View source for Confederate States Army

{{Short description|Land warfare force of the Confederate States}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2022}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2018}} 
{{Infobox military unit
| unit_name = Confederate States Army
| image = Battle flag of the Confederate States of America (With White Border).svg
| caption = Battle flag of the [[Army of Northern Virginia]]
| dates = 1861–1865
| start_date = {{start date|1861|2|28}}
| disbanded = {{end date|1865|5|26}}
| country = {{Flag|Confederate States|1865}}
| type = [[Army]]
| size = 1,082,119 total who served<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-facts|title=Civil War Facts|date=August 16, 2011|website=American Battlefield Trust}}</ref>
* 464,646 peak in 1863
| command_structure = [[File:Seal of the Confederate States of America.svg|Seal of the Confederate States of America|22px]] [[Confederate States War Department|War Department]]
| colors = {{color box|#91A3B0|border=darkgray}} [[Cadet grey|Cadet Gray]]<ref>C.S. War Dept., p. 402.</ref>
| march = "[[Dixie (song)|Dixie]]"
| battles =  {{tree list}}
* [[American Civil War]]
* [[Cortina Troubles]]
* [[American Indian Wars|Indian Wars]]
{{tree list/end}}
|battles_label = Conflicts
| commander1 = [[Jefferson Davis]] (1861–65)
| commander1_label = [[Commander-in-Chief|Commander in Chief]]
| commander2 = General [[Robert E. Lee]] (1865)
| commander2_label = [[General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States|General in Chief]]
}}
The '''Confederate States Army''' ('''CSA'''), also called the '''Confederate army''' or the '''Southern army''', was the [[Military forces of the Confederate States|military]] land force of the [[Confederate States of America]] (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the [[American Civil War]] (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces to support the rebellion of the Southern states and uphold and expand [[Slavery in the United States|the institution of slavery]].<ref>On February 8, 1861, delegates from the first seven [[Deep South]] slave states which had already declared their secession from the Union of the United States of America met at [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]], the [[state capital]] of [[Alabama]], adopted the [[Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States]].</ref> On February 28, 1861, the [[Provisional Confederate Congress]] established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate States president, [[Jefferson Davis]] (1808–1889). Davis was a graduate of the [[United States Military Academy]], on the [[Hudson River]] at [[West Point, New York]], and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the [[Mexican–American War]] (1846–1848). He had also been a [[United States senator]] from [[Mississippi]] and served as  [[United States Secretary of War|U.S. Secretary of War]] under 14th president [[Franklin Pierce]]. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the new Confederate States government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at [[Charleston Harbor]] in [[Charleston, South Carolina]], where South Carolina state militia had besieged the longtime Federal [[Fort Sumter]] in Charleston harbor, held by a small [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] garrison under the command of Major [[Robert Anderson (Union officer)|Robert Anderson]] (1805–1871). By March 1861, the [[Provisional Congress of the Confederate States]] meeting in the temporary capital of [[Montgomery, Alabama]], expanded the provisional military forces and established a more permanent regular Confederate States Army.

An accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the [[Military forces of the Confederate States]]  (Army, Navy and Marine Corps) is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed/burned Confederate records; and archives. Estimates of the number of Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines are between 750,000 and over 1,000,000 troops. This does not include an unknown number of  [[slavery in the United States|black slaves]] who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as the construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons.<ref>Records of the number of individuals who served in the [[United States Army]] are more extensive and reliable, but are not entirely accurate. Estimates of the number of individual Union soldiers range between 1,550,000 and 2,400,000, with a number between 2,000,000 and 2,200,000 most likely. Union Army records show slightly more than 2,677,000 enlistments, but this number apparently includes many re-enlistments. These numbers do not include sailors who served in [[United States Navy]] or [[United States Marine Corps]]. These figures represent the total number of soldiers who served at any time during the war, not the size of the army at any given date.</ref> Since these figures include estimates of the total number of soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the army at any given date. These numbers also do not include sailors/marines who served in the [[Confederate States Navy]].

Although most of the soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were volunteers, both sides by 1862 resorted to [[conscription]] as a means to supplement the volunteer soldiers. Although exact records are unavailable, estimates of the percentage of Confederate Army soldiers who were drafted are about double the 6 percent of Union Army soldiers who were drafted.<ref>Albert Burton Moore, ''Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy'' (1924).</ref>

According to the National Park Service, "Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records." Their estimates of Confederate military personnel deaths are about 94,000 killed in battle, 164,000 deaths from disease, and  25,976 deaths in Union prison camps. One estimate of the total Confederate wounded is 194,026. In comparison, the best estimates of the number of Union military personnel deaths are 110,100 killed in  battle, 224,580 deaths from disease, and 30,218 deaths in Confederate prison camps. The estimated figure for Union Army wounded is 275,174.<ref name="NPS2024">{{cite web |author1=NPS Staff |title=Facts – The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm |website=NPS.gov |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241203180922/https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm |archive-date=3 December 2024}}</ref>

The main Confederate armies, the [[Army of Northern Virginia]] under General [[Robert E. Lee]] and the remnants of the [[Army of Tennessee]] and various other units under General [[Joseph E. Johnston]], surrendered to the U.S. on April 9, 1865 (officially April 12), and April 18, 1865 (officially April 26). Other Confederate forces further south and west surrendered between April 16, 1865, and June 28, 1865.<ref>Confederate forces at [[Mobile, Alabama]], and [[Columbus, Georgia]], also had already surrendered on April 14, 1865, and April 16, 1865, respectively. U.S. and Confederate units fought a [[Battle of Columbus (1865)|battle at Columbus, Georgia]], before the surrender on April 16, 1865, and a small final battle at [[Battle of Palmito Ranch|Palmito Ranch]], Texas, on May 12, 1865. In areas more distant from the main theaters of operations, Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi under [[Lieutenant General (CSA)|Lieutenant General]] [[Richard Taylor (Confederate general)|Richard Taylor]], in Arkansas under [[Brigadier General (CSA)|Brigadier General]] [[M. Jeff Thompson]], in Louisiana and Texas under General [[E. Kirby Smith]] and in [[Indian Territory in the American Civil War|Indian Territory]] under Brigadier General [[Stand Watie]] surrendered on May 4, 1865, May 12, 1865, May 26, 1865 (officially June 2, 1865), and June 28, 1865, respectively.</ref> By the end of the war, more than 100,000 Confederate soldiers had [[Desertion|deserted]],<ref>{{cite book|author=Eric Foner|title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cwVkgrvctCcC&pg=PA15|year=1988|page=15|publisher=Harper Collins |isbn=9780062035868}}</ref> and some estimates put the number as high as one-third of all Confederate soldiers.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hamner |first1=Christopher |title=Deserters in the Civil War {{!}} Teachinghistory.org |url=http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/23934 |website=teachinghistory.org |access-date=August 3, 2018 |ref=Historian Christopher Hamner teaches at George Mason University, serves as Editor-in-Chief of Papers of the War Department, 1784–1800, and is the author of Enduring Battle: American Soldiers in Three Wars, 1776–1945. |language=en}}</ref> The Confederacy's government effectively dissolved when it evacuated the four-year old capital of [[Richmond, Virginia]], on April 3, 1865, and fled southwest by railroad train with President Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet. It gradually continued moving southwestward first to Lynchburg, Virginia, and lost communication with its remaining military commanders, soon exerting no control over the remaining armies. They were eventually caught and captured near [[Irwinville, Georgia]], a month later in May 1865.

==Prelude==
By the time [[Abraham Lincoln]] took office as President of the United States on March 4, 1861, the seven seceding slave states had formed the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate States]]. They seized federal property, including nearly all U.S. Army forts, within their borders.<ref name="McPherson2004">{{cite book|author= James M. McPherson|title= The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of the Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KVxnee59b_4C&pg=PA55|date=June 2004 |publisher= St. Martin's Press|isbn=978-0-312-33123-8|page=55}}</ref> Lincoln was determined to hold the forts remaining under U.S. control when he took office, especially [[Fort Sumter]] in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. On February 28, shortly before Lincoln was sworn in as president, the [[Provisional Confederate Congress]] had authorized the organization of a large Provisional Army of the Confederate States (PACS).<ref name="Tucker2013">{{cite book |author= Spencer C. Tucker|title= American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection &#91;6 volumes&#93;: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=9dvYAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA74|date=September 30, 2013|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn= 978-1-85109-682-4|page=74}}</ref>

Under orders from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, C.S. troops under the command of General Pierre Gustave Toutant /  [[P. G. T. Beauregard]]  military forces surrounding the city harbor began [[Battle of Fort Sumter|bombarding Fort Sumter]] on April 12–13, [[1861]] and forced its capitulation on April 14.<ref name="Weigley2000">{{cite book|author=Russell Frank Weigley |title=A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861–1865|url= https://archive.org/details/greatcivilwarmil0000weig|url-access=registration|year=2000|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn= 0-253-33738-0|pages= [https://archive.org/details/greatcivilwarmil0000weig/page/21 21]–23}}</ref><ref name="Williams2015">{{cite book|author=T. Harry Williams|title=P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon In Gray|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sQlvCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT62|date=November 6, 2015|publisher=Golden Springs Publishing|isbn=978-1-78289-373-8|pages=62–64}}</ref> The remaining loyal United States in the North, outraged by the Confederacy's attack, demanded war. It rallied behind new 16th President Lincoln's call on April 15 for all the loyal states to send their state militia units avolunteer troops to reinforce and protect the national federal capital of Washington, D.C., to recapture the various forts, arsenals, shipyards and other seized federal installations from the secessionists, to put down and suppress the rebellion and to save the Union.<ref>Weigley 2000, p. 24</ref> Four more upper border [[slave state]]s (North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and finally Virginia) then joined the Confederacy, making eleven seceded states, rather than fight fellow Southerners. The Confederacy then moved its national capital from temporary Montgomery, Alabama to the state capital of Virginia in Richmond. Both the United States and the Confederate States began in earnest to raise large, mostly volunteer, armies,<ref name="Karsten2006">{{cite book|author=Peter Karsten|title= Encyclopedia of War and American Society|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediawara00kars|url-access= registration|year=2006|publisher=SAGE|isbn=978-0-7619-3097-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediawara00kars/page/n201 187]}}</ref><ref name="GrimsleyWoodworth2006">{{cite book|author1=Mark Grimsley|author2=Steven E. Woodworth|title=Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=u7cWoRN4v8MC&pg=PA3|year=2006|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=0-8032-7100-X |pages=3–}}</ref> with the opposing objectives: putting down the rebellion and preserving the Union on the one hand, and establishing Southern independence from the northern United States on the other.<ref>McPherson 1997, pp. 104–105.
</ref>

==Establishment==
[[File:Private Edwin Francis Jemison.jpg|thumb|upright|Private [[Edwin Francis Jemison]], whose image became one of the most famous portraits of the young soldiers of the war]]
The [[Confederate States Congress]] provided for a regular Confederate States Army,  patterned after its parent in the United States Army (established 1775 / 1789). It was to consist of a large provisional force to exist only in time of war and a small permanent regular army. The provisional, volunteer army was established by an act of the [[Provisional Confederate Congress]] passed on February 28, 1861, one week before the act which established the permanent regular army organization, passed on March 6. Although the two forces were to exist concurrently, little was done to organize the Confederate regular army.<ref name="Allardice2008">{{cite book|author=Bruce S. Allardice|title=Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register|url=https://archive.org/details/confederatecolon00alla|url-access=registration|year=2008|publisher=University of Missouri Press|isbn=978-0-8262-6648-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/confederatecolon00alla/page/8 8]–9}}</ref>
* The '''Provisional Army of the Confederate States''' ('''PACS''') began organizing on April 27. Virtually all regular, volunteer, and conscripted men preferred to enter this organization since officers could achieve a higher rank in the Provisional Army than they could in the Regular Army. If the war had ended successfully for them, the Confederates intended that the PACS would be disbanded, leaving only the ACSA.<ref name="Eicher7066"/>
* The '''Army of the Confederate States of America''' ('''ACSA''') was the regular army and was authorized to include 15,015 men, including 744 officers, but this level was never achieved. The men serving in the highest rank as Confederate States generals, such as [[Samuel Cooper (general)|Samuel Cooper]] and [[Robert E. Lee]], were enrolled in the ACSA to ensure that they outranked all militia officers.<ref name=Eicher7066/> ACSA ultimately existed only on paper. The organization of the ACSA did not proceed beyond the appointment and confirmation of some officers. Three state regiments were later denominated "Confederate" regiments, but this appears to have had no practical effect on the organization of a regular Confederate Army and no real effect on the regiments themselves.

Members of all the [[military forces of the Confederate States]] (the army, the navy, and the marine corps) are often referred to as "Confederates", and members of the Confederate army were referred to as "Confederate soldiers". Supplementing the Confederate army were the various state militias of the Confederacy:
* Confederate States '''State Militias''' were organized and commanded by the state governments, similar to those authorized by the United States' [[Militia Act of 1792]].  Some of these militia forces, in the early days of the Confederacy, had operated as stand alone military forces before being incorporated into the Confederate Army; one of the more well known was the [[Provisional Army of Virginia]].

