 or older by 1861.[97] The Confederacy adopted conscription in 1862. Many thousands of slaves served as laborers, cooks, and pioneers. Some freed blacks and men of color served in local state militia units of the Confederacy, primarily in Louisiana and South Carolina, but their officers deployed them for "local defense, not combat."[98] Depleted by casualties and desertions, the military suffered chronic manpower shortages. In the spring of 1865, the Confederate Congress, influenced by the public support by General Lee, approved the recruitment of black infantry units. Contrary to Lee’s and Davis’s recommendations, the Congress refused “to guarantee the freedom of black volunteers.” No more than two hundred black troops were ever raised.[99]
"Do not wait to be drafted"
under half re-enlisted
The immediate onset of war meant that it was fought by the "Provisional" or "Volunteer Army". State governors resisted concentrating a national effort. Several wanted a strong state army for self-defense. Others feared large “Provisional” armies answering only to Davis.[100] When filling the Confederate government's call for 100,000 men, another 200,000 were turned away by accepting only those enlisted "for the duration" or twelve-month volunteers who brought their own arms or horses.[101]
It was important to raise troops; it was just as important to provide capable officers to command them. With few exceptions the Confederacy secured excellent general officers. Efficiency in the lower officers was "greater than could have been reasonably expected". As with the Federals, political appointees could be indifferent. Otherwise, the officer corps was governor-appointed or elected by unit enlisted. Promotion to fill vacancies was made internally regardless of merit, even if better officers were immediately available.[102]
Anticipating the need for more “duration” men, in January 1862 Congress provided for company level recruiters to return home for two months, but their efforts met little success on the heels of Confederate battlefield defeats in February.[103] Congress allowed for Davis to require numbers of recruits from each governor to supply the volunteer shortfall. States responded by passing their own draft laws.[104]
The veteran Confederate army of early 1862 was mostly twelve-month volunteers with terms about to expire. Enlisted reorganization elections disintegrated the army for two months. Officers pleaded with the ranks to re-enlist, but a majority did not. Those remaining elected majors and colonels whose performance led to officer review boards in October. The boards caused a "rapid and widespread" thinning out of 1700 incompetent officers. Troops thereafter would elect only second lieutenants.[105]
In early 1862, the popular press suggested the Confederacy required a million men under arms. But veteran soldiers were not re-enlisting, and earlier secessionist volunteers did not reappear to serve in war. One Macon, Georgia, newspaper asked how two million brave fighting men of the South were about to be overcome by four million northerners who were said to be cowards.[106]
The Confederacy passed the first American law of national conscription on April 16, 1862. The white males of the Confederate States from 18 to 35 were declared members of the Confederate army for three years, and all men then enlisted were extended to a three-year term. They would serve only in units and under officers of their state. Those under 18 and over 35 could substitute for conscripts, in September those from 35 to 45 became conscripts.[107] The cry of “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” led Congress to abolish the substitute system altogether in December 1863. All principals benefiting earlier were made eligible for service. By February 1864, the age bracket was made 17 to 50, those under eighteen and over forty-five to be limited to in-state duty.[108]
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Gabriel James Rains.jpg
Gen. Gabriel J. Rains
Conscription Bureau chief
April 1862 – May 1863
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Confederate conscription was not universal, it was actually a selective service. The First Conscription Act of April 1862 exempted occupations related to transportation, communication, industry, ministers, teaching and physical fitness. The Second Conscription Act of October 1862 expanded exemptions in industry, agriculture and conscientious objection. Exemption fraud proliferated in medical examinations, army furloughs, churches, schools, apothecaries and newspapers.[110] Rich men’s sons were appointed to the socially outcast “overseer” occupation, but the measure was received in the country with "universal odium”. Backpedalling six months later, Congress provided overseers under 45 could be exempted only if they held the occupation before the first Conscription Act.[111] The number of officials under state exemptions appointed by state Governor patronage expanded significantly.[112] By law, substitutes could not be subject to conscription, but instead of adding to Confederate manpower, unit officers in the field reported that over-50 and under-17 year old substitutes made up to 90% of the desertions.[113]
The Conscription Act of February 1864 “radically changed the whole system” of selection. It abolished industrial exemptions, placing detail authority in President Davis. As the shame of conscription was greater than a felony conviction, the system brought in “about as many volunteers as it did conscripts.” Many men in otherwise “bombproof” positions were enlisted in one way or another, nearly 160,000 additional volunteers and conscripts in uniform. Still there was shirking.[114] To administer the draft, a Bureau of Conscription was set up to use state officers, as state Governors would allow. It had a checkered career of “contention, opposition and futility”. Armies appointed alternative military "recruiters" to bring in the out-of-uniform 17–50 year old conscripts and deserters. Nearly 3000 officers would be tasked with the job. By fall 1864, Lee was calling for more troops. “Our ranks are constantly diminishing by battle and disease, and few recruits are received; the consequences are inevitable.” By March 1865 conscription was to be administered by generals of the state reserves calling out men over 45 and under 18 years old. All exemptions were abolished. These regiments were assigned to recruit conscripts ages 17–50, recover deserters, and repel enemy cavalry raids. The service retained men who had lost but one arm or a leg in home guards. April 1865 Lee surrendered an army of 50,000. Conscription had been a failure.[115]
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 of fighting, and the Confederacy never succeeded in replacing casualties as the Union could. The civilians, although enthusiastic in 1861–62, seem to have lost faith in the future of the Confederacy by 1864, and instead looked to protect their homes and communities. As Rable explains, "This contraction of civic vision was more than a crabbed libertarianism; it represented an increasingly widespread disillusionment with the Confederate experiment."[116]
The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with the Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston. In December 1860, Federal troops had withdrawn to the island fort from others in Charleston Harbor soon after South Carolina’s declaration of secession to avoid soldier-civilian street confrontations.
In January, President James Buchanan had attempted to resupply the garrison with the Star of the West, but Confederate artillery drove it away. In March, President Lincoln notified Governor Pickens that without Confederate resistance to resupply there would be no military reinforcement without further notice, but Lincoln prepared to force resupply if it were not allowed. Confederate President Davis in cabinet decided to capture Fort Sumter before the relief fleet arrived and on April 12, 1861, General Beauregard forced their surrender.[118]
Following Fort Sumter, Lincoln directed states to provide 75,000 troops for three months to recapture the Charleston Harbor forts and all other federal property that had been seized without Congressional authorization.[119] In May, Federal troops crossed into Confederate territory along the entire border from the Chesapeake Bay to New Mexico. The Confederate victory at Fort Sumter was followed by Confederate victories at the battles of Big Bethel, (Bethel Church) VA in June, First Bull Run, (First Manassas) in July and in August, Wilson’s Creek, (Oak Hills) in southwest Missouri. At all three, Confederate forces could not follow up their victory due to inadequate supply and shortages of fresh troops to exploit their successes. Following each battle, Federals maintained a military presence and their occupation of Washington DC, Fort Monroe VA and Springfield MO. Both North and South began training up armies for major fighting the next year.[120]
Confederate commerce-raiding just south of the Chesapeake Bay was ended in August at the loss of Hatteras NC. Early November a Union expedition at sea secured Port Royal and Beaufort SC south of Charleston, seizing Confederate-burned cotton fields along with escaped and owner-abandoned "contraband" field hands. December saw the loss of Georgetown SC north of Charleston. Federals there began a war-long policy of burning grain supplies up rivers into the interior wherever they could not occupy.[121]
The victories of 1861 were followed by a series of defeats east and west in early 1862. To restore the Union by military force the Federal intent was to (1) secure the Mississippi River, (2) seize or close Confederate ports and (3) march on Richmond. To secure independence, the Confederate intent was to (1) repel the invader on all fronts, costing him blood and treasure and (2) carry the war into the north by two offensives in time to impact the mid-term elections.
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Burnsides halted at the bridge
Battle of Antietam, (Sharpsburg)
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burying Union dead
Antietam, Maryland[122]
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Much of northwestern Virginia was under Federal control.[123] In February and March, most of Missouri and Kentucky were Union “occupied, consolidated, and used as staging areas for advances further South”. Following the repulse of Confederate counter-attack at the Battle of Shiloh, (Pittsburg Landing) Tennessee, permanent Federal occupation expanded west, south and east.[124] Confederate forces then repositioned south along the Mississippi River to Memphis, where at the naval Battle of Memphis its River Defense Fleet was sunk and Confederates then withdrew from northern Mississippi and northern Alabama. New Orleans was captured April 29 by a combined Army-Navy force under U.S. Admiral Farragut, and the Confederacy lost control of the mouth of the Mississippi River, conceding large agricultural resources that supported the Union’s sea-supplied logistics base.[125]
Although Confederates had suffered major reverses everywhere but Virginia, as of the end of April the Confederacy still controlled 72% of its population.[124] Federal forces disrupted Missouri and Arkansas; they had broken through in western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana. Along the Confederacy’s shores it had closed ports and made garrisoned lodgments on every coastal Confederate state but Alabama and Texas.[126] Although scholars sometimes assess the Union blockade as ineffectual under international law until the last few months of the war, from the first months it disrupted Confederate privateers making it “almost impossible to bring their prizes into Confederate ports”.[127] Nevertheless, British firms developed small fleets of blockade running companies and the Ordnance Department secured its own blockade runners for dedicated munitions cargos.[128]
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CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, (Monitor and Merrimac) nearby destroyed Union warship
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CSS Alabama off Cherbourg
only cruiser engagement
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The Civil War saw the advent of fleets of armored warships deployed in sustained blockades at sea. After some success against the Union blockade, in March the ironclad CSS Virginia was forced into port and burned by Confederates at their retreat. Despite several attempts mounted from their port cities, C.S. naval forces were unable to break the Union blockade including Commodore Josiah Tattnall’s ironclads from Savannah, in 1862 with the CSS Atlanta.[129] Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory placed his hopes in a European-built ironclad fleet, but they were never realized. On the other hand, four new English-built commerce raiders saw Confederate service, and several fast blockade runners were sold in Confederate ports, then converted into commerce-raiding cruisers, manned by their British crews.[130]
In the east, Union forces could not close on Richmond. General McClellan landed his army on the Lower Peninsula of Virginia. Lee subsequently ended that threat from the east, then Union General John Pope attacked overland from the north only to be repulsed at Second Bull Run, (Second Manassas). Lee’s strike north was turned back at Antietam MD, then Burnside’s offensive was disastrously ended at Fredericksburg VA in December. Both armies then turned to winter quarters to recruit and train for the coming spring.[131]
In an attempt to seize the initiative, reprovision, protect farms in mid-growing season and influence U.S. Congressional elections, two major Confederate incursions into Union territory had been launched in August and September 1862. Both Braxton Bragg's invasion of Kentucky and Lee's invasion of Maryland were decisively repulsed, leaving Confederates in control of but 63% of its population.[124] Civil War scholar Alan Nevins argues that 1862 was the strategic high water mark of the Confederacy.[132] The failures of the two invasions were attributed to the same irrecoverable shortcomings: lack of manpower at the front, lack of supplies including serviceable shoes, and exhaustion after long marches without adequate food.[133]
The failed Middle Tennessee campaign was ended January 2, 1863 at the inconclusive Battle of Stones River, (Murfreesboro), both sides losing the largest percentage of casualties suffered during the war. It was followed by another strategic withdrawal by Confederate forces.[134] The Confederacy won a significant victory April 1863, repulsing the Federal advance on to Richmond at Chancellorsville, but the Union consolidated positions along the Virginia coast and the Chesapeake Bay.
