View source for Confederate States of America

{{Short description|Unrecognized state in North America (1861–1865)}}
{{Redirect|Confederate States|the system of government|Confederation|a list of confederate nation states|List of confederations}}
{{Redirect|Confederacy of America|the period in early US history|Confederation Period}}
{{About||the 2004 film|C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America{{!}}''C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America''}}
{{Distinguish|Confederation period}}
{{protection padlock|small=yes}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2017}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2023}}
{{Infobox country
| conventional_long_name = <!--?: The--> Confederate States of America
| common_name            = <!--?: The--> Confederate States of America
| status                 = [[List of historical unrecognized states|Unrecognized state]]<ref name="history-state-gov">{{cite web |url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/confederacy |title=Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, 1861–65 |publisher=U.S. Department of State |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130828005906/http://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/Confederacy |archive-date=August 28, 2013  }}</ref>
| year_start             = 1861
| year_end               = 1865
<!--******************************************************************************
The following flags should not be changed, by consensus at [[Talk:Confederate States of America/Archive 10#RFC Infobox flag choice]].
****************************************************************************** 
-->| flag                   = Flags of the Confederate States of America
| flag_type_article      = Flags of the Confederate States of America
| flag_type              = Top: Flag<br />{{nowrap|(1861–1863)}}<br />Bottom: Flag<br />{{nowrap|(1865)}}
| image_flag             = Flag of the Confederate States (1861–1863).svg
| image_flag2            = Flag of the Confederate States (1865).svg
| symbol_type_article    = Seal of the Confederate States
| symbol_type            = Seal<br />{{nowrap|(1863–1865)}}<!-- Please do not add the word "Great" as it would be historically inaccurate. The word was not in the 1863 law passed by the C.S. Congress establishing the Seal. -->
| coa_size               = 102px
| image_coat             = Seal of the Confederate States of America.svg
| national_motto         = ''[[Deo vindice]]''
| englishmotto           = (Under) God, (our) vindicator
| anthem                 = [[God Save the South]] (unofficial){{parabr}}{{center|[[File:Confederate States of America 1861-1865.ogg]]}}<hr />[[Dixie (song)|Dixie]] (popular, unofficial){{parabr}}{{center|[[File:Dixie's Land Instrumental.mp3]]}}
| march                  = [[The Bonnie Blue Flag]]{{parabr}}{{center|}}
| image_map              = Confederate States of America (orthographic projection).svg
| alt_map                = Map of northern hemisphere with Confederate States of America highlighted
| map_caption            = {{plainlist|style=padding-left: 0.6em; text-align: left;|
* {{Legend|#008000|The Confederate States}}
* {{Legend|#55c255|Territorial claims made and under partial control for a time}}
* {{Legend|#3d983d|[[West Virginia#Separation from Virginia|Separated]] West Virginia}}
* {{Legend|#00e6e6|Contested Native American territory}}
}}
| image_map_caption      = [[Federal government of the United States|Federal Union]] and Southern States
| capital                = {{ublist|item_style=margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0
|[[Montgomery, Alabama]]<br />(until May 29, 1861)
|[[Richmond, Virginia]]<br />(until April 2–3, 1865)<ref>{{cite web |title=Reaction to the Fall of Richmond |url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/reaction-fall-richmond |website=American Battlefield Trust |date=December 9, 2008 |access-date=July 12, 2021}}</ref>
|[[Danville, Virginia]]<br />(until April 10, 1865)<ref>{{cite web |title=History |url=https://www.danvillemuseum.org/history |website=Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History |access-date=July 12, 2021}}</ref>}}
[[Greensboro, North Carolina]]<br />(until May 5, 1865)
| largest_city           = [[New Orleans]]<br />(until [[Capture of New Orleans|May 1, 1862]])
| common_languages       = {{nowrap|English (''[[de facto]]'')}}<br />minor languages: [[Louisiana French|French]] ([[Louisiana]]), [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|Indigenous languages]] ([[Indian territory]])
| government_type        = {{plainlist| 
* [[Confederation]] of independent states (1861–1862)<ref name="wwgaunt">{{cite book |title=The Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America: From the Institution of the Government, February 8, 1861 to Its Termination, February 18, 1862, Inclusive. Arranged in Chronological Order, Together with the Constitution for the Provisional Government and the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States, and the Treaties Concluded by the Confederate States with Indian Tribes|author=W. W. Gaunt|year=1864|publisher=D & S Publishers, Indian Rocks Beach|page=1,2}}</ref>
* [[Richmond in the American Civil War|Federal]] presidential republic (1862–1865)<ref>Cooper (2000) p. 462. Rable (1994) pp. 2–3. Rable wrote, "But despite heated arguments and no little friction between the competing political cultures of unity and liberty, antiparty and broader fears about politics in general shaped civic life. These beliefs could obviously not eliminate partisanship or prevent Confederates from holding on to and exploiting old political prejudices. Indeed, some states, notably Georgia and North Carolina, remained political tinderboxes throughout the war. Even the most bitter foes of the Confederate government, however, refused to form an opposition party, and the Georgia dissidents, to cite the most prominent example, avoided many traditional political activities. Only in North Carolina did there develop anything resembling a party system, and there the central values of the Confederacy's two political cultures had a far more powerful influence on political debate than did organizational maneuvering."</ref><ref>David Herbert Donald, ed. ''Why the North Won the Civil War''. (1996) pp. 112–113. Potter wrote in his contribution to this book, "Where parties do not exist, criticism of the administration is likely to remain purely an individual matter; therefore the tone of the criticism is likely to be negative, carping, and petty, as it certainly was in the Confederacy. But where there are parties, the opposition group is strongly impelled to formulate real alternative policies and to press for the adoption of these policies on a constructive basis. ... But the absence of a two-party system meant the absence of any available alternative leadership, and the protest votes which were cast in the 1863 Confederate mid-term election became more expressions of futile and frustrated dissatisfaction rather than implements of a decision to adopt new and different policies for the Confederacy."</ref>}}
| title_leader           = [[President of the Confederate States of America|President]]
| leader1                = [[Jefferson Davis]]
| year_leader1           = 1861–1865
| title_deputy           = [[Vice President of the Confederate States of America|Vice President]]
| deputy1                = [[Alexander H. Stephens]]
| year_deputy1           = 1861–1865
| legislature            = [[Congress of the Confederate States|Congress]]
| house1                 = [[Senate of the Confederate States|Senate]]
| house2                 = {{nowrap|[[House of Representatives of the Confederate States|House of Representatives]]}}
| era                    = [[American Civil War]]
| event_start            = [[Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States|Provisional constitution]]
| date_start             = February 8,
| event2                 = {{nowrap|[[American Civil War]]}}<!-- Please do not add individual American Civil War battles to this list. ACW is enough. -->
| date_event2            = April 12, 1861<!-- The start date of the American Civil War was when Confederate guns around the harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter, S.C. -->
| event3                 = {{nowrap|[[Constitution of the Confederate States|Permanent constitution]]}}
| date_event3            = February 22, 1862
<!--************************************************************************************************************************************************************-->
<!-- Please do not add more armies or departments to list below of the 1865 surrender events. These were the "big three" field armies. -->
<!--************************************************************************************************************************************************************-->| event4                 = [[Battle of Appomattox Court House]]
| date_event4            = April 9, 1865
| event5                 = [[Carolinas campaign|Military collapse]]<!-- Largest surrender of Confederate forces occurred on April 26, 1865, of Joseph E. Johnston and his field army -->
| date_event5            = April 26, 1865
| event_end              = [[Conclusion of the American Civil War|Debellation and dissolution]]
| date_end               = May 5,
<!--************************************************************************************************************************************************************-->
<!-- Please do not add more armies or departments to above list of the 1865 surrender events. These were the "big three" field armies. -->
<!--************************************************************************************************************************************************************-->| stat_year1             = 1860{{efn|Slaves are included in the above population according to the 1860 census.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040604075834/http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html | archive-date=June 4, 2004 | title=1860 Census Results }}</ref>}}
| stat_pop1              = 9,103,332
| stat_year2             = Slaves{{efn|Population values do not include [[Missouri]], [[Kentucky]], or the [[Confederate Arizona|Arizona Territory]].}}
| stat_area2             = 
| stat_pop2              = 3,521,110
| currency               = {{ublist|class=nowrap|item_style=margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0
|[[Confederate States dollar]]
|[[Southern States Confederate Currency|State currencies]]}}
| p1                     = South Carolina in the American Civil War{{!}}{{nowrap|South Carolina}}<!-- Seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860 -->
| flag_p1                = Flag of South Carolina (January 1861).svg
| p2                     = Mississippi in the American Civil War{{!}}Mississippi<!-- Seceded on January 9, 1861 -->
| flag_p2                = Flag of Mississippi (1861-1865).svg
| p3                     = Florida in the American Civil War{{!}}Florida<!-- Seceded on January 10, 1861 -->
| flag_p3                = Flag of Florida (1861-1865).svg
| p4                     = Alabama in the American Civil War{{!}}Alabama<!-- Seceded on January 11, 1861 -->
| flag_p4                = Flag of the Alabama Secession Convention (reproduction, obverse).svg
| p5                     = Georgia in the American Civil War{{!}}Georgia<!-- Seceded on January 19, 1861 -->
| flag_p5                = Flag of the State of Georgia (1861, red).svg
| p6                     = Louisiana in the American Civil War{{!}}Louisiana<!-- Seceded on January 26, 1861 -->
| flag_p6                = Louisiana Feb 11 1861.svg
| p7                     = Texas in the American Civil War{{!}}Texas<!-- Seceded on February 1, 1861 -->
| flag_p7                = Flag of Texas (1839–1879).svg
| p8                     = Virginia in the American Civil War{{!}}Virginia<!-- Seceded on April 17, 1861 -->
| flag_p8                = Flag of Virginia (1861–1865).svg
| p9                     = Arkansas in the American Civil War{{!}}Arkansas<!-- Seceded on May 6, 1861 -->
| flag_p9                = Flag of the Confederate States (May 1861 – July 1861).svg
| p10                    = North Carolina in the American Civil War{{!}}{{nowrap|North Carolina}}
| flag_p10               = Flag of North Carolina (1861).svg<!-- Seceded on May 20, 1861 -->
| p11                    = Tennessee in the American Civil War{{!}}Tennessee<!-- Seceded on June 8, 1861 -->
| flag_p11               = Tennessee 1861 proposed.svg
| p12                    = <!-- Territories are always listed after the States, regardless of alphabetical order. -->Confederate Arizona{{!}}Arizona Territory<!-- Declared itself an independent territory (separate from U.S. New Mexico Territory) and seceded from the Union on March 28, 1861 -->
| flag_p12               = Flag of the Confederate States (1861–1863).svg
| s1                     = West Virginia<!-- Admitted into the Union on June 20, 1863 -->
| flag_s1                = <!-- Please leave blank. The West Virginia Legislature did not enact legislation to adopt an official State flag until 1905. Please do not add the West Virginia flag adopted by the state government in 1905 (1905, 1907, 1929, or 1962) (42 years after the state was admitted into the Union) or any of the other so-called "proposed" flags as it would be historically inaccurate. -->
| s2                     = Tennessee<!-- Readmitted on July 24, 1866 -->
| flag_s2                = Tennessee 1861 proposed.svg
| s3                     = Arkansas<!-- Readmitted on June 22, 1868 -->
| flag_s3                = Flag of the Confederate States (May 1861 – July 1861).svg
| s4                     = Florida<!-- Readmitted on June 25, 1868 -->
| flag_s4                = Flag of Florida (1861–1865).svg
| s5                     = Alabama<!-- Readmitted on June 25, 1868 -->
| flag_s5                = Flag of Alabama (1861, reverse).svg
| s6                     = Louisiana<!-- Readmitted on June 25, 1868 -->
| flag_s6                = Louisiana Feb 11 1861.svg
| s7                     = North Carolina<!-- Readmitted on June 25, 1868 -->
| flag_s7                = Flag of North Carolina (1861).svg
| s8                     = South Carolina<!-- Readmitted on June 25, 1868 -->
| flag_s8                = Flag of South Carolina (1861).svg
| s9                     = Virginia<!-- Readmitted on January 27, 1870 -->
| flag_s9                = Flag of Virginia (1861–1865).svg
| s10                    = Mississippi<!-- Readmitted on February 23, 1870 -->
| flag_s10               = Flag of Mississippi (1861-1865).svg
| s11                    = Texas<!-- Readmitted on March 30, 1870 -->
| flag_s11               = Flag of Texas (1839–1879).svg
| s12                    = Georgia (U.S. state){{!}}Georgia<!-- Readmitted on July 15, 1870 -->
| flag_s12               = Flag of the State of Georgia (non-official).svg
| s13                    = <!-- Territories are always listed after the States, regardless of alphabetical order. -->Arizona Territory<!-- Organized by the United States on February 24, 1863 -->
| flag_s13               = Flag of the United States (1863–1865).svg
<!-- Please do not add 1850–1912 New Mexico Territory to this list because it remained a U.S. territory during the War and Reconstruction. -->| today                  = {{flagicon|United States of America}} [[United States]]
| footnotes              = 
| demonym                = Confederate<br />[[White Southerners|Southerner]]
}}

The '''Confederate States of America''' ('''CSA'''), also known as the '''Confederate States''' ('''C.S.'''), '''the Confederacy''', or '''the South''', was an [[List of historical unrecognized states and dependencies|unrecognized]] breakaway<ref name="history-state-gov" /> [[republic]] in the [[Southern United States]] from 1861 to 1865.<ref name="Tikkanen-2020">{{Cite web|last=Tikkanen|first=Amy|date=June 17, 2020|title=American Civil War|url=https://www.britannica.com/event/American-Civil-War|access-date=June 28, 2020|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|quote=[The American Civil War was] between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.}}</ref> It comprised 11 [[U.S. state]]s that declared [[Secession in the United States|secession]]: [[South Carolina in the American Civil War|South Carolina]], [[Mississippi in the American Civil War|Mississippi]], [[Florida in the American Civil War|Florida]], [[Alabama in the American Civil War|Alabama]], [[Georgia in the American Civil War|Georgia]], [[Louisiana in the American Civil War|Louisiana]], [[Texas in the American Civil War|Texas]], [[Virginia in the American Civil War|Virginia]], [[Arkansas in the American Civil War|Arkansas]], [[Tennessee in the American Civil War|Tennessee]], and [[North Carolina in the American Civil War|North Carolina]]. These states fought against the United States during the [[American Civil War]].<ref name="Tikkanen-2020" /><ref name="Hubbard-2000">{{Cite book|last=Hubbard|first=Charles|title=The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy|publisher=University of Tennessee Press|year=2000|isbn=1-57233-092-9|location=Knoxville|page=55|oclc=745911382}}</ref>

With [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s [[1860 United States presidential election|election]] as [[President of the United States]] in 1860, 11 southern states believed their slavery-dependent [[plantation economy|plantation economies]] were threatened, and seven initially [[Secession in the United States|seceded from the United States]].<ref name="history-state-gov" /><ref name="Thomas1979">{{cite book |last1=Thomas |first1=Emory M. |title=The Confederate Nation: 1861–1865 |year=1979 |publisher=Harper Collins |isbn=978-0-06-206946-7 |pages=256–257 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IpM8EKRH_bUC}}</ref><ref name="McPherson">{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195313666 |url-access=registration |title=This mighty scourge: perspectives on the Civil War |first=James M. |last=McPherson |publisher=Oxford University Press US |year=2007 |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195313666/page/65 65]|isbn=978-0198042761 }}</ref> The Confederacy was formed on February 8, 1861, by South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.<ref name="Encyclopædia Britannica-1998" /><ref name="Smith2008">{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Mark M. |editor1-last=Boles |editor1-first=John B. |title=A Companion to the American South |year=2008 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4051-3830-7 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vANndXTE8g4C&pg=PA103 |language=en |chapter=The Plantation Economy |quote=Antebellum southern society was defined in no small part by the shaping and working of large tracts of land whose soil was tilled and staples tended by enslaved African-American laborers. This was, in short, a society dependent on what historians have variously referred to as the plantation system, the southern slave economy or, more commonly, the plantation economy... Slaveholders' demand for labor increased apace. The number of southern slaves jumped from under one million in 1790 to roughly four million by 1860. By the middle decades of the antebellum period, the Old South had matured into a slave society whose plantation economy affected virtually every social and economic relation within the South.}}</ref><ref name="McMurtry-Chubb2021">{{cite book |last1=McMurtry-Chubb |first1=Teri A. |title=Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy |year=2021 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=978-1-4985-9907-8 |page=31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M0UsEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA31 |language=en |quote=The plantation as the vehicle to wealth was tied to the primacy of cotton in the growth of global capitalism. The large-scale cultivation and harvest of cot ton required new forms of labor organization, as well as labor management, Enter the overseer. By 1860, there were approximately 38,000 overseers working as plantation managers throughout the antebellum south. They were employed by the wealthiest of planters, planters who held multiple plantations and owned hundreds of enslaved Africans. By 1860, 85% of all cotton grown in the South was on plantations of 100 acres or more. On these plantations resided 91.2% of enslaved Africans. Planters came to own these Africans through the internal slave trade in the United States that moved to its cotton fields approximately one million enslaved laborers.}}</ref> They adopted a new constitution establishing a [[confederation]] government of "sovereign and independent states".<ref name="usgovernmentprintingoffice">{{cite book |title=Multinational Operations, Alliances, and International Military Cooperation|author=Robert S. Rush|author2=William W. Epley|year=2007|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|page=21,27}}</ref><ref name="johntishiyama">{{cite book |title=Comparative Politics: Principles of Democracy and Democratization|author=John T. Ishiyama|year=2011|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|page=214}}</ref><ref name="dunbarrowland">{{cite book |title=History of Mississippi: The Heart of the South|volume=1|author=Dunbar Rowland|year=1925|publisher=[[S. J. Clarke Publishing Company]]|page=784}}</ref> The [[Federal government of the United States|federal government]] in [[Washington D.C.]] and states under its control were known as the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]].<ref name="Hubbard-2000" /><ref name="Encyclopædia Britannica-1998">{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Confederate-States-of-America|title=Confederate States of America|<!--author=Editors|-->date=July 20, 1998|website=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]|access-date=June 25, 2019}}</ref><ref name="charlesdanieldrake">{{cite book |title=Union and Anti-Slavery speeches, delivered during the Rebellion, etc|author=Charles Daniel Drake|year=1864|page=219,220,222,241}}</ref>

The Civil War began in April 1861, when [[Battle of Fort Sumter|South Carolina's militia attacked Fort Sumter]]. Four slave states of the [[Upper South]]—[[Virginia in the American Civil War|Virginia]], [[Arkansas in the American Civil War|Arkansas]], [[Tennessee in the American Civil War|Tennessee]], and [[North Carolina in the American Civil War|North Carolina]]—then seceded and joined the Confederacy. In February 1862, [[Confederate States Army]] leaders installed a [[President of the Confederate States of America|centralized federal government]] in [[Richmond in the American Civil War|Richmond, Virginia]], and enacted the first [[Confederate Conscription Acts 1862–1864|Confederate draft]] on April 16, 1862. By 1865, the Confederacy's federal government dissolved into chaos, and the [[Confederate States Congress]] [[adjournment sine die|adjourned]], effectively ceasing to exist as a legislative body on March 18. After four years of heavy fighting, most Confederate land and naval forces either surrendered or otherwise ceased hostilities by May 1865.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.civilwar.org/education/pdfs/civil-was-curriculum-medicine.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100401062715/http://civilwar.org/education/pdfs/civil-was-curriculum-medicine.pdf |archive-date=April 1, 2010 |url-status=live|title=Learn – Civil War Trust|website=civilwar.org|date=October 29, 2013|access-date=August 27, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/recounting-the-dead/|title=Recounting the Dead|last=Hacker|first=J. David|date=September 20, 2011|website=Opinionator|access-date=May 19, 2018}}</ref> The most significant capitulation was Confederate general [[Robert E. Lee]]'s [[Battle of Appomattox Court House#Surrender|surrender on April 9]], after which any doubt about the war's outcome or the Confederacy's survival was extinguished.