===Control and conscription===
{{Main|Confederate Conscription Acts 1862–1864}}
[[File:Resistance to Confederate conscription.jpg|thumb|left|A cartoon from the war, showing the Confederates forcibly drafting a [[Southern Unionist]] man into the Confederate army. The Unionist man objects, with the Confederates threatening to lynch him if he does not comply.]]
Control and operation of the Confederate army were administered by the [[Confederate States War Department]], which was established by the Confederate Provisional Congress in an act on February 21, 1861. The Confederate Congress gave control over military operations, and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the President of the Confederate States of America on February 28, 1861, and March 6, 1861. On March 8, the Confederate Congress passed a law that authorized President Davis to issue proclamations to call up no more than 100,000 men.<ref>{{cite book|author=United States. War Dept|title=Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NasoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA134|year=1900|page=134}}</ref> The C.S.  War Department asked for 8,000 volunteers on March 9, 20,000 on April 8, and 49,000 on and after April 16. Davis proposed an army of 100,000 soldiers in his message to Congress on April 29.<ref>{{cite book|author1=John George Nicolay|author2=John Hay|title=Abraham Lincoln: A History|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.260345|year=1890|publisher=The Century Co.|page=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.260345/page/n308 264]}}</ref>

On August 8, 1861, the Confederacy called for 400,000 volunteers to serve for one or three years. Eight months later in April 1862,<ref name=McPhersonBooknotes1994>{{Cite web|url=http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=55946-1 |last1=McPherson |first1=James M. |author-link1=James M. McPherson |first2=Brian |last2=Lamb |author-link2=Brian Lamb |title=James McPherson: What They Fought For, 1861–1865 |work=Booknotes |publisher=National Cable Satellite Corporation |access-date=March 9, 2016 |date=May 22, 1994 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160309201904/http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=55946-1 |archive-date=March 9, 2016 }}</ref> the Confederacy passed the first [[conscription]] law in either Confederate or Union history, the Conscription Act,<ref name=EFoner1998p15>{{Cite book|first=Eric|last=Foner|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cwVkgrvctCcC&q=%22Eric+Foner%22+%22Republicans%22|title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877|date=1988|location=United States of America|publisher=Harper & Row|page=15|access-date=March 2, 2016|author-link=Eric Foner|isbn=0-06-093716-5|quote=[T]he Confederacy enacted the first conscription laws in American history{{nbsp}}...}}</ref> which made all able bodied white men between the ages of 18 and 35 liable for a three-year term of service in the Provisional Army. It also extended the terms of enlistment for all one-year soldiers to three years. Men employed in certain occupations considered to be most valuable for the home front (such as railroad and river workers, civil officials, telegraph operators, miners, druggists and teachers) were exempt from the draft.<ref name="Exemptions">[http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2012/11/civil-war-conscription-laws/''Civil War Conscription Laws:'' November 15, 2012 by Margaret Wood.]</ref> The act was amended twice in 1862. On September 27, the maximum age of conscription was extended to 45.<ref name="Age Extension">Faust, Patricia L. ed ''Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War:'' New York, 1986</ref> On October 11, the Confederate States Congress passed the so-called "[[Twenty Negro Law]]",<ref>{{Cite book|author-link=James W. Loewen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5m23RrMeLt4C&pg=PT225|title=Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong|isbn=978-1-56584-100-0|oclc=29877812|publisher=The New Press|location=New York|first=James W.|last=Loewen|date=2007|pages=224–226|access-date=January 19, 2016}}</ref> which exempted anyone who owned 20 or more slaves, a move that caused deep resentment among conscripts who did not own slaves.<ref name="Wiley2008">{{cite book|author=Bell Irvin Wiley|title=The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bbEqSLOriEoC&pg=PT505|date=January 1, 2008|publisher=LSU Press|isbn=978-0-8071-5604-9|page=505}}</ref>

The C.S. Congress enacted several more amendments throughout the war to address losses suffered in battle as well as the United States' greater supply of manpower. In December 1863, it abolished the previous practice of allowing a rich drafted man to hire a substitute to take his place in the ranks. Substitution had also been practiced in the United States, leading to similar resentment from the lower classes. In February 1864, the age limits were extended to between 17 and 50.<ref name="Civil War Conscription Laws">{{cite web|url=http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2012/11/civil-war-conscription-laws/%22%22Civil|title=War Conscription Laws": November 15, 2012 by Margaret Wood."}}{{Dead link|date=October 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Challenges to the subsequent acts came before five state supreme courts; all five upheld them.<ref name="Constitutional Law of Conscription Law">{{Cite web|url=http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/necessity-knows-no-law.pdf|title='Necessity Knows No Law': Vested Rights and Styles of Reasoning in the Confederate Conscription Cases|work=Mississippi Law Journal|date=2000|author=Mississippi Law Journal|location=Mississippi}}.</ref>

==Morale and motivations==
[[File:Men of Virginia to the Rescue! (May 1861).jpg|thumb|An 1861 Confederate recruiting poster from Virginia, urging men to join the Confederate cause and fight off the Union Army, which it refers to as a "brutal and desperate foe"]]
In his 2010 book ''Major Problems in the Civil War'', historian [[Michael Perman]] says that historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years:

{{blockquote|text=Some historians emphasize that Civil War soldiers were driven by political ideology, holding firm beliefs about the importance of liberty, Union, or state rights, or about the need to protect or to destroy slavery. Others point to less overtly political reasons to fight, such as the defense of one's home and family, or the honor and brotherhood to be preserved when fighting alongside other men. Most historians agree that, no matter what he thought about when he went into the war, the experience of combat affected him profoundly and sometimes affected his reasons for continuing to fight.|author=Michael Perman|source=''Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction'' (2010), p. 178.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Michael|last1=Perman|first2=Amy Murrell|last2=Taylor|title=Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5rPbZT_hrncC&pg=PA178|year= 2010|publisher=Cengage|access-date=March 9, 2016|page=178|isbn=978-0618875207}}</ref>}}

Educated soldiers drew upon their knowledge of American history to justify their costs. Historian [[James M. McPherson]] says:

{{blockquote|text=Confederate and Union soldiers interpreted the heritage of 1776 in opposite ways. Confederates professed to fight for liberty and independence from a too radical government; Unionists said they fought to preserve the nation conceived in liberty from dismemberment and destruction ... The rhetoric of liberty that had permeated the letters of Confederate volunteers in 1861, grew even stronger as the war progressed.<ref>James McPherson, ''For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War'' (1998) pp 104–5.</ref>}}

Before and during the Civil War, the popular press of Richmond, including its five major newspapers, sought to inspire a sense of patriotism, Confederate identity, and the moral high ground in the southern population.<ref name="AyersGallagher2006">{{cite book|author1=Edward L. Ayers|author2=Gary W. Gallagher|author3=Andrew J. Torget|editor=Edward L. Ayers|title=Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rIJhAcEcODcC|year=2006|publisher=University of Virginia Press|isbn=978-0-8139-2552-3|pages=80–81}}</ref>

===Religion===
The southern churches met the shortage of Army chaplains by sending missionaries. The Southern Baptists sent a total of 78 missionaries, starting in 1862. Presbyterians were even more active, with 112 missionaries sent in early 1865. Other missionaries were funded and supported by the Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans. One result was wave after wave of religious revivals in the Army,<ref>W. Harrison Daniel, "Southern Protestantism and Army Missions in the Confederacy." ''Mississippi Quarterly'' 17.4 (1964): 179+.</ref> religion playing a major part in the lives of Confederate soldiers. Some men with a weak religious affiliation became committed Christians, and saw their military service in terms of satisfying God's wishes. Religion strengthened the soldiers' loyalty to their comrades and the Confederacy.<ref>{{Cite book|first=Kent T.|last=Dollar|title=Soldiers of the Cross: Soldier-Christians and the Impact of the War on their Faith|publisher=Mercer University Press|date=2005|url=https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/reviews/4849/melton-dollar-soldiers-cross-soldier-christians-and-impact-war-their}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|first=Steven E.|last=Woodworth|title=While God is Marching On|date=2001}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|first=Charles Reagan|last=Wilson|title=Baptized in Blood|date=1980}}</ref><ref name="MillerStout1998">{{cite book|author1=Kurt O. Berends|editor1=Randall M. Miller|editor2=Harry S. Stout|editor3=Charles Reagan Wilson|title=Religion and the American Civil War|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y3NZ6LvDfikC&pg=PA141|chapter="Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man": The Religious Military Press in the Confederacy|date=November 5, 1998|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-802834-5|pages=141–142}}</ref> Military historian Samuel J. Watson argues that Christian faith was a major factor in combat motivation. According to his analysis, the soldiers' faith was consoling for the loss of comrades; it was a shield against fear; it helped reduce drinking and fighting in the ranks; it enlarged the soldiers' community of close friends and helped compensate for their long-term separation from home.<ref>Samuel J. Watson, "Religion and combat motivation in the Confederate armies." ''Journal of Military History'' 58#1 (1994): 29+.</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.questia.com/library/120078224/why-confederates-fought-family-and-nation-in-civil|first=Aaron|last=Sheehan-Dean|title=Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia|date=2009}}</ref>

===Slavery and white supremacism===
In his 1997 book [[For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|''For Cause and Comrades'']], which examines the motivations of the American Civil War's soldiers, noted [[Princeton University]] war  historian and author [[James M. McPherson]] (born 1936), contrasts the views of Confederate soldiers regarding slavery with those of the colonial American revolutionaries of the earlier 18th century.<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p106>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/106 106]|quote=Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought.|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press|oclc=34912692|location=New York|author-link=James M. McPherson|isbn=0-19-509-023-3}}</ref> He stated that while the American rebel colonists of the [[1770s]] saw an incongruity between owning slaves on the one hand, and proclaiming to be fighting for liberty on the other, the later Confederacy's soldiers did not, as the  Confederate ideology of [[white supremacy]] negated any contradiction between the two:

{{blockquote|text=Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought.|author=[[James M. McPherson]]|source=''[[For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War]]'' (1997), p. 106.<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p106/>}}

McPherson states that Confederate States Army soldiers did not discuss the issue of slavery as often as the opposing United States Army soldiers did, because most Confederate soldiers readily accepted as an obvious fact that they were fighting to perpetuate slavery and thus did not feel the need to debate over it:

{{blockquote|text=[O]nly 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from non-slaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it.|author=James M. McPherson|source=''For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War'' (1997), pp. 109–110.<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p110>{{Cite book|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press, Inc.|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|pages=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/109 109]–110|quote=It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. Only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from non-slaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, ''none at all'' dissented from that view.|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|access-date=April 1, 2016}}</ref>}}

Continuing, retired Professor McPherson also stated that of the hundreds of Confederate soldiers' letters he had examined, none of them contained any anti-slavery sentiment whatsoever:

{{blockquote|text=Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, ''none at all'' dissented from that view.|author=James M. McPherson|source=''For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War'' (1997), p. 110, emphasis in original.<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p110/>}}

McPherson admits some flaws in his sampling of letters. Soldiers from slaveholding families were overrepresented by 100%:

{{blockquote|text=Nonslaveholding farmers are underrepresented in the Confederate sample. Indeed, while about one-third of all Confederate soldiers belonged to slaveholding families, slightly more than two-thirds of the sample whose slaveholding status is known did so.|author=James M. McPherson|source=''For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War'' (1997), p. ix.
<ref>James M. McPherson, ''For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War'' (1997), p. ix. "In both the Union and Confederate samples, foreign-born soldiers are substantially underrepresented. In the Union sample, only 9 percent of soldiers were born abroad in the Confederate Army, compared with 24 percent of all Union Army soldiers. Unskilled and even skilled laborers are underrepresented in both samples. Nonslaveholding farmers are underrepresented in the Confederate sample. Indeed, while about one-third of all Confederate soldiers belonged to slaveholding families, slightly more than two-thirds of the sample whose slaveholding status is known did so ... Officers are overrepresented in both samples. While some 10 percent of Civil War soldiers served as officers for at least half of their time in the army, 47 percent of the Confederate sample and 35 percent of the Union sample did so. Both samples are also skewed toward those who volunteered in 1861–62 and therefore contain disproportionately few draftees{{nbsp}}..."</ref>}}

In some cases, Confederate men were motivated to join the army in response to the United States' actions regarding its opposition to slavery.<ref name=JMMcPhersonP107>{{Cite book|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|quote=The Proclamation is worth three hundred thousand soldiers to our Government at least ... It shows exactly what this war was brought about for and the intention of its damnable authors.|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/107 107]|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|oclc=34912692|access-date=April 1, 2016}}</ref> After the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] in [[1862]]–[[1863]], some Confederate soldiers welcomed the move, as they believed it would strengthen pro-slavery sentiment in the Confederacy, and thus lead to greater enlistment of soldiers in the Confederate armies.<ref name=JMMcPhersonP107/>

One Confederate soldier from the West in [[Texas in the American Civil War|Texas]]  gave his reasons for fighting for the Confederacy, stating that "we are fighting for our property",<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p117>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/117 117]|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press, Inc.|oclc=34912692|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|access-date=April 1, 2016}}</ref> contrasting this with the motivations of Union soldiers, who, he claimed, were fighting for the "flimsy and abstract idea that a negro is equal to an Anglo American".<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p117/> One [[Louisiana]]n artilleryman stated, "I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person. There is too many free niggers ... now to suit me, let alone having four millions."<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p109>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/109 109]|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press, Inc.|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|access-date=April 1, 2016}}</ref> A [[North Carolina in the American Civil War|North Carolinian]] soldier stated, "[A] white man is better than a nigger."<ref name=JMMcPherson1997p109/>