Without an effective answer to Federal gunboats, river transport and supply, the Confederacy lost the Mississippi River following the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson in July, ending Southern access to the trans-Mississippi West. July brought short-lived counters, Morgan's Raid into Ohio and the New York City draft riots. Robert E. Lee’s strike into Pennsylvania was repulsed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania despite Pickett’s famous charge and other acts of valor. Southern newspapers assessed the campaign as “The Confederates did not gain a victory, neither did the enemy.”
September and November left Confederates yielding Chattanooga, Tennessee, the gateway to the lower south.[135] For the remainder of the war fighting was restricted inside the South, resulting in a slow but continuous loss of territory. In early 1864, the Confederacy still controlled 53% of its population, but it withdrew further to reestablish defensive positions. Union offensives continued with Sherman’s March to the Sea to take Savannah and Grant's Wilderness Campaign to encircle Richmond and besiege Lee's army at Petersburg[136]
In April 1863, the C.S. Congress authorized a uniformed Volunteer Navy, many of whom were British.[137] Wilmington and Charleston had more shipping while “blockaded” than before the beginning of hostilities.[138] The Confederacy had altogether eighteen commerce destroying cruisers, which seriously disrupted Federal commerce at sea and increased shipping insurance rates 900 percent.[139] Commodore Tattnall unsuccessfully attempted to break the Union blockade on the Savannah River GA with an ironclad again in 1863.[140] However beginning April 1864 the ironclad CSS Albemarle engaged Union gunboats and sank or cleared them for six months on the Roanoke River NC.[141] The Federals closed Mobile Bay by sea-based amphibious assault in August, ending Gulf coast trade east of the Mississippi River. In December, the Battle of Nashville ended Confederate operations in the western theater.
The first three months of 1865 saw the Federal Carolinas Campaign, devastating a wide swath of the remaining Confederate heartland. The “breadbasket of the Confederacy” in the Great Valley of Virginia was occupied by Philip Sheridan. The Union Blockade captured Fort Fisher NC, and Sherman finally took Charleston SC by land attack.[125]
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Armory, Richmond, Virginia
fires denied advancing Federals
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McLean house, Appomattox C.H.
site of "the Surrender”
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The Confederacy controlled no ports, harbors or navigable rivers. Railroads were captured or had ceased operating. Its major food producing regions had been war-ravaged or occupied. Its administration survived in only three pockets of territory holding one-third its population. Its armies were defeated or disbanding. At the February 1865 Hampton Roads Conference with Lincoln, senior Confederate officials rejected his invitation to restore the Union with compensation for emancipated slaves.[142] The Davis policy was independence or nothing, while Lee's army was wracked by disease and desertion, barely holding the trenches defending Jefferson Davis' capital.
The Confederacy's last remaining blockade-running port, Wilmington, North Carolina, was lost. When the Union broke through Lee's lines at Petersburg, Richmond fell immediately. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. “The Surrender” marked the end of the Confederacy.[143] The CSS Stonewall sailed from Europe to break the Union blockade in March; on making Havana, Cuba it surrendered. Some high officials escaped to Europe, but President Davis was captured May 10; all remaining Confederate forces surrendered by June 1865. The U.S. Army took control of the Confederate areas without post-surrender insurgency or guerrilla warfare against them, but peace was subsequently marred by a great deal of local violence, feuding and revenge killings.[144]
Historian Gary Gallagher concluded that the Confederacy capitulated in the spring of 1865 because northern armies crushed “organized southern military resistance." The Confederacy's population, soldier and civilian, had suffered material hardship and social disruption. They had expended and extracted a profusion of blood and treasure until collapse; "the end had come".[145] Jefferson Davis' assessment in 1890 determined, “With the capture of the capital, the dispersion of the civil authorities, the surrender of the armies in the field, and the arrest of the President, the Confederate States of America disappeared … their history henceforth became a part of the history of the United States.”[146]
Historian Frank Lawrence Owsley argued that the Confederacy "died of states' rights."[3][147] The central government was denied requisitioned soldiers and money by governors and state legislatures because they feared that Richmond would encroach on the rights of the states. Georgia's governor Joseph Brown warned of a secret conspiracy by Jefferson Davis to destroy states’ rights and individual liberty. The first conscription act in North America authorizing Davis to draft soldiers was said to be the "essence of military despotism."[148]
Vice President Alexander Stephens feared losing the very form of republican government. Allowing President Davis to threaten "arbitrary arrests" to draft hundreds of governor-appointed “bomb-proof” bureaucrats conferred "more power than the English Parliament had ever bestowed on the king. History proved the dangers of such unchecked authority." Abolishing draft exemptions for newspaper editors must mean that the Confederate government intended to muzzle targeted presses such as the Raleigh NC Standard to control elections and to suppress the peace meetings there. Southerners should never view liberty as subordinate to independence because the cry of "independence first and liberty second" was a "fatal delusion". As Rable concludes, "For Stephens, the essence of patriotism, the heart of the Confederate cause, rested on an unyielding commitment to traditional rights” without considerations of military necessity, pragmatism or compromise.[149]
In 1863 governor Pendleton Murrah of Texas determined that state troops were required for defense against Plains Indians and Union successes advancing from the free state of Kansas. He refused to send them East.[150] Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina showed intense opposition to conscription, limiting recruitment success. Vance's faith in states' rights drove him into repeated, stubborn opposition to the Davis administration.[151]
Despite political differences within the Confederacy, no national political parties were formed because they were seen as illegitimate. "Anti-partyism became an article of political faith."[152] Without a two party system building alternative sets of national leaders, electoral protests tended to be narrowly state-based, “negative, carping and petty”. The 1863 mid-term elections became mere expressions of futile and frustrated dissatisfaction. According to historian David M. Potter, this lack of a functioning two-party system caused "real and direct damage" to the Confederate war effort since it prevented the formulation of any effective alternatives to the conduct of the war by the Davis administration.[153]
The enemies of President Davis proposed that the Confederacy “died of Davis.” He was unfavorably compared to George Washington by critics such as E. A. Pollard, editor of the Richmond Examiner. Coulter summarizes, “The American Revolution had its Washington; the Southern Revolution had its Davis … one succeeded and the other failed.” Besides the early honeymoon period, Davis was never popular. He unwittingly caused much internal dissention from early on. His ill health and temporary bouts of blindness disabled him for days at a time.[154]
Coulter says Davis was heroic and his will was indomitable. But his “tenacity, determination, and will power” stirred up lasting opposition of enemies Davis could not shake. He failed to overcome “petty leaders of the states” who made the term “Confederacy” into a label for tyranny and oppression, denying the "Stars and Bars" from becoming a symbol of larger patriotic service and sacrifice. Instead of campaigning to develop nationalism and gain support for his administration, he rarely courted public opinion, assuming an aloofness, “almost like an Adams”.[155]
Davis attended to too many details. He protected his friends after their failures were obvious. He spent too much time on military affairs versus his civil responsibilities. Coulter concludes he was not the ideal leader for the Southern Revolution, but he showed “fewer weaknesses than any other” contemporary character available for the role.[156] Robert E. Lee’s assessment of Davis as President was, “I knew of none that could have done as well.”[157]
The Southern leaders met in Montgomery, Alabama, to write their constitution. Much of the Confederate States Constitution replicated the United States Constitution verbatim, but it contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery including provisions for the recognition and protection of negro slavery in any new state admitted to the Confederacy. It maintained the existing ban on international slave-trading while protecting the existing internal trade of slaves among slaveholding states.
In certain areas, the Confederate Constitution gave greater powers to the states (or curtailed the powers of the central government more) than the U.S. Constitution of the time did, but in other areas, the states actually lost rights they had under the U.S. Constitution. Although the Confederate Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, contained a commerce clause, the Confederate version prohibited the central government from using revenues collected in one state for funding internal improvements in another state. The Confederate Constitution's equivalent to the U.S. Constitution's general welfare clause prohibited protective tariffs (but allowed tariffs for providing domestic revenue), and spoke of "carry[ing] on the Government of the Confederate States" rather than providing for the "general welfare". State legislatures had the power to impeach officials of the Confederate government in some cases. On the other hand, the Confederate Constitution contained a Necessary and Proper Clause and a Supremacy Clause that essentially duplicated the respective clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The Confederate Constitution also incorporated each of the 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution that had been ratified up to that point.
The Confederate Constitution did not specifically include a provision allowing states to secede; the Preamble spoke of each state "acting in its sovereign and independent character" but also of the formation of a "permanent federal government". During the debates on drafting the Confederate Constitution, one proposal would have allowed states to secede from the Confederacy. The proposal was tabled with only the South Carolina delegates voting in favor of considering the motion.[158] The Confederate Constitution also explicitly denied States the power to bar slaveholders from other parts of the Confederacy from bringing their slaves into any state of the Confederacy or to interfere with the property rights of slave owners traveling between different parts of the Confederacy. In contrast with the language of the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution overtly asked God's blessing ("...invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God...").
The Montgomery Convention to establish the Confederacy and its executive met February 4, 1861. Each state as a sovereignty had one vote, with the same delegation size as it held in the U.S. Congress, and generally 41 to 50 members attended.[159] Offices were “provisional”, limited to a term not to exceed one year. One name was placed in nomination for president, one for vice president. Both were elected unanimously, 6–0.[160]
Jefferson Davis was elected president. His U.S. Senate resignation speech greatly impressed with its clear rationale for secession and his pleading for a peaceful departure from the Union to independence. Although he had made it known that he wanted to be commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies, when elected, he assumed the office of Provisional President. Three candidates for Vice President were under consideration the night before the February 9 election. All were from Georgia, and the various delegations meeting in different places determined two would not do, so Alexander Stephens was elected unanimously Provisional Vice President, though with some privately held reservations. Stephens was inaugurated February 11, Davis February 18.[161]
Historian E. M. Coulter observed, “No president of the U.S. ever had a more difficult task.” Washington was inaugurated in peacetime. Lincoln inherited an established government of long standing. The creation of the Confederacy was accomplished by men who saw themselves as fundamentally conservative. Although they referred to their “Revolution”, it was in their eyes more a counter-revolution against changes away from their understanding of U.S. founding documents. In Davis’ inauguration speech, he explained the Confederacy was not a French-like revolution, but a transfer of rule. The Montgomery Convention had assumed all the laws of the United States until superseded by the Confederate Congress.[162]
The Permanent Constitution provided for a President of the Confederate States of America, elected to serve a six-year term but without the possibility of re-election. Unlike the Union Constitution, the Confederate Constitution gave the president the ability to subject a bill to a line item veto, a power also held by some state governors.