After the war, during the [[Reconstruction era]], the Confederate states were readmitted to Congress after each ratified the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution]], which outlawed slavery, "except as a punishment for crime". [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause mythology]], an idealized view of the Confederacy valiantly fighting for a just cause, emerged in the decades after the war among former Confederate generals and politicians, and in organizations such as the [[United Daughters of the Confederacy]], [[Ladies' Memorial Association]]s, and the [[Sons of Confederate Veterans]]. Intense periods of Lost Cause activity developed around the turn of the 20th century and during the [[civil rights movement]] of the 1950s and 1960s in [[Reactionary|reaction]] to growing support for [[racial equality]]. Advocates sought to ensure future generations of [[White Southerners|Southern whites]] would continue to support white supremacist policies such as the [[Jim Crow laws]] through activities such as building [[Confederate monuments and memorials|Confederate monuments]] and influencing the authors of [[textbook]]s.<ref name="Blight2009">{{cite book|author=David W. Blight|title=Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3R-yvmpYaqAC&pg=PA259|date=2009|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-02209-6|page=259}}</ref> The [[modern display of the Confederate battle flag]] primarily started during the [[1948 United States presidential election|1948 presidential election]], when it was used by the pro-segregationist and white supremacist [[Dixiecrat]] Party.<ref name="Strother2017">{{cite journal |first1=Logan |last1=Strother |first2=Spencer |last2=Piston |first3=Thomas |last3=Ogorzalek |title=Pride or Prejudice? Racial Prejudice, Southern Heritage, and White Support for the Confederate Battle Flag |url=https://www.academia.edu/34155396 |website=academia.edu |date=August 7, 2017 |access-date=September 13, 2019 |page=7}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Ogorzalek|first1=Thomas|last2=Piston|first2=Spencer|last3=Strother|first3=Logan|date=2017|title=Pride or Prejudice?: Racial Prejudice, Southern Heritage, and White Support for the Confederate Battle Flag|journal=Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race|volume=14|issue=1|pages=295–323|doi=10.1017/S1742058X17000017|issn=1742-058X|doi-access=free|hdl=2144/31476|hdl-access=free}}</ref>
{{TOC limit|limit=5}}

==Origins==
{{Main|Origins of the American Civil War}}
{{See also|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War}}

Historians widely agree that the preservation of the [[Slavery in the United States|institution of slavery]] was the principal aim of the 11 [[Southern United States|Southern states]] that declared their secession from the United States (the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]]) and formed the Confederate States of America. Seven of these states seceded before the outbreak of the [[American Civil War]] and four did so after hostilities began.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Woods |first=M. E. |date=2012-08-20 |title=What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas272 |journal=[[Journal of American History]] |volume=99 |issue=2 |pages=415–439 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jas272 |issn=0021-8723}}</ref> While there is broad consensus among 21st-century historians that slavery was central to the conflict, there remains debate over which specific ideological, economic, political, or social factors were most influential and over the reasons why the [[Union (American Civil War)|North]] rejected the Southern states’ attempt to secede.<ref>Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "A Book for Every Perspective: Current Civil War and Reconstruction Textbooks", ''Civil War History'' (2005) 51#3 pp. 317–324</ref> Proponents of the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]] interpretation, a viewpoint rejected by mainstream historians, deny that slavery was the primary cause of secession—a position contradicted by overwhelming historical evidence, including the secession documents of the states themselves.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Loewen |first=James W. |date=2011 |title=Using Confederate Documents to Teach About Secession, Slavery, and the Origins of the Civil War |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23210244 |journal=OAH Magazine of History |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=35–44 |doi=10.1093/oahmag/oar002 |jstor=23210244 |issn=0882-228X}}</ref>

A central political dispute in the antebellum period concerned whether slavery would be permitted to spread into the Western territories that were destined to become states. Initially, the [[United States Congress|Congress]] admitted new states in pairs—one slave and one free—to preserve sectional balance in the [[United States Senate|Senate]], though not in the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] since free states tended to have larger electorates.<ref name="O'Brien2002qs">{{cite book |author=Patrick Karl O'Brien |title=Atlas of World History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffZy5tDjaUkC&pg=PA184 |year=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-521921-0 |page=184}}</ref> By the mid‑19th century, the status of new territories as free or slave had become a defining political issue. Anti‑slavery sentiment was growing in the North, while in the South fear of abolition was intensifying. Another contributing factor was the rise of distinctly [[white Southerners|white Southern]] nationalism in preceding decades.<ref>John McCardell, ''The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860'' (1981)</ref> The primary reason the North rejected secession was a commitment to preserving the Union, grounded in a sense of [[American nationalism]].<ref>Susan-Mary Grant, ''North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era'' (2000)</ref>

[[Abraham Lincoln]] won the [[1860 United States presidential election|1860 presidential election]], and his victory prompted declarations of [[secession in the United States|secession]] by seven slave states of the [[Deep South]]. These states—whose cotton‑based economies depended on enslaved labor—formed the Confederate States after Lincoln's election in November 1860 but before he took office in March 1861. Northern nationalists and Southern “Unionists” refused to recognize these declarations. No foreign government ever officially recognized the Confederacy. The U.S. government, under President [[James Buchanan]], did not cede control of federal forts located in territory claimed by the Confederacy. The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces bombarded the Union garrison at [[Battle of Fort Sumter|Fort Sumter]] in the harbor of [[Charleston, South Carolina]].

Other background factors contributing to the breakdown of the Union included partisan politics under the [[Second Party System]], the growth of [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionism]], disputes over [[Nullification (U.S. Constitution)|nullification]] versus [[Secession in the United States|secession]], regional nationalisms, [[Manifest destiny|expansionism]], economic tensions such as the [[Panic of 1857]], and differing paths of modernization in the [[Antebellum South|antebellum period]]. Although slavery and its related conflicts were the primary cause of the break with the Union, it was the act of disunion itself that sparked the ensuing war.<ref>Elizabeth R. Varon et al., plenary session, Organization of American Historians, March 17, 2011, reported by David A. Walsh, HNN online</ref> Historian [[David M. Potter]] observed: “The problem for Americans who, in the age of Lincoln, wanted slaves to be free was not simply that southerners wanted the opposite, but that they themselves cherished a conflicting value: they wanted the Constitution, which protected slavery, to be honored, and the Union, which was a fellowship with slaveholders, to be preserved. Thus they were committed to values that could not logically be reconciled.”<ref>Potter, David M., ''The Impending Crisis'', pp. 44–45.</ref>

==Secession==
[[File:1861 Davis Inaugural.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|The inauguration of [[Jefferson Davis]] in [[Montgomery, Alabama]]]]

The first secession state conventions from the Deep South sent representatives to the [[Montgomery Convention]] in Alabama on February 4, 1861. A provisional government was established.<ref name="Freehling">Freehling, p. 503</ref> The new provisional Confederate President [[Jefferson Davis]] issued a call for 100,000 men from the states' militias to defend the newly formed Confederacy.<ref name="Freehling" /> All federal property was seized, including gold bullion and coining dies at the U.S. mints.<ref name="Freehling" /> The Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia, in May 1861. On February 22, 1862, Davis was inaugurated as president with a term of six years.<ref>{{cite book|author=John D. Wright|title=The Routledge Encyclopedia of Civil War Era Biographies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V_wpKWzSmvUC&pg=PA150|year=2013|publisher=Routledge|page=150|isbn=978-0415878036}}</ref>

The Confederate administration pursued a policy of national territorial integrity, continuing earlier state efforts in 1860–1861 to remove U.S. government presence. This included taking possession of U.S. courts, custom houses, post offices, and most notably, arsenals and forts. After the Confederate attack and capture of [[Fort Sumter]] in April 1861, Lincoln called up [[75,000 volunteers|75,000 of the states' militia]] to muster under his command. The stated purpose was to re-occupy U.S. properties throughout the South, as the U.S. Congress had not authorized their abandonment. The resistance at Fort Sumter signaled his change of policy from that of the Buchanan Administration. Lincoln's response ignited a firestorm of emotion. The people of both North and South demanded war, with soldiers rushing to their colors in the hundreds of thousands.<ref name="Freehling" />

[[File:US map 1864 Civil War divisions.svg|thumb|upright=1.5|Blue indicates the Union states and light blue Union-supporting slave states ([[Border states (American Civil War)|border states]]) that primarily stayed in Union control, though [[Kentucky]] and [[Missouri]] had dual competing Confederate and Unionist governments. Red represents seceded states in rebellion, also known as the Confederate States of America. Uncolored areas were territories, with the exception of the [[Indian Territory]], which is present-day [[Oklahoma]].]]
[[File:CSA states evolution.gif|thumb|upright=1.5|Evolution of the Confederate States between December 1860 and July 1870]]
Secessionists argued that the [[Constitution of the United States|United States Constitution]] was a contract among sovereign states that could be abandoned without consultation and each state had a right to secede. After intense debates and statewide votes, seven Deep South states passed secession ordinances by February 1861, while secession efforts failed in the other eight slave states.

The Confederacy expanded in May–July 1861 (with [[Virginia in the Civil War|Virginia]], [[Arkansas in the Civil War|Arkansas]], [[Tennessee in the Civil War|Tennessee]], [[North Carolina in the Civil War|North Carolina]]), and disintegrated in April–May 1865. It was formed by delegations from seven slave states of the [[Lower South]] that had proclaimed their secession. After the fighting began in April, four additional slave states seceded and were admitted. Later, two slave states ([[Missouri]] and [[Kentucky]]) and two territories were given seats in the Confederate Congress.<ref>David M. Potter, ''The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861'' (1976) pp. 484–514.</ref>

Its establishment flowed from and deepened Southern nationalism,<ref>Potter, pp. 448–484.</ref> which prepared men to fight for "The Southern Cause".<ref>"Thomas 1979" pp. 3–4</ref> This "Cause" included support for [[states' rights]], [[Tariff|tariff policy]], and internal improvements, but above all, cultural and financial dependence on the South's slavery-based economy. The convergence of race and slavery, politics, and economics raised South-related policy questions to the status of moral questions over, way of life, merging love of things Southern and hatred of things Northern. As the war approached, political parties split, and national churches and interstate families divided along sectional lines.<ref>"Thomas 1979" pp. 4–5</ref> According to historian John M. Coski:
{{blockquote|The statesmen who led the secession movement were unashamed to explicitly cite the defense of [[slavery]] as their prime motive&nbsp;... Acknowledging the centrality of slavery to the Confederacy is essential for understanding the Confederate.<ref>{{Cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=zs0VJTbNwfAC&q=%22men+carrying+the+battle+flag+preserved+and+perpetuated+the+Confederate+cause+and+their+flag+became+the+symbol+of+Confederate+nationalism%22&pg=PA20 |title= The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem |pages=23–27 |first=John M. |last=Coski |date=2005 |publisher= Harvard University Press |isbn= 978-0674029866}}</ref>}}

Following South Carolina's unanimous 1860 secession vote, no other Southern states considered the question until 1861; when they did, none had a unanimous vote. All had residents who cast significant numbers of Unionist votes. Voting to remain in the Union did not necessarily mean individuals were sympathizers with the North. Once fighting began, many who voted to remain in the Union accepted the majority decision, and supported the Confederacy.<ref name="personal.tcu.edu">{{cite web |url= http://personal.tcu.edu/swoodworth/Crofts.htm |title=Reluctant Confederates |publisher= Personal.tcu.edu |access-date= April 19, 2014}}</ref> Many writers have evaluated the Civil War as an American tragedy—a "Brothers' War", pitting "brother against brother, father against son, kin against kin of every degree".<ref>{{cite book |last= Coulter |first=E. Merton |title= The Confederate States of America 1861–1865 |date= 1950 |page=61}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |first= Avery O. |last=Craven |title= The Growth of Southern Nationalism 1848–1861 |page=390 }}</ref>

===States===
Initially, some secessionists hoped for a peaceful departure. Moderates in the Confederate Constitutional Convention included a provision against importation of slaves from Africa to appeal to the Upper South. Non-slave states might join, but the radicals secured a two-thirds requirement in both houses of Congress to accept them.<ref>"Thomas 1979" pp. 59, 81</ref>

Seven states declared their secession from the United States before Lincoln took office on March{{nbsp}}4, 1861. After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April{{nbsp}}12, 1861, and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops, four more states declared their secession.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center|footer_align=center
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[[Kentucky in the American Civil War|Kentucky]] declared neutrality, but after Confederate troops moved in, the state legislature asked for Union troops to drive them out. Delegates from 68{{nbsp}}Kentucky counties were sent to the Russellville Convention that signed an Ordinance of Secession. Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy on December{{nbsp}}10, 1861, with Bowling Green as its first capital. Early in the war, the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky but largely lost control in 1862. The splinter [[Confederate government of Kentucky]] relocated to accompany western Confederate armies and never controlled the state population after 1862. By the end of the war, 90,000{{nbsp}}Kentuckians had fought for the Union, compared to 35,000 for the Confederacy.<ref name="Why?">{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/01/why-do-people-believe-myths-about-the-confederacy-because-our-textbooks-and-monuments-are-wrong/ |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=July 1, 2015 |author=James W. Loewen |title=Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong.}}</ref>

In [[Missouri in the American Civil War|Missouri]], a [[Missouri Constitutional Convention (1861–63)|constitutional convention]] was approved and delegates elected. The convention rejected secession 89–1 on March{{nbsp}}19, 1861.<ref>''Journal and Proceedings of the Missouri State Convention Held at Jefferson City and St. Louis, March 1861'', George Knapp & Co., 1861, p. 47</ref> The governor maneuvered to take control of the [[St. Louis Arsenal|St.{{nbsp}}Louis Arsenal]] and restrict federal military movements. This led to a confrontation, and in June federal forces drove him and the [[Missouri General Assembly|General Assembly]] from Jefferson City. The executive committee of the convention called the members together in July, and declared the state offices vacant and appointed a Unionist interim state government.<ref>Eugene Morrow Violette, ''A History of Missouri'' (1918), pp. 393–395</ref> The exiled governor called a rump session of the former General Assembly together in [[Neosho, Missouri|Neosho]] and, on October{{nbsp}}31, 1861, it passed an [[Missouri secession|ordinance of secession]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/secessionacts.html|title=Secession Acts of the Thirteen Confederate States|access-date=September 30, 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170308171406/http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/secessionacts.html|archive-date=March 8, 2017}}</ref><ref>Weigley (2000) p. 43 See also, [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/misouord.htm Missouri's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190940/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/misouord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref> The [[Confederate government of Missouri]] effectively controlled only southern Missouri early in the war. It had its capital at Neosho, then [[Cassville, Missouri|Cassville]], before being driven out of the state. For the remainder of the war, it operated as a government in exile at [[Marshall, Texas]].<ref>{{cite book|author=A. C. Greene|title=Sketches from the Five States of Texas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XeSi31_W8H4C&pg=PA27|year=1998|publisher=Texas A&M UP|pages=27–28|isbn=978-0890968536}}</ref>

Not having seceded, neither Kentucky nor Missouri was declared in rebellion in Lincoln's [[Emancipation Proclamation]]. The Confederacy recognized the pro-Confederate claimants in Kentucky (December 10, 1861) and Missouri (November 28, 1861) and laid claim to those states, granting them congressional representation and adding two stars to the Confederate flag. Voting for the representatives was done mostly by Confederate soldiers from Kentucky and Missouri.<ref>{{cite book|author=Wilfred Buck Yearns|title=The Confederate Congress|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rV-XNj4eJ3wC&pg=PA43|year=2010|publisher=University of Georgia Press|pages=42–43|isbn=978-0820334769}}</ref>

Some Southern Unionists blamed Lincoln's call for troops as the precipitating event for the second wave of secessions. Historian James McPherson argues such claims have "a self-serving quality" and regards them as misleading:

{{Blockquote|As the telegraph chattered reports of the attack on Sumter April{{nbsp}}12 and its surrender next day, huge crowds poured into the streets of Richmond, Raleigh, Nashville, and other upper South cities to celebrate this victory over the Yankees. These crowds waved Confederate flags and cheered the glorious cause of southern independence. They demanded that their own states join the cause. Scores of demonstrations took place from April{{nbsp}}12 to 14, before Lincoln issued his call for troops. Many conditional unionists were swept along by this powerful tide of southern nationalism; others were cowed into silence.<ref>McPherson p. 278</ref>}}

Historian [[Daniel W. Crofts]] disagrees with McPherson:

{{Blockquote|The bombardment of Fort Sumter, by itself, did not destroy Unionist majorities in the upper South. Because only three days elapsed before Lincoln issued the proclamation, the two events viewed retrospectively, appear almost simultaneous. Nevertheless, close examination of contemporary evidence&nbsp;... shows that the proclamation had a far more decisive impact.{{nbsp}}... Many concluded&nbsp;... that Lincoln had deliberately chosen "to drive off all the Slave states, in order to make war on them and annihilate slavery".<ref>Crofts pp. 336–338, quoting the North Carolina politician [[Jonathan Worth (Governor)|Jonathan Worth]] (1802–1869).</ref>}}

[[Richard N. Current]] concluded:

{{Blockquote|In short, it appears that Lincoln, when he decided to send the Sumter expedition, considered hostilities to be ''probable''. It also appears, however, that he believed an unopposed and peaceable provisioning to be at least barely ''possible''{{nbsp}}... He thought hostilities would be the likely result, and he was determined that, if they should be, they must clearly be initiated by the Confederates. "To say that Lincoln meant that the first shot would be fired by the other side ''if a first shot was fired'',{{nbsp}}... is not to say that he maneuvered to have the first shot fired."<ref>Current, Richard N. (1963). ''Lincoln and the First Shot''. J.&nbsp;B. Lippincott Company, pp. 193-194.</ref>}}

The order of secession resolutions and dates are:
:1. [[South Carolina in the American Civil War|South Carolina]] (December 20, 1860)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/scord.htm South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190955/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/scord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}. Also, {{cite web|url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/southcar/south.html|title=South Carolina documents including signatories|publisher=Docsouth.unc.edu|access-date=August 29, 2010}}</ref>
:2. [[Mississippi in the American Civil War|Mississippi]] (January 9, 1861)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/msord.htm Mississippi's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190945/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/msord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>
:3. [[Florida in the American Civil War|Florida]] (January 10)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/flord.htm Florida's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190920/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/flord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>
:4. [[Alabama in the American Civil War|Alabama]] (January 11)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/alord.htm Alabama's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190910/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/alord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>
:5. [[Georgia in the American Civil War|Georgia]] (January 19)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/gaord.htm Georgia's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190928/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/gaord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>
:6. [[Louisiana in the American Civil War|Louisiana]] (January 26)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/laord.htm Louisiana's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190935/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/laord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>
:7. [[Texas in the American Civil War|Texas]] (February 1; referendum February 23)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/txordnan.htm Texas' Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012191030/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/txordnan.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>
:* [[First inauguration of Abraham Lincoln|Inauguration of President Lincoln]], March 4
:* [[Battle of Fort Sumter|Bombardment of Fort Sumter]] (April 12) and [[Proclamation 80|President Lincoln's call-up]] (April 15)<ref>The text of [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/lincoln-declares-war/ Lincoln's calling-up of the militia of the several States]</ref>

:8. [[Virginia in the American Civil War|Virginia]] (April 17; referendum May 23, 1861)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/vaord.htm Virginia's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012191039/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/vaord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}. Virginia took two steps toward secession, first by secession convention vote on April 17, 1861, and then by ratification of this by a popular vote conducted on May 23, 1861. A Unionist [[Restored government of Virginia]] also operated. Virginia did not turn over its military to the Confederate States until June 8, 1861. The Commonwealth of Virginia ratified the Constitution of the Confederate States on June 19, 1861.</ref>
:9. [[Arkansas in the American Civil War|Arkansas]] (May 6)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/arord.htm Arkansas' Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190914/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/arord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>
:10. [[Tennessee in the American Civil War|Tennessee]] (May 7; referendum June 8)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/tnord.htm Tennessee's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012191004/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/tnord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}. The Tennessee legislature ratified an agreement to enter a military league with the Confederate States on May 7, 1861. Tennessee voters approved the agreement on June 8, 1861.</ref>
:11. [[North Carolina in the American Civil War|North Carolina]] (May 20)<ref>The text of [http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/ncord.htm North Carolina's Ordinance of Secession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012190953/http://gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/ncord.htm |date=October 12, 2007 }}.</ref>

In Virginia, the populous counties along the Ohio and Pennsylvania borders rejected the Confederacy. Unionists held a [[Wheeling Convention|Convention]] in [[Wheeling, West Virginia#Industrialization and anti-secession sentiment|Wheeling]] in June{{nbsp}}1861, establishing a "restored government" with a [[Restored government of Virginia|rump legislature]], but sentiment in the region remained deeply divided. In the 50{{nbsp}}counties that would make up the state of [[West Virginia in the American Civil War|West Virginia]], voters from 24{{nbsp}}counties had voted for disunion in Virginia's May 23 referendum on the ordinance of secession.<ref>Curry, Richard Orr, ''A House Divided, A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia'', Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1964, p. 49</ref> In the 1860 election, "Constitutional Democrat" Breckenridge had outpolled "Constitutional Unionist" Bell in the 50{{nbsp}}counties by 1,900{{nbsp}}votes, 44% to 42%.<ref>Rice, Otis K. and Stephen W. Brown, ''West Virginia, A History'', Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1993, second edition, p. 112. Another way of looking at the results would note the pro-union candidates winning 56% with Bell 20,997, Douglas 5,742, and Lincoln 1,402 versus Breckenridge 21,908. But the "deeply divided sentiment" point remains.</ref> The counties simultaneously supplied over 20,000 soldiers to each side of the conflict.<ref>[http://www.wvculture.org/HISTORY/wvcivilwar.html The Civil War in West Virginia] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041015135703/http://www.wvculture.org/history/wvcivilwar.html |date=October 15, 2004 }} "No other state serves as a better example of this than West Virginia, where there was relatively equal support for the northern and southern causes."</ref><ref>Snell, Mark A., ''West Virginia and the Civil War, Mountaineers Are Always Free'', History Press, Charleston, South Carolina, 2011, p. 28</ref> Representatives for most counties were seated in both state legislatures at Wheeling and at Richmond for the duration of the war.<ref>Leonard, Cynthia Miller, ''The General Assembly of Virginia, July 30, 1619 – January 11, 1978: A Bicentennial Register of Members'', Virginia State Library, Richmond, Virginia, 1978, pp. 478–493</ref>

Attempts to secede from the Confederacy by counties in [[East Tennessee]] were checked by martial law.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.aotc.net/Marxen.htm |title=Marx and Engels on the American Civil War |publisher=Army of the Cumberland and George H. Thomas}} and {{cite web |url=http://www.civilwarhome.com/csaconstitutionbackground.htm |title=Background of the Confederate States Constitution |publisher= Civilwarhome.com}}</ref> Although slaveholding [[Delaware in the American Civil War#State of Delaware|Delaware]] and [[Maryland in the American Civil War|Maryland]] did not secede, citizens exhibited divided loyalties. Regiments of Marylanders fought in Lee's [[Army of Northern Virginia]].<ref>Glatthaar, Joseph T., ''General Lee's Army: from victory to collapse'', 2008. {{ISBN|978-0-684-82787-2}}</ref> Overall, 24,000{{nbsp}}men from Maryland joined Confederate forces, compared to 63,000 who joined Union forces.<ref name="Why?"/> Delaware never produced a full regiment for the Confederacy, but neither did it emancipate slaves as did Missouri and West Virginia. District of Columbia citizens made no attempts to secede and through the war, referendums sponsored by Lincoln approved compensated emancipation and slave confiscation from "disloyal citizens".<ref>Freedmen & Southern Society Project, [http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/chronol.htm Chronology of Emancipation during the Civil War] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011224131/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/chronol.htm |date=October 11, 2007 }}, University of Maryland. Retrieved January 4, 2012.</ref>

===Territories===
{{Main|Confederate Arizona|New Mexico Territory in the American Civil War|Indian Territory in the American Civil War}}
[[File:Elias Boudinot2.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|left|[[Elias Cornelius Boudinot|Elias Boudinot]], a Cherokee secessionist and Confederate Representative in the [[Indian Territory]] of present-day [[Oklahoma]]]]

Citizens at [[Mesilla, New Mexico|Mesilla]] and [[Tucson, Arizona|Tucson]] in the southern part of [[New Mexico Territory]] formed a secession convention, which voted to join the Confederacy on March 16, 1861, and appointed Dr. [[Lewis S. Owings]] as the new territorial governor. They won the [[First Battle of Mesilla|Battle of Mesilla]] and established a territorial government with Mesilla serving as its capital.<ref>Bowman, p. 48.</ref> The Confederacy proclaimed the Confederate Arizona Territory on February 14, 1862, north to the [[34th parallel north|34th parallel]]. [[Marcus H. MacWillie]] served in both Confederate Congresses as Arizona's delegate. In 1862, the Confederate [[New Mexico campaign]] to take the northern half of the U.S. territory failed and the Confederate territorial government in exile relocated to San Antonio, Texas.<ref>{{cite book |title=History of Arizona |volume=2 |first=Thomas Edwin |last=Farish |year=1915 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9HkUAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Act+to+organize+the+Territory+of+Arizona%22++Jefferson+Davis&pg=PA96}}</ref>

Confederate supporters in the trans-Mississippi west claimed portions of the [[Indian Territory in the American Civil War|Indian Territory]] after the US evacuated the federal forts and installations. Over half of the American Indian troops participating in the War from the Indian Territory supported the Confederacy. On July 12, 1861, the Confederate government signed a treaty with both the [[Choctaw]] and [[Chickasaw]] Indian nations. After several battles, Union armies took control of the territory.<ref>Troy Smith. [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/civil_war_history/v059/59.3.smith.html "The Civil War Comes to Indian Territory"], ''Civil War History'' (2013) 59#3 pp. 279–319.</ref>

The [[Indian Territory]] never formally joined the Confederacy, but did receive representation in the Congress. Many Indians from the Territory were integrated into regular Confederate Army units. After 1863, the tribal governments sent representatives to the [[Congress of the Confederate States|Confederate Congress]]: [[Elias Cornelius Boudinot]] representing the [[Cherokee]] and [[Samuel Benton Callahan]] representing the [[Seminole]] and [[Muscogee|Creek]]. The [[Cherokee Nation (1794–1907)|Cherokee Nation]] aligned with the Confederacy. They practiced and supported slavery, opposed abolition, and feared their lands would be seized by the Union. After the war, the Indian Territory was disestablished, their black slaves were freed, and the tribes lost some of their lands.<ref>[[Laurence M. Hauptman]], ''Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War'' (1996).</ref>

===Capitals===
{{multiple image
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 | caption1 = The first Capitol of the Confederacy in [[Montgomery, Alabama]]
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}}
[[File:William T Sutherlin Mansion Danville Virginia.JPG|thumb|[[William T. Sutherlin]]'s mansion in [[Danville, Virginia]] was the temporary residence of [[Jefferson Davis]] and dubbed the "last Capitol of the Confederacy".]]