Decades later in [[1894]], [[Virginia in the American Civil War|Virginian]] and former famous Confederate cavalry leader, [[John S. Mosby]] (1833–1916), reflecting on his role in the war, stated in a letter to a friend that "I've always understood that we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I've never heard of any other cause than slavery."<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem|date=2005|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zs0VJTbNwfAC&pg=PA26|page=26|first=John M.|last=Coski|isbn=0-674-01722-6|publisher=First Harvard University Press|location=United States of America|access-date=July 1, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/06/19/how-people-convince-themselves-that-the-confederate-flag-represents-freedom-not-slavery/|title=How people convince themselves that the Confederate flag represents freedom, not slavery: Historian John M. Coski examines the fights over the symbol's meaning in 'The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem.'|newspaper=The Washington Post|publisher=Graham Holdings Company|location=Washington, D.C.|date=June 19, 2015|first=Carlos|last=Lozada|access-date=July 1, 2015}}</ref>
As stated by researcher / authors  Andrew Hall, Connor Huff and Shiro Kuriwaki in the article ''Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War'', research done using an 1862 [[Georgia Lottery]] showed that rich white Southern men actually enlisted at a higher rate than poor men because they had more to lose. Slavery helped provide them with wealth and power, and they felt that the Civil War would destroy everything that they had if they lost because they saw slavery as the foundation of their wealth, which was under threat and caused them to fight hard.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hall |first1=Andrew |last2=Huff |first2=Connor |last3=Kuriwaki |first3=Shiro |title=Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War |journal=American Political Science Review |date=August 2019 |volume=113 |issue=3 |pages=658–673 |doi=10.1017/S0003055419000170|s2cid=21749302 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

===Desertion===
{{further|Desertion#American Civil War}}
At many points during the war, and especially near the end, the Confederate armies were very poorly fed. At home their families were in worsening condition and faced starvation and the depredations of roving bands of marauders. Many soldiers went home temporarily (A.W.O.L. –         "[[Absent Without Official Leave]]") and quietly returned when their family problems had been resolved. By September 1864, however, President Davis publicly admitted that two-thirds of the soldiers were absent, "most of them without leave". The problem escalated rapidly after that, and fewer and fewer men returned.<ref>{{cite book|author=David Williams|title=Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-U2z9lk833EC&pg=PA4|year=2011|publisher=University of Georgia Press|page=4|isbn=9780820340791}}</ref> Soldiers who were fighting in defense of their homes realized that they had to desert to fulfill that duty. Historian Mark Weitz argues that the official count of 103,400 deserters is too low. He concludes that most of the desertions came because the soldier felt he owed a higher duty to his own family than to the Confederacy.<ref>Mark A. Weitz, ''A higher duty: desertion among Georgia troops during the Civil War'' (U of Nebraska Press, 2005).</ref>

Confederate policies regarding desertion generally were severe. For example, on August 19, 1862, famed General [[Stonewall Jackson|Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson]] (1824–1863),  approved the court-martial sentence of execution for three soldiers for desertion, rejecting pleas for clemency from the soldiers' regimental commander. General Jackson's goal was to maintain discipline in a volunteer army whose homes were under threat of enemy occupation.<ref>K. M. L. "Stonewall's Rush to Judgment", ''Civil War Times'' (2010) 49#2 pp 51+.</ref><ref>Ella Lonn, ''Desertion during the Civil War'' (1928).</ref>

Historians of the Civil War have emphasized how soldiers from poor families deserted because they were urgently needed at home. Local pressures mounted as Union forces occupied more and more Confederate territory, putting more and more families at risk of hardship.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 2580242|title = Desertion as Localism: Army Unit Solidarity and Group Norms in the U.S. Civil War|journal = Social Forces|volume = 70|issue = 2|pages = 321–342|last1 = Bearman|first1 = Peter S.|year = 1991|doi = 10.2307/2580242}}</ref> One Confederate Army officer at the time noted, "The deserters belong almost entirely to the poorest class of non-slave-holders whose labor is indispensable to the daily support of their families" and that "When the father, husband or son is forced into the service, the suffering at home with them is inevitable. It is not in the nature of these men to remain quiet in the ranks under such circumstances."<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=http://www.americanheritage.com/content/south%E2%80%99s-inner-civil-war-0 |title=The South's Inner Civil War: The more fiercely the Confederacy fought for its independence, the more bitterly divided it became. To fully understand the vast changes the war unleashed on the country, you must first understand the plight of the Southerners who didn't want secession |date=March 1989 |volume=40 |issue=2 |first=Eric |last=Foner |author-link=Eric Foner |page=3 |magazine=American Heritage |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131218233100/http://www.americanheritage.com/content/south%E2%80%99s-inner-civil-war-0 |archive-date=December 18, 2013 }}</ref>

Some soldiers also deserted from ideological motivations.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Doyle | first1 = Patrick J. | year = 2013 | title = Understanding the Desertion of South Carolinian Soldiers during the Final Years of the Confederacy | journal = Historical Journal | volume = 56 | issue = 3| pages = 657–679 | doi=10.1017/s0018246x13000046| s2cid = 159773914 }}</ref> A growing threat to the solidarity of the Confederacy was dissatisfaction in the [[Appalachian Mountains]] districts caused by lingering Unionism and a distrust of the power wielded by the slave-holding class. Many of their soldiers deserted, returned home, and formed a military force that fought off Regular Army units trying to capture and punish them.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 4249872|title = "The Grave and Scandalous Evil Infected to Your People": The Erosion of Confederate Loyalty in Floyd County, Virginia|journal = The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography|volume = 108|issue = 4|pages = 393–434|last1 = Dotson|first1 = Rand|year = 2000}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Otten | first1 = James T. | year = 1974 | title = Disloyalty in the Upper Districts of South Carolina During the Civil War | journal = South Carolina Historical Magazine | volume = 75 | issue = 2| pages = 95–110 | jstor=27567243}}</ref> North Carolina lost nearly a quarter of its soldiers (24,122) to desertion. This was the highest rate of desertion of any Confederate state.<ref>Scott King-Owen, "Conditional Confederates: Absenteeism among Western North Carolina Soldiers, 1861–1865." ''Civil War History'' 2011; 57(4): 349–379. [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/civil_war_history/v057/57.4.king-owen.html online]</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Giuffre | first1 = Katherine A. | year = 1997 | title = First in Flight: Desertion as Politics in the North Carolina Confederate Army | journal = Social Science History | volume = 21 | issue = 2| pages = 245–263 | doi=10.2307/1171275| jstor = 1171275 }}</ref>

Young Samuel Clemens (1835–1910, later to be known as [[Mark Twain]]) soon deserted the Southern army long before he became a world-famous writer, journalist and lecturer, but he often commented upon that episode in his life comically, even writing a book about it. Author Neil Schmitz has examined the deep unease Twain felt about losing his honor, his fear of facing death as a soldier, and his rejection of a Southern identity as a professional author.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Schmitz | first1 = Neil | year = 2007 | title = Mark Twain, Traitor | journal = Arizona Quarterly | volume = 63 | issue = 4| pages = 25–37 | doi=10.1353/arq.2007.0025| s2cid = 161125965 }}</ref>

==Organization==
[[File:CW Arty M1857 Napoleon front.jpg|thumb|CSA M1857 Napoleon Artillery Piece]]

Because of the destruction of any central repository of records in the capital at Richmond in 1865 and the comparatively poor record-keeping of the time, there can be no definitive number that represents the strength of the Confederate States Army. Estimates range from 500,000 to 2,000,000 soldiers who were involved at any time during the war. Reports from the C.S. War Department beginning at the end of 1861 indicated 326,768 men that year, 449,439 in 1862, 464,646 in 1863, 400,787 in 1864, and "last reports" showed 358,692. Estimates of enlistments throughout the war range from 1,227,890 to 1,406,180.<ref name="Eicher71"/>

The following calls for soldiers were issued:
* March 6, 1861: 100,000 volunteers and militia
* January 23, 1862: 400,000 volunteers and militia
* April 16, 1862, the First [[Conscription]] Act: passed by the [[Confederate States Congress]] conscripted white men ages 18 to 35 for the duration of hostilities<ref name="eicher1"/>
* September 27, 1862, the Second Conscription Act: expanded the age range to 18 to 45,<ref name="eicher2"/> with implementation beginning on July 15, 1863
* February 17, 1864, the Third Conscription Act: expanded further to ages 17 to 50<ref name="eicher3"/>
* March 13, 1865, authorized finally up to 300,000 African American slaves as troops but was never fully implemented.<ref name="official"/>

The C.S.A. was initially a (strategically) defensive army, and many soldiers were resentful when General Robert E. Lee led his  [[Army of Northern Virginia]] across the [[Potomac River]] in his first invasion of the North in the [[Maryland campaign|Antietam campaign]] in [[Maryland in the American Civil War|Maryland]] in September 1862.

===Command===
{{further|General officers in the Confederate States Army}}
[[File:Robert Edward Lee.jpg|thumb|General [[Robert E. Lee]], the Confederacy's most famous general]]

The Confederate States Army  did not have a formal overall military commander, or general in chief, until late in the war. The Confederate President, [[Jefferson Davis]], himself a former U.S. Army officer and [[United States Secretary of War|U.S. Secretary of War]],<ref name="OwnbyWilson2017">{{cite book|author1=Lynda Lasswell Crist|editor1=Ted Ownby|editor2=Charles Reagan Wilson|editor3=Ann J. Abadie|editor4=Odie Lindsey|editor5=James G. Thomas, Jr.|title=The Mississippi Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HWolDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA317|date=May 25, 2017|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-4968-1159-2|pages=317}}</ref> served as [[commander-in-chief]] and provided the overall strategic direction for Confederate land and naval forces in both eastern and western theaters. The following men had varying degrees of control:
* [[Robert E. Lee]] was "charged with the conduct of military operations in the armies of the Confederacy" from March 13 to May 31, 1862. He was referred to as President Davis' military adviser but exercised broad control over the strategic and logistical aspects of the Army, a role similar in nature to the current [[Chief of Staff of the United States Army]] (not developed until beginning in the early 20th century). On June 1, he assumed command of the [[Army of Northern Virginia]], which was considered the most important of all the Confederate field armies.<ref name="McCABE1870">{{cite book|author=James D. McCabe|title=Life and Campaigns of General Robert E. Lee.|url=https://archive.org/details/lifecampaignsofg01mcca|year=1870|page=[https://archive.org/details/lifecampaignsofg01mcca/page/49 49]}}</ref>
* [[Braxton Bragg]] was similarly "charged with the conduct of military operations in the armies of the Confederacy" from February 24, 1864 (after he was relieved of field command following the [[Battle of Chattanooga III|Battle of Chattanooga]]) to January 31, 1865. This role was a military advisory position under Davis.<ref name="Martin2014">{{cite book|author=Samuel J. Martin|title=General Braxton Bragg, C.S.A.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oPyswIt41YsC&pg=PA382|date=January 10, 2014|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-6194-3|page=382}}</ref>
* Lee was formally designated [[General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States]] by an act of Congress (January 23, 1865) and served in this capacity from January 31 to April 9, 1865.<ref name="Thomas1997">{{cite book|author=Emory M. Thomas|title=Robert E. Lee: A Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2tJZ_TCHUjAC&pg=PA347|date=June 17, 1997|publisher=W. W. Norton|isbn=978-0-393-31631-5|page=347}}</ref>

The lack of centralized control was a strategic weakness for the Confederacy, and there are only a few examples of its armies acting in concert across multiple theaters to achieve a common objective. One instance occurred in late 1862 with Lee's invasion of [[Maryland]], coincident with two other actions: Bragg's invasion of [[Kentucky]] and [[Earl Van Dorn]]'s advance against [[Corinth, Mississippi]]. All three initiatives were unsuccessful, however. Georgia Governor [[Joseph E. Brown]] was an extreme case of a Southern States Rights advocate asserting control over Confederate soldiers: he defied the Confederate government's wartime policies and resisted the military draft. Believing that local troops should be used only for the defense of Georgia,<ref name="McPherson2003">{{cite book|author=James M. McPherson|title=The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GXfGuNAvm7AC&pg=PA433|date=December 11, 2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-974390-2|page=433}}</ref> Brown tried to stop Colonel Francis Bartow from taking Georgia troops out of the state to the First Battle of Bull Run.<ref name="Jordan2018">{{cite book|author=Jim Jordan|title=The Slave-trader's Letter-book: Charles Lamar, the Wanderer, and Other Tales of the African Slave Trade|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eY5FDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA242|year=2018|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-5196-4|page=242}}</ref>

Many of the Confederacy's senior military leaders (including Robert E. Lee, [[Albert Sidney Johnston]], and [[James Longstreet]]) and even President Jefferson Davis, were former U.S. Army and, in smaller numbers, U.S. Navy officers who had been opposed to, disapproved of, or were at least unenthusiastic about secession, but resigned their U.S. commissions upon hearing that their states had left the Union. They felt that they had no choice but to help defend their homes. President Abraham Lincoln was exasperated to hear of such men who professed to love their country but were willing to fight against it.