The Confederate Congress could overturn either the general or the line item vetoes with the same two-thirds majorities that are required in the U.S. Congress. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. The only person to serve as president was Jefferson Davis, due to the Confederacy being defeated before the completion of his term.
The only two “formal, national, functioning, civilian administrative bodies” in the Civil War South were the Jefferson Davis administration and the Confederate Congresses. The Confederacy was begun by the Provisional Congress in Convention at Montgomery, Alabama on February 28, 1861. It had one vote per state in a unicameral assembly.[163]
The Permanent Confederate Congress was elected and began its first session February 18, 1862. The Permanent Congress for the Confederacy followed the United States forms with a bicameral legislature. The Senate had two per state, twenty-six Senators. The House numbered 106 representatives apportioned by free and slave populations within each state. Two Congresses sat in six sessions until March 18, 1865.[164]
The political influences of the civilian, soldier vote and appointed representatives reflected divisions of political geography of a diverse South. These in turn changed over time relative to Union occupation and disruption, the war impact on local economy, and the course of the war. Without political parties, key candidate identification related to adopting secession before or after Lincoln's call for volunteers to retake Federal property. Previous party affiliation played a part in voter selection, predominantly secessionist Democrat or unionist Whig.[165]
The absence of political parties made individual roll call voting all the more important, as the Confederate “freedom of roll-call voting [was] unprecedented in American legislative history.[166] Key issues throughout the life of the Confederacy related to (1) suspension of habeas corpus, (2) military concerns such as control of state militia, conscription and exemption, (3) economic and fiscal policy including impressment of slaves, goods and scorched earth, and (4) support of the Jefferson Davis administration in its foreign affairs and negotiating peace.[167]
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Provisional Congress
For the first year, the unicameral Provisional Confederate Congress functioned as the Confederacy's legislative branch.
President of the Provisional Congress
Presidents pro tempore of the Provisional Congress
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Sessions of the Confederate Congress
Tribal Representatives to Confederate Congress
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The Confederate Constitution outlined a judicial branch of the government, but the ongoing war and resistance from states-rights advocates, particularly on the question of whether it would have appellate jurisdiction over the state courts, prevented the creation or seating of the "Supreme Court of the Confederate States;" the state courts generally continued to operate as they had done, simply recognizing the Confederate States as the national government.[168]
Confederate district courts were authorized by Article III, Section 1, of the Confederate Constitution,[169] and President Davis appointed judges within the individual states of the Confederate States of America.[169] In many cases, the same US Federal District Judges were appointed as Confederate States District Judges. Confederate district courts began reopening in the spring of 1861 handling many of the same type cases as had been done before. Prize cases, in which Union ships were captured by the Confederate Navy or raiders and sold through court proceedings, were heard until the blockade of southern ports made this impossible. After a Sequestration Act was passed by the Confederate Congress, the Confederate district courts heard many cases in which enemy aliens (typically Northern absentee landlords owning property in the South) had their property sequestered (seized) by Confederate Receivers.
When the matter came before the Confederate court, the property owner could not appear because he was unable to travel across the front lines between Union and Confederate forces. Thus, the District Attorney won the case by default, the property was typically sold, and the money used to further the Southern war effort. Eventually, because there was no Confederate Supreme Court, sharp attorneys like South Carolina's Edward McCrady began filing appeals. This prevented their clients' property from being sold until a supreme court could be constituted to hear the appeal, which never occurred.[169] Where Federal troops gained control over parts of the Confederacy and re-established civilian government, US district courts sometimes resumed jurisdiction.[170]
Supreme Court – not established.
District Courts – judges
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John H. Reagan
Postmaster General
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Andrew Jackson
2 cent, 1862
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George Washington
20 cent, 1863
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When the Confederacy was formed and its seceding states broke from the Union, it was at once confronted with the arduous task of providing its citizens with a mail delivery system, and, in the midst of the American Civil War, the newly formed Confederacy created and established the Confederate Post Office. One of the first undertakings in establishing the Post Office was the appointment of John H. Reagan to the position of Postmaster General, by Jefferson Davis in 1861, making him the first Postmaster General of the Confederate Post Office as well as a member of Davis' presidential cabinet. Through Reagan's resourcefulness and remarkable industry, he had his department assembled, organized and in operation before the other Presidential cabinet members had their departments fully operational.[171][172]
When the war began, the US Post Office still delivered mail from the seceded states for a brief period of time. Mail that was postmarked after the date of a state's admission into the Confederacy through May 31, 1861 and bearing US postage was still delivered.[173] After this time, private express companies still managed to carry some of the mail across enemy lines. Later, mail that crossed lines had to be sent by 'Flag of Truce' and was allowed to pass at only two specific points. Mail sent from the South to the North states was received, opened and inspected at Fortress Monroe on the Virginia coast before being passed on into the U.S. mail stream. Mail sent from the North to the South passed at City Point, also in Virginia, where it was also inspected before being sent on.[174][175]
With the chaos of the war, a working postal system was more important than ever for the Confederacy. The Civil War had divided family members and friends and consequently letter writing naturally increased dramatically across the entire divided nation, especially to and from the men who were away serving in an army. Mail delivery was also important for the Confederacy for a myriad of business and military reasons. Because of the Union blockade, basic supplies were always in demand and so getting mailed correspondence out of the country to suppliers was imperative to the successful operation of the Confederacy. Volumes of material have been written about the Blockade runners who evaded Union ships on blockade patrol, usually at night, and who moved cargo and mail in and out of the Confederate States throughout the course of the war. Of particular interest to students and historians of the American Civil War is Prisoner of War mail and Blockade mail as these items were often involved with a variety of military and other war time activities. The postal history of the Confederacy along with surviving Confederate mail has helped historians document the various people, places and events that were involved in the American Civil War as it unfolded.[176]
The Confederacy actively used the army to arrest people suspected of loyalty to the United States. Historian Mark Neely found 4,108 names of men arrested and estimated a much larger total.[177] The Confederacy arrested pro-Union civilians in the South at about the same rate as the Union arrested pro-Confederate civilians in the North.[178] Neely concludes:
The Confederate citizen was not any freer than the Union citizen – and perhaps no less likely to be arrested by military authorities. In fact, the Confederate citizen may have been in some ways less free than his Northern counterpart. For example, freedom to travel within the Confederate states was severely limited by a
domestic passport system.
[179]
Most whites were subsistence farmers who traded their surpluses locally. The plantations of the South, with white ownership and an enslaved labor force, produced substantial wealth from cash crops. It supplied two-thirds of the world’s cotton, which was in high demand for textiles, along with tobacco, sugar, and naval stores (such as turpentine). These raw materials were exported to factories in Europe and the Northeast. Planters reinvested their profits in more slaves and fresh land, for cotton and tobacco depleted the soil. There was little manufacturing or mining; shipping was controlled by outsiders.[180]
New Orleans the largest port city of the South
the only 1860 southern city over 100,000 population
The most distinctive feature of Southern economic life was racial slavery. Nearly four million black slaves were the principal source of wealth, but they were also the source of general tension and white racial solidarity. William Freehling and Steven A. Channing have documented the race-based system of enslavement as “prone to insurrection and racial upheaval” inside the South, and by midcentury, its maintenance there was coming under increasing attacks from outside.[181] Racism was a national character flaw in nineteenth century America, differing in degree only from section to section. But slavery was abandoned in other regions, leaving it the South’s “peculiar institution”. It was a relationship of management and labor as elsewhere, but a master-slave interaction, a human enterprise of mutual economic indifference, racial hate and personal affection unlike slavery as practiced anywhere in the Western world.[182]
Slave labor was applied in manufacturing in a limited way in the Upper South and in a few port cities. One reason for the regional lag in industrial development was “top-heavy income distribution”. Mass production requires mass markets, and slave-labor living in packed-earth cabins, using self-made tools and outfitted with one suit of work clothes each year of inferior fabric, did not generate consumer demand to sustain local manufactures of any description in the same way a mechanized family farm of free labor did in the North.[183] The Southern economy was "pre-capitalist" in that slaves were employed in the largest revenue producing enterprises, not free labor. That labor system as practiced in the American South encompassed paternalism, whether abusive or indulgent, and that meant labor management considerations apart from productivity.[184]
Approximately 85% of both North and South white populations lived on family farms, both regions were predominantly agricultural, and mid-century industry in both was mostly domestic. But the Southern economy was uniquely pre-capitalist in its overwhelming reliance on the agriculture of cash crops to produce wealth. Southern cities and industries grew faster than ever before, but the thrust of the rest of the country’s exponential growth elsewhere was towards urban industrial development along transportation systems of canals and railroads. The South was following the dominant currents of the American economic mainstream, but at a "great distance" as it lagged in the all-weather modes of transportation that brought cheaper, speedier freight shipment and forged new, expanding inter-regional markets.[185]
A third count of southern pre-capitalist economy relates to the cultural setting. The South and southerners did not adopt a frenzied work ethic, nor the habits of thrift that marked the rest of the country. It had access to the tools of capitalism, but it did not adopt its culture. The Southern Cause as a national economy in the Confederacy was grounded in “slavery and race, planters and patricians, plain folk and folk culture, cotton and plantations”.[186]
The Confederacy started its existence as an agrarian economy with exports, to a world market, of cotton, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco and sugarcane. Local food production included grains, hogs, cattle, and gardens.
The 11 states produced $155 million in manufactured goods in 1860, chiefly from local grist-mills, and lumber, processed tobacco, cotton goods and naval stores such as turpentine. By the 1830s, the 11 states produced more cotton than all of the other countries in the world combined.
The Confederacy adopted a low tariff of 15 per cent, but imposed it on all imports from other countries, including the United States.[187] The tariff mattered little; the Union blockade minimized commercial traffic through the Confederacy's ports, and very few people paid taxes on goods smuggled from the North. The Confederate government in its entire history collected only $3.5 million in tariff revenue. The lack of adequate financial resources led the Confederacy to finance the war through printing money, which led to high inflation.