[[History of Montgomery, Alabama#Montgomery in the Civil War|Montgomery, Alabama]], served as capital of the Confederate States from February 4 until May 29, 1861, in the [[Alabama State Capitol]]. Six states created the Confederacy there on February 8, 1861. The Texas delegation was seated at the time, so it is counted in the "original seven" states of the Confederacy; it had no roll call vote until after its referendum made secession "operative".<ref>The Texas delegation was seated with full voting rights after its statewide referendum of secession on March 2, 1861. It is generally counted as an "original state" of the Confederacy. Four upper south states declared secession following Lincoln's call for volunteers: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. "The founders of the Confederacy desired and ideally envisioned a peaceful creation of a new union of all slave-holding states, including the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri." Kentucky and Missouri were seated in December 1861. Kenneth C. Martis, ''The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America 1861–1865'' (1994) p. 8</ref><ref>The sessions of the Provisional Congress were in Montgomery, Alabama, (1) First Session February 4 – March 10, and (2) Second Session April 29 – May 21, 1861. The Capital was moved to Richmond May 30. The (3) Third Session was held July 20 – August 31. The (4) Fourth Session called for September 3 was never held. The (5) Fifth Session was held November 18, 1861 – February 17, 1862.</ref> The Permanent Constitution was adopted there on March 12, 1861.<ref>Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', pp. 7–8.</ref>

The permanent capital provided for in the Confederate Constitution called for a state cession of a 100 square mile district to the central government. Atlanta, which had not yet supplanted [[Milledgeville, Georgia#Life in the antebellum capital|Milledgeville]], Georgia, as its state capital, put in a bid noting its central location and rail connections, as did [[Opelika, Alabama]], noting its strategically interior situation, rail connections and deposits of coal and iron.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 100</ref>

[[Richmond in the American Civil War|Richmond, Virginia]], was chosen for the interim capital at the [[Virginia State Capitol]]. The move was used by Vice President Stephens and others to encourage other border states to follow Virginia into the Confederacy. In the political moment it was a show of "defiance and strength". The war for Southern independence was surely to be fought in Virginia, but it also had the largest Southern military-aged white population, with infrastructure, resources, and supplies. The Davis Administration's policy was that "It must be held at all hazards."<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 101. Virginia was practically promised as a condition of secession by Vice President Stephens. It had rail connections south along the east coast and into the interior, and laterally west into Tennessee, parallel the U.S. border, a navigable river to the Hampton Roads to menace ocean approaches to Washington DC, trade via the Atlantic Ocean, an interior canal to North Carolina sounds. It was a great storehouse of supplies, food, feed, raw materials, and infrastructure of ports, drydocks, armories and the established Tredegar Iron Works. Nevertheless, Virginia never permanently ceded land for the capital district. A local homeowner donated his home to the City of Richmond for use as the Confederate White House, which was in turn rented to the Confederate government for the Jefferson Davis presidential home and administration offices.</ref>

The naming of Richmond as the new capital took place on May 30, 1861, and the last two sessions of the Provisional Congress were held there.<ref>Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', p. 2.</ref> As war dragged on, Richmond became crowded with training and transfers, logistics and hospitals. Prices rose dramatically despite government efforts at price regulation. A movement in Congress argued for moving the capital from Richmond. At the approach of federal armies in mid-1862, the government's archives were readied for removal. As the [[Overland Campaign|Wilderness Campaign]] progressed, Congress authorized Davis to remove the executive department and call Congress to session elsewhere in 1864 and again in 1865. Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, planning to relocate further south. Little came of these plans before Lee's surrender.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 102.</ref> Davis and most of his cabinet fled to [[Danville, Virginia]], which served as their headquarters for eight days.

==Diplomacy==
During its four years, the Confederacy asserted its independence and appointed dozens of diplomatic agents abroad. None were recognized by a foreign government. The U.S. government regarded the Southern states as being in rebellion or insurrection and so refused any formal recognition of their status.

The U.S. government never declared war on those "kindred and countrymen" in the Confederacy but conducted its military efforts beginning with a presidential proclamation issued April 15, 1861.<ref>{{cite book|author=Carl Sandburg|title=Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_nL5xCYLFs0C&pg=PA151|date=1940|page=151|publisher=Sterling Publishing Company |isbn=978-1402742880}}</ref> It called for troops to recapture forts and suppress what Lincoln later called an "insurrection and rebellion".<ref>{{cite book|author=Abraham Lincoln|title=Abraham Lincoln; Complete Works, Comprising His Speeches, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hX8_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA542|year=1920|publisher=Century|page=542}}</ref> Mid-war parleys between the two sides occurred without formal political recognition, though the [[laws of war]] predominantly governed military relationships on both sides of the conflict.<ref>Violations of the rules of law were precipitated on both sides and can be found in historical accounts of guerrilla war, units in cross-racial combat and captives held in prisoner of war camps, brutal, tragic accounts against both soldiers and civilian populations.</ref>

Once war with the United States began, the Confederacy pinned its hopes for survival on military intervention by the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|UK]] or [[Second French Empire|France]]. The Confederate government sent [[James M. Mason]] to London and [[John Slidell]] to Paris. On their way in 1861, the U.S. Navy intercepted their ship, the ''Trent'', and took them to Boston, an international episode known as the [[Trent Affair|''Trent'' Affair]]. The diplomats were eventually released and continued their voyage.<ref>Francis M. Carroll, "The American Civil War and British Intervention: The Threat of Anglo-American Conflict." ''Canadian Journal of History'' (2012) 47#1 pp. 94–95.</ref> However, their mission was unsuccessful; historians judge their diplomacy as poor.<ref>Blumenthal (1966) p. 151; Jones (2009) p. 321; Owsley pp. 77-86 (1959)</ref> Neither secured [[diplomatic recognition]] for the Confederacy, much less military assistance.

The Confederates who had believed that "[[King Cotton|cotton is king]]", that is, that Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton, proved mistaken. The British had stocks to last over a year and had been developing alternative sources.<ref name=Young>{{cite book|title=Senator James Murray Mason: Defender of the Old South|first=Robert W.|last=Young|author-link= Robert W. Young|location=[[Knoxville, Tennessee]]|publisher=[[University of Tennessee Press]]|year=1998|isbn=978-0870499982|page=166}}</ref> The United Kingdom took pride in leading the end of the [[Atlantic slave trade|transatlantic slave trade]]. By [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833|1833]], the Royal Navy patrolled [[Middle Passage]] waters to prevent slave ships from reaching the Western Hemisphere. It was in London that the first [[World Anti-Slavery Convention]] had been held in 1840. Black abolitionist speakers toured England, Scotland, and Ireland, exposing the reality of America's chattel slavery and rebutting the Confederate position that blacks were "unintellectual, timid, and dependent",<ref>{{cite book|title=Plantation slavery in Georgia|first=Ralph Betts|last=Flanders|location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina|publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]]|year=1933|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015000661366&view=1up&seq=319|page=289}}</ref> and "not equal to the white man...the superior race." [[Frederick Douglass]], [[Henry Highland Garnet]], [[Sarah Parker Remond]], her brother [[Charles Lenox Remond]], [[James W. C. Pennington]], [[Martin Delany]], [[Samuel Ringgold Ward]], and [[William G. Allen]] all spent years in Britain, where fugitive slaves were safe and, as Allen said, there was an "absence of prejudice against color. Here the colored man feels himself among friends, and not among enemies".<ref>{{cite news|title=Letter from Professor Wm. G. Allen [dated June 20, 1853]|newspaper=[[The Liberator (newspaper)|The Liberator]]|via=[[newspapers.com]]. Reprinted in ''[[Frederick Douglass' Paper]]'', August 5, 1853.|date=July 22, 1853|page=4|first=Wm. G.|last=Allen|author-link=William G. Allen|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/33711948/letter-from-william-g-allen/}}</ref> Most British public opinion was against the practice, with Liverpool seen as the primary base of Southern support.<ref>{{Cite web |title=British Support During the U.S. Civil War · Liverpool's Abercromby Square and the Confederacy During the U.S. Civil War · Lowcountry Digital History Initiative |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/liverpools-abercromby-square/britain-and-us-civil-war#:~:text=By%20the%20time%20of%20the,start%20of%20the%20Civil%20War. |access-date=2024-04-21 |website=ldhi.library.cofc.edu}}</ref>

{{multiple image|caption_align=center
|image1=Lord John Russell.jpg |width1=150|caption1= Lord John Russell, British foreign secretary and later prime minister, considered mediation in the "American War".
|image2=Alexandre Cabanel 002.jpg|width2=157|caption2= French Emperor Napoleon III sought joint French–British recognition of the Confederacy.}}

Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary [[John Russell, 1st Earl Russell|Lord John Russell]], Emperor [[Napoleon III]] of France, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister [[Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Lord Palmerston]], showed interest in recognition of the Confederacy or at least mediation of the war. [[Chancellor of the Exchequer]] [[William Ewart Gladstone|William Gladstone]] attempted unsuccessfully to convince Palmerston to intervene.<ref>{{cite book|author= Richard Shannon|author-link = Richard Shannon (historian)|title= Gladstone: God and Politics|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=H9TUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA144|year= 2008|page= 144| publisher=A&C Black |isbn = 978-1847252036}}</ref> By September 1862 the Union victory at the [[Battle of Antietam]], Lincoln's preliminary [[Emancipation Proclamation]] and abolitionist opposition in Britain put an end to these possibilities.<ref>Thomas Paterson, et al. ''American foreign relations: A history, to 1920: Volume 1'' (2009) pp. 149–155.</ref> The cost to Britain of a war with the U.S. would have been high: the immediate loss of American grain shipments, the end of British exports to the U.S., and seizure of billions of pounds invested in American securities. War would have meant higher taxes in Britain, another invasion of Canada, and attacks on the British merchant fleet. In mid-1862, fears of a race war (like the [[Haitian Revolution]] of 1791–1804) led to the British considering intervention for humanitarian reasons.<ref>Howard Jones, ''Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War'' (2002), p. 48</ref>

[[John Slidell]], the Confederate States emissary to the [[Second French Empire|French Empire]], succeeded in negotiating a loan of $15,000,000 from [[Frédéric Émile d'Erlanger|Erlanger]] and other French capitalists for [[ironclad warship]]s and military supplies.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 2205869|title = A Confederate Success in Europe: The Erlanger Loan|journal = The Journal of Southern History|volume = 36|issue = 2|pages = 157–188|last1 = Gentry|first1 = Judith Fenner|year = 1970|doi = 10.2307/2205869}}</ref> The British government allowed the construction of [[Blockade runners of the American Civil War|blockade runners]] in Britain. Most of these were owned and operated by British financiers and shipowners, though a few were owned and operated by the Confederacy. The goal of the British investors was to acquire highly profitable cotton.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 2120650|title = Through the Blockade: The Profitability and Extent of Cotton Smuggling, 1861–1865|journal = The Journal of Economic History|volume = 41|issue = 4|pages = 867–888|last1 = Lebergott|first1 = Stanley|year = 1981|doi = 10.1017/S0022050700044946| s2cid=154654909 }}</ref>

Several European nations maintained diplomats in place who had been appointed to the U.S., but no country appointed any diplomat to the Confederacy. Those nations recognized the Union and Confederate sides as [[belligerent]]s. In 1863, the Confederacy expelled European diplomatic missions for advising their resident subjects to refuse to serve in the Confederate army.<ref>Alexander DeConde, ed. ''Encyclopedia of American foreign policy'' (2001) vol. 1 p. 202 and Stephen R. Wise, ''Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War'', (1991), [https://books.google.com/books?id=_kq7diciSsQC&pg=PA86 p. 86].</ref> Both Confederate and Union agents were allowed to work openly in British territories.<ref>Wise, Stephen R. [https://books.google.com/books?id=_kq7diciSsQC ''Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War'']. University of South Carolina Press, 1991 {{ISBN|978-0-87249-799-3}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=_kq7diciSsQC&pg=PA86 p. 86]. An example of agents working openly occurred in [[Hamilton, Bermuda|Hamilton]] in Bermuda, where a Confederate agent openly worked to help blockade runners.</ref> The Confederacy appointed [[Ambrose Dudley Mann]] as special agent to the [[Holy See]] in September 1863, but the Holy See never released a statement supporting or recognizing the Confederacy. In November 1863, Mann met [[Pope Pius IX]] and received a letter supposedly addressed "to the Illustrious and Honorable Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America"; Mann had mistranslated the address. In his report to Richmond, Mann claimed a great diplomatic achievement for himself, but Confederate Secretary of State [[Judah P. Benjamin]] told Mann it was "a mere inferential recognition, unconnected with political action or the regular establishment of diplomatic relations" and thus did not assign it the weight of formal recognition.<ref>{{cite book|title= The American Catholic Historical Researches|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=m7c7AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA227|year= 1901|pages= 27–28}}</ref><ref>Don H. Doyle, ''The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War'' (2014) pp. 257–270.</ref>

Nevertheless, the Confederacy was seen internationally as a serious attempt at nationhood, and European governments sent military observers to assess whether there had been a ''de facto'' establishment of independence. These observers included [[Arthur Lyon Fremantle]] of the British [[Coldstream Guards]], who entered the Confederacy via Mexico, Fitzgerald Ross of the Austrian [[Hussars]], and [[Justus Scheibert]] of the [[Prussian Army]].<ref>"Thomas1979" pp. 219–221</ref> European travelers visited and wrote accounts for publication. Importantly in 1862, the Frenchman [[Charles Frédéric Girard|Charles Girard]]'s ''Seven months in the rebel states during the North American War'' testified "this government ... is no longer a trial government ... but really a normal government, the expression of popular will".<ref>Scholars such as Emory M. Thomas have characterized Girard's book as "more propaganda than anything else, but Girard caught one essential truth", the quote referenced. "Thomas1979" p. 220</ref> Fremantle went on to write in his book ''Three Months in the Southern States'' that he had:

{{Blockquote|not attempted to conceal any of the peculiarities or defects of the Southern people. Many persons will doubtless highly disapprove of some of their customs and habits in the wilder portion of the country; but I think no generous man, whatever may be his political opinions, can do otherwise than admire the courage, energy, and patriotism of the whole population, and the skill of its leaders, in this struggle against great odds. And I am also of opinion that many will agree with me in thinking that a people in which all ranks and both sexes display a unanimity and a heroism which can never have been surpassed in the history of the world, is destined, sooner or later, to become a great and independent nation.<ref>{{cite book |last= Fremantle |first= Arthur |date= 1864 |title= Three Months in the Southern States|publisher= University of Nebraska Press|page= 124 |isbn= 978-1429016667}}</ref>}}

French Emperor Napoleon III assured Confederate diplomat John Slidell that he would make a "direct proposition" to Britain for joint recognition. The Emperor made the same assurance to British members of Parliament [[John A. Roebuck]] and John A. Lindsay. Roebuck in turn publicly prepared a bill to submit to Parliament supporting joint Anglo-French recognition of the Confederacy. "Southerners had a right to be optimistic, or at least hopeful, that their revolution would prevail, or at least endure." Following the disasters at [[Siege of Vicksburg|Vicksburg]] and [[Battle of Gettysburg]] in July 1863, the Confederates "suffered a severe loss of confidence in themselves" and withdrew into an interior defensive position.<ref>"Thomas1979" p. 243</ref> By December 1864, Davis considered sacrificing slavery in order to enlist recognition and aid from Paris and London; he secretly sent [[Duncan F. Kenner]] to Europe with a message that the war was fought solely for "the vindication of our rights to self-government and independence" and that "no sacrifice is too great, save that of honor". The message stated that if the French or British governments made their recognition conditional on anything at all, the Confederacy would consent to such terms.<ref>{{cite book |title= A compilation of the messages and papers of the Confederacy: including the diplomatic correspondence, 1861–1865 |url= https://archive.org/details/acompilationmes74richgoog |editor= Richardson, James D. |others= Volume II |publisher= United States Publishing Company |location= Nashville |year= 1905 |page =[https://archive.org/details/acompilationmes74richgoog/page/n715 697] |access-date= March 18, 2013}}</ref> European leaders all saw that the Confederacy was on the verge of defeat.<ref name="levine-248">{{cite book|last= Levine|first= Bruce|title= The Fall of the House of Dixie|year= 2013|publisher= Random House|page= 248}}</ref>

The Confederacy's biggest foreign policy successes were with [[Empire of Brazil|Brazil]] and [[Captaincy General of Cuba|Cuba]], but this had little military import. Brazil represented the "peoples most identical to us in Institutions",<ref name=Spain/> in which [[Slavery in Brazil|slavery remained legal]] until the 1880s and the abolitionist movement was small. Confederate ships were welcome in Brazilian ports.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason|last=Mason|first=Virginia|year=1906|page=203|publisher=New York and Washington, The Neale Publishing Company|url=https://archive.org/details/publiclifediplom00masonva/page/202/mode/2up}}</ref> After the war, Brazil was the primary destination of those Southerners who wanted to continue living in a slave society, where, as one immigrant remarked, ''[[Confederados|Confederado]]'' slaves were cheap. The Captain–General of Cuba declared in writing that Confederate ships were welcome, and would be protected in Cuban ports.<ref name=Spain>{{cite news|title=Spain and the Confederate States|newspaper=[[Charleston Mercury]] ([[Charleston, South Carolina]])|date=September 12, 1861|page=1|via=accessiblearchives.com|url=https://accessible.com/accessible/docButton?AAWhat=builtPage&AAWhere=THECHARLESTONMERCURY.18610912_001.image&AABeanName=toc1&AANextPage=/printBuiltImagePage.jsp}}</ref> Historians speculate that if the Confederacy had achieved independence, it probably would have tried to acquire Cuba as a base of expansion.<ref>Robert E. May, "The irony of confederate diplomacy: visions of empire, the Monroe doctrine, and the quest for nationhood." ''Journal of Southern History'' 83.1 (2017): 69–106 [https://muse.jhu.edu/article/647290/summary excerpt]</ref>

==At war==

===Motivations of soldiers===
{{Main|Confederate States Army#Morale and motivations}}

Most soldiers who joined Confederate national or state military units joined voluntarily. [[Michael Perman]] (2010) says historians are of two minds on why millions of soldiers seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years:

{{Blockquote|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.<ref>{{cite book|editor=Michael Perman|editor2=Amy Murrell 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 |page=178|isbn=978-0618875207}}</ref><ref>James McPherson, ''For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War'' (1998)</ref>}}

===Military strategy===
Civil War historian [[E. Merton Coulter]] wrote that for those who would secure its independence, "The Confederacy was unfortunate in its failure to work out a general strategy for the whole war". Aggressive strategy called for offensive force concentration. Defensive strategy sought dispersal to meet demands of locally minded governors. The controlling philosophy evolved into a combination "dispersal with a defensive concentration around Richmond". The Davis administration considered the war purely defensive, a "simple demand that the people of the United States would cease to war upon us".<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 342–343</ref> Historian [[James M. McPherson]] is a critic of Lee's offensive strategy: "Lee pursued a faulty military strategy that ensured Confederate defeat".<ref>{{cite book|author=James M. McPherson Professor of American History Princeton University|title=Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War: Reflections on the American Civil War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KejHFo7A8eQC&pg=PA152|year=1996|publisher=Oxford U.P.|page=152|isbn=978-0199727834}}</ref>

As the Confederate government lost control of territory in campaign after campaign, it was said that "the vast size of the Confederacy would make its conquest impossible". The enemy would be struck down by the same elements which so often debilitated or destroyed visitors and transplants in the South: heat exhaustion, sunstroke, and endemic diseases such as malaria and typhoid.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 348. "The enemy could not hold territory, a hostile people would close in behind. The Confederacy still existed wherever there was an army under her unfurled banners."</ref>

[[File:Seal of the Confederate States of America.svg|thumb|The Seal<!-- "Great" would be historically inaccurate, and was not in the 1863 law passed by the C.S. Congress establishing the Seal. --> has symbols of an independent agricultural Confederacy surrounding an equestrian Washington, sword encased.{{efn|The cash crops circling the Seal are wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar cane. Like Washington's equestrian statue honoring him at [[Union Square (New York City)#Union Square Partnership|Union Square]] NYC 1856, slaveholding Washington is pictured in his uniform of the Revolution securing American independence. Though armed, he does not have his sword drawn as he is depicted in the [[Washington Monument (Richmond, Virginia)|equestrian statue at the Virginia Capitol, Richmond, Virginia]]. The plates for the Seal were engraved in England but never received due to the Union Blockade.}}]]

Early in the war, both sides believed that one great battle would decide the conflict; the Confederates won a surprise victory at the [[First Battle of Bull Run]], also known as [[First Manassas]] (the name used by Confederate forces). It drove the Confederate people "insane with joy"; the public demanded a forward movement to capture Washington, relocate the Confederate capital there, and admit [[Maryland in the Civil War|Maryland]] to the Confederacy.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 343</ref> A council of war by the victorious Confederate generals decided not to advance against larger numbers of fresh federal troops in defensive positions. Davis did not countermand it. Following the Confederate incursion into Maryland halted at the [[Battle of Antietam]] in October 1862, generals proposed concentrating forces from state commands to re-invade the north. Nothing came of it.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 346</ref> Again in mid-1863 at his incursion into Pennsylvania, Lee requested of Davis that [[P. G. T. Beauregard|Beauregard]] simultaneously attack Washington with troops taken from the Carolinas. But the troops there remained in place during the [[Gettysburg campaign]].