===Personnel organization===

As in the [[Union Army|U.S. Army]], the Confederate Army's soldiers were organized by military specialty. The combat arms included infantry, cavalry, and artillery.{{cn|date=June 2025}}

Although fewer soldiers might comprise a squad or platoon, the smallest [[Infantry in the American Civil War|infantry maneuver unit]] in the Army was a company of 100 soldiers. Ten companies were organized into an infantry regiment, which theoretically had 1,000 men. In reality, as disease, desertions and casualties took their toll, and the common practice of sending replacements to form new regiments took hold, most regiments were greatly reduced in strength. By the mid-war, most regiments averaged 300–400 men, with Confederate units slightly smaller on average than their U.S. counterparts. For example, at the pivotal [[Battle of Chancellorsville]], the average U.S. Army infantry regiment's strength was 433 men, versus 409 for Confederate infantry regiments.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/historicaltimesi00faus|title=Historical times illustrated encyclopedia of the Civil War|date=1986|publisher=Harper & Row|editor-last=Faust|editor-first=Patricia L.|editor-last2=Delaney|editor-first2=Norman C.|isbn=0061812617|edition=1st|location=New York|oclc=13796662}}</ref>

Rough unit sizes for CSA combat units during the war:<ref>The Civil War Book of Lists, p. 56</ref>
* Corps - 24,000 to 28,000
* Division - 6,000 to 14,000
* Brigade - 800 to 1,700
* Regiment - 350 to 400
* Company – 35 to 40

Regiments, which were the basic units of army organization through which soldiers were supplied and deployed, were raised by individual states. They were generally referred by number and state, for example [[1st Texas Infantry|1st Texas]], [[12th Virginia Infantry|12th Virginia]]. To the extent the word "[[battalion]]" was used to describe a military unit, it referred to a multi-company task force of a regiment or a near-regimental size unit. Throughout the war, the Confederacy raised the equivalent of 1,010 regiments in all branches, including militias, versus 2,050 regiments for the U.S. Army.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Civil War dictionary|last1=Boatner|first1=Mark Mayo|date=1959|publisher=D. McKay Co|last2=Northrop|first2=Allen C.|last3=Miller|first3=Lowell I.|isbn=0679500138|location=New York|oclc=445154}}</ref>

Four regiments usually formed a [[brigade]], although as the number of soldiers in many regiments became greatly reduced, especially later in the war, more than four were often assigned to a brigade. Occasionally, regiments would be transferred between brigades. Two to four brigades usually formed a [[Division (military)|division]]. Two to four divisions usually formed a [[corps]]. Two to four corps usually formed an army. Occasionally, a single corps might operate independently as if it were a small army. The Confederate States Army consisted of several field armies, named after their primary area of operation. The largest Confederate field army was the [[Army of Northern Virginia]], whose surrender at [[Battle of Appomattox Court House|Appomattox Courthouse]] in 1865 marked the end of major combat operations in the U.S. Civil War.

[[Company (military unit)|Companies]] were commanded by captains and had two or more lieutenants. Regiments were commanded by colonels. Lieutenant colonels were second in command. At least one major was next in command. Brigades were commanded by brigadier generals although casualties or other attrition sometimes meant that brigades would be commanded by senior colonels or even a lower grade officer. Barring the same type of circumstances that might leave a lower grade officer in temporary command, divisions were commanded by major generals and corps were commanded by lieutenant generals. A few corps commanders were never confirmed as lieutenant generals and exercised corps command for varying periods as major generals. Armies of more than one corps were commanded by (full) generals.

<gallery widths="200px" heights="200px">
File:Corporal Artillery CS Army.jpg|Corporal of the Artillery division of the Confederate Army
File:AdamJSlemmerinConfederateBatteryAtWarringtonAcrossFromFortPickens1861.jpg|Confederate mortar crew at Warrington, Florida in 1861, across from Fort Pickens
File:ArtilleryCharleston1863.jpg|Confederate artillery at Charleston Harbor, 1863
File: History of the Doles-Cook brigade of northern Virginia, C.S. A; containing muster roles of each company of the Fourth, Twelfth, Twenty-first and Forty-fourth Georgia regiments, with a short sketch of (14762498312).jpg|Lt Col. E. V. Nash, 4th Georgia Infantry Doles-Cook Brigade, who was killed in 1864
</gallery>

===Ranks and insignia===
{{further|Ranks and insignia of the Confederate States}}
{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"  style="margin:auto; width:100%;"
|-
!colspan=11| '''Officer rank structure of the Confederate Army'''
|-
![[General officers in the Confederate States Army|General]]
![[Colonel (United States)|Colonel]]
![[Lieutenant colonel (United States)|Lieutenant colonel]]
![[Major (United States)|Major]]
![[Captain (United States O-3)|Captain]]
![[First lieutenant]]
![[Second lieutenant]]
|-
![[File:Confederate States of America General-collar.svg|100px]]
![[File:Confederate States of America Colonel.png|100px]]
![[File:Confederate States of America Lieutenant Colonel.png|75px]]
![[File:Confederate States of America Major.png|50px]]
![[File:Confederate States of America Captain.png|100px]]
![[File:Confederate States of America First Lieutenant.png|100px]]
![[File:Confederate States of America Second Lieutenant.png|100px]]
|}
<gallery>
File:Confederate States of America General-Staff Officer.svg|{{center|'''''General''''' (CSA)}}
File:Confederate States of America Colonel-Infantry.svg|{{center|'''''Colonel''''' (Infantry shown)}}
File:Confederate States of America Lieutenant Colonel-Staff Officer.svg|{{center|'''''Lieutenant-colonel''''' (Headquarters shown)}}
File:Confederate States of America Major-Medical.svg|{{center|'''''Major''''' (Medical Corps shown)}}
File:Confederate States of America Captain-Marines.svg|{{center|'''''Captain''''' (Marine Corps shown)}}
File:Confederate States of America First Lieutenant-Artillery.svg|{{center|'''''1st Lieutenant''''' (Artillery shown)}}
File:Confederate States of America Second Lieutenant-Cavalry.svg|{{center|'''''2nd Lieutenant''''' (Cavalry shown)}}
</gallery>
[[File:War of the Rebellion Atlas Plate 172.jpg|thumb|An 1895 illustration showing the uniforms of the Confederate Army contrasted with those of the U.S. Army]]
There were four grades of general officer ([[General (CSA)|general]], [[Lt. General (CSA)|lieutenant general]], [[Maj. Gen. (CSA)|major general]], and [[Brigadier General (CSA)|brigadier general]]), but all wore the same insignia regardless of grade. This was a decision made early in the conflict. The Confederate Congress initially made the rank of brigadier general the highest rank. As the war progressed, the other general-officer ranks were quickly added, but no insignia for them was created. (Robert E. Lee was a notable exception to this. He chose to wear the rank insignia of a colonel.) Only seven men achieved the rank of (full) general;<ref name="confederate"/> the highest-ranking (earliest date of rank) was [[Samuel Cooper (general)|Samuel Cooper]], Adjutant General and Inspector General of the Confederate States Army.

Officers' uniforms bore a braided design on the sleeves and [[kepi]], the number of adjacent strips (and therefore the width of the lines of the design) denoting rank. The color of the piping and kepi denoted the military branch. The braid was sometimes left off by officers since it made them conspicuous targets. The kepi was rarely used, the common slouch hat being preferred for its practicality in the Southern climate.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"  style="margin:auto; width:100%;"
|-
!colspan=11| '''Enlisted rank structure'''
|-
![[Sergeant Major]]
![[Quartermaster Sergeant]]
![[Ordnance Sergeant]]
![[First Sergeant]]
|-
![[File:Confederate States of America Sergeant Major-Infantry.svg|80px]]
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Branch colors were used for the color of chevrons—blue for infantry, yellow for cavalry, and red for artillery. This could differ with some units, however, depending on available resources or the unit commander's desire. Cavalry regiments from Texas, for example, often used red insignia and at least one Texas infantry regiment used black.

The CSA differed from many contemporaneous armies in that all officers under the rank of [[brigadier general (CSA)|brigadier general]] were elected by the soldiers under their command. The Confederate Congress authorized the awarding of medals for courage and good conduct on October 13, 1862, but wartime difficulties prevented the procurement of the needed medals. To avoid postponing recognition for their valor, those nominated for the awards had their names placed on a [[Confederate Roll of Honor|Roll of Honor]], which would be read at the first dress parade after its receipt and be published in at least one newspaper in each state.

===Armies and prominent leaders===
The C.S. Army was composed of independent armies and military departments that were constituted, renamed, and disbanded as needs arose, particularly in reaction to offensives launched by the [[Union (American Civil War)|United States]]. These major units were generally named after states or geographic regions (in comparison to the U.S. Army's custom of naming armies after rivers). Armies were usually commanded by [[Full General (CSA)#Major general|full generals]] (there were seven in the C.S. Army) or [[Lt. General (CSA)|lieutenant generals]]. Some of the more important armies and their commanders were:

[[File:Battle of Spottsylvania by Thure de Thulstrup.jpg|thumb|275px|A painting of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia fighting the [[Union Army|U.S. Army]] at [[Battle of Spotsylvania Court House|Spotsylvania]] in 1864]]
* [[Army of Central Kentucky]] – [[Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr.|Simon B. Buckner]], [[Albert Sidney Johnston]]
* Army of East Tennessee – [[Edmund Kirby Smith]] (later renamed Army of Kentucky)
* Army of Eastern Kentucky – [[Humphrey Marshall (general)|Humphrey Marshall]]
* [[Army of the Kanawha]] – [[Henry A. Wise]], [[John B. Floyd]], [[Robert E. Lee]]
* [[Confederate Army of Kentucky|Army of Kentucky]] – [[Edmund Kirby Smith]] (eventually commander of all forces West of the Mississippi)
* Army of Louisiana – [[Braxton Bragg]]. [[Paul Octave Hébert|Paul O. Hébert]]
* [[Army of Mississippi]]
** March 1862 – November 1862: [[P. G. T. Beauregard]], [[Albert Sidney Johnston]], [[Braxton Bragg]], [[William J. Hardee]], [[Leonidas Polk]], (also known as the Army of the Mississippi; redesignated [[Army of Tennessee]] on November 20, 1862)
** December 1862 – July 1863: [[John C. Pemberton]], [[Earl Van Dorn]], (1863) [[William W. Loring]] (also known as Army of Vicksburg)
** July 1863 – June 1864: [[William J. Hardee]], [[Leonidas Polk]], [[William W. Loring]] (also known as the Army of the Mississippi; redesignated III Corps, [[Army of Tennessee]] in May 1864, but continued to use its old name)
* Army of Middle Tennessee – [[John C. Breckinridge]]
* [[Army of Missouri]] – [[Sterling Price]]
* Army of Mobile – [[Jones M. Withers]], [[Braxton Bragg]], [[John Bordenave Villepigue|John B. Villepigue]], [[Sam Jones (Confederate Army officer)|Samuel Jones]], William L. Powell, [[John Horace Forney|John H. Forney]]
* [[Army of New Mexico]] – [[Henry Hopkins Sibley|Henry H. Sibley]]
* [[Army of Northern Virginia]] – [[Joseph E. Johnston]], [[Gustavus Woodson Smith|Gustavus W. Smith]], [[Robert E. Lee]]
** [[First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia]]
** [[Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia]]
** [[Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia]]
** [[Fourth Corps, Army of Northern Virginia]], often styled "[[Anderson's Corps]]"
** [[Cavalry Corps, Army of Northern Virginia]]
* Army of the New River – [[Henry Heth]]
* [[Confederate Army of the Northwest|Army of the Northwest]] – [[Robert S. Garnett]], [[Henry R. Jackson]], [[William W. Loring]], [[Edward Johnson (general)|Edward Johnson]]
* [[Army of the Peninsula]] – [[John B. Magruder]], [[Daniel Harvey Hill|Daniel H. Hill]]
* Army of Pensacola – [[Adley H. Gladden]], [[Braxton Bragg]], [[Sam Jones (Confederate Army officer)|Samuel Jones]]
* [[Confederate Army of the Potomac|Army of the Potomac]] – [[P. G. T. Beauregard]], [[Joseph E. Johnston]]
* [[Confederate Army of the Shenandoah|Army of the Shenandoah]] – [[Joseph E. Johnston]]
* [[Army of Tennessee]] – [[Braxton Bragg]], [[Samuel Gibbs French]], [[William J. Hardee]], [[Daniel Harvey Hill|Daniel H. Hill]], [[John Bell Hood]], [[Joseph E. Johnston]], [[Richard Taylor (Confederate general)|Richard Taylor]]
** [[First Corps, Army of Tennessee]]
** [[Second Corps, Army of Tennessee]]
** [[Third Corps, Army of Tennessee]]
** [[Forrest's Cavalry Corps]] – [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]]
* [[Army of the Trans-Mississippi]] – [[Thomas C. Hindman]], [[Theophilus Holmes]], [[Edmund Kirby Smith]] (also known as the Army of the Southwest)
* [[Army of the Valley]] (also known as [[Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia]]) – [[Jubal Anderson Early|Jubal Early]]
* [[Army of the West (1862)|Army of the West]] – [[Earl van Dorn]], [[John P. McCown]], [[Dabney H. Maury]], [[Sterling Price]]
* [[Confederate Army of West Tennessee|Army of West Tennessee]] – [[Earl Van Dorn]]
* [[Army of Western Louisiana]] – [[Richard Taylor (Confederate general)|Richard Taylor]], [[John George Walker|John G. Walker]]

Some other prominent Confederate generals who led significant units operating sometimes independently in the CSA included [[Stonewall Jackson|Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson]], [[James Longstreet]], [[J. E. B. Stuart]], [[Gideon Pillow]], [[A. P. Hill]], [[John B. Gordon]].

===Military departments===

In addition to the Confederate field armies, the Confederate States itself was divided into several military territorial organizations, known as departments.  These departments were mainly administrative in nature, organizing recruiting, supply distribution, and coordinating with the field armies in the event of Union invasions.  The military departments were also the ultimate authority for all Confederate forts within their region, as well as commanding all garrison forces and units of the [[Confederate Home Guard]]<ref>Fullerton, D. (2017). "Armies in Gray: The Organizational History of the Confederate States Army in the Civil War", LSU Press.</ref>

Unlike the Union, which had fairly stable military departments through most of the Civil War, Confederate departments were constantly being formed, reformed, and renamed as the war progressed.  The original two departments, formed at the beginning of the Civil War, were "Department No 1" (later incorporated into the Department of Louisiana) and "Department No 2" (later becoming the [[Western Department]]).