The requirements of its military encouraged the Confederate government to take a dirigiste-style approach to industrialization.[188] But such efforts faced setbacks: Union raids and in particular Sherman's scorched-earth campaigning destroyed much economic infrastructure.[189]
File:Railroad of Confederacy-1861.jpg
Main railroads of Confederacy, 1861; colors show the different gauges (track width); the top railroad shown in the upper right is the Baltimore and Ohio, which was at all times a Union railroad
In peacetime, the extensive and connected systems of navigable rivers and coastal access allowed for cheap and easy transportation of agricultural products. The railroad system in the South had been built as a supplement to the navigable rivers to enhance the all-weather shipment of cash crops to market. They tied plantation areas to the nearest river or seaport and so made supply more dependable, lowered costs and increased profits. In the event of invasion, the vast geography of the Confederacy made logistics difficult for the Union. Wherever Union armies invaded, they assigned many of their soldiers to garrison captured areas and to protect rail lines.
At onset of the Civil War, the Southern rail network was disjointed and plagued by change in track gauge as well as lack of interchange. Locomotives and freight cars had fixed axles and could not roll on tracks of different gauges (widths). Railroads of different gauges leading to the same city required all freight to be off-loaded onto wagons to be transported to the connecting railroad station where it would await freight cars and a locomotive to proceed. These included Vicksburg, New Orleans, Montgomery, Wilmington and Richmond.[190] In addition, most rail lines led from coastal or river ports to inland cities, with few lateral railroads. Due to this design limitation, the relatively primitive railroads of the Confederacy were unable to overcome the Union Naval Blockade of the South's crucial intra-coastal and river routes.
The outbreak of war economically depressed the fortunes of the railroad system in Confederate territory. The cotton crop was hoarded or destroyed in an attempt to entice European intervention. That diplomatic strategy left railroads bereft of their main source of income.[191] Many had to lay off employees, and in particular, the Confederate railroads let go skilled technicians and engineers who were permanently lost to military service.[192] For the early years of the war, the Confederate government had a hands-off approach to the railroads. Only in mid-1863 did the Confederate government initiate an national policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort.[193] With the legislation of impressment the same year, railroads and their rolling stock came under the de facto control of the military. In contrast, U.S. Congress had authorized military administration of railroad and telegraph January 1862, imposed a standard gauge, and built railroads into the South using that gauge. Confederate reoccupation of territory by successful armies could not be resupplied directly by rail as they advanced. The C.S. Congress formally authorized military administration of railroads in February 1865.
In the last year before the end of the war, the Confederate railroad system stood permanently on the verge of collapse. There was no new equipment and raids on both sides systematically destroyed key bridges, as well as locomotives and freight cars. Spare parts were cannibalized; feeder lines were torn up to get replacement rails for trunk lines, and the heavy use of rolling stock wore them out.[194]
The army was always short of horses and mules, and requisitioned them with dubious promissory notes from local farmers and breeders. Union forces paid in real money and found ready sellers in the South. Horses were needed for cavalry and artillery.[195] Mules pulled the wagons. The supply was undermined by an unprecedented epidemic of glanders, a fatal disease that baffled veterinarians.[196] After 1863 the policy of the Union Army was to shoot all the horses and mules it did not need to keep them out of Confederate hands. The army and farmers experienced a growing shortage of horses and mules, which hurt the economy and the Confederate war effort. The South lost half its 2.5 million horses and mules; many farmers ended the war with none left. Army horses were used up by hard work, malnourishment, disease and battle wounds; their life expectancy was about seven months.[197]
Both the individual Confederate states and later the Confederate government printed Confederate States of America dollars as paper currency in various denominations, much of it signed by the Treasurer Edward C. Elmore. During the course of the war these severely depreciated and eventually became worthless. Many bills still exist, although in recent years copies have proliferated.
The Confederate government initially wanted to finance its war mostly through tariffs on imports, export taxes, and voluntary donations of gold. However, after the spontaneous imposition of an embargo on cotton sales to Europe in 1861, these sources of revenue dried up and the Confederacy increasingly turned to issuing debt and printing money to pay for war expenses. The Confederate States politicians were worried about angering the general population with hard taxes. A tax increase might disillusion many Southerners, so the Confederacy resorted to printing more money. As a result inflation increased and remained a problem for the southern states throughout the rest of the war.[198]
At the time of their secession, the states (and later the Confederate government) took over the national mints in their territories: the Charlotte Mint in North Carolina, the Dahlonega Mint in Georgia, and the New Orleans Mint in Louisiana. During 1861, the first two produced small amounts of gold coinage, the latter half dollars. Since the mints used the current dies on hand, these issues remain indistinguishable from those minted by the Union.
By the end of the war deterioration of the Southern infrastructure was widespread. The number of civilian deaths is unknown. Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every Southern state was affected as well as Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Indian Territory. Texas and Florida saw the least military action. Much of the damage was caused by military action, but most was caused by lack of repairs and upkeep, and by deliberately using up resources. Historians have recently estimated how much of the devastation was caused by military action.[199] Military operations were conducted in 56% of 645 counties in nine Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida). These counties contained 63% of the 1860 white population and 64% of the slaves. By the time the fighting took undoubedly some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.
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Potters House, Atlanta Ga
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rail bridge, Petersburg Va
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The eleven Confederate states in the 1860 census 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 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated what their actual population was when Union forces arrived. The number of people (as of 1860) who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's 1860 population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830). 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, worth just $48 million. Many old tools had broken through heavy use; new tools were rarely available; even repairs were difficult.[200]
The economic losses affected everyone. Banks and insurance companies were mostly bankrupt. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. The billions of dollars invested in slaves vanished. However, most debts were left behind. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. Prices for cotton had plunged. The rebuilding would take years and require outside investment because the devastation was so thorough. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:[201]
- "One of the greatest calamities which confronted Southerners was the havoc wrought on the transportation system. Roads were impassable or nonexistent, and bridges were destroyed or washed away. The important river traffic was at a standstill: levees were broken, channels were blocked, the few steamboats which had not been captured or destroyed were in a state of disrepair, wharves had decayed or were missing, and trained personnel were dead or dispersed. Horses, mules, oxen, carriages, wagons, and carts had nearly all fallen prey at one time or another to the contending armies. The railroads were paralyzed, with most of the companies bankrupt. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. On one stretch of 114 miles in Alabama, every bridge and trestle was destroyed, cross-ties rotten, buildings burned, water-tanks gone, ditches filled up, and tracks grown up in weeds and bushes. . . . Communication centers like Columbia and Atlanta were in ruins; shops and foundries were wrecked or in disrepair. Even those areas bypassed by battle had been pirated for equipment needed on the battlefront, and the wear and tear of wartime usage without adequate repairs or replacements reduced all to a state of disintegration."
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1st National Flag
"Stars and Bars"
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2nd National Flag
"Stainless Banner"
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3rd National Flag
"Blood Stained Banner"
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Battle Flag
"Southern Cross"
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Bonnie Blue Flag
Unofficial Southern Flag
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Confederate Flag
in some army units
The first official flag of the Confederate States of America—called the "Stars and Bars" – originally had seven stars, representing the first seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. As more states seceded, more stars were added, until the total was 13 (two stars were added for the divided states of Kentucky and Missouri). However, during the First Battle of Bull Run, (First Manassas) it sometimes proved difficult to distinguish the Stars and Bars from the Union flag. To rectify the situation, a separate "Battle Flag" was designed for use by troops in the field. Also known as the "Southern Cross", many variations sprang from the original square configuration. Although it was never officially adopted by the Confederate government, the popularity of the Southern Cross among both soldiers and the civilian population was a primary reason why it was made the main color feature when a new national flag was adopted in 1863. This new standard—known as the "Stainless Banner" – consisted of a lengthened white field area with a Battle Flag canton. This flag too had its problems when used in military operations as, on a windless day, it could easily be mistaken for a flag of truce or surrender. Thus, in 1865, a modified version of the Stainless Banner was adopted. This final national flag of the Confederacy kept the Battle Flag canton, but shortened the white field and added a vertical red bar to the fly end.
Because of its depiction in the 20th-century[citation needed] and popular media, many people consider the rectangular battle flag with the dark blue bars as being synonymous with "the Confederate Flag". This flag, however, was never adopted as a Confederate national flag, although it was adopted by the Army of Tennessee and other units. The "Confederate Flag" has a color scheme similar to the official Battle Flag, but is rectangular, not square. (Its design and shape matches the Naval Jack, but the blue bars are darker.) The "Confederate Flag" is the most recognized symbol of the South in the United States today, and continues to be a controversial icon.
The Confederate States of America claimed a total of 2,919 miles (4,698 km) of coastline, thus a large part of its territory lay on the seacoast with level and often sandy or marshy ground. Most of the interior portion consisted of arable farmland, though much was also hilly and mountainous, and the far western territories were deserts. The lower reaches of the Mississippi River bisected the country, with the western half often referred to as the Trans-Mississippi. The highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was Guadalupe Peak in Texas at 8,750 feet (2,667 m).
Map of the states and territories claimed by the Confederate States of America
Climate
Much of the area claimed by the Confederate States of America had a humid subtropical climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. The climate and terrain varied from vast swamps (such as those in Florida and Louisiana) to semi-arid steppes and arid deserts west of longitude 100 degrees west. The subtropical climate made winters mild but allowed infectious diseases to flourish. Consequently, on both sides more soldiers died from disease than were killed in combat,[204] a fact hardly atypical of pre–World War I conflicts.
Population
The United States Census of 1860[205] gives a picture of the overall 1860 population of the areas that joined the Confederacy. Note that population-numbers exclude non-assimilated Indian tribes.
(Figures for Virginia include the future West Virginia.)
(Rows may not total to 100% due to rounding)
In 1860 the areas that later formed the 11 Confederate States (and including the future West Virginia) had 132,760 (1.46%) free blacks. Males made up 49.2% of the total population and females 50.8% (whites: 48.60% male, 51.40% female; slaves: 50.15% male, 49.85% female; free blacks: 47.43% male, 52.57% female).[208]
Rural/urban configuration
The area claimed by the Confederate States of America consisted overwhelmingly of rural land. Few urban areas had populations of more than 1,000 – the typical county seat had a population of fewer than 500 people. Cities were rare. Of the twenty largest U.S. cities in the 1860 census, only New Orleans lay in Confederate territory[209] – and the Union captured New Orleans in 1862. Only 13 Confederate-controlled cities ranked among the top 100 U.S. cities in 1860, most of them ports whose economic activities vanished or suffered severely in the Union blockade. The population of Richmond swelled after it became the Confederate capital, reaching an estimated 128,000 in 1864.[210] Other Southern cities in the Border slave-holding states such as Baltimore MD, Washington DC, Wheeling VA/WV and Alexandria VA, Louisville KY, and St. Louis MO, never came under the control of the Confederate government.
The cities of the Confederacy included most prominently in order of size of population:
(See also Atlanta in the Civil War, Charleston, South Carolina, in the Civil War, Nashville in the Civil War, New Orleans in the Civil War, Wilmington, North Carolina, in the American Civil War, and Richmond in the Civil War).