The 11 states of the Confederacy were outnumbered by the North about four-to-one in military manpower. It was overmatched far more in military equipment, industrial facilities, railroads, and wagons supplying the front.

Confederates slowed the Yankee invaders, at heavy cost to the Southern infrastructure. The Confederates burned bridges, laid [[land mine]]s in the roads, and made harbors inlets and inland waterways unusable with sunken mines (called "torpedoes" at the time). Coulter reports:

{{Blockquote|Rangers in twenty to fifty-man units were awarded 50% valuation for property destroyed behind Union lines, regardless of location or loyalty. As Federals occupied the South, objections by loyal Confederate concerning Ranger horse-stealing and indiscriminate scorched earth tactics behind Union lines led to Congress abolishing the Ranger service two years later.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 333–338.</ref>}}

The Confederacy relied on external sources for war materials. The first came from trade with the enemy. "Vast amounts of war supplies" came through Kentucky, and thereafter, western armies were "to a very considerable extent" provisioned with illicit trade via federal agents and northern private traders.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 286. After capture by the Union, [[Memphis, Tennessee#19th century|Memphis]], Tennessee became a major source of supply for Confederate armies, comparable to Nassau and its [[Blockade runners of the American Civil War|blockade runners]].</ref> But that trade was interrupted in the first year of war by [[David Dixon Porter|Admiral Porter]]'s river gunboats as they gained dominance along navigable rivers north–south and east–west.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 306. Confederate units harassed them throughout the war years by laying torpedo mines and loosing barrages from shoreline batteries.</ref> Overseas blockade running then came to be of "outstanding importance".<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 287–288. The principal ports on the Atlantic were [[Wilmington, North Carolina in the American Civil War|Wilmington]], North Carolina, [[Charleston, South Carolina#Civil War (1861–1865)|Charleston]], South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia for supplies from Europe via Bermuda and Nassau. On the Gulf were Galveston, Texas and [[New Orleans in the American Civil War|New Orleans]], Louisiana for those from Havana, Cuba and Mexican ports of Tampico and Vera Cruz.</ref> On April 17, President Davis called on privateer raiders, the "militia of the sea", to wage war on U.S. seaborne commerce.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 296, 304. Two days later Lincoln proclaimed a blockade, declaring them pirates. Davis responded with [[letters of marque]] to protect privateers from outlaw status. Some of the early raiders were converted merchantmen seized in Southern ports at the outbreak of the war</ref> Despite noteworthy effort, over the course of the war the Confederacy was found unable to match the Union in ships and seamanship, materials and marine construction.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 299–302. The [[Confederate Secret Service#Torpedo Bureau|Torpedo Bureau]] seeded defensive water-borne mines in principal harbors and rivers to compromise the Union naval superiority. These "torpedoes" were said to have caused more loss in U.S. naval ships and transports than by any other cause. Despite a rage for Congressional appropriations and public "subscription ironclads", armored platforms constructed in blockaded ports lacked the requisite marine engines to become ironclad warships. The armored platforms intended to become ironclads were employed instead as floating batteries for port city defense.</ref>

An inescapable obstacle to success in the warfare of mass armies was the Confederacy's lack of manpower, and sufficient numbers of disciplined, equipped troops in the field at the point of contact with the enemy. During the winter of 1862–63, Lee observed that none of his famous victories had resulted in the destruction of the opposing army. He lacked reserve troops to exploit an advantage on the battlefield as Napoleon had done. Lee explained, "More than once have most promising opportunities been lost for want of men to take advantage of them, and victory itself had been made to put on the appearance of defeat, because our diminished and exhausted troops have been unable to renew a successful struggle against fresh numbers of the enemy."<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 321</ref>

===Armed forces===
{{Main|Military forces of the Confederate States}}
[[File:Robert Edward Lee.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|General [[Robert E. Lee]], [[General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States|General in Chief]] (1865)]]
[[File:Uniform and dress of the army of the Confederate States bis-page-031.jpg|thumb|[[Uniform]] and dress of the army of the Confederate States.]]
The military armed forces of the Confederacy comprised three branches: [[Confederate States Army|Army]], [[Confederate States Navy|Navy]] and [[Confederate States Marine Corps|Marine Corps]].

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 president, [[Jefferson Davis]]. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at [[Charleston, South Carolina]], where South Carolina state militia besieged [[Fort Sumter]] in Charleston harbor, held by a small [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] garrison. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.

The total population of the Confederate Army is unknowable due to incomplete and destroyed Confederate records but estimates are between 750,000 and 1,000,000 troops. This does not include an unknown number of slaves pressed into army tasks, such as the construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons.<ref>Albert Burton Moore, ''Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy'' (1924)</ref> Confederate casualty figures also are incomplete and unreliable, estimated at 94,000 killed or mortally wounded, 164,000 deaths from disease, and between 26,000 and 31,000 deaths in Union prison camps. One incomplete estimate is 194,026.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

The Confederate military leadership included many veterans from the [[United States Army]] and [[United States Navy]] who had resigned their federal commissions and were appointed to senior positions. Many had served in the [[Mexican–American War]] (including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis), but some such as [[Leonidas Polk]] (who graduated from [[United States Military Academy|West Point]] but did not serve in the Army) had little or no experience.

The Confederate officer corps consisted of men from both slave-owning and non-slave-owning families. The Confederacy appointed junior and field grade officers by election from the enlisted ranks. Although no Army service academy was established for the Confederacy, some colleges (such as [[The Citadel (military college)|The Citadel]] and [[Virginia Military Institute]]) maintained cadet corps that trained Confederate military leadership. A naval academy was established at [[Drewry's Bluff]], Virginia<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1862blackCSN.htm|title=1862blackCSN|website=navyandmarine.org|access-date=May 3, 2023}}</ref> in 1863, but no midshipmen graduated before the Confederacy's end.

Most soldiers were white males aged between 16 and 28; half were 23 or older by 1861.<ref>Joseph T. Glatthaar, ''Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Statistical Portrait of the Troops Who Served under Robert E. Lee'' (2011) p. 3, ch. 9</ref> The Confederate Army was permitted to disband for two months in early 1862 after its short-term enlistments expired. The majority of those in uniform would not re-enlist after their one-year commitment, thus on April 16, 1862, the Confederate Congress imposed the first mass [[conscription]] on North American territory. (A year later, on March 3, 1863, the United States Congress passed the [[Enrollment Act]].) Rather than a universal draft, the first program was a selective one with physical, religious, professional, and industrial exemptions. These became narrower as the battle progressed. Initially substitutes were permitted, but by December 1863 these were disallowed. In September 1862 the age limit was increased from 35 to 45 and by February 1864, all men under 18 and over 45 were conscripted to form a reserve for state defense inside state borders. By March 1864, the Superintendent of Conscription reported that all across the Confederacy, every officer in constituted authority, man and woman, "engaged in opposing the enrolling officer in the execution of his duties".<ref>Coulter, E. Merton, ''The Confederate States of America: 1861–1865'', op. cit., pp. 313–315, 318.</ref> Although challenged in the state courts, the Confederate State Supreme Courts routinely rejected legal challenges to conscription.<ref>[[Alfred L. Brophy]], [http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/necessity-knows-no-law.pdf {{"'}}Necessity Knows No Law': Vested Rights and the Styles of Reasoning in the Confederate Conscription Cases"], ''[[Mississippi Law Journal]]'' (2000) 69: 1123–1180.</ref>

Many thousands of slaves served as personal servants to their owner, or were hired as laborers, cooks, and pioneers.<ref>{{cite book|author=Stephen V. Ash|title=The Black Experience in the Civil War South|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L6BURiBt340C&pg=PA43|year=2010|publisher=ABC-CLIO|page=43|isbn=978-0275985240}}</ref> Some freed blacks and men of color served in local state militia units of the Confederacy, primarily in Louisiana and South Carolina, but their officers deployed them for "local defense, not combat".<ref>Rubin p. 104.</ref> Depleted by casualties and desertions, the military suffered chronic manpower shortages. In early 1865, the Confederate Congress, influenced by the public support by General Lee, approved the recruitment of black infantry units. Contrary to Lee's and Davis's recommendations, the Congress refused "to guarantee the freedom of black volunteers". No more than two hundred black combat troops were ever raised.<ref>Levine pp. 146–147.</ref>

====Raising troops====
[[File:To Arms Confederate Enlistment Poster 1862.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Recruitment poster: "Do not wait to be drafted". Under half re-enlisted.]]

The immediate onset of war meant that it was fought by the "Provisional" or "Volunteer Army". State governors resisted concentrating a national effort. Several wanted a strong state army for self-defense. Others feared large "Provisional" armies answering only to Davis.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 308–311. The patchwork recruitment was (a) with and without state militia enrolment, (b) state Governor sponsorship and direct service under Davis, (c) for under six months, one year, three years and the duration of the war. Davis proposed recruitment for some period of years or the duration. Congress and the states equivocated. Governor Brown of Georgia became "the first and most persistent critic" of Confederate centralized military and civil power.</ref> When filling the Confederate government's call for 100,000 men, another 200,000 were turned away by accepting only those enlisted "for the duration" or twelve-month volunteers who brought their own arms or horses.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 310–311</ref>

It was important to raise troops; it was just as important to provide capable officers to command them. With few exceptions the Confederacy secured excellent general officers. Efficiency in the lower officers was "greater than could have been reasonably expected". As with the Union, political appointees could be indifferent. Otherwise, the officer corps was governor-appointed or elected by unit enlisted. Promotion to fill vacancies was made internally regardless of merit, even if better officers were immediately available.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 328, 330–332. About 90% of West Pointers in the U.S. Army resigned to join the Confederacy. Notably, of Virginia's West Pointers, not 90% but 70% resigned for the Confederacy. Exemplary officers without military training included [[John B. Gordon]], [[Nathan B. Forrest]], [[J. Johnston Pettigrew|James J. Pettigrew]], [[John Hunt Morgan|John H. Morgan]], [[Turner Ashby]] and [[John S. Mosby]]. Most preliminary officer training was had from Hardee's "Tactics", and thereafter by observation and experience in battle. The Confederacy had no officers training camps or military academies, although early on, cadets of the Virginia Military Institute and other military schools drilled enlisted troops in battlefield evolutions.</ref>

Anticipating the need for more "duration" men, in January 1862 Congress provided for company level recruiters to return home for two months, but their efforts met little success on the heels of Confederate battlefield defeats in February.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 310–311. Early 1862 "dried up the enthusiasm to volunteer" due to the impact of victory's battle casualties, the humiliation of defeats and the dislike of camp life with its monotony, confinement and mortal diseases. Immediately following the great victory at the [[First Battle of Bull Run|Battle of Manassas]], many believed the war was won and there was no need for more troops. Then the new year brought defeat over February 6–23: [[Fort Henry (site of the Battle of Fort Henry)|Fort Henry]], [[Battle of Roanoke Island|Roanoke Island]], [[Fort Donelson]], Nashville—the first capital to fall. Among some not yet in uniform, the less victorious "Cause" seemed less glorious.</ref> Congress allowed for Davis to require numbers of recruits from each governor to supply the volunteer shortfall. States responded by passing their own draft laws.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 312. The government funded parades and newspaper ad campaigns, $2,000,000 for recruitment in Kentucky alone. With a state-enacted draft, Governor Brown with a quota of 12,000 raised 22,000 Georgia militia.</ref>

The veteran Confederate army of early 1862 was mostly twelve-month volunteers with terms about to expire. Enlisted reorganization elections disintegrated the army for two months. Officers pleaded with the ranks to re-enlist, but a majority did not. Those remaining elected majors and colonels whose performance led to officer review boards in October. The boards caused a "rapid and widespread" thinning out of 1,700 incompetent officers. Troops thereafter would elect only second lieutenants.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 313, 332. Officially dropping 425 officers by board review in October was followed immediately by 1,300 "resignations". Some officers who resigned then served honorably as enlisted for the duration or until they were made casualties, others resigned and returned home until conscription.</ref>

In early 1862, the popular press suggested the Confederacy required a million men under arms. But veteran soldiers were not re-enlisting, and earlier secessionist volunteers did not reappear to serve in war. One [[Macon, Georgia]], newspaper asked how two million brave fighting men of the South were about to be overcome by four million northerners who were said to be cowards.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 313</ref>

====Conscription====
{{Main|Confederate Conscription Acts 1862–1864}}
[[File:Resistance to Confederate conscription.jpg|thumb|Southern Unionists throughout the Confederate States resisted the 1862 conscription]]

The Confederacy passed the first American law of national conscription on April 16, 1862. The white males of the Confederate States from 18 to 35 were declared members of the Confederate army for three years, and all men then enlisted were extended to a three-year term. They would serve only in units and under officers of their state. Those under 18 and over 35 could substitute for conscripts, in September those from 35 to 45 became conscripts.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 313–314. Military officers including Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee, advocated conscription. In the circumstances they persuaded Congressmen and newspaper editors. Some editors advocating conscription in early 1862 later became "savage critics of conscription and of Davis for his enforcement of it: Yancey of Alabama, Rhett of the Charleston 'Mercury', Pollard of the Richmond 'Examiner', and Senator Wigfall of Texas".</ref> The cry of "rich man's war and a poor man's fight" led Congress to abolish the substitute system altogether in December 1863. All principals benefiting earlier were made eligible for service. By February 1864, the age bracket was made 17 to 50, those under eighteen and over forty-five to be limited to in-state duty.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 313–314, 319.</ref>

Confederate conscription was not universal; it was a selective service. The [[Confederate Conscription Acts 1862–1864|First Conscription Act]] of April 1862 exempted occupations related to transportation, communication, industry, ministers, teaching and physical fitness. The Second Conscription Act of October 1862 expanded exemptions in industry, agriculture and conscientious objection. Exemption fraud proliferated in medical examinations, army furloughs, churches, schools, apothecaries and newspapers.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 315–317.</ref>

Rich men's sons were appointed to the socially outcast "overseer" occupation, but the measure was received in the country with "universal odium". The legislative vehicle was the controversial [[Twenty Negro Law]] that specifically exempted one white overseer or owner for every plantation with at least 20 slaves. Backpedaling six months later, Congress provided overseers under 45 could be exempted only if they held the occupation before the first Conscription Act.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 320. One such exemption was allowed for every 20 slaves on a plantation, the May 1863 reform required previous occupation and that the plantation of 20 slaves (or group of plantations within a five-mile area) had not been subdivided after the first exemption of April 1862.</ref> The number of officials under state exemptions appointed by state Governor patronage expanded significantly.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 317–318.</ref>

<gallery style="float:right; text-align:center" perrow="2" heights="150">
Gabriel James Rains.jpg|Gen. [[Gabriel J. Rains]], {{small|Conscription Bureau chief, April 1862 – May 1863}}
General Gideon Johnson Pillow.jpg|Gen. [[Gideon J. Pillow]], {{small|military recruiter under Bragg, then J.E. Johnston<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederates States of America'', p. 324.</ref>}}
</gallery>

The Conscription Act of February 1864 "radically changed the whole system" of selection. It abolished industrial exemptions, placing detail authority in President Davis. As the shame of conscription was greater than a felony conviction, the system brought in "about as many volunteers as it did conscripts." Many men in otherwise "bombproof" positions were enlisted in one way or another, nearly 160,000 additional volunteers and conscripts in uniform. Still there was shirking.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 322–324, 326.</ref> To administer the draft, a Bureau of Conscription was set up to use state officers, as state Governors would allow. It had a checkered career of "contention, opposition and futility". Armies appointed alternative military "recruiters" to bring in the out-of-uniform 17–50-year-old conscripts and deserters. Nearly 3,000 officers were tasked with the job. By late 1864, Lee was calling for more troops. "Our ranks are constantly diminishing by battle and disease, and few recruits are received; the consequences are inevitable." By March 1865 conscription was to be administered by generals of the state reserves calling out men over 45 and under 18 years old. All exemptions were abolished. These regiments were assigned to recruit conscripts ages 17–50, recover deserters, and repel enemy cavalry raids. The service retained men who had lost but one arm or a leg in home guards. Ultimately, conscription was a failure, and its main value was in goading men to volunteer.<ref name="Coulter, pp. 323">Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 323–325, 327.</ref>

The survival of the Confederacy depended on a strong base of civilians and soldiers devoted to victory. The soldiers performed well, though increasing numbers deserted in the last year of fighting, and the Confederacy never succeeded in replacing casualties as the Union could. The civilians, although enthusiastic in 1861–62, seem to have lost faith in the future of the Confederacy by 1864, and instead looked to protect their homes and communities. As [[George C. Rable]] explains, "This contraction of civic vision was more than a crabbed [[libertarianism]]; it represented an increasingly widespread disillusionment with the Confederate experiment."<ref>Rable (1994) p. 265.</ref>

===Victories: 1861===
The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with a Confederate victory at the [[Battle of Fort Sumter]] in [[Charleston, South Carolina in the American Civil War|Charleston]].

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|caption2=First Bull Run ([[First Battle of Bull Run|First Manassas]]), the North's "Big Skedaddle"<ref>[[Margaret Leech]], ''Reveille in Washington'' (1942)</ref>
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In January, President [[James Buchanan]] had attempted to resupply the garrison with the steamship, ''[[Star of the West]]'', but Confederate artillery drove it away. In March, President Lincoln notified South Carolina Governor [[Francis W. Pickens|Pickens]] that without Confederate resistance to the resupply there would be no military reinforcement without further notice, but Lincoln prepared to force resupply if it were not allowed. Confederate President Davis, in cabinet, decided to seize Fort Sumter before the relief fleet arrived, and on April 12, 1861, General [[P. G. T. Beauregard|Beauregard]] forced its surrender.<ref>{{cite book|last=Stephens|first=Alexander H.|author-link=Alexander Stephens|title=A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States|url=https://archive.org/details/constitutionalview02steprich|format=PDF|volume=2|year=1870|page=[https://archive.org/details/constitutionalview02steprich/page/36 36]|quote=I maintain that it was inaugurated and begun, though no blow had been struck, when the hostile fleet, styled the 'Relief Squadron', with eleven ships, carrying two hundred and eighty-five guns and two thousand four hundred men, was sent out from New York and Norfolk, with orders from the authorities at Washington, to reinforce Fort Sumter peaceably, if permitted 'but forcibly if they must'&nbsp;...|publisher=Philadelphia: National Pub. Co.; Chicago: Zeigler, McCurdy}} After the war, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens maintained that Lincoln's attempt to resupply Sumter was a disguised reinforcement and had provoked the war.</ref>

Following Sumter, [[Proclamation 80|Lincoln directed states to provide 75,000 militiamen]] for three months to recapture the Charleston Harbor forts and all other federal property.<ref name=LincolnCallToArms>
[http://www.civilwarhome.com/lincolntroops.htm Lincoln's proclamation calling for troops from the remaining states] (bottom of page); Department of War details to States (top).</ref> This emboldened secessionists in Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina to secede rather than provide troops to march into neighboring Southern states. In May, federal troops crossed into Confederate territory along the entire border from the Chesapeake Bay to New Mexico. The first battles were Confederate victories at Big Bethel ([[Battle of Big Bethel|Bethel Church, Virginia]]), First Bull Run ([[First Battle of Bull Run|First Manassas]]) in Virginia July and in August, Wilson's Creek ([[Battle of Wilson's Creek|Oak Hills]]) in Missouri. At all three, Confederate forces could not follow up their victory due to inadequate supply and shortages of fresh troops to exploit their successes. Following each battle, Federals maintained a military presence and occupied Washington, DC; Fort Monroe, Virginia; and Springfield, Missouri. Both North and South began training up armies for major fighting the next year.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 352–353.</ref> Union General [[George B. McClellan]]'s forces gained possession of much of northwestern Virginia in mid-1861, concentrating on towns and roads; the interior was too large to control and became the center of guerrilla activity.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moawar;cc=moawar;q1=red%20house;rgn=full%20text;idno=waro0005;didno=waro0005;view=image;seq=0580|title= The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; Series 1|volume= 5|page=56}}4</ref><ref>Rice, Otis K. and Stephen W. Brown, ''West Virginia, A History'', University of Kentucky Press, 1993, 2nd ed., p. 130</ref> General [[Robert E. Lee]] was defeated at [[Cheat Mountain]] in September and no serious Confederate advance in western Virginia occurred until the next year.

Meanwhile, the Union Navy seized control of much of the Confederate coastline from Virginia to South Carolina. It took over plantations and the abandoned slaves. Federals there began a war-long policy of burning grain supplies up rivers into the interior wherever they could not occupy.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 353.</ref> The Union Navy began a blockade of the major southern ports and prepared an invasion of Louisiana to capture New Orleans in early 1862.