In Virginia, where hostilities broke out almost immediately after the start of the war, the "Alexandria line" was established as the first Confederate administrative body in this area.  This was later expanded to formal military departments in the following order:

* Department of Alexandria
* Department of the Potomac
* Department of Northern Virginia

Virginia also maintained the following smaller departments which fluctuated as the war progressed:

* Department of Norfolk
* Department of Fredericksburg
* Department of Richmond (operated in tandem with the Department of Henrico)
* Department of Southwestern Virginia
* Department of the Peninsula

In the Shenandoah Valley, the first Confederate administrative command was set up at Harper's Ferry, later becoming the [[Valley District]], directly subordinate to the Army of the Shenandoah.  The Shenandoah Valley was without a department for most of the war, militarily controlled by Army of the Northwest and the Army of the Valley, before finally being declared the [[Trans-Allegheny Department]].  Elsewhere in the Confederacy, the following major departments were formed which operated throughout most of the war:<ref>Vandiver, F. (1977) "Rebel Brass: The Confederate Command System", Greenwood Publishing.</ref>

* Department of Louisiana
* Department of Tennessee
* [[Department of North Carolina]]
* Department of South Carolina
* Department of Georgia

The Union attack on [[Vicksburg, Mississippi]] also brought about a succession of departments known as:

* Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana
* Department of Alabama and East Mississippi 
* Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and Eastern Louisiana

The entire Mississippi region was eventually merged into the [[Trans-Mississippi Department]], one of the largest departments of the war.  At the same time, departments were being formed further west as the:

* [[Western Department]]
* [[Department of Texas]]
* Department of the Indian Territory

Battles in Tennessee, and shifting fronts in that region, also brought about the need for new departments in that region, most of  which reported directly to the Army of Tennessee under [[John Bell Hood]]. Hood would directly command the following three departments at the same time as his service as an Army commander:<ref>Woods, M. (2019). "Tennessee In The War, 1861–1865: Lists Of Military Organizations And Officers From Tennessee In Both The Confederate And Union Armies", Wentworth Press.</ref>

* Department of East Tennessee
* [[Department of East Tennessee and West Virginia]]
* Department of Tennessee and Georgia

In 1864, Robert E. Lee held the idea for "super theaters" encompassing vast areas of the south, as follows:

* Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia (expansion of the Department of Southern Virginia)
* Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida
* Department of South Carolina and Georgia (later expanded to the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida

Lesser departments, without much combat activity, were:

* Department of West Florida
* Department of Alabama and West Florida (expansion of the District of Alabama)
* Department of Middle and Eastern Florida
* Department of Western Kentucky

==Supply and logistics==
[[File:ConfederateArmyPhoto.jpg|thumb|275px|A group of Confederate soldiers-possibly an artillery unit captured at [[Battle of Island No. 10|Island No. 10]] and taken at POW [[Camp Douglas (Chicago)]]; photograph possibly by D. F. Brandon<ref name="history-sites"/>]]
{{main|Confederate States of America#Transportation systems}}

The supply situation for most Confederate armies was dismal, even when they were victorious on the battlefield. The central Confederate government was short of money so each state government had to supply its regiments. The lack of central authority and the ineffective [[Confederate railroads in the American Civil War|railroads]], combined with the frequent unwillingness or inability of Southern state governments to provide adequate funding, were key factors in the Confederate army's demise. The Confederacy early on lost control of most of its major river and ocean ports to capture or blockade. The road system was poor, and it relied more and more on a heavily overburdened railroad system. U.S. forces destroyed track, engines, cars, bridges and telegraph lines as often as possible, knowing that new equipment was unavailable to the Confederacy.<ref>George Edgar Turner, ''Victory rode the rails: the strategic place of the railroads in the Civil War'' (1972)</ref> Occasional raids into the North were designed to bring back money and supplies. In 1864, the Confederates burned down [[Chambersburg]], a Pennsylvania city they had raided twice in the years before, due to its failure to pay an extortion demand.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 2163218|title = Chambersburg: Anatomy of a Confederate Reprisal|journal = The American Historical Review|volume = 96|issue = 2|pages = 432–455|last1 = Smith|first1 = Everard H.|year = 1991|doi = 10.2307/2163218}}</ref>

As a result of severe supply problems, as well as the lack of textile factories in the Confederacy and the successful U.S. naval blockade of Southern ports, the typical Confederate soldier was rarely able to wear the standard regulation uniform, particularly as the war progressed. While on the march or in parade formation, Confederate armies often displayed a wide array of dress, ranging from faded, patched-together regulation uniforms; rough, homespun uniforms colored with homemade dyes such as [[Juglans cinerea|butternut]] (a yellow-brown color), and even soldiers in a hodgepodge of civilian clothing. After a successful battle, it was not unusual for victorious Confederate troops to procure [[U.S. Army]] uniform parts from captured supplies and dead U.S. soldiers; this would occasionally cause confusion in later battles and skirmishes.<ref>Steven G. Collins, "System in the South: John W. Mallet, Josiah Gorgas, and uniform production at the confederate ordnance department." ''Technology and culture'' (1999) 40#3 pp: 517–544 [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/v040/40.3collins.html in Project MUSE].</ref>

Individual states were expected to supply their soldiers, which led to a lack of uniformity. Some states (such as North Carolina) were able to better supply their soldiers, while other states (such as Texas) were unable for various reasons to adequately supply their troops as the war continued.

Furthermore, each state often had its uniform regulations and insignia, which meant that the "standard" Confederate uniform often featured a variety of differences based on the state the soldier came from. For example, uniforms for North Carolina regiments often featured a colored strip of cloth on their shoulders to designate what part of the service the soldier was in. Confederate soldiers also frequently suffered from inadequate supplies of shoes, tents, and other gear, and would be forced to innovate and make do with whatever they could scrounge from the local countryside. While Confederate officers were generally better-supplied and were normally able to wear a regulation officer's uniform, they often chose to share other hardships – such as the lack of adequate food – with their troops.

[[File:Confederates marching through Frederick, MD in 1862.jpg|thumb|250px|Confederate troops marching south on N Market Street, [[Frederick, Maryland]], during the Civil War]]

Confederate soldiers were also faced with inadequate food rations, especially as the war progressed. There was plenty of meat in the Confederacy. The unsolvable problem was shipping it to the armies, especially when Lee's army in Virginia was at the end of a long, tenuous supply line. The United States victory at Vicksburg in 1863 shut off supplies from Texas and the west.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Vandiver | first1 = Frank E. | year = 1944 | title = Texas and the Confederate Army's Meat Problem | journal = Southwestern Historical Quarterly | volume = 47 | issue = 3| pages = 225–233 | jstor=30236034}}</ref>

By 1863, Confederate generals such as [[Robert E. Lee]] often spent as much time and effort searching for food for their men, as they did in planning strategy and tactics. Individual commanders often had to "[[Foraging|beg, borrow or steal]]" food and ammunition from whatever sources were available, including captured U.S. depots and encampments, and private citizens regardless of their loyalties. Lee's campaign against [[Battle of Gettysburg|Gettysburg]] and southern [[Pennsylvania]] (a rich agricultural region) was driven in part by his desperate need of supplies, especially food.<ref>Larry J. Daniel, ''Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee: A Portrait of Life in a Confederate Army'' (2003) ch 4 on inadequate rations</ref>

[[William Tecumseh Sherman|General Sherman]]'s [[total warfare]] reduced the ability of the South to produce food and ship it to the armies or its cities. Coupled with the [[Union blockade|U.S. blockade of all ports]] the devastation of plantations, farms and railroads meant the Confederacy increasingly lost the capacity to feed its soldiers and civilians.

===Arms importation===
{{Further information|Blockade runners of the American Civil War}}
The Confederate government had some success in importing weapons from Britain. When the War began, the Confederacy lacked the financial and manufacturing capacity to wage war against the industrialized North. To increase its arsenal, the Confederacy looked to [[United Kingdom and the American Civil War|Britain as a major source of arms]]. British merchants and bankers funded the purchase of arms and construction of ships being outfitted as [[blockade runner]]s which later carried war supplies bound for Southern ports.  A British publication in 1862 summed up the country's involvement in blockade running:

<blockquote>
Score after score of the finest, swiftest British steamers and ships, loaded with British material of war of every description, cannon, rifles by the hundreds of thousand, powder by the thousand of tons, shot, shell, cartridges, swords, etc, with cargo after cargo of clothes, boots, shoes, blankets, medicines and supplies of every kind, all paid for by British money, at the sole risk of British adventurers, well insured by [[Lloyds Bank|Lloyds]] and under the protection of the British flag, have been sent across the ocean to the insurgents by British agency.<ref name="Peter Andreas 159">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N39oAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA159|title=Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America|author=[[Peter Andreas]]|page=159|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|date=January 16, 2013|isbn=9-7801-9930-1607}}</ref>
</blockquote>

It was estimated the Confederate Army received thousands of tons of gunpowder, half a million rifles, and several hundred cannons from British blockade runners.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling|last1=Gallien|first1=Max|last2=Weigand|first2=Florian|page=321|date=December 21, 2021|publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]]|isbn=9-7810-0050-8772}}</ref>

[[Ulysses S. Grant III]], President of the [[American Civil War Centennial]] in 1961, remarked for example:

<blockquote>
[B]etween October 26, 1864 and January 1865, it was still possible for 8,632,000 lbs of meat, 1,507,000 lbs of lead, 1,933,000 lbs of saltpeter, 546,000 pairs of shoes, 316,000 blankets, half a million pounds of coffee, 69,000 rifles, and 43 cannon to run the blockade [[Wilmington, North Carolina in the American Civil War|into the port of Wilmington]] alone, while cotton sufficient to pay for these purchases was exported[. I]t is evident that the blockade runners made an important contribution to the Confederate effort to carry on.<ref name="BGWADA">{{cite web|url=http://www.cfhi.net/WilmingtonsWartimeCanadianConnection.php|title=Wilmington to Canada: Blockade Runners & Secret Agents|publisher=Cape Fear Historical Institute}}</ref>
</blockquote>

==Italian Americans and the Confederate Army==
{{main|Italian Americans in the Civil War}}
[[File:William B. Taliaferro, circa 1865.jpg|thumb|170px|[[William B. Taliaferro]] was Confederate [[General officer|general]] in the [[American Civil War]].]]
Many Italian American soldiers of the Confederate States Army were veterans from the [[Army of the Two Sicilies]] who had fought against Giuseppe Garibaldi in, and were captured during, the [[Expedition of the Thousand]] as part of the [[unification of Italy]]. They were released after a treaty between Garibaldi and [[Chatham Roberdeau Wheat]]. In December 1860 and few months of 1861, these volunteers were transported to [[New Orleans]] with the ships ''Elisabetta'', ''Olyphant'', ''Utile'', ''Charles & Jane'', ''Washington'' and ''Franklin''.<ref>[https://www.amazon.it/Italiani-guerra-civile-americana-1861-1865/dp/8874184107 Italiani nella guerra civile americana]</ref> Most Confederate Italian Americans had settled in Louisiana. The militia of Louisiana had an [[6th Regiment, European Brigade|Italian Guards Battalion]] that became part of its 6th Regiment.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lonn |first1=Ella |title=Foreigners in the Confederacy |date=2002 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=113–115 |url=http://www.acadiansingray.com/6th%20Regt.%20(It.%20Gds.%20Bn.),%20European%20Brig.%20Mil.htm#6th |access-date=21 December 2022}}</ref> Following the protests of many soldiers, who did not feel like Italian citizens since they fought against the unification of Italy, it was renamed ''6th Regiment, European Brigade'' in 1862.

==Native Americans and the Confederate Army==
{{main|Native Americans in the American Civil War}}
Native Americans served in both the United States and Confederate military during the [[American Civil War]].<ref name="aa"/><ref name="Native_American_Participation_Numbers"/> They fought knowing they might jeopardize their freedom, unique cultures, and ancestral lands if they ended up on the losing side of the Civil War.<ref name="aa"/><ref name="ac"/> During the Civil War, 28,693 Native Americans served in the U.S. and Confederate armies, participating in battles such as [[Battle of Pea Ridge|Pea Ridge]], [[Second Manassas]], [[Antietam]], [[Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse|Spotsylvania]], [[Battle of Cold Harbor|Cold Harbor]], and in Federal assaults on [[Siege of Petersburg|Petersburg]].<ref name="aa"/><ref name="Native_American_Participation_Numbers"/> Many Native American tribes, such as the Creek, the Cherokee, and the Choctaw, were slaveholders themselves, and thus, found a political and economic commonality with the Confederacy.<ref name="Native_American_Slave_Ownership"/>

At the beginning of the war, [[Albert Pike]] was appointed as Confederate envoy to Native Americans. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, one such treaty was the [[Treaty with Choctaws and Chickasaws]] conducted in July 1861. The treaty covered sixty-four terms covering many subjects like Choctaw and Chickasaw nation sovereignty, [[Confederate States of America]] citizenship possibilities, and an entitled delegate in the House of Representatives of the Confederate States of America. The [[Cherokee]], [[Choctaw]], [[Seminole]], [[Catawba people|Catawba]], and [[Muscogee (Creek)|Creek]] tribes were the only tribes to fight on the Confederate side. The [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] wanted to recruit Indians east of the Mississippi River in 1862, so they opened up a recruiting camp in [[Mobile, Alabama]] "at the foot of Stone Street".<ref name="j_matte1"/> The ''Mobile Advertiser and Register'' would advertise for a chance at military service.