Military leaders of the Confederacy (with their state or country of birth and highest rank)[211] included:
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General Robert E. Lee: for many, the face of the Confederate army
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Confederate government
Confederacy in Latin America
Confederacy in popular culture
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Confederacy at war
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States below the Mason-Dixon Line
- ^ a b "Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, 1861–1865". U.S. Department of State. http://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/Confederacy.
- ^ McPherson, James M. (2007). This mighty scourge: perspectives on the Civil War. Oxford University Press US. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-19-531366-6. http://books.google.com/?id=bJEINL6bakYC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=confederacy+recognition.
- ^ a b Frank L. Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy (Chicago, 1925), and (Thomas, “The Confederate Nation”, pp.155.
- ^ Cooper, William J.; Terrill, Tom E. (2009). The American South: a history. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. xix. ISBN 0-7425-6095-3.
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” pp.3–4
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” pp.4–5 and notes.
- ^ The first six signatory states establishing the Confederacy counted about one-fourth its population. They voted 43% for pro-Union candidates. The four states which entered after Fort Sumter held almost half its population. They voted 53% for pro-Union candidates. The three big turnout states voted extremes. Texas at 5% population voted only 20% pro-Union candidates. Kentucky and Missouri with one-fourth the Confederate population as claimed, voted a combined 68% for the pro-Union Lincoln, Douglas and Bell. See Table of election returns at United States presidential election, 1860.
- ^ Coulter, E. Merton, "The Confederate States of America 1861–1865" (1950) p.61. See also Avery O. Craven in "The Growth of Southern Nationalism 1848–1861" (1953) p.390.
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” pp.7–8
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” pp.7, 9
- ^ Craven, Avery O., "The Growth of Southern Nationalism. 1848–1861" (1953) LSU Press ISBN 978-0-8071-0006-6, p.350
- ^ Freehling, William W. (1990). The Road to Disunion: Volume II, Secessionists Triumphant. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-505815-4. p. 398
- ^ Craven, "The Growth of Southern Nationalism", p. 366
- ^ Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation: 1861–1865 (1979), pp. 83–84
- ^ Faust, Drew Gilpin (1988). The creation of Confederate nationalism : ideology and identity in the Civil War South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. p. 59. ISBN 0-8071-1509-6.
- ^ Murrin, John (2001). Liberty, Equality, Power. p. 1000. ISBN 0-495-09176-6.
- ^ McPherson pp. 232–233.
- ^ McPherson pg. 244. The text of Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech".
- ^ Davis, William C. (1994). A government of our own : the making of the Confederacy. New York: Free Press. pp. 294–295. ISBN 978-0-02-907735-1.
- ^ "What I Really Said in the Cornerstone Speech".Stephens, Alexander Hamilton; Avary, Myrta Lockett. (1998). Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens : his diary kept when a prisoner at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, 1865, giving incidents and reflections of his prison life and some letters and reminiscence. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-2268-6.
- ^ The text of the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.
- ^ The text of A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
- ^ The text of Georgia's secession declaration.
- ^ a b The text of A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.
- ^ Freehling, pp. 448+
- ^ Freehling, p. 445
- ^ Freehling, pp. 391–394
- ^ Freehling, p.416
- ^ Freehling, pp. 418+
- ^ a b c d Freehling, p.503
- ^ Holzer, Harold (2008). Lincoln president-elect : Abraham Lincoln and the great secession winter 1860–1861. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-8948-1. p.429
- ^ February 28, 1861, Congress authorized Davis to accept state militias into national service. Confederate Act of Congress for “provisionals” on March 6, 1861, authorized 100,000 militia and volunteers under Davis' command. May 6, Congress empowered Davis to accept volunteers directly without state intermediaries. Keegan, John. The American Civil War: a military history 2009. ISBN 978-0-307-26343-8, p. 49
- ^ Thomas, Emory T., "The Confederate Nation: 1861–1865" 1979. ISBN 0-06-090703-7 Chapter 3. "Foundations of the Southern Nation".
- ^ Some southern unionists blamed Lincoln's call for troops as the precipitating event for the second wave of secessions. Historian James McPherson argues that such claims have "a self-serving quality" and regards them as misleading. He wrote:
As the telegraph chattered reports of the attack on Sumter April 12 and its surrender next day, huge crowds poured into the streets of Richmond, Raleigh, Nashville, and other upper South cities to celebrate this victory over the Yankees. These crowds waved Confederate flags and cheered the glorious cause of southern independence. They demanded that their own states join the cause. Scores of demonstrations took place from April 12 to 14, before Lincoln issued his call for troops. Many conditional unionists were swept along by this powerful tide of southern nationalism; others were cowed into silence.
— McPherson p. 278
Historian Daniel W. Crofts disagrees with McPherson. Crofts wrote:
The bombardment of Fort Sumter, by itself, did not destroy Unionist majorities in the upper South. Because only three days elapsed before Lincoln issued the proclamation, the two events viewed retrospectively, appear almost simultaneous. Nevertheless, close examination of contemporary evidence ... shows that the proclamation had a far more decisive impact.
—Crofts p. 336
Crofts further noted that,
Many concluded ... that Lincoln had deliberately chosen 'to drive off all the Slave states, in order to make war on them and annihilate slavery.'
— Crofts pp. 337–338, quoting the North Carolina politician Jonathan Worth (1802–1869).
- ^ Weigley (2000) p. 43 See also, Missouri's Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession. Also, "South Carolina documents including signatories". Docsouth.unc.edu. http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/southcar/south.html. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
- ^ The text of Mississippi's Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of Florida's Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of Alabama's Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of Georgia's Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of Louisiana's Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of Texas' Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of Virginia's Ordinance of Secession. Virginia seceded in two steps, first by secession convention vote on April 17, 1861, and then by ratification of this by a popular vote conducted on May 23, 1861. A Unionist Restored government of Virginia also operated. Virginia did not turn over its military to the Confederate States until June 8, 1861. The Commonwealth of Virginia ratified the Constitution of the Confederate States on June 19, 1861.
- ^ The text of Arkansas' Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ The text of Tennessee's Ordinance of Secession. The Tennessee legislature ratified an agreement to enter a military league with the Confederate States on May 7, 1861. Tennessee voters approved the agreement on June 8, 1861.
- ^ The text of North Carolina's Ordinance of Secession.
- ^ Curry, Richard Orr, A House Divided, A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1964, pg. 49
- ^ Rice, Otis K. and Stephen W. Brown, West Virginia, A History, Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1993, 2nd edition, pg. 112. Another way of looking at the results would note the pro-union candidates winning 56% with Bell 20,997, Douglas 5,742, and Lincoln 1,402 versus Breckenridge 21,908. But the "deeply divided sentiment" point remains.
- ^ The Civil War in West Virginia "No other state serves as a better example of this than West Virginia, where there was relatively equal support for the northern and southern causes."
- ^ Snell, Mark A., West Virginia and the Civil War, Mountaineers Are Always Free, History Press, Charleston, SC, 2011, pg. 28
- ^ Leonard, Cynthia Miller, The General Assembly of Virginia, July 30, 1619 – January 11, 1978: A Bicentennial Register of Members, Virginia State Library, Richmond, VA, 1978, pgs. 478–493
- ^ ""Marx and Engels on the American Civil War", Army of the Cumberland and George H. Thomas source page and "Background of the Confederate States Constitution", The American Civil War Home Page.
- ^ Glatthaar, Joseph T., "General Lee's Army: from victory to collapse" 2008 ISBN 978-0-684-82787-2
- ^ Freedmen & Southern Society Project, Chronology of Emancipation during the Civil War, University of Maryland. Viewed January 4, 2012.
- ^ Bowman, p. 48.
- ^ History of Arizona vol. 2 by Thomas Edwin Farish (1915) [1].
- ^ Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.
- ^ The Texas delegation was seated with full voting rights after its statewide referendum of secession on March 2, 1861. It is generally counted as an "original state" of the Confederacy. Four upper south states seceded following Lincoln's call for volunteers: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. "The founders of the Confederacy desired and ideally envisioned a peaceful creation of a new union of all slave-holding states, including the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri." Kentucky and Missouri were seated in December 1861. Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America 1861–1865 (1994) p 8
- ^ The sessions of the Provisional Congress were in Montgomery, Alabama, (1) First Session February 4 – March 10, and (2) Second Session April 29 – May 21, 1861. The Capital was moved to Richmond May 30. The (3) Third Session was held July 20 – August 31. The (4) Fourth Session called for September 3 was never held. The (5) Fifth Session was held November 18, 1861 – February 17, 1862.
- ^ Martis, Historical Atlas, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 100
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 101. Virginia was practically promised as a condition of secession by Vice President Stephens. It had rail connections south along the east coast and into the interior, and laterally west into Tennessee, parallel the U.S. border, a navigable river to the Hampton Roads to menace ocean approaches to Washington DC, trade via the Atlantic Ocean, an interior canal to North Carolina sounds. It was a great storehouse of supplies, food, feed, raw materials, and infrastructure of ports, drydocks, armories and the established Tredegar Iron Works. Nevertheless, Virginia never permanently ceded land for the capital district. A local homeowner donated his home to the City of Richmond for use as the Confederate White House, which was in turn rented to the Confederate Government for the Jefferson Davis presidential home and administration offices.
- ^ Martis, Historical Atlas, pp.2.
- ^ Coulter, “Confederate States of America”, p.102.
- ^ "The San Jacinto, having overhauled the British mail packet Trent, forces her to heave to. Confederate commissioners Mason and Slidell were taken off shortly afterward". Loc.gov. http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c08243/. Retrieved May 17, 2011.
- ^ a b William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, April 10, 1861 in Marion Mills Miller, (ed.) Life And Works Of Abraham Lincoln (1907) Vol 6.
- ^ "President Abraham Lincoln's Declaration of War". Sonofthesouth.net. January 26, 2007. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/april/abraham-lincoln-declaration-war.htm. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
- ^ "Lincoln Proclamation". NY Times. April 15, 1861. http://www.nytimes.com/1861/04/15/news/proclamation-president-seventy-five-thousand-volunteers-extra-session-congress.html.
- ^ Violations of the rules of law were precipitated on both sides and can be found in historical accounts of guerilla war, units in cross-racial combat and captives held in prisoner of war camps, brutal, tragic accounts against both soldiers and civilian populations.
- ^ Moore, Frank (1861). The Rebellion Record. I. G.P. Putnam. pp. 195–197. ISBN 0-405-10877-X. http://books.google.com/?id=RKB2AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Moore,%20Frank,%20#v=onepage&q=war%20exists%20between. Doc. 140. The places excepted in the Confederate States proclamation that “a war exists” were the places where slavery was allowed: States of Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and Delaware, and the Territories of Arizona, and New Mexico, and the Indian Territory south of Kansas.
- ^ Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1868) at Cornell University Law School Supreme Court collection.
- ^ Blumenthal (1966)
- ^ Stanley Lebergott, "Why the South Lost: Commercial Purpose in the Confederacy, 1861–1865," Journal of American History, (1983) 70#1 p. 61 in JSTOR.