===Incursions: 1862===
The victories of 1861 were followed by a series of defeats east and west in early 1862. To restore the Union by military force, the federal strategy was to (1) secure the Mississippi River, (2) seize or close Confederate ports, and (3) march on Richmond. To secure independence, the Confederate intent was to (1) repel the invader on all fronts, costing him blood and treasure, and (2) carry the war into the North by two offensives in time to affect the mid-term elections.

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|caption2=Burying Union dead. Antietam, Maryland.<ref>Glatthaar, Joseph T., ''General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse,'' Free Press 2008. {{ISBN|978-0-684-82787-2}}, p. xiv. Inflicting intolerable casualties on invading federal armies was a Confederate strategy to make the northern Unionists relent in their pursuit of restoring the Union.</ref>
}}

Much of northwestern Virginia was under federal control.<ref>Ambler, Charles, ''Francis H. Pierpont: Union War Governor of Virginia and Father of West Virginia'', Univ. of North Carolina, 1937, p. 419, note 36. Letter of Adjutant General Henry L. Samuels, August 22, 1862, to Gov. Francis Pierpont listing 22 of 48 counties under sufficient control for soldier recruitment.<br />[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsb&fileName=037/llsb037.db&recNum=1996 ''Congressional Globe,'' 37th Congress, 3rd Session, Senate Bill S.531, February 14, 1863] "A bill supplemental to the act entitled 'An act for the Admission of the State of 'West Virginia' into the Union, and for other purposes' which would include the counties of "Boone, Logan, Wyoming, Mercer, McDowell, Pocahontas, Raleigh, Greenbrier, Monroe, Pendleton, Fayette, Nicholas, and Clay, now in the possession of the so-called confederate government".</ref> In February and March, most of Missouri and Kentucky were Union "occupied, consolidated, and used as staging areas for advances further South". Following the repulse of a Confederate counterattack at the [[Battle of Shiloh]], Tennessee, permanent federal occupation expanded west, south and east.<ref>Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', p. 27. In the Mississippi River Valley, during the first half of February, central Tennessee's [[Battle of Fort Henry|Fort Henry]] was lost and [[Battle of Fort Donelson|Fort Donelson]] fell with a small army. By the end of the month, [[Tennessee in the american civil war#Twin Rivers Campaign of 1862|Nashville]], Tennessee was the first conquered Confederate state capital. On April 6–7, Federals turned back the Confederate offensive at the Battle of Shiloh, and three days later [[Battle of Island Number Ten|Island Number 10]], controlling the upper Mississippi River, fell to a combined Army and Naval gunboat siege of three weeks.

Federal occupation of Confederate territory expanded to include northwestern Arkansas, south down the Mississippi River and east up the Tennessee River. The Confederate River Defense fleet sank two Union ships at [[Battle of Plum Point Bend|Plum Point Bend]] (naval Fort Pillow), but they withdrew and [[Fort Pillow, Tennessee|Fort Pillow]] was captured downriver.</ref> Confederate forces repositioned south along the Mississippi River to [[Memphis, Tennessee]], where at the naval [[First Battle of Memphis|Battle of Memphis]], its River Defense Fleet was sunk. Confederates withdrew from northern Mississippi and northern Alabama. [[Capture of New Orleans|New Orleans was captured on April 29]] by a combined Army-Navy force under U.S. Admiral [[David Farragut]], and the Confederacy lost control of the mouth of the Mississippi River. It had to concede extensive agricultural resources that had supported the Union's sea-supplied logistics base.<ref name="Martis28">Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', p. 28.</ref>

Although Confederates had suffered major reverses everywhere, as of the end of April the Confederacy still controlled territory holding 72% of its population.<ref name="Martis27">Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', p. 27. Federal occupation expanded into northern Virginia, and their control of the Mississippi extended south to Nashville, Tennessee.</ref> Federal forces disrupted Missouri and Arkansas; they had broken through in western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana. Along the Confederacy's shores, Union forces had closed ports and made garrisoned lodgments on every coastal Confederate state except Alabama and Texas.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 354. Federal sea-based amphibious forces captured [[Battle of Roanoke Island|Roanoke Island]], North Carolina along with a large garrison in February. In March, Confederates abandoned forts at [[Amelia Island|Fernandia]] and [[St. Augustine in the American Civil War#Early war|St. Augustine]] Florida, and lost [[Battle of New Berne|New Berne]], North Carolina. In April, [[Capture of New Orleans|New Orleans]] fell and Savannah, Georgia was closed by the [[Battle of Fort Pulaski]]. In May retreating Confederates burned their two pre-war Navy yards at Norfolk and Pensacola. See Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 287, 306, 302</ref> Although scholars sometimes assess the Union blockade as ineffectual under international law until the last few months of the war, from the first months it disrupted Confederate privateers, making it "almost impossible to bring their prizes into Confederate ports".<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 294, 296–297. Europeans refused to allow captured U.S. shipping to be sold for the privateers 95% share, so through 1862, Confederate privateering disappeared. The Confederate Congress authorized a Volunteer Navy to man cruisers the following year.</ref> British firms developed small fleets of [[Blockade runners of the American Civil War|blockade running]] companies, such as [[George Trenholm|John Fraser and Company]] and [[S. Isaac, Campbell & Company]] while the Ordnance Department secured its own blockade runners for dedicated munitions cargoes.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 288–291. As many as half the Confederate blockade runners had British nationals serving as officers and crew. Confederate regulations required one-third, then one-half of the cargoes to be munitions, food and medicine.</ref>

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During the Civil War fleets of [[Ironclad warship|armored warships]] were deployed for the first time in sustained blockades at sea. After some success against the Union blockade, in March the ironclad [[CSS Virginia|CSS ''Virginia'']] was forced into port and burned by Confederates at their retreat. Despite several attempts mounted from their port cities, Confederate naval forces were unable to break the Union blockade. Attempts were made by Commodore [[Josiah Tattnall III]]'s ironclads from Savannah in 1862 with the [[USS Atlanta (1861)|CSS ''Atlanta'']].<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 287, 306, 302, 306 and [http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org11-2.htm CSS Atlanta, USS Atlanta. Navy Heritage] {{Webarchive|url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20100407154442/http%3A//www%2Ehistory%2Enavy%2Emil/branches/org11%2D2%2Ehtm |date=April 7, 2010 }}. In both events, as with the CSS ''Virginia'', the Navy's bravery and fighting skill was compromised in combat by mechanical failure in the engines or steering. The joint combined Army-Navy defense by General [[Robert E. Lee]], and his successor and Commodore [[Josiah Tattnall III]], repelled amphibious assault of Savannah for the duration of the war. Union General [[Tecumseh Sherman]] captured Savannah from the land side in December 1864. The British blockade runner [[USS Atlanta (1861)#As Fingal|''Fingal'']] was purchased and converted to the ironclad [[USS Atlanta (1861)|CSS ''Atlanta'']]. It made two sorties, was captured by Union forces, repaired, and returned to service as the ironclad USS ''Atlanta'' supporting Grant's [[Siege of Petersburg]].</ref> Secretary of the Navy [[Stephen Mallory]] placed his hopes in a European-built ironclad fleet, but they were never realized. On the other hand, four new English-built commerce raiders served the Confederacy, and several fast blockade runners were sold in Confederate ports. They were converted into commerce-raiding cruisers, and manned by their British crews.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 303. French shipyards built four corvettes, and two ironclad rams for the Confederacy, but the American minister prevented their delivery. British firms contracted to build two additional ironclad rams, but under threat from the U.S., the British government bought them for their own navy. Two of the converted blockade runners effectively raided up and down the Atlantic coast until the end of the war.</ref>

In the east, Union forces could not close on Richmond. General McClellan landed his army on the [[Peninsula Campaign|Lower Peninsula]] of Virginia. Lee subsequently ended that threat from the east, then Union General John Pope attacked overland from the north only to be repulsed at Second Bull Run ([[Second Battle of Bull Run|Second Manassas]]). Lee's strike north was turned back at Antietam MD, then Union [[Ambrose Burnside|Major General Ambrose Burnside's]] offensive was disastrously ended at [[Battle of Fredericksburg|Fredericksburg]] VA in December. Both armies then turned to winter quarters to recruit and train for the coming spring.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 354–356. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign caused the surprised Confederates to destroy their winter camp to mobilize against the threat to their Capital. They burned "a vast amount of supplies" to keep them from falling into enemy hands.</ref>

In an attempt to seize the initiative, reprove, protect farms in mid-growing season and influence U.S. Congressional elections, two major Confederate incursions into Union territory had been launched in August and September 1862. Both [[Braxton Bragg]]'s invasion of Kentucky and [[Battle of Antietam|Lee's invasion]] of Maryland were decisively repulsed, leaving Confederates in control of but 63% of its population.<ref name="Martis27"/> Civil War scholar [[Allan Nevins]] argues that 1862 was the strategic [[Ordinary high water mark|high-water mark]] of the Confederacy.<ref>Nevin's analysis of the strategic highpoint of Confederate military scope and effectiveness is in contra-distinction to the conventional "last chance" battlefield imagery of the [[High-water mark of the Confederacy]] found at "The Angle" of the Battle of Gettysburg.</ref> The failures of the two invasions were attributed to the same irrecoverable shortcomings: lack of manpower at the front, lack of supplies including serviceable shoes, and exhaustion after long marches without adequate food.<ref>Allan Nevins, ''War for the Union'' (1960) pp. 289–290. Weak national leadership led to disorganized overall direction in contrast to improved organization in Washington. With another 10,000 men Lee and Bragg might have prevailed in the border states, but the local populations did not respond to their pleas to recruit additional soldiers.</ref> Also in September Confederate General [[William W. Loring]] pushed federal forces from [[Charleston, West Virginia|Charleston, Virginia]], and the Kanawha Valley in western Virginia, but lacking reinforcements Loring abandoned his position and by November the region was back in federal control.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rice |first1=Otis K. |first2=Stephen W. |last2=Brown |title=West Virginia, A History |publisher=Univ. of Kentucky Press |year=1993 |edition=2nd |pages=[https://archive.org/details/westvirginiahist00rice_0/page/134 134–135] |isbn=0-8131-1854-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/westvirginiahist00rice_0/page/134 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh23-1.html|title=The Civil War Comes to Charleston|accessdate=May 3, 2023}}</ref>

===Anaconda: 1863–1864===
{{Main|Anaconda Plan}}

The failed Middle [[Tennessee in the Civil War|Tennessee]] campaign was ended January 2, 1863, at the inconclusive Battle of Stones River ([[Battle of Stones River|Murfreesboro]]), both sides losing the largest percentage of casualties suffered during the war. It was followed by another strategic withdrawal by Confederate forces.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 357</ref> The Confederacy won a significant victory April 1863, repulsing the federal advance on Richmond at [[Battle of Chancellorsville|Chancellorsville]], but the Union consolidated positions along the Virginia coast and the Chesapeake Bay.

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| caption2 = Closing of Mobile Bay, Alabama. The [[Union blockade]] ended trade with the Confederate states.
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Without an effective answer to federal gunboats, river transport and supply, the Confederacy lost the Mississippi River following the capture of [[Siege of Vicksburg|Vicksburg]], Mississippi, and [[Siege of Port Hudson|Port Hudson]] in July, ending Southern access to the trans-Mississippi West. July brought short-lived counters, [[Morgan's Raid]] into Ohio and the [[New York City draft riots]]. Robert E. Lee's strike into Pennsylvania was repulsed at [[Battle of Gettysburg|Gettysburg]], Pennsylvania despite Pickett's famous charge and other acts of valor. Southern newspapers assessed the campaign as "The Confederates did not gain a victory, neither did the enemy."

September and November left Confederates yielding [[Chattanooga Campaign|Chattanooga]], Tennessee, the gateway to the lower south.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 356</ref> For the remainder of the war fighting was restricted inside the South, resulting in a slow but continuous loss of territory. In early 1864, the Confederacy still controlled 53% of its population, but it withdrew further to reestablish defensive positions. Union offensives continued with [[Sherman's March to the Sea]] to take Savannah and Grant's [[Overland Campaign|Wilderness Campaign]] to encircle Richmond and besiege Lee's army at [[Siege of Petersburg|Petersburg]].<ref name="Martis28"/>

In April 1863, the C.S. Congress authorized a uniformed Volunteer Navy, many of whom were British.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 297–298. They were required to supply their own ships and equipment, but they received 90% of their captures at auction, 25% of any U.S. warships or transports captured or destroyed. Confederate cruisers raided merchant ship commerce but for one exception in 1864.</ref> The Confederacy had altogether eighteen commerce-destroying cruisers, which seriously disrupted federal commerce at sea and increased shipping insurance rates 900%.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 305–306. The most successful Confederate merchant raider 1863–1864, [[CSS Alabama|CSS ''Alabama'']] had ranged the Atlantic for two years, sinking 58 vessels worth {{sic|?|$6,54,000}}, but she was trapped and sunk in June by the chain-clad {{USS|Kearsarge|1861|6}} off Cherbourg, France.</ref> Commodore Tattnall again unsuccessfully attempted to break the Union blockade on the Savannah River in Georgia with an ironclad in 1863.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', in 1862, [http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org11-2.htm CSS Atlanta, USS Atlanta. Navy Heritage] {{Webarchive|url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20100407154442/http%3A//www%2Ehistory%2Enavy%2Emil/branches/org11%2D2%2Ehtm |date=April 7, 2010 }}, in 1863 the ironclad [[CSS Savannah (ironclad)|CSS ''Savannah'']]</ref> Beginning in April 1864 the ironclad [[CSS Albemarle|CSS ''Albemarle'']] engaged Union gunboats for six months on the Roanoke River in North Carolina.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 305</ref> The Federals closed [[Battle of Mobile Bay|Mobile Bay]] by sea-based amphibious assault in August, ending Gulf coast trade east of the Mississippi River. In December, the [[Battle of Nashville]] ended Confederate operations in the western theater.

Large numbers of families relocated to safer places, usually remote rural areas, bringing along household slaves if they had any. Mary Massey argues these elite exiles introduced an element of defeatism into the southern outlook.<ref>Mary Elizabeth Massey, ''Refugee Life in the Confederacy'' (1964)</ref>

===Collapse: 1865===
The first three months of 1865 saw the federal [[Carolinas campaign]], devastating a wide swath of the remaining Confederate heartland. The "breadbasket of the Confederacy" in the Great Valley of Virginia was occupied by [[Philip Sheridan]]. The Union Blockade captured [[Fort Fisher]] in North Carolina, and Sherman finally [[Second Battle of Charleston Harbor|took Charleston, South Carolina]], by land attack.<ref name="Martis28"/>

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| width1 = 200
| caption1 = Armory, Richmond, Virginia.
| image2 = Appomattox Court House, Va. Federal soldiers at the courthouse LOC cwpb.03908.jpg
| width2 = 200
| caption2 = Appomattox Courthouse, site of "The Surrender".
|direction=vertical
}}

The Confederacy controlled no ports, harbors or navigable rivers. Railroads were captured or had ceased operating. Its major food-producing regions had been war-ravaged or occupied. Its administration survived in only three pockets of territory holding only one-third of its population. Its armies were defeated or disbanding. At the February 1865 [[Hampton Roads Conference]] with Lincoln, senior Confederate officials rejected his invitation to restore the Union with compensation for emancipated slaves.<ref name="Martis28"/> The three pockets of unoccupied Confederacy were southern Virginia—North Carolina, central Alabama—Florida, and Texas, the latter two areas less from any notion of resistance than from the disinterest of federal forces to occupy them.<ref>{{cite book |last=Foote |first=Shelby |date=1974 |title=The Civil War, a narrative: Vol III |page=967 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing |quote=Sherman was closing in on Raleigh, whose occupation tomorrow would make it the ninth of the eleven seceded state capitals to feel the tread of the invader. All, that is, but Austin and Tallahassee, whose survival was less the result of their ability to resist than it was of federal oversight or disinterest. |isbn=0-394-74622-8 }}</ref> The Davis policy was independence or nothing, while Lee's army was wracked by disease and desertion, barely holding the trenches defending Jefferson Davis' capital.

The Confederacy's last remaining blockade-running port, [[Wilmington, North Carolina]], [[Battle of Wilmington|was lost]]. When the Union broke through Lee's lines at Petersburg, [[Richmond in the American Civil War|Richmond]] fell immediately. Lee surrendered at [[Appomattox Court House National Historical Park|Appomattox Court House]], Virginia, on April 9, 1865.<ref name="Coulter, pp. 323"/> "The Surrender" marked the end of the Confederacy.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 287</ref> The [[Japanese ironclad Kōtetsu#American career as CSS Stonewall|CSS ''Stonewall'']] sailed from Europe to break the Union blockade in March; on making Havana, Cuba, it surrendered. Some high officials escaped to Europe, but President Davis was captured May 10; all remaining Confederate land forces surrendered by June 1865. The U.S. Army took control of the Confederate areas, but peace was subsequently marred by a great deal of local violence, feuding and revenge killings.<ref>The French-built ironclad [[Japanese ironclad Kōtetsu#American career as CSS Stonewall|CSS ''Stonewall'']] had been purchased from Denmark and set sail from Spain in March. The crew of the [[CSS Shenandoah|CSS ''Shenandoah'']] hauled down the last Confederate flag at Liverpool in the UK on November 5, 1865. {{cite book|author=John Baldwin |author2=Ron Powers |title=Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship|page=368|publisher=Three Rivers Press|isbn=978-0-307-23656-2|date=May 2008 }}</ref> The last Confederate military unit, the commerce raider [[CSS Shenandoah|CSS ''Shenandoah'']], surrendered on November 6, 1865, in [[Liverpool]].<ref>United States Government Printing Office, ''Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion'', United States Naval War Records Office, United States Office of Naval Records and Library, 1894
{{DANFS}}</ref>

Historian [[Gary Gallagher]] concluded that the Confederacy capitulated in early 1865 because northern armies crushed "organized southern military resistance". The Confederacy's population, soldier and civilian, had suffered material hardship and social disruption.<ref>Gallagher p. 157</ref> Jefferson Davis' assessment in 1890 determined, "With the capture of the capital, the dispersion of the civil authorities, the surrender of the armies in the field, and the arrest of the President, the Confederate States of America disappeared ... their history henceforth became a part of the history of the United States."<ref>Davis, Jefferson. [https://archive.org/stream/ashorthistoryco00davigoog#page/n544/mode/2up/search/surrender+at+Appomattox ''A Short History of the Confederate States of America''], 1890, 2010. {{ISBN|978-1-175-82358-8}}. Available free online as an ebook. Chapter LXXXVIII, "Re-establishment of the Union by force", p. 503. Retrieved March 14, 2012.</ref>

==Government and politics==

===Political divisions===
{{Main|List of Confederate states by date of admission to the Confederacy}}
{{CS statehood and territory dates}}

===Constitution===
{{Main|Constitution of the Confederate States}}
{{Wikisource|Constitution of the Confederate States of America}}

In February, 1861, Southern leaders met in Montgomery, Alabama to adopt their first constitution, establishing a [[confederation]] of "sovereign and independent states", guaranteeing states the right to a republican form of government. Prior to adopting to the first Confederate constitution, the independent states were sovereign republics.<ref name="wwgaunt"/><ref name="dunbarrowland"/>

A second Confederate constitution was written in March, 1861, which sought to replace the confederation with a federal government; much of this constitution replicated the United States Constitution verbatim, but contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery including provisions for the recognition and protection of slavery in any territory of the Confederacy. It maintained the [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|ban on international slave-trading]], though it made the ban's application explicit to "Negroes of the African race" in contrast to the U.S. Constitution's reference to "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit". It protected the [[Slavery in the United States#Internal slave trade|existing internal trade]] of slaves among slaveholding states.

In certain areas, the second Confederate Constitution gave greater powers to the states (or curtailed the powers of the central government more) than the U.S. Constitution of the time did, but in other areas, the states lost rights they had under the U.S. Constitution. Although the Confederate Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, contained a [[commerce clause]], the Confederate version prohibited the central government from using revenues collected in one state for funding [[internal improvement]]s in another state. The Confederate Constitution's equivalent to the U.S. Constitution's [[General Welfare clause|general welfare clause]] prohibited [[protective tariff]]s (but allowed tariffs for providing domestic revenue). State legislatures had the power to [[impeachment|impeach]] officials of the Confederate government in some cases. On the other hand, the Confederate Constitution contained a [[Necessary and Proper Clause]] and a [[Supremacy Clause]] that essentially duplicated the respective clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The Confederate Constitution also incorporated each of the 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution that had been ratified up to that point.

The second Confederate Constitution was adopted on February 22, 1862, one year into the American Civil War, and did not specifically include a provision allowing states to secede; the Preamble spoke of each state "acting in its sovereign and independent character" but also of the formation of a "permanent [[Federalism|federal government]]". During the debates on drafting the Confederate Constitution, one proposal would have allowed states to secede from the Confederacy. The proposal was tabled with only the South Carolina delegates voting in favor of considering the motion.<ref>Davis p. 248.</ref> The Confederate Constitution also explicitly denied States the power to bar slaveholders from other parts of the Confederacy from bringing their slaves into any state of the Confederacy or to interfere with the property rights of slave owners traveling between different parts of the Confederacy. In contrast with the secular language of the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution overtly asked God's blessing ("... invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God ...").