{{blockquote|text=A Chance for Active Service. The Secretary of War has authorized me to enlist all the Indians east of the Mississippi River into the service of the Confederate States, as Scouts. In addition to the Indians, I will receive all white male citizens, who are good marksmen. To each member, Fifty Dollars Bounty, clothes, arms, camp equipage &c: furnished. The weapons shall be Enfield Rifles. For further information address me at Mobile, Ala. (Signed) S. G. Spann, Comm'ing Choctaw Forces.|author=Jacqueline Anderson Matte|source=''They Say the Wind Is Red''<ref name=j_matte1 />}}

=== Cherokee ===
{{main|Cherokee in the American Civil War}}
[[File:Cherokee Confederates Reunion.gif|325px|thumb|A Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, 1903]]

[[Stand Watie]], along with a few Cherokee, sided with the Confederate army, in which he was made colonel and commanded a battalion of Cherokee.<ref name="aa"/> Reluctantly, on October 7, 1861, Chief Ross signed a treaty transferring all obligations due to the Cherokee from the United States to the Confederate States.<ref name="aa"/> The Cherokee were guaranteed protection, rations of food, livestock, tools, and other goods, as well as a delegate to the Confederate Congress at Richmond.<ref name="aa"/>

In exchange, the Cherokee would furnish ten companies of mounted men, and allow the construction of military posts and roads within the Cherokee Nation. However, no Indian regiment was to be called on to fight outside Indian Territory.<ref name="aa"/> As a result of the Treaty, the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles, led by Col. John Drew, was formed. Following the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, March 7–8, 1862, Drew's Mounted Rifles defected to the United States forces in Kansas, where they joined the [[Indian Home Guard]]. In the summer of 1862, U.S. troops captured Chief Ross, who was paroled and spent the remainder of the war in Washington and Philadelphia proclaiming Cherokee loyalty to the United States Army.<ref name="aa"/>

[[William Holland Thomas]], the adopted white son of the chief of the [[Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians]], recruited hundreds of Cherokees for the Confederate army, particularly for [[Thomas' Legion]]. The Legion, raised in September 1862, fought until the end of the War.

===Choctaw===
[[File:J f mccurtain.jpg|upright|175px|thumb|[[Jackson McCurtain]], Lieutenant Colonel of the First Choctaw Battalion in Oklahoma, [[Confederate States of America|CSA]]]]

Choctaw [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] battalions were formed in Indian Territory and later in Mississippi in support of the southern cause. The Choctaws, who were expecting support from the Confederates, got little. Webb Garrison, a Civil War historian, describes their response: when Confederate Brigadier General [[Albert Pike]] authorized the raising of regiments during the fall of 1860, Seminoles, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Cherokees responded with considerable enthusiasm. Their zeal for the Confederate cause, however, began to evaporate when they found that neither arms nor pay had been arranged for them. A disgusted officer later acknowledged that "with the exception of a partial supply for the Choctaw regiment, no tents, clothing, or camp, and garrison equipage was furnished to any of them."<ref name="webb_garrison"/>

==African Americans and the Confederate Army==
[[File:Negroes Being Driven South By the Rebel Officers (November 1862), by Harper's Weekly.jpg|thumb|1862 illustration showing Confederates escorting kidnapped African American civilians south into slavery. A similar instance occurred in Pennsylvania when the Army of Northern Virginia invaded it in 1863 to fight the U.S. at [[Battle of Gettysburg|Gettysburg]].<ref name=JWLoewenP193>{{Cite book|quote=White Southerners founded the Confederacy on the ideology of white supremacy. Confederate soldiers on their way to Antietam and Gettysburg, their two main forays into U.S. states, put this ideology into practice: they seized scores of free black people in Maryland and Pennsylvania and sold them south into slavery. Confederates maltreated black U.S. troops when they captured them.|author-link=James W. Loewen|first=James W.|last=Loewen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5m2_xeJ4VdwC&pg=PA193|title=Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong|publisher=The New Press|location=New York|date=2007|page=193|isbn=978-1-56584-100-0}}</ref><ref name=CSymondsP4954>{{Cite book|author-link=Craig Symonds|last1=Symonds|first1=Craig L.|title=American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg|location=New York|publisher=HarperCollins|date=2001|isbn=0-06-019474-X|pages=49–54}}</ref><ref name=JWLoewenP350>{{Cite book|first=James W.|last=Loewen|author-link=James W. Loewen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vBZiU_tmRmgC&pg=PA350|isbn=0-684-87067-3|title=Lies Across America: What American Historic Sites Get Wrong|date=1999|publisher=Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, Inc.|location=New York City|page=350|access-date=March 5, 2016|quote=[[Robert E. Lee|Lee]]'s troops seized scores of free black people in Maryland and Pennsylvania and sent them south into slavery. This was in keeping with Confederate national policy, which virtually re-enslaved free people of color into work gangs on earthworks throughout the south.}}</ref><ref name=BDSimpson07052015>{{Cite web|quote=[T]he Army of Northern Virginia was under orders to capture and send south supposed escaped slaves during that army's invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863.|author-link=Brooks D. Simpson|first=Brooks D.|last=Simpson|url=https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/the-soldiers-flag/|title=The Soldiers' Flag?|date=July 5, 2015 |work=Crossroads|publisher=WordPress}}</ref>]]
[[File:A Rebel Captain Forcing Negroes to Load Cannon Under the Fire of Beedan's Sharp-shooters (May 1862), by Harper's Weekly.png|thumb|An 1862 illustration of a Confederate officer forcing slaves at gunpoint to fire a cannon at U.S. soldiers in battle. A similar instance occurred at the [[First Battle of Bull Run]], where slaves were forced by the Confederates to load and fire a cannon at U.S. forces.<ref name=KateMasur2015>{{Cite web|url=http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/slavery-and-freedom-at-bull-run/?_r=0|title=Slavery and Freedom at Bull Run|date=July 27, 2011|first=Kate|last=Masur|author-link=Kate Masur|work=[[The New York Times]]|location=New York|access-date=March 5, 2016}}</ref><ref name=AndyHallBlack2015>{{Cite web|url=http://deadconfederates.com/tag/black-confederates/ |title=Memory: Frederick Douglass' Black Confederate |date=February 20, 2015 |first=Andy |last=Hall |work=Dead Confederates: A Civil War Blog |publisher=WordPress |access-date=March 9, 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160309192511/http://deadconfederates.com/tag/black-confederates/ |archive-date=March 9, 2016 }}</ref>]]
[[File:Impetuous Charge of the First Colored Rebel Regiment (November 5, 1864), by Frank Bellew.jpg|thumb|An 1864 cartoon lampooning the Confederacy's deliberating on the use of black soldiers, showing them defecting ''en masse'' towards U.S. lines if such proposals were adopted.]]
[[File:Black Confed-1.JPG|upright|thumb|"Marlboro", an African American body servant to a white Confederate soldier]]
{{main|Military history of African Americans in the American Civil War#Confederacy}}

With so many white males conscripted into the army and roughly 40% of its population unfree, the work required to maintain a functioning society in the Confederacy ended up largely on the backs of slaves.<ref name="Levine2005">{{cite book|author=Bruce Levine|title=Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KOO6y1-1DnsC&pg=PA17|date=November 1, 2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-803367-7|page=17}}</ref> Even Georgian governor [[Joseph E. Brown]] noted that "the country and the army are mainly dependent upon slave labor for support."<ref name="proclamation"/> African American slave labor was used in a wide variety of logistical support roles for the Confederacy, from infrastructure and mining, to teamster and medical roles such as hospital attendants and nurses.<ref>Levine 2005, pp. 62–63,</ref><ref>Jaime Amanda Martinez, ''Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South'' (U. North Carolina Press, 2013)</ref>

===Using enslaved soldiers===

The Confederacy did not allow African Americans to join the army, neither [[free Negro|free people]] nor slaves. The idea of arming the Confederacy's slaves for use as soldiers was speculated on from the onset of the war, but such proposals were not seriously considered by Jefferson Davis or others in the Confederate administration until late in the war when severe manpower shortages were faced.<ref>Levine 2005, pp. 17–18</ref> [[Gary Gallagher]] says, "When Lee publicly advocated arming slaves in early 1865, he did so as a desperate expedient that might prolong Southern military resistance."<ref>{{cite book|author=Gary W. Gallagher|author-link=Gary W. Gallagher|title=Lee and His Army in Confederate History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AE7qCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA169|year=2002|page=169|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |isbn=9780807875629}}</ref> After acrimonious debate the Confederate Congress agreed in March 1865. The war was nearly over by then, and only about two hundred enslaved soldiers ended up being enlisted before the Confederate armies all surrendered.<ref name=McPhersonBooknotes1994/>

====Opposition from Confederates====
As early as November 1864, some Confederates knew that the chance of securing victory against the U.S. was slim.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America|date=2002|page=402|author-link=William C. Davis (historian)|first=William C.|last=Davis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KSd0SkDXtJQC&q=eloquent+of|publisher=The Free Press|location=New York|isbn=0-7432-2771-9|access-date=March 9, 2016}}</ref> Despite lacking foreign assistance and recognition and facing slim chances of victory against superior U.S. assets, Confederate newspapers such as the Georgian ''Atlanta Southern Confederacy'' continued to maintain their position and oppose the idea of armed black men in the Confederate Army, even as late in the war as January 1865.<ref name=RFDurden156158>{{Cite book|title=The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation|date=1875|author1-link=Robert Franklin Durden|first=Robert F.|last=Durden|publisher=Louisiana State University|pages=156–58}}</ref> They stated that it was incongruous with the Confederacy's goals and views regarding African Americans and slavery. The Georgian newspaper opined that using black men as soldiers would be an embarrassment to Confederates and their children, saying that although African Americans should be used for slave labor, they should not be used as armed soldiers, opining that:
{{blockquote|text=Such an act on our part would be a stigma on the imperishable pages of history, of which all future generations of Southrons would be ashamed. These are some of the additional considerations which have suggested themselves to us. Let us put the negro to work, but not to fight.|source=''Atlanta Southern Confederacy'' (January 20, 1865), Macon, Georgia.<ref name=RFDurden156158/>}}

Prominent Confederates such as [[Robert M. T. Hunter|R. M. T. Hunter]] and Georgian Democrat [[Howell Cobb]] opposed arming slaves, saying that it was "suicidal" and would run contrary to the Confederacy's ideology. Opposing such a move, Cobb stated that African Americans were untrustworthy and innately lacked the qualities to make good soldiers, and that using them would cause many Confederates to quit the army.  Cobb said using blacks as soldiers would be the end of the revolution, because "if slaves make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N48LAAAAIAAJ&q=%22howell+cobb%22+%22soldiers+of+slaves%22&pg=PA97 |title=Letter to James A. Seddon |access-date=March 8, 2016 |last=Cobb |first=Howell |author-link=Howell Cobb |date=January 8, 1865 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160308160426/https://books.google.com/books?id=N48LAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=%22howell+cobb%22+%22soldiers+of+slaves%22&source=bl&ots=kxO5xZwwr3&sig=HV6CCacydzUmjOpdEhjJ3uKR8rU&hl=en&ei=d8fETLXiB4G0lQfN9IEG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q=%22howell%20cobb%22%20%22soldiers%20of%20slaves%22&f=false |archive-date=March 8, 2016 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|access-date=March 8, 2016 |url=http://deadconfederates.com/2015/01/08/real-confederates-didnt-know-about-black-confederates-2/ |date=January 8, 2015 |title=Real Confederates Didn't Know About Black Confederates |first=Andy |last=Hall |publisher=WordPress |work=Dead Confederates: A Civil War Blog |quote=[E]arnest and vituperative opposition to the enlistment of slaves in Confederate service was widespread, even as the concussion of U.S. artillery rattled the panes in the windows of the capitol in Richmond. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160308151730/http://deadconfederates.com/2015/01/08/real-confederates-didnt-know-about-black-confederates-2/ |archive-date=March 8, 2016 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://cwmemory.com/2015/01/07/the-most-pernicious-idea-150-years-later |date=January 7, 2015 |work=Civil War Memory |access-date=January 9, 2015 |title=The Most Pernicious Idea: 150 Years Later |first=Kevin M. |last=Levin |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150109213957/http://cwmemory.com/2015/01/07/the-most-pernicious-idea-150-years-later |archive-date=January 9, 2015 }}</ref>

The overwhelming support most Confederates had for maintaining black slavery was the primary cause of their strong opposition to using African Americans as armed soldiers. Former Confederate secretary of state [[Robert Toombs]] said "In my opinion, the worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves... instead of our own... " and complained using black troops would be "a surrender of the entire slavery question."<ref name="Nevins1959">{{cite book|author=Allan Nevins|title=The War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dpdx5LCcmZIC&q=%22In%20my%20opinion,%20the%20worst%20calamity%22C|year=1959|publisher=Scribner|isbn=978-0-684-10429-4|page=279}}</ref> Maintaining the institution of slavery was the primary goal of the Confederacy's existence, and thus, using their slaves as soldiers was incongruous with that goal. According to historian Paul D. Escott:

{{blockquote|text=[F]or a great many of the most powerful southerners the idea of arming and freeing the slaves was repugnant because the protection of slavery had been and still remained the central core of Confederate purpose ... Slavery was the basis of the planter class's wealth, power, and position in society. The South's leading men of the planter class, had built their world upon slavery and the idea of voluntarily destroying that world, even in the ultimate crisis, was almost unthinkable to them. Such feelings moved Senator R. M. T. Hunter to deliver a long speech against the bill to arm the slaves.<ref>Paul D. Escott, ''After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism'' (1992), p. 254.</ref>}}