- ^ Blumenthal (1966); Jones (2009); Owsley (1959)
- ^ Thomas Paterson, et al. American foreign relations: A history, to 1920: Volume 1 (2009) p. 149-55.
- ^ Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (2002) p 48
- ^ Alexander DeConde, ed. Encyclopedia of American foreign policy (2001) vol 1 p 202 and Stephen R. Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War, (1991), p. 86.
- ^ Wise, Stephen R., Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War, University of South Carolina Press, 1991, ISBN 0-87249-799-2, ISBN 978-0-87249-799-3, p. 86. An example of agents working openly can be found in Hamilton Bermuda where a Confederate agent openly worked to help blockade runners.
- ^ In November 1863, Confederate diplomat A. Dudley Mann met Pope Pius IX in Rome and received a letter addressed "to the Illustrious and Honorable Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America". Mann, in his dispatch to Richmond, interpreted the letter as "a positive recognition of our Government". Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, however, interpreted it as "a mere inferential recognition, unconnected with political action or the regular establishment of diplomatic relations" and thus did not assign it the weight of formal recognition. See Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, p. 1015.
- ^ Thomas, “The Confederate Nation” pp.219–220
- ^ Scholars such as Emory M. Thomas have characterized Girard’s book as “more propaganda than anything else, but Girard caught one essential truth”, the quote referenced. (Thomas, “The Confederate Nation”, pp.220).
- ^ Thomas, “The Confederate Nation” pp.220
- ^ Thomas, “The Confederate Nation” pp.220, 219, 221. Jefferson Davis and General Lee had planned to lure the Army of the Potomac away from Washington, effect another Chancellorsville defeat of maneuver, and stun the world with a diplomatic coup. Once in Pennsylvania, as the Federals began stripping Washington’s defenses to meet him, Lee urged Davis to place Beauregard in command of all forces in the Carolinas and march on Washington. Davis was content with waiting for the outcome of Lee's solo effort.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.342-343
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.348. The enemy could not hold territory, a hostile people would close in behind. The Confederacy still existed wherever there was an army under her unfurled banners.
- ^ The cash crops circling the Great Seal are wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar cane. Like Washington’s equestrian statue honoring him at Union Square NYC 1856, slaveholding Washington is pictured in his uniform of the Revolution securing American independence. While armed, he does not have his sword drawn as he is depicted in the equestrian statue at the Virginia Capitol, Richmond VA. The plates for the Great Seal were engraved in England but never received due to the Union Blockade.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.343
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.346
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.333-338. Rangers in twenty to fifty-man units were awarded 50% valuation for property destroyed behind Union lines, regardless of location or loyalty. As Federals occupied the South, objections by loyal Confederate concerning Ranger horse stealing and indiscriminate scorched earth tactics behind Union lines led to Congress abolishing the Ranger service two years later. Cavalry produced great uplift the first two years. But civilians and infantry increasingly complained that the “dashing cavalry” neglected fighting for marauding. The Confederacy suffered a horse epidemic and widespread breakdown of draft animals for artillery and wagons from lack of proper feed. The Union put in place systematic horse-breeding for Army use. Two years into the fighting, Confederate cavalry was eclipsed by the Federal’s better horses and better equipment. Union tactics fighting as dismounted infantry with repeating rifles overmatched dashing saber charges as tactical assets on the battlefield.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.286. After capture by Federals, Memphis TN became a major source of supply for Confederate armies, comparable to Nassau and its blockade runners.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.306. Confederate units harassed them throughout the war years by laying torpedo mines and loosing barrages from shoreline batteries.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.287-8. The principal ports on the Atlantic were Wilmington NC, Charleston SC, and Savannah GA for supplies from Europe via Bermuda and Nassau. On the Gulf were Galveston TX and New Orleans LA for those from Havana, Cuba and Mexican ports of Tampico and Vera Cruz.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.296, 304. Two days later Lincoln proclaimed a blockade, declaring them pirates. Davis responded with letters of marque to protect privateers from outlaw status. Some of the early raiders were converted merchantmen seized in Southern ports at the outbreak of the war
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.299-302. The Torpedo Bureau seeded defensive water-borne mines in principal harbors and rivers to compromise the Union naval superiority. These "torpedoes" were said to have caused more loss in U.S. naval ships and transports than by any other cause. Despite a rage for Congressional appropriations and public “subscription ironclads”, armored platforms constructed in blockaded ports lacked the requisite marine engines to become ironclad warships. The armored platforms intended to become ironclads were employed instead as floating batteries for port city defense.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.321
- ^ 1862blackCSN.
- ^ Joseph T. Glatthaar, Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Statistical Portrait of the Troops Who Served under Robert E. Lee (2011) p. 3, ch 9
- ^ Rubin p. 104.
- ^ Levine pp. 146–147.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 308-311. The patchwork recruitment was (a) with and without state militia enrolment, (b) state Governor sponsorship and direct service under Davis, (c) for under six months, one year, three years and the duration of the war. Davis proposed recruitment for some period of years or the duration. Congress and the states equivocated. Governor Brown of Georgia became “the first and most persistent critic” of Confederate centralized military and civil power.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 310-311
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 328, 330–332. About 90% of West Pointers in the U.S. Army resigned to join the Confederacy. Notably, of Virginia’s West Pointers, not 90% but 70% resigned for the Confederacy. Exemplary officers without military training included John B. Gordon, Nathan B. Forrest, James J. Pettigrew, John H. Morgan, Turner Ashby and John S. Mosby. Most preliminary officer training was had from Hardee’s “Tactics”, and thereafter by observation and experience in battle. The Confederacy had no officers training camps or military academies, although early on, cadets of the Virginia Military Institute and other military schools drilled enlisted troops in battlefield evolutions.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 310-311. Spring 1862 "dried up the enthusiasm to volunteer” due to the impact of victory's battle casualties, the humiliation of defeats and the dislike of camp life with its monotony, confinement and mortal diseases. Immediately following the great victory at the Battle of Manassas, many believed the war was won and there was no need for more troops. Then the new year brought defeat over February 6–23: Fort Henry, Roanoke Island, Fort Donelson, Nashville—the first capital to fall. Among some not yet in uniform, the less victorious “Cause” seemed less glorious.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 312. The government funded parades and newspaper ad campaigns, $2,000,000 for recruitment in Kentucky alone. With a state-enacted draft, Governor Brown with a quota of 12,000 raised 22,000 Georgia militia.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p.313, 332. Officially dropping 425 officers by board review in October was followed immediately by 1,300 "resignations". Some officers who resigned then served honorably as enlisted for the duration or until they were made casualties, others resigned and returned home until conscription.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 313
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 313-314. Military officers including Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee, advocated conscription. In the circumstances they persuaded Congressmen and newspaper editors. Some editors advocating conscription in spring of 1862 would later become “savage critics of conscription and of Davis for his enforcement of it: Yancey of Alabama, Rhett of the Charleston ‘Mercury’, Pollard of the Richmond ‘Examiner’, and Senator Wigfall of Texas”.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 313-314, 319. Apart from their respective system exemptions, populations under Federal administration were subject to a "wheel of fortune" draft by aggregate number from each state in each draft, rather than the Confederate's universal selection by age. Overrun areas such as Kentucky and Missouri were not subject to the daft, these areas expanded as the war progressed. The act abolishing the substitute system and nullifying the principal’s exemption was challenged in court as a violation of contract, but “no court of importance so held.”
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederates States of America”, p. 324.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 315-317.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 320. One such exemption was allowed for every 20 slaves on a plantation, the May 1863 reform required previous occupation and that a the plantation of 20 slaves had not been subdivided after the first exemption of April 1862.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 317-318. There were no organized political parties, but elective offices were also exempted. Virtually every position was contested with as many as twenty candidates for each office. Some scholars such as Martis interpret this as robust democratic society in wartime. Coulter attributes the widely newfound enthusiasm for political careers as a means to “get out of the army or keep from getting into it". State Governor patronage expanded most notably in the tens of thousands in Georgia and North Carolina. In Greene County GA two dozen men ran for three offices; in protest, the women of the county ran a ticket of three men older than the 45 years conscription age.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 319.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 322-324, 326. The Conscription Bureau was run by Brigadier General Gabriel J. Rains until May 1863, Brigadier General Charles W. Field until July 1864, Colonel John S. Preston until “the bitter end”. The “odium and disgrace” of conscription led many to volunteer. The Bureau was “undoubtedly very inefficient” as officers were culled from those unwanted for field service. Virginia had 26,000 volunteers to 9,000 conscripts. Governor Vance NC “vigorously supported conscription”, uncharacteristically netting 21,343 conscripts to 8,000 volunteers. Necessary railroad positions once demeaned as “blacks only” were in 1864 taken by whites of military age.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America” p. 323-325, 327. Those governors with constitutional reservations refused to participate in conscription. In Fall 1864, Lee required of Davis a total number of 150,000 to match Grant’s numbers, “else I fear a great calamity will befall us”. This led to Davis appointing officers such as General Pillow to recruiting positions. As a military recruiting officer, Gideon J. Pillow for whom Fort Pillow, was named, would bring in 25,000 for Braxton Bragg and Joseph E. Johnston.
- ^ Rable (1994) p. 265.
- ^ Following a near victory at Manassas, the Federal rout was epically described and often paraphrased from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Margaret Leech’s “Reveille in Washington” (1942) ISBN 978-1-931313-23-0
- ^ Stephens, Alexander H. (1870) (PDF) A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States 2 p. 36 http://ia300043.us.archive.org/1/items/constitutionalview02steprich/constitutionalview02steprich.pdf "I maintain that it was inaugurated and begun, though no blow had been struck, when the hostile fleet, styled the 'Relief Squadron,' with eleven ships, carrying two hundred and eighty-five guns and two thousand four hundred men, was sent out from New York and Norfolk, with orders from the authorities at Washington, to reinforce Fort Sumter peaceably, if permitted 'but forcibly if they must'..." After the war, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens maintained that Lincoln's attempt to resupply Sumter was a disguised reinforcement and had provoked the war.
- ^ Lincoln's proclamation calling for troops from the remaining states (bottom of page); Department of War details to States (top). The proclamation of April 15 called for 75,000 volunteers for an initial recruitment of three-months. This sparked the four border states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina to initiate secession proceedings rather than provide troops to march into neighboring Southern states.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.352-353.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.353.
- ^ Glatthaar, Joseph T., “General Lee’s Army: from victory to collapse”, Free Press 2008. ISBN 978-0-684-82787-2, p. xiv. Inflicting intolerable casualties on invading Federal armies was a Confederate strategy to make the northern Unionists relent in their pursuit of restoring the Union.