Some historians have referred to the Confederacy as a form of [[Herrenvolk democracy]].<ref name="Dal Lago2018">{{Cite book|last=Dal Lago|first=Enrico|title=Civil War and Agrarian Unrest: The Confederate South and Southern Italy|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|year=2018|isbn=978-1108340625|pages=79|quote=the slaveholding elites' project of Confederate nation building—likely believing the idea that the Confederacy was a 'herrenvolk democracy' or 'democracy of the white race'....}}</ref><ref name="McPherson1997">{{Cite book|last=McPherson|first=James M.|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|title-link=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=1997|isbn=978-0195124996|location=[[New York City]]|pages=106, 109|quote=Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their own 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.... Herrenvolk democracy—the equality of all who belonged to the master race—was a powerful motivator for many Confederate soldiers.|author-link=James M. McPherson}}</ref>

====Executive====
{{Main|President of the Confederate States of America}}

The Montgomery Convention to establish the Confederacy and its executive met on February 4, 1861. Each state as a sovereignty had one vote, with the same delegation size as it held in the U.S. Congress, and generally 41 to 50 members attended.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 22. The Texas delegation had four in the U.S. Congress, seven in the Montgomery Convention.</ref> Offices were "provisional", limited to a term not to exceed one year. One name was placed in nomination for president, one for vice president. Both were elected unanimously, 6–0.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 23. While the Texas delegation was seated, and is counted in the "original seven" states of the Confederacy, its referendum to ratify secession had not taken place, so its delegates did not yet vote on instructions from their state legislature.</ref>

[[File:President-Jefferson-Davis.jpg|thumb|left|upright=.8|[[Jefferson Davis]], President of the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865]]

Jefferson Davis was elected provisional president. His U.S. Senate resignation speech greatly impressed with its clear rationale<!-- source? sounds biased, but could use further explanation. did someone say it was clear? --> for secession and his pleading for a peaceful departure from the Union to independence. Although he had made it known that he wanted to be commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies, when elected, he assumed the office of Provisional President. Three candidates for provisional Vice President were under consideration the night before the February 9 election. All were from Georgia, and the various delegations meeting in different places determined two would not do, so Alexander H. Stephens was elected unanimously provisional Vice President, though with some privately held reservations. Stephens was inaugurated February 11, Davis February 18.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 23–26.</ref>

Davis and Stephens were elected president and vice president, unopposed [[Confederate States presidential election, 1861|on November 6, 1861]]. They were inaugurated on February 22, 1862.

Coulter stated, "No president of the U.S. ever had a more difficult task." Washington was inaugurated in peacetime. Lincoln inherited an established government of long standing. The creation of the Confederacy was accomplished by men who saw themselves as fundamentally conservative. Although they referred to their "Revolution", it was in their eyes more a counter-revolution against changes away from their understanding of U.S. founding documents. In Davis' inauguration speech, he explained the Confederacy was not a French-like revolution, but a transfer of rule. The Montgomery Convention had assumed all the laws of the United States until superseded by the Confederate Congress.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 25, 27</ref>

The Permanent Constitution provided for a President of the Confederate States of America, elected to serve a six-year term but without the possibility of re-election. Unlike the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution gave the president the ability to subject a bill to a [[line item veto]], a power also held by some state governors.

The Confederate Congress could overturn either the general or the line item vetoes with the same two-thirds votes required in the [[Congress of the United States|U.S. Congress]]. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. The only person to serve as president was [[Jefferson Davis]], as the Confederacy was defeated before the completion of his term.
{{clear}}

=====Administration and cabinet=====
{{Main|Cabinet of the Confederate States of America}}
{{Infobox cabinet members

|office1=[[President of the Confederate States of America|President]]
|name1a=[[Jefferson Davis]]
|term1a=1861–65

|office2=[[Vice President of the Confederate States of America|Vice President]]
|name2a=[[Alexander H. Stephens]]
|term2a=1861–65

|office3=[[Confederate States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]]

|name3a=[[Robert Toombs]]
|term3a=1861

|name3b=[[Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter|Robert M.T. Hunter]]
|term3b=1861–62

|name3c=[[Judah P. Benjamin]]
|term3c=1862–65

|office4=[[Confederate States of America Secretary of the Treasury|Secretary of the Treasury]]

|name4a=[[Christopher Memminger]]
|term4a=1861–64

|name4b=[[George Trenholm]]
|term4b=1864–65

|name4c=[[John H. Reagan]]
|term4c=1865

|office5=[[Confederate States Secretary of War|Secretary of War]]

|name5a=[[Leroy Pope Walker]]
|term5a=1861

|name5b=[[Judah P. Benjamin]]
|term5b=1861–62

|name5c=[[George W. Randolph]]
|term5c=1862

|name5d=[[James Seddon]]
|term5d=1862–65

|name5e=[[John C. Breckinridge]]
|term5e=1865

|office6=[[Confederate States Secretary of the Navy|Secretary of the Navy]]
|name6a=[[Stephen Mallory]]
|term6a=1861–65

|office7=[[Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States#Confederate Post Office|Postmaster General]]
|name7a=[[John H. Reagan]]
|term7a=1861–65

|office8=[[Confederate States Attorney General|Attorney General]]

|name8a=[[Judah P. Benjamin]]
|term8a=1861

|name8b=[[Thomas Bragg]]
|term8b=1861–62

|name8c=[[Thomas H. Watts]]
|term8c=1862–63

|name8d=[[George Davis (Confederate States politician)|George Davis]]
|term8d=1864–65
}}
[[File:Confederate Cabinet (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.4|Davis's cabinet in 1861, Montgomery, Alabama<br />Front row, left to right: [[Judah P. Benjamin]], [[Stephen Mallory]], [[Alexander H. Stephens]], [[Jefferson Davis]], [[John Henninger Reagan]], and [[Robert Toombs]]<br />Back row, standing left to right: [[Christopher Memminger]] and [[LeRoy Pope Walker]]<br />Illustration printed in ''[[Harper's Weekly]]'']]
{{Clear}}

====Legislative====
{{Main|Provisional Confederate States Congress|Confederate States Congress}}
[[File:Confederate congress.jpg|thumb|'''[[Provisional Confederate Congress|Provisional Congress]]''', Montgomery, Alabama]]

The only two "formal, national, functioning, civilian administrative bodies" in the Civil War South were the Jefferson Davis administration and the Confederate Congresses. The Confederacy was begun by the Provisional Congress in Convention at Montgomery, Alabama on February 28, 1861. The Provisional Confederate Congress was a unicameral assembly; each state received one vote.<ref name="Martis-1994">{{cite book| last=Martis |first=Kenneth C. |title=The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America: 1861–1865 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |year=1994 |isbn=0-13-389115-1 |page=1}}</ref>

The Permanent Confederate Congress was elected and began its first session February 18, 1862. The Permanent Congress for the Confederacy followed the United States forms with a bicameral legislature. The Senate had two per state, twenty-six Senators. The House numbered 106 representatives apportioned by free and slave populations within each state. Two Congresses sat in six sessions until March 18, 1865.<ref name="Martis-1994"/>

The political influences of the civilian, soldier vote and appointed representatives reflected divisions of political geography of a diverse South. These in turn changed over time relative to Union occupation and disruption, the war impact on the local economy, and the course of the war. Without political parties, key candidate identification related to adopting secession before or after Lincoln's call for volunteers to retake federal property. Previous party affiliation played a part in voter selection, predominantly secessionist Democrat or unionist Whig.<ref>Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', pp. 72–73</ref>

The absence of political parties made individual roll call voting all the more important, as the Confederate "freedom of roll-call voting [was] unprecedented in American legislative history."<ref>Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', p. 3</ref> Key issues throughout the life of the Confederacy related to (1) suspension of habeas corpus, (2) military concerns such as control of state militia, conscription and exemption, (3) economic and fiscal policy including impressment of slaves, goods and scorched earth, and (4) support of the Jefferson Davis administration in its foreign affairs and negotiating peace.<ref>Martis, ''Historical Atlas'', pp. 90–91</ref>

{{col-begin}}
{{col-2}}
;Provisional Congress
For the first year, the unicameral [[Provisional Confederate Congress]] functioned as the Confederacy's legislative branch.

;President of the Provisional Congress
* [[Howell Cobb|Howell Cobb, Sr.]] of Georgia, February 4, 1861 – February 17, 1862

;Presidents pro tempore of the Provisional Congress
* [[Robert Woodward Barnwell]] of South Carolina, February 4, 1861
* [[Thomas Stanhope Bocock]] of Virginia, December 10–21, 1861 and January 7–8, 1862
* [[Josiah Abigail Patterson Campbell]] of Mississippi, December 23–24, 1861 and January 6, 1862
{{col-break}}
;Sessions of the Confederate Congress
* [[Provisional Congress of the Confederate States|Provisional Congress]]
* [[1st Confederate States Congress|1st Congress]]
* [[2nd Confederate States Congress|2nd Congress]]

;Tribal Representatives to Confederate Congress
* [[Elias Cornelius Boudinot]] 1862–65, [[Cherokee]]
* [[Samuel Benton Callahan]] Unknown years, [[Creek (people)|Creek]], [[Seminole]]
* [[Burton Allen Holder]] 1864–65, [[Chickasaw]]
* [[Robert McDonald Jones]] 1863–65, [[Choctaw]]
{{col-end}}

====Judicial====
<gallery style="float:right; text-align:center" perrow="2">
Jesse Finley - Brady-Handy.jpg|[[Jesse J. Finley]]<br />Florida District
HenryRootesJackson.jpg|[[Henry R. Jackson]]<br />Georgia District
NC-Congress-AsaBiggs.jpg|[[Asa Biggs]]<br />North Carolina District
Andrew Gordon Magrath.jpg|[[Andrew Gordon Magrath|Andrew Magrath]]<br />South Carolina District
</gallery>

The Confederate Constitution outlined a judicial branch of the government, but the ongoing war and resistance from states-rights advocates, particularly on the question of whether it would have appellate jurisdiction over the state courts, prevented the creation or seating of the "Supreme Court of the Confederate States". Thus, the state courts generally continued to operate as they had done, simply recognizing the Confederate States as the national government.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.albanylaw.edu/sub.php?navigation_id=821 |title="Legal Materials on the Confederate States of America in the Schaffer Law Library", Albany Law School |publisher=Albanylaw.edu |access-date=August 29, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071103033519/http://www.albanylaw.edu/sub.php?navigation_id=821 |archive-date=November 3, 2007 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Confederate district courts were authorized by Article III, Section 1, of the Confederate Constitution,<ref name="ReferenceJud"><span class="plainlinks">[[s:Constitution of the Confederate States of America#a3-s1|Constitution of the Confederate States of America – Wikisource, the free online library]]</span>. Retrieved July 6, 2018.</ref> and President Davis appointed judges within the individual states of the Confederate States of America. In many cases, the same U.S. Federal District Judges were appointed as Confederate States District Judges. Confederate district courts began reopening in early 1861, handling many of the same type cases as had been done before. Prize cases, in which Union ships were captured by the Confederate Navy or raiders and sold through court proceedings, were heard until the blockade of southern ports made this impossible. After a Sequestration Act was passed by the Confederate Congress, the Confederate district courts heard many cases in which enemy aliens (typically Northern absentee landlords owning property in the South) had their property sequestered (seized) by Confederate Receivers.

'''Supreme Court''' – not established.

'''District Courts''' – judges
{{col-begin}}
{{col-2}}
* Alabama [[William Giles Jones]] 1861–1865
* Arkansas [[Daniel Ringo]] 1861–1865
* Florida [[Jesse J. Finley]] 1861–1862
* Georgia [[Henry R. Jackson]] 1861, Edward J. Harden 1861–1865
* Louisiana [[Edwin Warren Moise]] 1861–1865
* Mississippi [[Alexander Mosby Clayton]] 1861–1865
* North Carolina [[Asa Biggs]] 1861–1865
{{col-break}}
* South Carolina [[Andrew G. Magrath]] 1861–1864, [[Benjamin F. Perry]] 1865
* Tennessee [[West H. Humphreys]] 1861–1865
* Texas-East William Pinckney Hill 1861–1865
* Texas-West Thomas J. Devine 1861–1865
* Virginia-East [[James D. Halyburton]] 1861–1865
* Virginia-West [[John W. Brockenbrough]] 1861–1865
{{col-end}}

===Post office===
{{Further|Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States}}

<gallery style="float:right; text-align:center" perrow="2">
John Henninger Reagan - Brady-Handy.jpg|[[John H. Reagan]]<br />Postmaster General
J Davis 1861-5c.jpg|[[Jefferson Davis]], 5 cent<br />[[Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States#Confederate postage|The first stamp]], 1861
Csa jackson 1862-2c.jpg|[[Andrew Jackson]]<br />2 cent, 1862
George-washington-CSA-stamp.jpg|[[George Washington]]<br />20 cent, 1863
</gallery>

The Confederacy established the Confederate Post Office for mail delivery. One of the first undertakings in establishing the office was the appointment of [[John H. Reagan|John{{nbsp}}H. Reagan]] as Postmaster General, by [[Jefferson Davis]] in 1861. Writing in 1906, historian Walter Flavius McCaleb praised Reagan's "energy and intelligence{{nbsp}}... in a degree scarcely matched by any of his associates".<ref>Walter Flavius McCaleb, "The Organization of the Post-Office Department of the Confederacy." ''American Historical Review'' 12#1 (1906), pp. 66–74 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1832885 online]</ref>

When the war began, the United States Post Office briefly delivered mail from the secessionist states. Mail that was postmarked after the date of a state's admission into the Confederacy through May{{nbsp}}31, 1861, and bearing U.S.{{nbsp}}postage, was still delivered.<ref name="U.S. Postal used in the Confederacy">{{cite web |url=http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&mode=&tid=2040514 |publisher=Smithsonian National Postal Museum |title=U.S. Postal Issue Used in the Confederacy (1893) |access-date=January 29, 2011 |archive-date=March 29, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120329131022/http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&mode=&tid=2040514 |url-status=dead }}</ref> After this time, private express companies still managed to carry some of the mail across enemy lines. Later, mail that crossed lines had to be sent by [[Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States#Covers|'Flag of Truce']] and was allowed to pass at only two specific points. Mail sent from the Confederacy to the U.S. was received, opened and inspected at [[Fortress Monroe]] on the Virginia coast before being passed on into the U.S. mail stream. Mail sent from the North to the South passed at [[City Point, Virginia|City Point]], also in Virginia, where it was also inspected before being sent on.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 1832885|title = The Organization of the Post-Office Department of the Confederacy|journal = The American Historical Review|volume = 12|issue = 1|pages = 66–74|last1 = McCaleb|first1 = Walter Flavius|year = 1906|doi = 10.2307/1832885}}</ref><ref>
* {{cite journal|jstor=30234666|title=Administrative Problems of the Confederate Post Office Department, I|journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly|volume=19|issue=2|pages=111–141|last1=Garrison|first1=L. R.|year=1915}}
* {{cite journal|jstor=30237275|title=Administrative Problems of the Confederate Post Office Department, II|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_southwestern-historical-quarterly_1916-01_19_3/page/232|journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly|volume=19|issue=3|pages=232–250|last1=Garrison|first1=L. R.|year=1916}}</ref>

With the chaos of the war, a working postal system was more important than ever for the Confederacy. The Civil War had divided family members and friends and consequently letter writing increased dramatically across the entire divided nation, especially to and from the men who were away serving in an army. Mail delivery was also important for the Confederacy for a myriad of business and military reasons. Because of the Union blockade, basic supplies were always in demand and so getting mailed correspondence out of the country to suppliers was imperative to the successful operation of the Confederacy. Volumes of material have been written about the [[Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States#Blockade mail|Blockade runners]] who evaded Union ships on blockade patrol, usually at night, and who moved cargo and mail in and out of the Confederate States throughout the course of the war. 

Both [[Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States#Prisoner of war mail|prisoner of war mail]] and [[Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States#Blockade mail|blockade mail]] often played a role in military and other wartime activities. The postal history of the Confederacy along with [[:File:Pow cover 19May1865.jpg|surviving Confederate mail]] has helped historians document the various people, places, and events involved in the Civil War.<ref name="Confederate States Post Office">{{cite web |url=http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&tid=2027888 |title=Confederate States Post Office |publisher=Smithsonian National Postal Museum |access-date=November 17, 2010 |archive-date=July 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720043556/http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&tid=2027888 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
{{clear}}

===Civil liberties===
{{Further|Confederate patriotism}}

The Confederacy actively used the army to arrest people suspected of loyalty to the United States. Historian [[Mark E. Neely, Jr.|Mark Neely]] found 4,108 names of men arrested and estimated a much larger total.<ref>Neely (1999) p. 1</ref> The Confederacy arrested pro-Union civilians in the South at about the same rate as the Union arrested pro-Confederate civilians in the North.<ref>Neely (1999) p. 172. Neely notes that. "Most surprising of all, the Confederacy at a greater rate than the North arrested persons who held opposition political views at least in part because they held them, despite the Confederacy's vaunted lack of political parties. Such arrests were more common before 1863 while memories of the votes on secession remained fresh."</ref> Neely argues:

{{Blockquote|The Confederate citizen was not any freer than the Union citizen – and perhaps no less likely to be arrested by military authorities. In fact, the Confederate citizen may have been in some ways less free than his Northern counterpart. For example, freedom to travel within the Confederate states was severely limited by a domestic passport system.<ref>Neely (1993) pp. 11, 16.</ref>}}

==Economy==
{{Main|Economy of the Confederate States of America}}

===Slaves===
Across the South, widespread rumors predicted the slaves were planning insurrection, causing panic. [[Slave patrol|Patrols]] were stepped up. The slaves did become increasingly independent and resistant to punishment, but historians agree there were no insurrections. Many slaves became spies for the North, and large numbers ran away to federal lines.<ref>{{cite book |first=Bell Irvin |last=Wiley |title=Southern Negroes, 1861–1865 |year=1938 |pages=21, 66–69 }}</ref>

According to the [[1860 United States census]], about 31% of free households in the 11 states that would join the Confederacy owned slaves. The 11 states that seceded had the highest percentage of slaves as a proportion of their population, representing 39% of their total population. The proportions ranged from a majority in South Carolina (57.2%) and Mississippi (55.2%) to about a quarter in Tennessee (24.8%).

Lincoln's [[Emancipation Proclamation]] on January 1, 1863, legally freed three million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy. The long-term effect was that the Confederacy could not preserve the institution of slavery and lost the use of the core element of its plantation labor force. Over 200,000 freed slaves were hired by the federal army as teamsters, cooks, launderers and laborers, and eventually as soldiers.<ref>{{cite book|author=Martha S. Putney|title=Blacks in the United States Army: Portraits Through History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R3EcLw6H38kC&pg=PA13|year=2003|publisher=McFarland|page=13|isbn=978-0786415939}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.historynet.com/african-americans-in-the-civil-war|title= African Americans In The Civil War|work= History Net: Where History Comes Alive – World & US History Online}}</ref> Plantation owners, realizing that emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves as far as possible out of reach of the Union army.<ref>{{cite book |first=Leon F. |last=Litwack |title=Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery |location=New York |publisher=Knopf |year=1979 |pages=30–36, 105–166 |isbn=0-394-50099-7 }}</ref>

Though the [[Forty acres and a mule|concept was promoted within certain circles]] of the Union hierarchy during and immediately following the war, no program of reparations for freed slaves was ever attempted. Unlike other Western countries, such as Britain and France, the U.S. government never paid compensation to Southern slave owners for their "lost property". The only place [[compensated emancipation]] was carried out was the [[District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act|District of Columbia]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Michael |editor-last=Vorenberg |title=The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents |year=2010 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Peter |last=Kolchin |title=Reexamining Southern Emancipation in Comparative Perspective |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_journal-of-southern-history_2015-02_81_1/page/n8 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=81 |issue=1 |year=2015 |pages=7–40 }}</ref>

===Political economy===
The plantations of the South, with white ownership and an enslaved labor force, produced substantial wealth from cash crops. It supplied two-thirds of the world's cotton, which was in high demand for textiles, along with tobacco, sugar, and naval stores (such as [[turpentine]]). These [[raw material]]s were exported to factories in Europe and the Northeast. Planters reinvested their profits in more slaves and fresh land, as cotton and tobacco depleted the soil. There was little manufacturing or mining; shipping was controlled by non-southerners.<ref>"Thomas1979" pp. 13–14</ref><ref>R. Douglas Hurt, ''Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South'' (2015)</ref>

{{multiple image
|caption_align=center
|direction=vertical
|image1=NewOrleans1841AcrossRiver.jpg
|width1=220
|caption1=New Orleans, the South's largest port city and the only pre-war population over 100,000. The port and region's agriculture were lost to the Union in April 1862.
|image2=TredagarIronWorksRichmond.jpg
|width2=220
|caption2=Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond VA. South's largest factory. Ended locomotive production in 1860 to make arms and munitions.
}}

The plantations that enslaved over three million black people were the principal source of wealth. Most were concentrated in "[[Black Belt (geological formation)|black belt]]" plantation areas (because few white families in the poor regions owned slaves). For decades, there had been widespread fear of slave revolts. During the war, extra men were assigned to "home guard" patrol duty and governors sought to keep militia units at home for protection. Historian William Barney reports, "no major slave revolts erupted during the Civil War." Nevertheless, slaves took the opportunity to enlarge their sphere of independence, and when union forces were nearby, many ran off to join them.<ref>{{cite book|author=William L. Barney|title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R6BpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA291|year=2011|publisher=Oxford Up|page=291|isbn=978-0199878147}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Leslie Alexander|title=Encyclopedia of African American History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uivtCqOlpTsC&pg=PA351|year=2010|publisher=ABC-CLIO|page=351|isbn=978-1851097746}}</ref>

Slave labor was applied in industry in a limited way in the Upper South and in a few port cities. One reason for the regional lag in industrial development was top-heavy income distribution. Mass production requires mass markets, and [[Economics of slavery|slaves]] living in small cabins, using self-made tools and outfitted with one suit of work clothes each year of inferior fabric, did not generate consumer demand to sustain local manufactures of any description in the same way as did a mechanized family farm of [[free labor]] in the North. The Southern economy was "pre-capitalist" in that slaves were put to work in the largest revenue-producing enterprises, not free labor markets. That labor system as practiced in the American South encompassed paternalism, whether abusive or indulgent, and that meant labor management considerations apart from productivity.<ref>"Thomas1979" pp. 12–15</ref>

Approximately 85% of both the North and South white populations lived on family farms, both regions were predominantly agricultural, and mid-century industry in both was mostly domestic. But the Southern economy was pre-capitalist in its overwhelming reliance on the agriculture of cash crops to produce wealth, while the great majority of farmers fed themselves and supplied a small local market. Southern cities and industries grew faster than ever before, but the thrust of the rest of the country's exponential growth elsewhere was toward urban industrial development along transportation systems of canals and railroads. The South was following the dominant currents of the American economic mainstream, but at a "great distance" as it lagged in the all-weather modes of transportation that brought cheaper, speedier freight shipment and forged new, expanding inter-regional markets.<ref>Thomas ''The Confederate Nation'' pp. 15–16</ref>

A third count of the pre-capitalist Southern economy relates to the cultural setting. White southerners did not adopt a [[work ethic]], nor the habits of thrift that marked the rest of the country. It had access to the tools of capitalism, but it did not adopt its culture. The Southern Cause as a national economy in the Confederacy was grounded in "slavery and race, planters and patricians, plain folk and folk culture, cotton and plantations".<ref>"Thomas1979" p. 16</ref>

====National production====
[[File:Advantages.jpg|thumb|right|238x238px|The Union had large advantages in men and resources at the start of the war; the ratio grew steadily in favor of the Union]]

The Confederacy started its existence as an agrarian economy with exports, to a world market, of cotton, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco and [[sugarcane]]. Local food production included grain, hogs, cattle, and vegetables. The cash came from exports but the Southern people spontaneously stopped exports in early 1861 to hasten the impact of "[[King Cotton]]", a failed strategy to coerce international support for the Confederacy through its cotton exports. When the blockade was announced, commercial shipping practically ended (because the ships could not get insurance), and only a trickle of supplies came via blockade runners. The cutoff of exports was an economic disaster for the South, rendering useless its most valuable properties: its plantations and their enslaved workers. Many planters kept growing cotton, which piled up everywhere, but most turned to food production. All across the region, the lack of repair and maintenance wasted away the physical assets.