Though most Confederates were opposed to the idea of using black soldiers, a small number suggested the idea. An acrimonious and controversial debate was raised by a letter from [[Patrick Cleburne]]<ref name="official6"/> urging the Confederacy to raise black soldiers by offering emancipation; Jefferson Davis refused to consider the proposal and issued instructions forbidding the matter from being discussed.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CfL_b0WPmRQC&q=raise+a+negro+army|title=The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union|date=1991|publisher=Ballantine Books|chapter=Chapter 17: The Decision to Raise a Negro Army, 1864–1865|isbn=978-0-307-48860-2|location=New York|first=James M.|last=McPherson|author-link=James M. McPherson|access-date=March 11, 2016}}</ref> It would not be until [[Robert E. Lee]] wrote the Confederate Congress urging them that the idea would take serious traction.<ref>{{Cite book|first=Robert F.|last=Durden|title=The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation|location=Louisiana|publisher=LSU Press|date=2000}}</ref>

On March 13, 1865,<ref name=McPhersonBooknotes1994/> the Confederate Congress passed General Order 14<ref name=GO14TKCPL>{{cite web|url=http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/timeline/general-orders-no-14 |title=General Orders No. 14 |publisher=The Kansas City Public Library |location=Kansas City |work=Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1855–1865 |access-date=November 5, 2014 |quote=[I]t does not extend freedom to the slaves who serve, giving them little personal motivation to support the Southern cause. Ultimately, very few blacks serve in the Confederate armed forces, as compared to hundreds of thousands who serve for the Union. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141105001859/http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/timeline/general-orders-no-14 |archive-date=November 5, 2014 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|access-date=March 11, 2016|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZP0dHXadOIMC&pg=PA56|title=American Civil War: The Essential Reference Guide|isbn=978-1-59884-905-9|publisher=ABC-CLIO, LLC|date=2011|location=Santa Barbara, California|chapter=Congress, Confederate|first1=James R.|last1=Arnold|first2=Roberta|last2=Wiener|first3=Seth A.|last3=Weitz|page=56}}</ref> by a single vote in the Confederate senate,<ref name=McPhersonBooknotes1994/><ref name="umd"/> and Jefferson Davis signed the order into law. The order was issued March 23, but as it was late in the war, only a few African American companies were raised in the Richmond area before the town was captured by the [[Union Army|U.S. Army]] and placed back under U.S. control.<ref>{{cite book|author=E. Merton Coulter|title=The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z2_ZM0dWVrsC&pg=PA268|year=1950|publisher=LSU Press|pages=267–68|isbn=9780807100073}}</ref>
According to historian James M. McPherson in 1994, "no black soldiers fought in the Confederate army, unless they were passing as white.<ref name="BaslerSandburg2008">{{cite book|author1=James M. McPherson|editor1=Roy Basler|editor2=Carl Sandburg|title=Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches And Writings|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vyqEB2PXJ5UC&pg=PA86|chapter=Slavery, the Union, and War|date=4 August 2008|publisher=Hachette Books|isbn=978-0-7867-2372-0|pages=86}}</ref> He noted that some Confederates brought along "their body servants, who in many cases had grown up with them" and that "on occasion some of those body servants were known to have picked up a rifle and fought. But there was no official recruitment of black soldiers in the Confederate army until the very end of the war..." He continued, "But Appomattox came only a few weeks later, and none of these men were ever put in uniform to fight."<ref name=McPhersonBooknotes1994/>

===Treatment of black civilians===
In some cases, the Confederates forced their African American slaves to fire upon U.S. soldiers at gunpoint,<ref name=KateMasur2015/><ref name=AndyHallBlack2015/> such as at the [[First Battle of Bull Run]]. According to John Parker, a slave who was forced by the Confederates to fight Union soldiers, "Our masters tried all they could to make us fight ... They promised to give us our freedom and money besides, but none of us believed them; we only fought because we had to." Parker stated that had he been given an opportunity, he would have turned against his Confederate captors, and "could do it with pleasure".<ref name=KateMasur2015/><ref name=AndyHallBlack2015/> According to abolitionist [[Henry Highland Garnet]] in 1862, he had met a slave who "had unwillingly fought on the side of Rebellion", but the slave had since defected to "the side of Union and universal liberty".<ref name=AndyHallBlack2015/>

During the [[Siege of Yorktown (1862)|siege of Yorktown]], The United States Army's elite sniper unit, the [[1st United States Sharpshooters]], was devastatingly effective at shooting Confederate artillerymen defending the city. In response, some Confederate artillery crews started forcing slaves to load the cannons. "They forced their negroes to load their cannon," reported a U.S. officer. "They shot them if they would not load the cannon, and we shot them if they did."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.historynet.com/killers-in-green-coats.htm|title=Killers in Green Coats|date=July 20, 2016|website=HistoryNet}}</ref>

In other cases, under explicit orders from their commanders, Confederate armies would often forcibly kidnap free African American civilians during their incursions into Union territory, sending them south into Confederate territory and thus enslaving them, as was the case with the Army of Northern Virginia when it invaded Pennsylvania in 1863.<ref>David G. Smith, "Race and Retaliation: The Capture of African Americans During the Gettysburg Campaign." in Peter Wallenstein and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, ed., ''Virginia's Civil War'' (2004) pp: 122–37. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Ma-XQ2KqkyIC&pg=PA137 online]</ref><ref>Ted Alexander, "'A Regular Slave Hunt': The Army of Northern Virginia and Black Civilians in the Gettysburg Campaign", ''North & South'' 4 (September 2001): 82–89</ref>

===Treatment of black prisoners of war===
The usage of [[United States Colored Troops|black men as soldiers]] by the Union, combined with [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s issuing of the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], profoundly angered the Confederacy,<ref>{{Cite web|quote=I have given the subject of arming the negro my hearty support. This, with the emancipation of the negro, is the heavyest blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a greatdeel about it and profess to be very angry. |first=Ulysses |last=Grant |author-link=Ulysses S. Grant |location=Cairo, Illinois |url=http://www.civil-war-tribute.com/us-grant-letter-to-lincoln-08231863.htm |title=Letter to Abraham Lincoln |date=August 23, 1863 |via=Civil War Tribute |access-date=May 3, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140503212700/http://www.civil-war-tribute.com/us-grant-letter-to-lincoln-08231863.htm |archive-date=May 3, 2014 }}</ref> with the Confederates calling it uncivilized.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://deadconfederates.com/2014/04/15/understanding-fort-pillow-full-and-ample-retaliation/ |title=Understanding Fort Pillow: 'Full and Ample Retaliation' |last=Hall |first=Andy |work=Dead Confederates |date=April 15, 2014 |publisher=WordPress |access-date=March 6, 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160307013507/http://deadconfederates.com/2014/04/15/understanding-fort-pillow-full-and-ample-retaliation/ |archive-date=March 7, 2016 }}</ref> As a response, in May 1863, the Confederacy passed a law demanding "full and ample retaliation" against the United States, stating that any black person captured in "arms against the Confederate States" or giving aid and comfort to their enemies would be turned over to state authorities, where they could be tried as slave insurrectionists; a capital offense punishable with a sentence of death.<ref>Williams, George W., ''History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880: Negros as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens'', vol. II, New York: G.P. Putnam Son's, 1883, pp. 351–352.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|author=Congress of the Confederate States of America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AMg4AAAAIAAJ&q=confederate+laws+%22full+and+ample+retaliation%E2%80%9D&pg=PA168 |title=No. 5. |work=Joint Resolution on the Subject of Retaliation |location=Virginia |date=May 1, 1863 |access-date=March 6, 2016 }}{{dead link|date=August 2017|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> However, Confederate authorities feared retaliation, and consequently no black prisoner was ever put on trial and executed.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qmg6HbOCmsIC&q=%22decided+instead+to+return+former+slaves+to+their+masters%22&pg=PA725|title=The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child|first=Carolyn L.|last=Karcher|date=April 19, 1994|publisher=Duke University Press|via=Google Books|isbn=0822321637}}</ref>

James McPherson states that "Confederate troops sometimes murdered black soldiers and their officers as they tried to surrender. In most cases, though, Confederate officers returned captured black soldiers to slavery or put them to hard labor on southern fortifications."<ref>{{cite book|first1=John|last1=Murrin|first2=James M.|last2=McPherson|first3=Paul|last3=Johnson|first4=Alice|last4=Fahs|first5=Gary|last5=Gerstle|title=Liberty, Liberty, Equality, Power|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1w5Qp4qYfE0C&pg=PA433|year=2009|publisher=Cengage Learning|page=433|isbn=978-0495565987}}</ref><ref name="cornish173">{{Cite book|last=Cornish|first=Dudley Taylor|title=The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865|location=New York|publisher=W.W. Norton|date=1965|pages=173–180}}</ref>
African American soldiers who served in the [[United States Colored Troops]] were often singled out by the Confederates and suffered extra violence when captured by them.<ref name=JWLoewenP193/> They were often the victims of battlefield massacres and atrocities at the hands of the Confederates,<ref name=JWLoewenP193/> most notably at [[Battle of Fort Pillow|Fort Pillow]] in Tennessee and at the [[Battle of the Crater]] in Virginia.<ref>{{Cite book|author-link1=James I. Robertson, Jr.|last1=Robertson| first1=James I. Jr. |first2=William|last2=Pegram|title="The Boy Artillerist": Letters of Colonel William Pegram, C.S.A.}}</ref><ref>'' The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography'' 98, no. 2 (The Trumpet Unblown: The Old Dominion in the Civil War), (1990), pp.&nbsp;242–43.</ref>

====Prisoner exchanges with the United States====
The Confederate law declaring black U.S. soldiers to be insurrectionist slaves, combined with the Confederacy's discriminatory mistreatment of captured black U.S. soldiers, became a stumbling block for prisoner exchanges between the United States and the Confederacy, as the U.S. government in the [[Lieber Code]] officially objected to the Confederacy's discriminatory mistreatment of prisoners of war on basis of color.<ref name=MurrinMcPhersonP433>{{cite book|first1=John|last1=Murrin|first2=James M.|last2=McPherson|author-link2=James M. McPherson|first3=Paul|last3=Johnson|first4=Alice|last4=Fahs|first5=Gary|last5=Gerstle|title=Liberty, Equality, Power: Enhanced Concise Fourth Edition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1w5Qp4qYfE0C&pg=PA433|year=2009|publisher=Cengage Learning|location=Belmont, California|page=433|quote=Confederate troops sometimes murdered black soldiers and their officers as they tried to surrender. In most cases, though, Confederate officers returned captured black soldiers to slavery or put them to hard labor on southern fortifications ... Expressing outrage at this treatment, in 1863 the Lincoln administration suspended the exchange of prisoners until the Confederacy agree to treat white and black prisoners alike. The Confederacy refused.|isbn=978-0495565987}}</ref><ref name=LieberCode58>{{Cite web|quote=58. The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint. |first=E.D. |last=Townsend |url=http://www.civilwarhome.com/liebercode.htm |title=Section III.–Deserters—Prisoners of war–Hostages–Booty on the battle-field. |work=[[Lieber Code|Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field]] |via=The American Civil War Home Page |date=April 24, 1863 |location=Washington |access-date=April 7, 2001 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010407120840/http://www.civilwarhome.com/liebercode.htm |archive-date=April 7, 2001 }}</ref> The [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]]'s platform of the 1864 presidential election reflected this view, as it too condemned the Confederacy's discriminatory mistreatment of captured black U.S. soldiers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29621 |title=Republican Party Platform of 1864 |date=June 7, 1864 |author=Republican Party of the United States |quote=[T]he Government owes to all men employed in its armies, without regard to distinction of color, the full protection of the laws of war—and that any violation of these laws, or of the usages of civilized nations in time of war, by the Rebels now in arms, should be made the subject of prompt and full redress. |website=The American Presidency Project |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150421080932/http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29621 |archive-date=April 21, 2015 }}</ref> According to the authors of ''Liberty, Equality, Power'', "Expressing outrage at this treatment, in 1863 the Lincoln administration suspended the exchange of prisoners until the Confederacy agree to treat white and black prisoners alike. The Confederacy refused."<ref name=MurrinMcPhersonP433/>

==Statistics and size==
[[File:Surrender of a Confederate Soldier - Smithsonian American Art Museum.jpg|200px|thumb|right|[[Julian Scott]]'s 1873 painting, ''[[Surrender of a Confederate Soldier]]'']]

Incomplete and destroyed records make an accurate count of the number of soldiers who served in the Confederate army impossible. Historians provide estimates of the actual number of individual Confederate soldiers between 750,000 and 1,000,000 troops.<ref>Long, E. B. ''The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865''. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. {{OCLC|68283123}}. p. 705</ref>

The exact number is unknown. Since these figures include estimates of the total number of individual soldiers who served in each army at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the armies at any given date. Confederate casualty figures are as incomplete and unreliable as the figures on the number of Confederate soldiers. The best estimates of the number of deaths of Confederate soldiers appear to be about 94,000 killed or mortally wounded in battle, 164,000 deaths from disease and between 26,000 and 31,000 deaths in Union prison camps. In contrast, about 25,000 Union soldiers died as a result of accidents, drowning, murder, killed after capture, suicide, execution for various crimes, execution by the Confederates (64), sunstroke, other and not stated. Confederate casualties for all these reasons are unavailable. Since some Confederate soldiers would have died for these reasons, more total deaths and total casualties for the Confederacy must have occurred. One estimate of the Confederate wounded, which is considered incomplete, is 194,026; another is 226,000. At the end of the war 174,223 men of the Confederate forces surrendered to the [[Union Army]].<ref name="www1"/><ref>Long, 1971, p. 711</ref>

Compared to the Union Army at the time, the Confederate Army was not very ethnically diverse. Ninety-one percent of Confederate soldiers were [[White Southerners|native-born white men]] and only nine percent were foreign-born white men, Irishmen being the largest group with others including Germans, French, Mexicans, and British. A small number of Asian men were forcibly inducted into the Confederate Army against their will, when they arrived in Louisiana from overseas.<ref>{{Cite book|first=Burke|last=Davis|title=Civil War: Strange and Fascinating Facts|publisher=Random House|date=1960}}</ref>
{{clear}}