- ^ Ambler, Charles, Francis H. Pierpont: Union War Governor of Virginia and father of West Virginia, Univ. of North Carolina, 1937, pg. 419, note 36. Letter of Adjutant General Henry L. Samuels, August 22, 1862, to Gov. Francis Pierpont listing 22 of 48 counties under sufficient control for soldier recruitment.
Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, 3rd Session, Senate Bill S.531, Feb. 14, 1863 "A bill supplemental to the act entitled 'An act for the Admission of the State of 'West Virginia' into the Union, and for other purposes' which would include the counties of "Boone, Logan, Wyoming, Mercer, McDowell, Pocahontas, Raleigh, Greenbrier, Monroe, Pendleton, Fayette, Nicholas, and Clay, now in the possession of the so-called confederate government."
- ^ a b c Martis, Historical Atlas, pp. 27. In the Mississippi River Valley, over the first half of February, central Tennessee’s Fort Henry was lost and Fort Donelson fell with a small army. By the end of the month, Nashville Tennessee was the first conquered Confederate state capital. On April 6–7 Federals turned back the Confederate offensive at the Battle of Shiloh, (Pittsburg Landing), and three days later Island Number 10 controlling the upper Mississippi River fell to a combined Army and Naval gunboat siege of three weeks. Federal occupation expanded to include northwestern Arkansas, south down the Mississippi River and east up the Tennessee River.Confederate River Defense fleet sank two Union ships at Plum Point Bend, (naval Fort Pillow), but they withdrew and Fort Pillow was captured downriver.
- ^ a b Martis, Historical Atlas, pp. 28.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.354. Federal sea-based amphibious forces captured Roanoke Island NC along with a large garrison in February. In March, Confederates abandoned forts at Fernandia and St. Augustine FL, and lost New Berne NC. In April, New Orleans fell and Savannah GA was closed by the Battle of Fort Pulaski. May saw retreating Confederates burn their two pre-war Navy yards at Norfolk and Pensacola. See Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p. 287, 306, 302
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.294, 296–7. Europeans refused to allow captured U.S. shipping to be sold for the privateers 95% share, so through1862, Confederate privateering disappeared; the CS Congress then authorized a Volunteer Navy to man cruisers the following year.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.288-291. As many as half the Confederate blockade runners were officered and manned by British nationals. Confederate regulations required one-third, then one-half cargos to be munitions, food and medicine.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p. 287, 306, 302, 306 and CSS Atlanta, USS Atlanta. Navy Heritage. In both events, as with the CSS Virginia, the Navy's bravery and fighting skill was compromised in combat by mechanical failure in the engines or steering. The joint combined Army-Navy defense by General Robert E. Lee, his successor and Commodore Josiah Tattnall repelled amphibious assault of Savannah for the duration of the war. Union General Techumseh Sherman captured Savannah from behind in December 1864. The British blockade runner HMS Fingal was purchased and converted to the ironclad CSS Atlanta. It made two sorties, was captured, repaired, and returned to service as the ironclad USS Atlanta supporting Grant's Siege of Petersburg.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.303. French shipyards built four corvettes, and two ironclad rams for the Confederacy, but the American minister prevented their delivery. British firms contracted to build two additional ironclad rams, but under threat from the U.S., the British government bought them for their own navy. Two of the converted blockade runners effectively raided up and down the Atlantic coast until the end of the war.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p. 354-356. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign caused the surprised Confederates to destroy their winter camp to mobilize against the threat to their Capital. They burned “a vast amount of supplies” to keep them from falling into enemy hands.
- ^ Nevin's analysis of the strategic highpoint of Confederate military scope and effectiveness is in contra-distinction to the conventional "last chance" battlefield imagery of the High-water mark of the Confederacy found at "The Angle" of the Battle of Gettysburg.
- ^ Allan Nevins, War for the Union (1960) pp 289–90. Weak national leadership led to disorganized overall direction in contrast to improved organization in Washington. With another 10,000 men Lee and Bragg might have prevailed in the border states, but the local populations did not respond to their pleas to recruit additional soldiers.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.357
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.356
- ^ Martis (1994) pp. 28.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.297-8. They were required to supply their own ships and equipment, but they received 90% of their captures at auction, 25% of any U.S. warships or transports captured or destroyed. Confederate cruisers raided merchant ship commerce but for one exception in 1864.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.294. Confederates estimated that the Union Blockade interdicted no more than 10% of the cotton exported, but the Lincoln administration claimed one of every three blockade runners were being captured.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.305-306. The most successful Confederate merchant raider 1863–1864, CSS Alabama had ranged the Atlantic for two years, sinking 58 vessels worth $6,54,000, but she was trapped and sunk in June by the chain-clad USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg, France.
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, in 1862, CSS Atlanta, USS Atlanta. Navy Heritage, in 1863 the ironclad CSS Savannah
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.305
- ^ name="Martis28" The three pockets of unoccupied Confederacy were southern Virginia-North Carolina, central Alabama-Florida, and Texas
- ^ Coulter, “The Confederate States of America”, p.287
- ^ The French-built ironclad CSS Stonewall had been purchased from Denmark and set sail from Spain in March. The crew of the CSS Shenandoah hauled down the last Confederate flag at Liverpool in the UK on November 5, 1865. John Baldwin (Author), Ron Powers (Author). Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship (May 6, 2008 ed.). Three Rivers Press. p. 368. ISBN 0-307-23656-0.
- ^ Gallagher p. 157
- ^ Davis, Jefferson. Short History of the Confederate States of America, 1890, 2010. ISBN 978-1-175-82358-8. available free online as an ebook. Chapter LXXXVIII, “Re-establishment of the Union by force”. p.503. Viewed March 14, 2012.
- ^ Owsley, "Local Defense and the Overthrow of the Confederacy", Mississippi Valley Historical Review 11 (Mar. 1925): 492–525, in JSTOR
- ^ Rable (1994) 257. For a detailed criticism of Owsley's argument see Richard E. Beringer, William N. Still. Jr., Archer Jones and Herman Hattaway, Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986) pp 443–57. Brown declaimed against Davis Administration policies: "Almost every act of usurpation of power, or of bad faith, has been conceived, brought forth and nurtured in secret session."
- ^ Rable (1994) p. 258, 259
- ^ John Moretta; "Pendleton Murrah and States Rights in Civil War Texas," Civil War History, Vol. 45, 1999.
- ^ Albert Burton Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. (1924) p. 295.
- ^ Cooper (2000) p. 462. Rable (1994) pp. 2–3. Rable wrote, "But despite heated arguments and no little friction between the competing political cultures of unity and liberty, antiparty and broader fears about politics in general shaped civic life. These beliefs could obviously not eliminate partisanship or prevent Confederates from holding on to and exploiting old political prejudices. Indeed, some states, notably Georgia and North Carolina, remained political tinderboxes throughout the war. Even the most bitter foes of the Confederate government, however, refused to form an opposition party, and the Georgia dissidents, to cite the most prominent example, avoided many traditional political activities. Only in North Carolina did there develop anything resembling a party system, and there the central values of the Confederacy's two political cultures had a far more powerful influence on political debate than did organizational maneuvering."
- ^ David Herbert Donald, ed. Why the North Won the Civil War. (1996) p.112–113. Potter wrote in his contribution to this book, "Where parties do not exist, criticism of the administration is likely to remain purely an individual matter; therefore the tone of the criticism is likely to be negative, carping, and petty, as it certainly was in the Confederacy. But where there are parties, the opposition group is strongly impelled to formulate real alternative policies and to press for the adoption of these policies on a constructive basis. ... But the absence of a two-party system meant the absence of any available alternative leadership, and the protest votes which were cast in the [1863 Confederate mid-term] election became more expressions of futile and frustrated dissatisfaction rather than implements of a decision to adopt new and different policies for the Confederacy."
- ^ Coulter, Confederate States of America, p. 105-106
- ^ Coulter, Confederate States of America, p. 106, 105
- ^ Coulter, Confederate States of America, p. 108, 113, 103, 113
- ^ Encyclopedia Virginia, Jefferson Davis (1808–1889). Viewed March 12, 2012.
- ^ Davis p. 248.
- ^ Coulter, “Confederate States of America”, p. 22. The Texas delegation had four in the U.S. Congress, seven in the Montgomery Convention.
- ^ Coulter, “Confederate States of America”, p. 23. While the Texas delegation was seated, and is counted in the “original seven” states of the Confederacy, its referendum to ratify secession had not taken place, so its delegates did not yet vote on instructions from their state legislature.
- ^ Coulter, “Confederate States of America”, p. 23-26.
- ^ Coulter, “Confederate States of America”, p. 25, 27
- ^ Martis, Kenneth C., “The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America: 1861–1865” Simon & Schuster (1994) ISBN 0-13-389115-1 pp.1
- ^ Martis, Historical Atlas, pp.1
- ^ Martis, Historical Atlas, pp.72–73
- ^ Martis, Historical Atlas, pp.3
- ^ Martis, Historical Atlas, pp.90–91
- ^ ""Legal Materials on the Confederate States of America in the Schaffer Law Library", Albany Law School". Albanylaw.edu. http://www.albanylaw.edu/sub.php?navigation_id=821. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
- ^ a b c [Moise, E. Warren, Rebellion in the Temple of Justice (iUniverse 2003)]
- ^ "Records of District Courts of the United States, National Archives". Archives.gov. http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/021.html. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
- ^ "JOHN H. REAGAN – The Old Roman". John H. Reagan Camp #2156; Sons of Confederate Veterans. http://www.reaganscvcamp.org/. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
- ^ "REAGAN, John Henninger, (1818–1905)".
Biographical Directory of the United States. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=r000098. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
- ^ "U.S. Postal Issue Used in the Confederacy (1893)". Smithsonian National Postal Museum. http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&mode=&tid=2040514. Retrieved January 29, 2011.
- ^ Walter Flavius McCaleb, "The Organization of the Post-Office Department of the Confederacy," American Historical Review Vol. 12, No. 1 (Oct., 1906), pp. 66–74 in JSTOR
- ^ L. R. Garrison, "Administrative Problems of the Confederate Post Office Department I," Southwestern Historical Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 2 (Oct., 1915), pp. 111–141 and Vol. 19, No. 3 (Jan., 1916), pp. 232–250 in JSTOR and in JSTOR
- ^ "Confederate States Post Office". Smithsonian National Postal Museum. http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&tid=2027888. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
- ^ Neely (1999) p.1
- ^ Neely (1999) p. 172. Neely notes that. "Most surprising of all, the Confederacy at a greater rate than the North arrested persons who held opposition political views at least in part because they held them, despite the Confederacy's vaunted lack of political parties. Such arrests were more common before 1863 while memories of the votes on secession remained fresh."
- ^ Neely (1993) pp. 11, 16.
- ^ Thomas, “The Confederate Nation” pp.13–14
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” p.10
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” pp.11–12
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” p.12
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” pp.14–15
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” pp.15–16
- ^ Thomas “The Confederate Nation” p.16
- ^ Tariff of the Confederate States of America, May 21, 1861.