The 11 states had produced $155 million (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US-GDP|value=155000000|start_year=1860}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}) in manufactured goods in 1860, chiefly from local gristmills, and lumber, processed tobacco, cotton goods and [[naval stores]] such as turpentine. The main industrial areas were border cities such as Baltimore, Wheeling, Louisville and St. Louis, that were never under Confederate control. The government did set up munitions factories in the Deep South. Combined with captured munitions and those coming via blockade runners, the armies were kept minimally supplied with weapons. The soldiers suffered from reduced rations, lack of medicines, and the growing shortages of uniforms, shoes and boots. Shortages were much worse for civilians, and the prices of necessities steadily rose.<ref>{{cite book|author=Thomas Conn Bryan|title=Confederate Georgia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oeZr20kWbiAC&pg=PA106|year=2009|publisher=University of Georgia Press|pages=105–109|isbn=978-0820334998}}</ref>

The Confederacy adopted a [[tariff]] or tax on imports of 15% and imposed it on all imports from other countries, including the United States.<ref>[http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/tariff/tariff.html Tariff of the Confederate States of America, May 21, 1861].</ref> The tariff mattered little; the Union blockade minimized commercial traffic through the Confederacy's ports, and very few people paid taxes on goods smuggled from the North. The Confederate government in its entire history collected only $3.5&nbsp;million in tariff revenue. The lack of adequate financial resources led the Confederacy to finance the war through printing money, which led to high inflation. The Confederacy underwent an economic revolution by centralization and standardization, but it was too little too late, as its economy was systematically strangled by blockade and raids.<ref>Parker, Philip, ed. ''Collins Atlas of Military History'' (2004), p. 98. {{ISBN|9780007166398}}. "The Confederacy underwent a government-led industrial revolution during the war, but its economy was slowly strangled."</ref>

===Transportation systems===
{{Main|Confederate railroads in the American Civil War}}
[[File:Railroad of Confederacy-1861.jpg|thumb|upright=1.78|Main railroads of Confederacy, 1861; colors show the different gauges (track width); the top railroad shown in the upper right is the Baltimore and Ohio, which was at all times a Union railroad]]
[[File:Hensie-fry-hanging-brownlow-1861.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Passers-by abused the bodies of Union supporters near [[Knoxville, Tennessee]]. The two were hanged by Confederate authorities near the railroad tracks so passing train passengers could see them.]]

In peacetime, the South's extensive and connected systems of navigable rivers and coastal access allowed for cheap and easy transportation of agricultural products. The railroad system in the South had developed as a supplement to the navigable rivers to enhance the all-weather shipment of cash crops to market. Railroads tied plantation areas to the nearest river or seaport and so made supply more dependable, lowered costs and increased profits. In the event of invasion, the vast geography of the Confederacy made logistics difficult for the Union. Wherever Union armies invaded, they assigned many of their soldiers to garrison captured areas and to protect rail lines.

At the onset of the Civil War the South had a rail network disjointed and plagued by changes in [[track gauge]] as well as lack of interchange. Locomotives and freight cars had fixed axles and could not use tracks of different gauges (widths). Railroads of different gauges leading to the same city required all freight to be off-loaded onto wagons for transport to the connecting railroad station, where it had to await freight cars and a [[locomotive#Motive power|locomotive]] before proceeding. Centers requiring off-loading included Vicksburg, New Orleans, Montgomery, Wilmington and Richmond.<ref name="Trains1">{{cite journal|last1= Hankey|first1= John P.|year= 2011|title= The Railroad War|journal= Trains|publisher= Kalmbach Publishing Company|volume= 71|issue= 3|pages= 24–35 }}</ref> In addition, most rail lines led from coastal or river ports to inland cities, with few lateral railroads. Because of this design limitation, the relatively primitive railroads of the Confederacy were unable to overcome the Union naval blockade of the South's crucial intra-coastal and river routes.

The Confederacy had no plan to expand, protect or encourage its railroads. Southerners' refusal to export the cotton crop in 1861 left railroads bereft of their main source of income.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 1836241|doi = 10.2307/1836241|title = The Confederate Government and the Railroads|url = https://archive.org/details/sim_american-historical-review_1917-07_22_4/page/794|journal = The American Historical Review|volume = 22|issue = 4|pages = 794–810|year = 1917|last1 = Ramsdell|first1 = Charles W.}}</ref> Many lines had to lay off employees; many critical skilled technicians and engineers were permanently lost to military service. In the early years of the war the Confederate government had a hands-off approach to the railroads. Only in mid-1863 did the Confederate government initiate a national policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort.<ref name="Ersatz">Mary Elizabeth Massey. ''Ersatz in the Confederacy'' (1952) p. 128.</ref> Railroads came under the ''de facto'' control of the military. In contrast, the U.S. Congress had authorized military administration of Union-controlled railroad and telegraph systems in January 1862, imposed a standard gauge, and built railroads into the South using that gauge. Confederate armies successfully reoccupying territory could not be resupplied directly by rail as they advanced. The C.S. Congress formally authorized military administration of railroads in February 1865.

In the last year before the end of the war, the Confederate railroad system stood permanently on the verge of collapse. There was no new equipment and raids on both sides systematically destroyed key bridges, as well as locomotives and freight cars. Spare parts were cannibalized; feeder lines were torn up to get replacement rails for trunk lines, and rolling stock wore out through heavy use.<ref>Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads", pp. 809–810.</ref>

====Horses and mules====
The Confederate army experienced a persistent shortage of horses and mules and requisitioned them with dubious promissory notes given to local farmers and breeders. Union forces paid in real money and found ready sellers in the South. Both armies needed horses for cavalry and for artillery.<ref>Spencer Jones, "The Influence of Horse Supply Upon Field Artillery in the American Civil War", ''Journal of Military History'', (April 2010), 74#2 pp. 357–377</ref> Mules pulled the wagons. The supply was undermined by an unprecedented epidemic of [[glanders]], a fatal disease that baffled veterinarians.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 3744026|title = The Great Glanders Epizootic, 1861–1866: A Civil War Legacy|url = https://archive.org/details/sim_agricultural-history_winter-1995_69_1/page/79|journal = Agricultural History|volume = 69|issue = 1|pages = 79–97|last1 = Sharrer|first1 = G. Terry|year = 1995|pmid = 11639801}}</ref> After 1863 the invading Union forces had a policy of shooting all the local horses and mules that they did not need, in order to keep them out of Confederate hands. The Confederate armies and farmers experienced a growing shortage of horses and mules, which hurt the Southern economy and the war effort. The South lost half of its 2.5&nbsp;million horses and mules; many farmers ended the war with none left. Army horses were used up by hard work, malnourishment, disease and battle wounds; they had a life expectancy of about seven months.<ref>
Keith Miller, "Southern Horse", ''Civil War Times'', (February 2006) 45#1 pp. 30–36 [https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=19359914&site=eds-live&scope=site online]
</ref>

===Financial instruments===
Both the individual Confederate states and later the Confederate government printed [[Confederate States of America dollar]]s as paper currency in various denominations, with a total face value of $1.5&nbsp;billion. Much of it was signed by Treasurer [[Edward C. Elmore]]. Inflation became rampant as the paper money depreciated and eventually became worthless. The state governments and some localities printed their own paper money, adding to the runaway inflation.<ref>{{cite book |first=William J. |last=Cooper |title=Jefferson Davis, American |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j05vwNRXi-0C&pg=PA378 |year=2010 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |page=378 |isbn=978-0307772640 }}</ref>

[[File:CSA-T25-$10-1862.jpg|thumb|The 1862 $10 [[Confederate States dollar|CSA note]] depicts a vignette of [[Hope]] flanked by [[Robert M. T. Hunter|R. M. T. Hunter]] and [[Christopher Memminger|C. G. Memminger]].]]

The Confederate government initially wanted to finance its war mostly through tariffs on imports, export taxes, and voluntary donations of gold. After the spontaneous imposition of an embargo on cotton sales to Europe in 1861, these sources of revenue dried up and the Confederacy increasingly turned to [[Government debt|issuing debt]] and printing money to pay for war expenses. The Confederate States politicians were worried about angering the general population with hard taxes. A tax increase might disillusion many Southerners, so the Confederacy resorted to printing more money. As a result, inflation increased and remained a problem for the southern states throughout the rest of the war.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=Richard |last1=Burdekin |first2=Farrokh |last2=Langdana |title=War Finance in the Southern Confederacy, 1861–1865 |journal=Explorations in Economic History |volume=30 |issue=3 |pages=352–376 |year=1993 |doi=10.1006/exeh.1993.1015 }}</ref> By April 1863, for example, the cost of flour in Richmond had risen to $100 (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US|value=100|start_year=1863}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US}}) a barrel and housewives were rioting.<ref>{{cite book |first=John D. |last=Wright |title=The Language of the Civil War |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3aEJZRIxjDAC&pg=PA41 |year=2001 |page=41 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1573561358 }}</ref>

The Confederate government took over the three national mints in its territory: the [[Charlotte Mint]] in North Carolina, the [[Dahlonega Mint]] in Georgia, and the [[New Orleans Mint]] in Louisiana. During 1861 all of these facilities produced small amounts of gold coinage, and the latter half dollars as well. A lack of silver and gold precluded further coinage. The Confederacy apparently also experimented with issuing one cent coins, although only 12 were produced by a jeweler in Philadelphia, who was afraid to send them to the South. Like the half dollars, copies were later made as souvenirs.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pcgs.com/news/confederate-coinage-a-short-lived-dream|title=Confederate Coinage: A Short-lived Dream|website=PCGS}}</ref>

US coinage was hoarded and did not have any general circulation. U.S. coinage was admitted as legal tender up to $10, as were British sovereigns, [[Napoléon (coin)|French Napoleons]] and Spanish and Mexican doubloons at a fixed rate of exchange. Confederate money was paper and postage stamps.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 127, 151–153</ref>

===Food shortages and riots===
{{Main|Southern bread riots}}
[[File:Apr2 richmond riot.jpg|thumb|upright|Richmond bread riot, 1863]]

By mid-1861, the Union naval blockade virtually shut down the export of cotton and the import of manufactured goods. Food that formerly came overland was cut off.

As women were the ones who remained at home, they had to make do with the lack of food and supplies. They cut back on purchases, used old materials, and planted more flax and peas to provide clothing and food. They used ersatz substitutes when possible. The households were severely hurt by inflation in the cost of everyday items like flour, and the shortages of food, fodder for the animals, and medical supplies for the wounded.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Jessica Fordham |last=Kidd |title=Privation and Pride: Life in Blockaded Alabama |journal=Alabama Heritage Magazine |year=2006 |volume=82 |pages=8–15 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Mary Elizabeth |last=Massey |title=Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront |year=1952 |pages=71–73 }}</ref>

State governments requested that planters grow less cotton and more food, but most refused. When cotton prices soared in Europe, expectations were that Europe would soon intervene to break the blockade and make them rich, but Europe remained neutral.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Coulter|first=E. Merton|year=1927|title=The Movement for Agricultural Reorganization in the Cotton South during the Civil War|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_agricultural-history_1927-01_1_1/page/3|journal=Agricultural History|volume=1|issue=1|pages=3–17|jstor=3739261}}</ref> The Georgia legislature imposed cotton quotas, making it a crime to grow an excess. But food shortages only worsened, especially in the towns.<ref>{{cite book |first=C. Mildred |last=Thompson |title=Reconstruction In Georgia: Economic, Social, Political 1865–1872 |url=https://archive.org/details/reconstructionin00thomuoft |year=1915 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reconstructionin00thomuoft/page/14 14]–17, 22 |publisher=New York, Columbia University Press }}</ref>

The overall decline in food supplies, made worse by the inadequate transportation system, led to serious shortages and high prices in urban areas. When bacon reached a dollar a pound in 1863, the poor women of Richmond, Atlanta and many other cities began to riot; they broke into shops and warehouses to seize food. As wives and widows of soldiers, they were hurt by the inadequate welfare system.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Stephanie |last=McCurry |title=Bread or Blood! |journal=Civil War Times |year=2011 |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=36–41 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first1=Teresa Crisp |last1=Williams |first2=David |last2=Williams |title='The Women Rising': Cotton, Class, and Confederate Georgia's Rioting Women |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_georgia-historical-quarterly_spring-2002_86_1/page/49 |journal=Georgia Historical Quarterly |year=2002 |volume=86 |issue=1 |pages=49–83 |jstor=40584640 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Michael B. |last=Chesson |title=Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot |journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |volume=92 |issue=2 |year=1984 |pages=131–175 |jstor=4248710 }}</ref>

===Devastation by 1865===
By the end of the war deterioration of the Southern infrastructure was widespread. The number of civilian deaths is unknown. Every Confederate state was affected, but most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, while Texas and Florida saw the least military action. Much of the damage was caused by direct military action, but most was caused by lack of repairs and upkeep, and by deliberately using up resources. Historians have recently estimated how much of the devastation was caused by military action. Paul Paskoff calculates that Union military operations were conducted in 56% of 645 counties in nine Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida). These counties contained 63% of the 1860 white population and 64% of the slaves. By the time the fighting took place, undoubtedly some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Paul F. |last=Paskoff |title=Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy |journal=Civil War History |year=2008 |volume=54 |issue=1 |pages=35–62 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2008.0007 |s2cid=144929048 }}</ref>

<gallery style="float:right; text-align:center" perrow="2">
PottersHouseAtlanta1864.jpg|Potters House, Atlanta GA
Charleston ruins.jpg|Downtown Charleston SC
Virginia, Norfolk Navy Yard, Ruins of - NARA - 533292.tif|Navy Yard, Norfolk VA
Ruins of Petersburg, R.R. Bridge, Richmond, Va. April, 1865 - NARA - 528974.jpg|Rail bridge, Petersburg VA
</gallery>

The 11 Confederate States in the 1860 United States census had 297 towns and cities totaling 835,000 people; of these, 162 (with 681,000 people) were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged in the war, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston (40,500), Columbia (8,100), and Richmond (37,900); all 11 had 115,900 residents in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated what their actual population was when Union forces arrived. The number of people counted in 1860 who lived in the Confederacy's destroyed towns represented just over 1 percent of its 1860 population. In addition, 45 courthouses (out of a total of 830) were destroyed. 

The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81&nbsp;million; by 1870, it had diminished by 40 percent and was worth just $48&nbsp;million. Many old tools had broken through heavy use; new tools were rarely available, and even repairs were difficult.<ref name="Paskoff, Measures of War">Paskoff, "Measures of War"</ref> These economic losses affected everyone. Most banks and insurance companies had gone bankrupt. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. The billions of dollars invested in slaves vanished. Most debts were also left behind. Most farms were intact but had lost their horses, mules, and cattle. Paskoff shows the loss of farm infrastructure was about the same whether or not fighting took place nearby. The loss of infrastructure and productive capacity meant that rural widows throughout the region faced not only the absence of able-bodied men, but a depleted stock of material resources. During four years of warfare, disruption, and blockades, the South used up about half its capital stock.<ref name="Paskoff, Measures of War"/>

The rebuilding took years and was hindered by the low price of cotton after the war. Outside investment was essential, especially in railroads. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:<ref>{{cite book |first=John Samuel |last=Ezell |title=The South since 1865 |url=https://archive.org/details/southsince18650000ezel |year=1963 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/southsince18650000ezel/page/27 27]–28 |publisher=New York, Macmillan }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|One of the greatest calamities which confronted Southerners was the havoc wrought on the transportation system. Roads were impassable or nonexistent, and bridges were destroyed or washed away. The important river traffic was at a standstill: levees were broken, channels were blocked, the few steamboats which had not been captured or destroyed were in a state of disrepair, wharves had decayed or were missing, and trained personnel were dead or dispersed. Horses, mules, oxen, carriages, wagons, and carts had nearly all fallen prey at one time or another to the contending armies. The railroads were paralyzed, with most of the companies bankrupt. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. On one stretch of 114 miles in Alabama, every bridge and trestle was destroyed, cross-ties rotten, buildings burned, water-tanks gone, ditches filled up, and tracks grown up in weeds and bushes ... Communication centers like Columbia and Atlanta were in ruins; shops and foundries were wrecked or in disrepair. Even those areas bypassed by battle had been pirated for equipment needed on the battlefront, and the wear and tear of wartime usage without adequate repairs or replacements reduced all to a state of disintegration.}}

===Effect on women and families===
[[File:Confederate monument in Natchez, MS, Cemetery IMG 6995.JPG|thumb|right|upright=0.9|This Confederate memorial [[tombstone]] at Natchez City Cemetery is in [[Natchez, Mississippi]].]]

More than 250,000 Confederate soldiers died during the war. Some widows abandoned their family farms and merged into the households of relatives, or even became refugees living in camps with high rates of disease and death.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Lisa Tendrich |editor-last=Frank |title=Women in the American Civil War |year=2008 }}</ref> In the Old South, being an "[[Spinster|old maid]]" was an embarrassment to the woman and her family, but after the war, it became almost a norm.<ref>{{cite book |first=Drew Gilpin |last=Faust |title=Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War |year=1996 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/mothersofinventi00faus/page/139 139–152] |isbn=0-8078-2255-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/mothersofinventi00faus/page/139 |publisher=Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press }}</ref> Some women welcomed the freedom of not having to marry. Divorce, while never fully accepted, became more common. The concept of the "New Woman" emerged – she was self-sufficient and independent, and stood in sharp contrast to the "Southern Belle" of antebellum lore.<ref>{{cite book |first=Anya |last=Jabour |title=Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South |url=https://archive.org/details/scarlettssisters0000jabo |publisher=U of North Carolina Press |year=2007 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/scarlettssisters0000jabo/page/273 273]–280 |isbn=978-0-8078-3101-4 }}</ref>

==National flags==
{{Main|Flags of the Confederate States of America}}
<gallery class="center" style="margin:auto" widths="140" heights="100" perrow="4" mode="packed" caption="Flags of the Confederate States of America">
CSA FLAG 4.3.1861-21.5.1861.svg|1st National Flag<br />[7, 9, 11, 13 stars<ref>Coulter, Ellis Merton. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Z2_ZM0dWVrsC&q=stars+and+bars The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865] Retrieved 2012-06-13, published in LSU's History of the South series, on p. 118 notes that beginning in March 1861, the Stars-and-Bars was used "all over the Confederacy".</ref>]<br />"Stars and Bars"
Second national flag of the Confederate States of America.svg|2nd National Flag<br />[Richmond Capitol<ref>[[Sansing, David]]. [http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/107/history-of-the-confederate-flags|A Brief History of the Confederate Flags] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224053317/http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/107/history-of-the-confederate-flags%7CA |date=February 24, 2021 }} at "Mississippi History Now" online Mississippi Historical Society. Second National Flag, "the stainless banner" references, Devereaux D. Cannon, Jr., The Flags of the Confederacy, An Illustrated History (St. Lukes Press, 1988), 22–24. Section Heading "Second and Third National Flags". Retrieved October 4, 2012.</ref>]<br />"Stainless Banner"
Confederate National Flag since Mar 4 1865.svg|3rd National Flag<br />[never flown<ref>Sansing, David, [http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/107/history-of-the-confederate-flags|A Brief History of the Confederate Flags] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224053317/http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/107/history-of-the-confederate-flags%7CA |date=February 24, 2021 }} at "Mississippi History Now" online Mississippi Historical Socie ty. Third National Flag, "the bloodstained banner" references 19. Southern Historical Society Papers (cited hereafter as SHSP, volume number, date for the first entry, and page number), 24, 118. Section Heading "Second and Third National Flags". Retrieved October 4, 2012.</ref>]<br />"Blood Stained Banner"
Conf Navy Jack (light blue).svg|CSA Naval Jack<br />1863–65{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}
Battle flag of the Confederate States of America.svg|Battle Flag<br />"Southern Cross"<ref name=natgeo />
</gallery>
[[File:Battle flag of the Confederate States of America (Latest version).svg|thumb|This [[Flags of the Confederate States of America#Confederate flag|Confederate Battle Flag]] pattern is the one most often thought of as the Confederate Flag. It is one of many used by the Confederate armed forces. Variations of this design served as the Battle Flag of the Armies of Northern Virginia and Tennessee, and as the Confederate Naval Jack.]]

The first official flag of the Confederate States of America—called the "Stars and Bars"—originally had seven stars, representing the first seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. As more states joined, more stars were added, until the total was 13 (two stars were added for the divided states of Kentucky and Missouri). During the First Battle of Bull Run, ([[First Battle of Bull Run|First Manassas]]) it sometimes proved difficult to distinguish the Stars and Bars from the [[Flag of the United States#Historical progression of designs|Union flag]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=American Flag History {{!}} FlagandBanner.com |url=https://www.flagandbanner.com/flags/american-flag-history.asp |access-date=2025-02-16 |website=www.flagandbanner.com}}</ref> To rectify the situation, a separate "Battle Flag" was designed for use by troops in the field. Also known as the "Southern Cross", many variations sprang from the original square configuration.