==See also==
{{Portal|American Civil War}}
{{colbegin}}
* [[Confederate States Navy]]
* [[Blockade runners of the American Civil War]]
* [[General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States]]
* [[Confederate Government Civil War units]]
* [[Confederate States Marine Corps]]
* [[Medicine in the American Civil War]]
* [[Military of the Confederate States of America]]
* [[Social history of soldiers and veterans in the United States]]
* [[Uniforms of the Confederate States Armed Forces]]
* [[Uniforms of the Confederate States military forces|Uniforms of the Confederate military]]
* [[Bibliography of the American Civil War]]
* [[Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States]]
* [[Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials]]
{{colend}}

==References==
{{reflist|refs=

<ref name="Eicher7066">Eicher, pp. 70, 66.</ref>

<ref name="Native_American_Participation_Numbers">{{cite book |last=Rodman |first=Leslie |title=The Five Civilized Tribes and the American Civil War |url=http://www.amtour.net/downloadable/The_5_Civilized_Tribes_in_the_Civil_War_a_Biographical_Essay.pdf |page=2 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723013312/http://www.amtour.net/downloadable/The_5_Civilized_Tribes_in_the_Civil_War_a_Biographical_Essay.pdf |archive-date=July 23, 2011  }}</ref>

<ref name="Native_American_Slave_Ownership">{{cite book |last=Rodman |first=Leslie |title=The Five Civilized Tribes and the American Civil War |url=http://www.amtour.net/downloadable/The_5_Civilized_Tribes_in_the_Civil_War_a_Biographical_Essay.pdf |page=5 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723013312/http://www.amtour.net/downloadable/The_5_Civilized_Tribes_in_the_Civil_War_a_Biographical_Essay.pdf |archive-date=July 23, 2011  }}</ref>

<ref name="aa">{{cite web |title="We are all Americans", Native Americans in the Civil War |url=http://oha.alexandriava.gov/fortward/special-sections/americans/|date=January 5, 2009 |access-date=January 5, 2009|publisher=Native Americans.com|author=W. David Baird|display-authors=etal}}</ref>

<ref name="ac">{{cite web |title=Native Americans in the Civil War|url=http://www.civilwarhome.com/nativeamericans.htm|date=January 5, 2009 |access-date=January 5, 2009|publisher=Ethic Composition of Civil War Forces (C.S & U.S.A.) }}</ref>

<ref name="confederate">Eicher, p. 807. There were seven full generals in the CSA; [[John Bell Hood]] held "temporary full general" rank, which was withdrawn by the Confederate Congress.</ref>

<ref name="Eicher71">Eicher, p. 71.</ref>

<ref name="eicher1">Eicher, p. 25.</ref>

<ref name="eicher2">Eicher, p. 26.</ref>

<ref name="eicher3">Eicher, p. 29.</ref>

<ref name="history-sites">{{cite web|url=http://history-sites.com/cgi-bin/bbs53x/nvcwmb/webbbs_config.pl?read=58612|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090113112128/http://history-sites.com/cgi-bin/bbs53x/nvcwmb/webbbs_config.pl?read=58612|title=The Civil War News & Views Open Discussion Forum|archive-date=January 13, 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref>

<ref name="j_matte1">{{cite book |last=Matte |first=Jacqueline |title=They Say the Wind is Red |publisher=New South Books |chapter=Refugees- Six Towns Choctaw, 1830–1890 |page=65 |isbn=978-1-58838-079-1 |year=2002 }}</ref>

<ref name="official">Official Records, Series IV, Vol. III, pp. 1161–62.</ref>

<ref name="official6">Official Records, Series I, Vol. LII, Part 2, pp. 586–92.</ref>

<ref name="proclamation">Journal of the Senate at an Extra Session of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, Convened under the Proclamation of the Governor, March 25, 1863, p. 6.</ref>

<ref name="umd">{{cite web|url=http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/csenlist.htm|title=Confederate Law authorizing the enlistment of black soldiers, March 13, 1865, as promulgated in a military order|access-date=August 28, 2015|archive-date=March 12, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120312213532/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/csenlist.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

<!--<ref name="voices.washingtonpost.com">Levine, Bruce. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110603155829/http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-opinions/2010/10/the_myth_of_the_black_confeder.html ''The myth of the black Confederates''], The Washington Post, October 30, 2010.</ref>-->

<ref name="webb_garrison">{{cite book |last=Garrison |first=Webb |title=More Civil War Curiosities |publisher=Rutledge Hill Press |chapter=Padday Some Day |year=1995 |isbn=978-1-55853-366-0 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/morecivilwarcuri00garr |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/morecivilwarcuri00garr }}</ref>

<ref name="www1">{{cite web|url=http://www1.va.gov/opa/fact/amwars.asp|title=Fact Sheet: America's Wars|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090730023358/http://www1.va.gov/opa/fact/amwars.asp|archive-date=July 30, 2009|date=November 2008|publisher=United States Department of Veterans Affairs}}</ref>
}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite journal|last=Adams|first= George Worthington|title=Confederate Medicine|journal=Journal of Southern History|date=1940|volume=6#2 |issue= 2|pages= 151–166|doi= 10.2307/2191203|ref=pp.&nbsp;151–166|jstor=2191203}}
* Bardolph, Richard. "Inconstant rebels: desertion of North Carolina troops in the Civil War." ''North Carolina Historical Review'' 41.2 (1964): 163–189. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/23517187 online]
* {{cite journal|last=Allardice|first= Bruce|title=West Points of the Confederacy: Southern Military Schools and the Confederate Army|journal= Civil War History|date=1997|volume=43#4|ref=pp: 310–331|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/civil_war_history/v043/43.4.allardice.html}}
* Bledsoe, Andrew S. ''Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War''. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. {{ISBN|978-0-8071-6070-1}}.
* {{cite journal | last1 = Crawford | first1 = Martin | year = 1991 | title = Confederate Volunteering and Enlistment in Ashe County, North Carolina, 1861–1862 | journal = Civil War History | volume = 37 | issue = 1| pages = 29–50 | doi=10.1353/cwh.1991.0031| s2cid = 144583591 }}
* {{cite book|last=Crute|first= Joseph H. Jr.|date=1987|title=Units of the Confederate States Army|edition=2nd|place= Gaithersburg|publisher=Olde Soldier Books|isbn=0-942211-53-7}}
* {{cite book|last=Daniel|first=Larry J.|title=Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee: A Portrait of Life in a Confederate Army|date=2003}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=Hv6wUEFhLIEC&dq=+%27%27Soldiering+in+the+Army+of+Tennessee:+A+Portrait+of+Life+in+a+Confederate+Army%27%27&pg=PR11  online]
* Donald, David. "The Confederate as a Fighting Man." ''Journal of Southern History'' 25.2 (1959): 178–193. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2954612 online]
* {{cite book|author1=Eicher, John H.|author2=Eicher, David J.|title=Civil War High Commands|publisher=Stanford University Press|date=2001|isbn=978-0-8047-3641-1|author2-link=David J. Eicher}}
* {{cite book |author-link=Drew Gilpin Faust|last=Faust|first=Drew Gilpin|title=Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army|date=1987}} In [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2208627 ''The Journal of Southern History'', Vol. 53, No. 1 (Feb., 1987), pp. 63–90.]
* {{cite journal|last=Freemon|first= Frank R.|title=Administration of the Medical Department of the Confederate States Army, 1861 to 1865|journal=Southern Medical Journal|date=1987|volume=80|issue= 5|pages= 630–637|doi=10.1097/00007611-198705000-00019|pmid= 3554537}}
* {{cite book|last=Haughton|first=Andrew|title=Training, Tactics and Leadership in the Confederate Army of Tennessee: Seeds of Failure|date=2000}}
* Jones, Adam Matthew. "'The land of my birth and the home of my heart': Enlistment Motivations for Confederate Soldiers in Montgomery County, Virginia, 1861–1862.'" (MA thesis Virginia Tech, 2014). [http://hdl.handle.net/10919/49267 online] bibliography, pp 123–30.
* {{cite book|last=Levine|first=Bruce|title=Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War|date=2005}}
* Levin, Kevin M. ''Searching for Black Confederates: The civil War’s most persistent Myth'' (UNC Press Books, 2019). Debunks a false myth. [https://books.google.com/books?id=f1SoDwAAQBAJ&pg=PP1 online]
* {{cite journal|last=Logue|first=Larry M.|title=Who Joined the Confederate Army? Soldiers, Civilians, and Communities in Mississippi|journal=Journal of Social History|date=1993|volume=26#3|issue=3|pages=611–623|doi=10.1353/jsh/26.3.611|ref= pp 611–623|jstor=3788629}}
* Marrs, Aaron W. "Desertion and loyalty in the South Carolina infantry, 1861-1865." ''Civil War History'' 50.1 (2004): 47–65.  [https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/14/article/52345/summary excerpt]
* Power, J. Tracy. ''Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox'' (UNC Press Books, 2002). [https://books.google.com/books?id=dV6ggFBkTUoC&dq=J+Tracy+Power+Army&pg=PR11 online]
* Sheehan-Dean, Aaron. "Justice Has Something to Do with It: Class Relations and the Confederate Army." ''Virginia Magazine of History and Biography'' 113 (2005):340–377.
* Sheehan-Dean, Aaron. ''Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia'' (2007). [https://archive.org/details/whyconfederatesf0000shee online]
* Warner, Ezra J. ''Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders'' (LSU Press, 1959). [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Generals_in_Gray/t9YNGR_wdeoC?hl=en online]
* {{cite journal | last1 = Watson | first1 = Samuel J | year = 1994 | title = Religion and combat motivation in the Confederate armies | journal = Journal of Military History | volume = 58 | issue = 1| pages = 29–55 | doi=10.2307/2944178| jstor = 2944178 }}
* {{Cite book|last=Weinert| first=Richard P. Jr. |title=The Confederate Regular Army|publisher=White Mane Publishing|date=1991|isbn=978-0-942597-27-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Weitz|first= Mark A.|title=More Damning than Slaughter: Desertion in the Confederate Army|publisher=U of Nebraska Press |date=2005}}
* Wiley, Bell Irvin. ''The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy'' (1943). [https://archive.org/details/lifeofjohnnyrebc0000bell_m4v4/page/n8/mode/1up onlin e]
* {{cite book|author-link=Marcus Joseph Wright|last=Wright|first=Marcus J.|title=General Officers of the Confederate Army|publisher=J. M. Carroll & Co.|date=1983|isbn=978-0-8488-0009-3}}

===Historiography===
* Sheehan-Dean, Aaron. "The Blue and Gray in Black and White: Assessing the Scholarship on Civil War Soldiers," in Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed., ''The View from the Ground: Experiences of Civil War Soldiers'' (University Press of Kentucky, 2007) pp 9–30. [https://archive.org/details/viewfromground00shee/mode/1up online]

===Primary sources===
* {{cite book|title=Confederate States. War Dept. Regulations for the Army of the Confederate States|url=https://archive.org/details/regulati00conf|place= Richmond|publisher=J.W. Randolph|date=1863}}
* {{cite book|last=Robson|first= John S.|title=How A One-Legged Rebel Lives: Reminiscences of the Civil War; The Story of the Campaigns of Stonewall Jackson|publisher= Kessinger Publishing|date=2007|isbn=978-1-84685-665-5}}
* {{citation|author=U.S. War Department|url=http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/sources/records/list.cfm|title=The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies|place=U.S. Government Printing Office|date=1880–1901|access-date=February 3, 2009|archive-date=September 13, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090913062844/http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/sources/records/list.cfm|url-status=dead}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Confederate States Army}}
{{Wikiquote|Confederate States of America}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130625144353/http://www.civilwarsoldier.com/cws_confederate_soldiers.htm Confederate soldiers]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://jdc.jefferson.edu/milsurgcsa/ A Manual of Military Surgery (1863). The manual used by doctors in the CSA.]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://battleofolustee.org/uniforms/uniforms.html U.S. Civil War Era Uniforms and Accouterments]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://library.duke.edu/digital collections/strong/Duke University Libraries Digital Collections – William Emerson Strong Photograph Album] 200 cartes-de-visite depicting officers in the Confederate army and navy, officials in the Confederate government, famous Confederate wives, and other notable figures of the Confederacy. Also included are 64 photographs attributed to Mathew Brady.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.confederateuniforms.org Confederate and State Regulations] at confederateuniforms.org
* [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.1stconfederatebattalion.org 1st Confederate Battalion, Forney's Regiment] (Living History Organization)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20160303102250/http://www.histclo.com/essay/war/cwa/sold/cwas-black.html Black soldiers in the U.S. Civil War]
* [http://vault.georgiaarchives.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/confed Confederate Enlistment Oaths and Discharges of the Army of the State of Georgia]
* {{Cite EB1911|wstitle= American Civil War |volume= 1 |last= Atkinson |first= Charles Francis | pages = 818–828 |short= 1}}
* {{Cite EB1911|wstitle= Confederate States of America |volume= 6 |last= Schwab |first= John Christopher |author-link= John Christopher Schwab | pages = 899–901 |short= 1}}

{{Field armies of the Confederate States}}
{{American Civil War|state=collapsed}}

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[[Category:Confederate States Army| ]]
[[Category:1861 establishments in the Confederate States of America]]
[[Category:1865 disestablishments in the Confederate States of America]]
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[[Category:Former armies by country]]
[[Category:Military history of the United States]]
[[Category:Military units and formations established in 1861]]
[[Category:Military units and formations disestablished in 1865]]