- ^ Ian Drury, ed. (2003) [2000]. "American Civil War: Naval & Economic Warfare". History of war. London: Times Books. p. 138. ISBN 0-00-716458-0. "The Confederacy underwent a government-led industrial revolution during the war, but its economy was slowly strangled."
- ^ Ian Drury, ed. (2003) [2000] "American Civil War: Naval & Economic Warfare" History of war London: Times Books p. 138 ISBN 0-00-716458-0 "Like other belligerents unable to occupy enemy territory effectively, the US army resorted to raids. The most spectacular was Sherman's march through Georgia to the sea. This not only inflicted economic damage on the areas traversed, but disrupted the railways that supplied Confederate armies."
- ^ Hankey, John P. (2011). "The Railroad War". Trains (Kalmbach Publishing Company) 71 (3): 24–35.
- ^ Charles W. Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads, American Historical Review, Vol. 22, No. 4 (July, 1917), p. 795.
- ^ Charles W. Ramsdell The Confederate Government and the Railroads The American Historical Review, Vol. 22, No. 4 (July, 1917), p. 795.
- ^ Mary Elizabeth Massey. Ersatz in the Confederacy (1952) p. 128.
- ^ Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads," pp. 809–810.
- ^ Spencer Jones, "The Influence of Horse Supply Upon Field Artillery in the American Civil War," Journal of Military History, (Apr 2010), 74#2 pp 357–377,
- ^ G. Terry Sharrer, "The great glanders epizootic, 1861–1866," Agricultural History, (Win 1995) 69#1 pp 79–97 in JSTOR
- ^ Keith Miller, "Southern Horse," Civil War Times, (Feb 2006) 45#1 pp 30–36 online
- ^ Richard Burdekin and Farrokh Langdana, "War Finance in the Southern Confederacy, 1861–1865", Explorations in Economic History, Vol 30, No 3, July 1993
- ^ Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy," Civil War History, March 2008, Vol. 54 Issue 1, pp 35–62
- ^ Paskoff, "Measures of War"
- ^ John Samuel Ezell, The South since 1865 1963 pp 27–28
- ^ The Unionist state government was appointed by Missouri Constitutional Convention 1861
- ^ Kentucky has both elected Union and unelected Confederate governments from 1861
- ^ Two-thirds of soldiers' deaths occurred due to disease. Nofi, Al (June 13, 2001). "Statistics on the War's Costs". Louisiana State University. Archived from the original on July 11, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070711050249/http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm. Retrieved September 8, 2008.
- ^ "1860 Census of Population and Housing". Census.gov. January 7, 2009. http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1860.htm. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
- ^ Form available for viewing at http://c.ancestry.com/pdf/trees/charts/1860Slave.pdf shows how data on slave ownership was collected.
- ^ Calculated by dividing the number of owners (obtained via the census) by the number of free persons.
- ^ All data for this section taken from the University of Virginia Library, Historical Census Browser, Census Data for Year 1860.
- ^ "U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1860, Internet Release date: June 15, 1998". http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab09.txt. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
- ^ Dabney 1990 p. 182
- ^ Eicher, Civil War High Commands.
- Bowman, John S. (ed), The Civil War Almanac, New York: Bison Books, 1983
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3
- Martis, Kenneth C. The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America 1861–1865 (1994) ISBN 0-13-389115-1
- Wilentz, Sean, The Rise of American Democracy, W.W. Norton & Co., ISBN 0-393-32921-6
Overviews
- Coulter, E. Merton The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, 1950
- Beringer, Richard E., William N. Still. Jr., Archer Jones and Herman Hattaway, Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986)
- Current, Richard N., ed. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy (4 vol), 1993. 1900 pages, articles by scholars.
- William C. Davis (2003). Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-86585-8.
- Eaton, Clement A History of the Southern Confederacy, 1954
- Boritt, Gabor S., and others., Why the Confederacy Lost, (1992)
- Gallgher, Gary W., The Confederate War, 1999
- Faust, Patricia L. ed, Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 1986
- Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War (1997) ISBN 0-674-16055-X
- Heidler, David S., and others. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 2002 2400 pages (ISBN 0-393-04758-X)
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- McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom. (1988), standard military history of the war; Pulitzer Prize
- Nevins, Allan. War for the Union (4 vol 1960–1971), the most detailed history of the war.
- Roland, Charles P. The Confederacy, (1960) brief survey
- Rubin, Sarah Anne A Shattered Nation: The Rise & Fall of the Confederacy 1861–1868 (2005)
- Thomas, Emory M. Confederate Nation: 1861–1865, 1979 Standard political-economic-social history
- Wakelyn, Jon L. Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy Greenwood Press ISBN 0-8371-6124-X
- Weigley, Russell F. A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861–1865. (2000) ISBN 0-253-33738-0
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Historiography
- Gallagher, Gary W., “Disaffection, Persistence, and Nation: Some Directions in Recent Scholarship on the Confederacy,” Civil War History, 55 (Sept. 2009), 329–53. Historiography
- Woodworth, Steven E. ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research, 1996 750 pages of historiography and bibliography
- Ayers, Edward L. and others. Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration (2008)
- Crofts, Daniel W. Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. (1989) ISBN 0-8078-1809-7.
- Dollar, Kent, and others. Sister States, Enemy States: The Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee (2009) excerpt and text search
- Fleming, Walter Lynwood. Civil war and reconstruction in Alabama (1905); 815 pages online edition
- Inscoe, John C. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War (2003) excerpt and text search
- Lee, Edward J. and Ron Chepesiuk, eds. South Carolina in the Civil War: The Confederate Experience in Letters and Diaries (2004), primary sources
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- Smith, Timothy B. Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front (University Press of Mississippi, 2010) 265 pages; Examines the declining morale of Mississippians as they witnessed extensive destruction and came to see victory as increasingly improbable
- Snell, Mark A. West Virginia and the Civil War, Mountaineers Are Always Free, (2011) ISBN 978-1-59629-888-0.
- Wallenstein, Peter, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, eds. Virginia's Civil War (2008) excerpt and text search
- Woods, James M. Rebellion and Realignment: Arkansas's Road to Secession. (1987)
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Social history
- Bernath, Michael T. Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South (University of North Carolina Press; 2010) 412 pages. Examines the efforts of writers, editors, and other "cultural nationalists" to free the South from the dependence on Northern print culture and educational systems.
- Clinton, Catherine, and Silber, Nina, eds. Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, 1992
- Faust, Drew Gilpin Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, 1996
- Massey, Mary Elizabeth Bonnet Brigades: American Women and the Civil War, 1966
- Wiley, Bell Irwin Confederate Women, 1975
- Wiley, Bell Irwin The Plain People of the Confederacy, 1944
- Woodward, C. Vann, ed. Mary Chesnut's Civil War, 1981
Intellectual history
- Bonner, Robert E., “Proslavery Extremism Goes to War: The Counterrevolutionary Confederacy and Reactionary Militarism,” Modern Intellectual History, 6 (Aug. 2009), 261–85.
- Downing, David C. A South Divided: Portraits of Dissent in the Confederacy. (2007). ISBN 978-1-58182-587-9
- Faust, Drew Gilpin. The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. (1988)
- Lentz, Perry Carlton Our Missing Epic: A Study in the Novels about the American Civil War, 1970
- Levine, Bruce Confederate Emancipation. (2006)
- Rable, George C. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism, 1989
- Rubin, Anne Sarah. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861–1868, 2005 A cultural study of Confederates' self images
- Thomas, Emory M. The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience, 1992
Economic history
- Black, Robert C., III. The Railroads of the Confederacy, 1988.
- Bonner, Michael Brem. "Expedient Corporatism and Confederate Political Economy," Civil War History, 56 (March 2010), 33–65.
- Dabney, Virginius Richmond: The Story of a City. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 1990 ISBN 0-8139-1274-1
- Grimsley, Mark The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865, 1995
- Massey, Mary Elizabeth Refugee Life in the Confederacy, 1964
- Ramsdell, Charles. Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy, 1994.
- Roark, James L. Masters without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1977.
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Political history
- Alexander, Thomas B., and Beringer, Richard E. The Anatomy of the Confederate Congress: A Study of the Influences of Member Characteristics on Legislative Voting Behavior, 1861–1865, (1972)
- Cooper, William J, Jefferson Davis, American (2000), standard biography
- Davis, William C. A Government of Our Own. (1994) ISBN 0-8071-2177-0
- Eckenrode, H. J., Jefferson Davis: President of the South, 1923
- Martis, Kenneth C., “The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America 1861–1865” (1994) ISBN 0-13-389115-1
- Neely, Mark E., Jr., Confederate Bastille: Jefferson Davis and Civil Liberties (1993)
- Neely, Mark E. Jr. Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism. (1999) ISBN 0-8139-1894-4
- Rable, George C., The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics, 1994
- Rembert, W. Patrick Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (1944).
- Williams, William M. Justice in Grey: A History of the Judicial System of the Confederate States of America (1941)
- Yearns, Wilfred Buck The Confederate Congress (1960)
Foreign affairs
- Blumenthal, Henry. "Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 32, No. 2 (May, 1966), pp. 151–171 in JSTOR
- Daddysman, James W. The Matamoros Trade: Confederate Commerce, Diplomacy, and Intrigue. (1984)
- Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (2011) especially on Brits inside the Confederacy; excerpt and text search
- Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (1998)
- Jones, Howard. Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations (2009) excerpt and text search
- Merli, Frank J. The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War (2004). 225 pp.
- Owsley, Frank. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (2nd ed. 1959)
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- Carter, Susan B., ed. The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition (5 vols), 2006
- Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Blue and the Gray, the Story of the Civil War as Told By Participants (2 vol.; 1950 and many reprints)
- Davis, Jefferson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols), 1881.
- Harwell, Richard B., The Confederate Reader (1957)
- Jones, John B. A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, edited by Howard Swiggert, [1935] 1993. 2 vols.
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- 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 University of North Carolina
- Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 (7 vols), 1904. Available online at the Library of Congress
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- Confederate offices Index of Politicians by Office Held or Sought
- Civil War Research & Discussion Group -*Confederate States of Am. Army and Navy Uniforms, 1861
- The Countryman, 1862–1866, published weekly by Turnwold, Ga., edited by J.A. Turner
- The Federal and the Confederate Constitution Compared
- Confederate Currency
- Confederate Postage Stamps
- Photographs of the original Confederate Constitution and other Civil War documents owned by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia Libraries.
- Photographic History of the Civil War, 10 vols., 1912.
- DocSouth: Documenting the American South – numerous online text, image, and audio collections.
- Civil War records at the National Archives at Atlanta- includes Confederate records, such as Confederate court documents, Confederate records collected by the U.S. War Department during the Civil War and Confederate records collected by the Treasury Department during Civil War
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