Although it was never officially adopted by the Confederate government, the popularity of the Southern Cross among both soldiers and the civilian population was a primary reason why it was made the main color feature when a new national flag was adopted in 1863.<ref name=natgeo>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-confederate-battle-flag-became-symbol-racism|website=[[National Geographic]]|date=January 12, 2021|author=Erin Blakemore|title=How the Confederate battle flag became an enduring symbol of racism|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210217192512/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-confederate-battle-flag-became-symbol-racism|archive-date=February 17, 2021|url-status=dead|url-access=registration|access-date=July 21, 2022}}</ref> This new standard—known as the "Stainless Banner"—consisted of a lengthened white field area with a Battle Flag [[Canton (flag)|canton]]. This flag too had its problems when used in military operations as, on a windless day, it could easily be mistaken for a flag of truce or surrender. Thus, in 1865, a modified version of the Stainless Banner was adopted. This final national flag of the Confederacy kept the Battle Flag canton, but shortened the white field and added a vertical red bar to the fly end.

The "Confederate Flag" has a color scheme similar to that of the most common Battle Flag design, but is rectangular, not square. The "Confederate Flag" is a highly recognizable symbol of the South in the United States today and continues to be a controversial icon.

==Southern Unionism==
{{Main|Southern Unionist}}
[[File:1860-61 Secession in Appalachia by County.jpg|thumb|upright|Map of the county secession votes of 1860–1861 in Appalachia within the [[Appalachian Regional Commission|ARC]] definition. Virginia and Tennessee show the public votes, while the other states show the vote by county delegates to the conventions.]]

Unionism—opposition to the Confederacy—was strong in certain areas within the Confederate States. [[Southern Unionist]]s were widespread in the mountain regions of [[Appalachia]] and the [[Ozarks]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Kenneth W. |editor-last=Noe |editor2-first=Shannon H. |editor2-last=Wilson |title=Civil War in Appalachia |year=1997 }}</ref> Unionists, led by [[Parson Brownlow]] and Senator [[Andrew Johnson]], took control of [[East Tennessee]] in 1863.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Robert Tracy |last=McKenzie |title=Contesting Secession: Parson Brownlow and the Rhetoric of Proslavery Unionism, 1860–1861 |journal=Civil War History |year=2002 |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=294–312 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2002.0060 |s2cid=143199643 }}</ref> Unionists also attempted control over western Virginia, but never effectively held more than half of the counties that formed the new state of [[History of West Virginia#Civil War and split|West Virginia]].<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q9Lna2shH7oC&pg=PA54 |first=Richard O. |last=Curry |title=A House Divided, Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia |publisher=Univ. of Pittsburgh |year=1964 |page=8 |isbn=978-0822977513 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=James C. |last=McGregor |title=The Disruption of Virginia |year=1922 |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_px4SAAAAYAAJ |publisher=New York, The Macmillan company }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=David R. |last=Zimring |title='Secession in Favor of the Constitution': How West Virginia Justified Separate Statehood during the Civil War |journal=West Virginia History |year=2009 |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=23–51 |doi=10.1353/wvh.0.0060 |s2cid=159561246 }}</ref> Union forces captured parts of [[Eastern North Carolina|coastal North Carolina]], and at first were largely welcomed by local unionists. The occupiers became perceived as oppressive, callous, radical and favorable to [[Freedman|Freedmen]]. Occupiers pillaged, freed slaves, and evicted those who refused to swear loyalty oaths to the Union.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Judkin |last=Browning |title=Removing the Mask of Nationality: Unionism, Racism, and Federal Military Occupation in North Carolina, 1862–1865 |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_journal-of-southern-history_2005-08_71_3/page/589 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |year=2005 |volume=71 |issue=3 |pages=589–620 |jstor=27648821 |doi=10.2307/27648821 }}</ref>

In Texas, local officials harassed and murdered Unionists. Draft resistance was widespread especially among Texans of German or Mexican descent, many of the latter leaving for Mexico. Confederate officials attempted to hunt down and kill potential draftees who had gone into hiding.<ref name="in JSTOR">{{cite journal |first=Claude |last=Elliott |title=Union Sentiment in Texas 1861–1865 |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_southwestern-historical-quarterly_1947-04_50_4/page/449 |journal=Southwestern Historical Quarterly |year=1947 |volume=50 |issue=4 |pages=449–477 |jstor=30237490 }}</ref> Over 4,000 suspected Unionists were imprisoned in the Confederate States without trial.<ref>{{cite book |first=Mark E. Jr. |last=Neely |title=Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism |publisher=University Press of Virginia |year=1999 |isbn=0-8139-1894-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/southernrightspo0000neel }}</ref>

[[File:Jim Brownlow 1st Tennessee Cavalry Regiment (Union).jpg|thumb|upright=.8|Col. [[James P. Brownlow]], a 22-year-old cavalry colonel from Knoxville, and his regiment of Southern Unionist "mountaineers", were called "damned Tennessee Yankees" by Confederate troops.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Evans |first=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4vxjHOFflzcC&dq=jim+brownlow's+damned+tennessee+yankees&pg=PA28 |title=Sherman's Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign |date=March 22, 1999 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-21319-8 |pages=28 |language=en-us}}</ref>]]

Up to 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control served in the [[Union Army]] or pro-Union guerilla groups. Although Southern Unionists came from all classes, most differed socially, culturally, and economically from the region's dominant pre-war [[planter class]].<ref>Scott, E. Carele. [https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2018/12/21/southerner-vs-southerner-union-supporters-below-the-mason-dixon-line/ Southerner vs. Southerner: Union Supporters Below the Mason-Dixon Line]. ''Warfare History Network''. Retrieved December 27, 2022.</ref>

==Geography==

===Region and climate===
The Confederate States of America claimed a total of {{convert|2919|mi|km}} of coastline, thus a large part of its territory lay on the seacoast with level and often sandy or marshy ground. Most of the interior portion consisted of arable farmland, though much was also hilly and mountainous, and the far western territories were deserts. The southern reaches of the [[Mississippi River]] bisected the country, and the western half was often referred to as the [[Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War|Trans-Mississippi]]. The highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was [[Guadalupe Peak]] in Texas at {{convert|8750|ft|m}}.

[[File:Map of CSA 4.png|center|thumb|Map of the states and territories claimed by the Confederate States of America|upright=2.0]]
Much of the area had a [[humid subtropical climate]] with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. The climate and terrain varied from vast [[swamp]]s to semi-arid [[steppe climate|steppes]] and arid [[desert climate|deserts]]. The subtropical climate made winters mild but allowed [[infectious disease]]s to flourish; on both sides more soldiers died from disease than were killed in combat.<ref name="StatsWarCost">Two-thirds of soldiers' deaths occurred due to disease. {{cite web|last=Nofi|first=Al|author-link=Albert Nofi|title=Statistics on the War's Costs|publisher=Louisiana State University|date=June 13, 2001|url=http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711050249/http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm|archive-date=July 11, 2007|access-date=September 8, 2008}}
</ref>

==Demographics==
{{Further|White Southerners|Black Southerners}}

===Population===
{{Hatnote|Percentages may not total 100% because of rounding.}}
The 1860 United States census<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html#y1860|title=1860 Census of Population and Housing |publisher=Census.gov |date=January 7, 2009 |access-date=August 29, 2010}}</ref> gives a picture of the population for the areas that had joined the Confederacy. The population numbers exclude non-assimilated Indian tribes.

{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"
|-
! scope="col" | State
! scope="col" | Total<br />popu-<br />lation
! scope="col" | Total<br />number<br />of<br />slaves
! scope="col" | Total<br />number<br />of<br />house-<br />holds
! scope="col" | Total<br />free<br />popu-<br />lation
! scope="col" | Total<br />number<br />of<br />slave-<br />holders
! scope="col" | % of Free<br />popu-<br />lation<br />owning<br />slaves<ref>Calculated by dividing the number of owners (obtained via the census) by the number of free persons.</ref>
! scope="col" | % of Free<br />families<br />owning<br />slaves<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/selected_statistics_on_slavery_i.htm|title=Selected Statistics on Slavery in the United States|website=faculty.weber.edu|accessdate=May 3, 2023}}</ref>
! scope="col" | Slaves<br />as % of<br />popu-<br />lation
! scope="col" | Total<br />free<br />colored
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
| 964,201
| 435,080
| 96,603
| 529,121
| 33,730
| 6%
| 35%
| 45%
| 2,690
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Arkansas
| 435,450
| 111,115
| 57,244
| 324,335
| 11,481
| 4%
| 20%
| 26%
| 144
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
| 140,424
| 61,745
| 15,090
| 78,679
| 5,152
| 7%
| 34%
| 44%
| 932
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Georgia
| 1,057,286
| 462,198
| 109,919
| 595,088
| 41,084
| 7%
| 37%
| 44%
| 3,500
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
| 708,002
| 331,726
| 74,725
| 376,276
| 22,033
| 6%
| 29%
| 47%
| 18,647
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Mississippi
| 791,305
| 436,631
| 63,015
| 354,674
| 30,943
| 9%
| 49%
| 55%
| 773
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
| 992,622
| 331,059
| 125,090
| 661,563
| 34,658
| 5%
| 28%
| 33%
| 30,463
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | South Carolina
| 703,708
| 402,406
| 58,642
| 301,302
| 26,701
| 9%
| 46%
| 57%
| 9,914
|-
! scope="row" | Tennessee
| 1,109,801
| 275,719
| 149,335
| 834,082
| 36,844
| 4%
| 25%
| 25%
| 7,300
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Texas
| 604,215
| 182,566
| 76,781
| 421,649
| 21,878
| 5%
| 28%
| 30%
| 355
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia<ref>Figures for Virginia include the future West Virginia</ref>
| 1,596,318
| 490,865
| 201,523
| 1,105,453
| 52,128
| 5%
| 26%
| 31%
| 58,042
|- class="sortbottom" style="background: #f9f9f9; font-weight: bold;"
! scope="row" | '''Total'''
| 9,103,332
| 3,521,110
| 1,027,967
| 5,582,222
| 316,632
| 6%
| 31%
| 39%
| 132,760
|}

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"
|-
! scope="col" | Age structure
! scope="col" | 0–14 years
! scope="col" | 15–59 years
! scope="col" | 60 years and over
|-
! scope="row" | White males
| 43%
| 52%
| 4%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | White females
| 44%
| 52%
| 4%
|-
! scope="row" | Male slaves
| 44%
| 51%
| 4%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Female slaves
| 45%
| 51%
| 3%
|-
! scope="row" | Free black males
| 45%
| 50%
| 5%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Free black females
| 40%
| 54%
| 6%
|- style="background: #f9f9f9; font-weight: bold;"
! scope="row" | '''Total population'''<ref>Rows may not add to 100% due to rounding</ref>
| 44%
| 52%
| 4%
|}

In 1860, the areas that later formed the 11 Confederate states (including the future West Virginia) had 132,760 (2%) free blacks. Males made up 49% of the total population and females 51%.<ref>[http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/start.php?year=V1860 All data for this section taken from the University of Virginia Library, Historical Census Browser, Census Data for Year 1860] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141011024040/http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/start.php?year=V1860 |date=October 11, 2014 }}.</ref>

===Rural and urban population===
[[File:A Home on the Mississippi.png|thumb|upright=1.15|''[[A Home on the Mississippi]]'', [[Currier and Ives]], 1871]]

The Confederacy was overwhelmingly rural. Few towns had populations of more than 1,000—the typical [[county seat]] had a population under 500. Of the twenty largest U.S. cities in the 1860 census, only [[New Orleans]] lay in Confederate territory.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab09.txt|title=U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1860, Internet Release date: June 15, 1998|access-date=August 29, 2010}}</ref> Only 13 Confederate-controlled cities ranked among the top 100 U.S. cities in 1860, most of them ports whose economic activities vanished or suffered severely in the [[Union blockade]]. The population of Richmond swelled after it became the Confederate capital, reaching an estimated 128,000 in 1864.<ref>Dabney 1990 p. 182</ref> Prior to Richmond's late surge in population, only New Orleans among Confederate cities had 100,000 or more residents.

The cities of the Confederacy included (by size of population):

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin: auto;"
|-
! scope="col" | #
! scope="col" | City
! scope="col" | 1860 population
! scope="col" | [[List of United States metropolitan statistical areas by population|1860 U.S. rank]]
! Return to U.S. control
!Notes
|-
! scope="row" | 1.
| [[New Orleans]], Louisiana
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 168,675
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 6
| style="text-align: center; |1862
|See [[New Orleans in the American Civil War]]
|-
! scope="row" | 2.
| [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charleston]], South Carolina
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 40,522
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22
| style="text-align: center; |1865
|See [[Charleston in the American Civil War]]
|-
! scope="row" | 3.
| [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]], Virginia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 37,910
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 25
| style="text-align: center; |1865
|See [[Richmond in the Civil War|Richmond in the American Civil War]]
|-
! scope="row" | 4.
| [[Mobile, Alabama|Mobile]], Alabama
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 29,258
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 27
| style="text-align: center; |1865
|
|-
! scope="row" | 5.
| [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]], Tennessee
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,623
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 38
| style="text-align: center; |1862
|
|-
! scope="row" | 6.
| [[Savannah, Georgia|Savannah]], Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,619
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 41
| style="text-align: center; |1864
|
|-
! scope="row" | 7.
| [[Petersburg, Virginia|Petersburg]], Virginia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 18,266
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 50
| style="text-align: center; |1865
|
|-
! scope="row" | 8.
| [[Nashville, Tennessee|Nashville]], Tennessee
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 16,988
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 54
| style="text-align: center; |1862
|See [[History of Nashville, Tennessee#Civil War|Nashville in the American Civil War]]
|-
! scope="row" | 9.
| [[Norfolk, Virginia|Norfolk]], Virginia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 14,620
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 61
| style="text-align: center; |1862
|
|-
! scope="row" | 10.
| [[Alexandria, Virginia|Alexandria]], Virginia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 12,652
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 75
| style="text-align: center; |1861
|
|-
! scope="row" | 11.
| [[Augusta, Georgia|Augusta]], Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 12,493
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 77
| style="text-align: center; |1865
|
|-
! scope="row" | 12.
| [[Columbus, Georgia|Columbus]], Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,621
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 97
| style="text-align: center; |1865
|
|-
! scope="row" | 13.
| [[Atlanta]], Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,554
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 99
| style="text-align: center; |1864
|See [[Atlanta in the American Civil War]]
|-
! scope="row" | 14.
| [[Wilmington, North Carolina|Wilmington]], North Carolina
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,553
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 100
| style="text-align: center; |1865
|See [[Wilmington, North Carolina in the American Civil War]]
|}

===Religion===
{{See also|Christian views on slavery|The Jewish Confederates}}
[[File:St. John's Episcopal Montgomery Feb 2012 02.jpg|thumb|upright|[[St. John's Episcopal Church (Montgomery, Alabama)|St. John's Episcopal Church]], [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]]. The Secession Convention of Southern Churches was held here in 1861.]]

The Confederacy was overwhelmingly [[Protestant]].<ref>Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan, eds. ''Religion and the American Civil War'' (1998) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195121295 excerpt and text search].</ref> The majority of both free and enslaved populations identified with [[evangelical Protestantism]]. [[Baptists]] and [[Methodists]]. The slave population formed the [[Black church]]. [[Freedom of religion]] and [[separation of church and state]] were protected by Confederate laws.{{citation needed|date=June 2025}} [[Church attendance]] was very high and chaplains played a major role in the Army.<ref>Pamela Robinson-Durso, "Chaplains in the Confederate Army." ''Journal of Church and State'' 33 (1991): 747+.</ref>

Most large denominations experienced a North–South split in the prewar era on the issue of [[slavery]]. The creation of a new country necessitated independent structures. For example, the [[Presbyterian Church in the United States]] split, with much of the new leadership provided by [[Joseph Ruggles Wilson]].<ref>W. Harrison Daniel, "Southern Presbyterians in the Confederacy." ''North Carolina Historical Review'' 44.3 (1967): 231–255. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/23517888 online]</ref> Baptists and Methodists both broke off from their Northern coreligionists over the slavery issue, forming the [[Southern Baptist Convention]] and the [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South]].<ref>W. Harrison Daniel, "The Southern Baptists in the Confederacy." ''Civil War History'' 6.4 (1960): 389–401.</ref><ref>G. Clinton Prim. "Southern Methodism in the Confederacy". ''Methodist history'' 23.4 (1985): 240–249.</ref> Elites in the southeast favored the [[Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America]], which had reluctantly split from the [[Episcopal Church (USA)|Episcopal Church]] in 1861.<ref>Edgar Legare Pennington, "The Confederate Episcopal Church and the Southern Soldiers." ''Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church'' 17.4 (1948): 356–383. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/42972008 online]</ref> Other elites were [[Presbyterians]] belonging to the 1861-founded [[Presbyterian Church in the United States]]. Catholics included an Irish working-class element in coastal cities and an old French element in southern Louisiana.<ref>David T. Gleeson, ''The Green and the Gray: The Irish in the Confederate States of America'' (2013).</ref><ref>Sidney J. Romero, "Louisiana Clergy and the Confederate Army". ''Louisiana History'' 2.3 (1961): 277–300. {{JSTOR|4230621}}.</ref>

The southern churches met the shortage of Army chaplains by sending missionaries. One result was wave after wave of revivals in the Army.<ref>W. Harrison Daniel, "Southern Protestantism and Army Missions in the Confederacy". ''Mississippi Quarterly'' 17.4 (1964): 179+.</ref>

==Legacy and assessment==
{{See also|Lost Cause of the Confederacy}}

===Amnesty and treason issue===
{{Main|Pardons for ex-Confederates}}

When the war ended over 14,000 Confederates petitioned President Johnson for a pardon; he was generous in giving them out.<ref>{{cite journal |first=J. T. |last=Dorris |title=Pardoning the Leaders of the Confederacy |journal=Mississippi Valley Historical Review |year=1928 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=3–21 |jstor=1891664 |doi=10.2307/1891664 }}</ref> He issued a general amnesty to all Confederate participants in the "late Civil War" in 1868.<ref>Johnson, Andrew. [http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72360 "Proclamation 179 – Granting full pardon and amnesty for the offense of treason against the United States during the late Civil War"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171122185727/http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72360 |date=November 22, 2017 }}, December 25, 1868. Accessed July 18, 2014.</ref> Congress passed additional Amnesty Acts in May 1866 with restrictions on office holding, and the [[Amnesty Act]] in May 1872 lifting those restrictions. There was a great deal of discussion in 1865 about bringing treason trials, especially against Jefferson Davis. There was no consensus in President Johnson's cabinet, and no one was charged with treason. An acquittal of Davis would have been humiliating for the government.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Roy Franklin |last=Nichols |title=United States vs. Jefferson Davis, 1865–1869 |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_american-historical-review_1926-01_31_2/page/266 |journal=[[American Historical Review]] |year=1926 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=266–284 |jstor=1838262 |doi=10.2307/1838262 }}</ref>

Davis was indicted for treason but never tried; he was released from prison on bail in May 1867. The amnesty of December 25, 1868, eliminated any possibility of Davis standing trial for treason.<ref>{{cite book|author=Jefferson Davis|title=The Papers of Jefferson Davis: June 1865 – December 1870|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tCFFUrkgy60C&pg=PA96|year=2008|publisher=Louisiana State UP|page=96|isbn=978-0807133415}}</ref><ref>Nichols, "United States vs. Jefferson Davis, 1865–1869".</ref><ref>
* {{cite journal |jstor = 25723506|title = United States v. Jefferson Davis: Constitutional Issues in the Trial for Treason|journal = American Bar Association Journal|volume = 52|issue = 2|pages = 139–145|last1 = Deutsch|first1 = Eberhard P.|year = 1966}}
* {{cite journal |jstor = 25723552|title = United States v. Jefferson Davis: Constitutional Issues in the Trial for Treason|journal = American Bar Association Journal|volume = 52|issue = 3|pages = 263–268|last1 = Deutsch|first1 = Eberhard P.|year = 1966}}</ref>

[[Henry Wirz]], the [[commandant]] of a notorious [[prisoner-of-war]] camp near [[Andersonville, Georgia]], was convicted by a military court of charges related to cruelty and conspiracy, and executed on November 10, 1865.

The U.S. government began a decade-long process known as [[Reconstruction Era|Reconstruction]] which attempted to resolve the political and constitutional issues of the Civil War. The priorities were: to guarantee that Confederate nationalism and slavery were ended, to ratify and enforce the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]] which outlawed slavery; the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth]] which guaranteed dual U.S. and state citizenship to all native-born residents, regardless of race; the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifteenth]], which made it illegal to deny the right to vote because of race; and repeal each state's ordinance of secession.<ref>John David Smith, ed. ''Interpreting American History: Reconstruction'' (Kent State University Press, 2016).</ref>
By 1877, the [[Compromise of 1877]] ended Reconstruction in the former Confederate states. Federal troops were withdrawn. The war left the entire region economically devastated by military action, ruined infrastructure, and exhausted resources. Still dependent on an agricultural economy and resisting investment in infrastructure, it remained dominated by the planter elite into the next century. Democrat-dominated legislatures passed new constitutions and amendments [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|to exclude]] most blacks and many poor whites. This exclusion and a weakened Republican Party remained the norm until the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]]. The [[Solid South]] of the early 20th century did not achieve national levels of prosperity until long after [[World War II]].<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Cooper|first1=William J.|author-link1 = William J. Cooper, Jr.|last2=Terrill|first2=Tom E.|title=The American South: a history|year=2009|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers|isbn=978-0-7425-6095-6|page=xix}}</ref>

===Supreme Court rulings===
In ''[[Texas v. White]]'' (1869), the Supreme Court ruled by a 5–3 majority that Texas had remained a state ever since it first joined the Union, despite claims that it joined the Confederate States of America. The Court held that the Constitution did not permit [[United States states|a state]] to unilaterally secede.<ref>{{cite book |last=Murray |first=Robert Bruce |title=Legal Cases of the Civil War |url=https://archive.org/details/legalcasesofcivi0000murr |year=2003 |publisher=Stackpole Books |isbn=0-8117-0059-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/legalcasesofcivi0000murr/page/155 155]–159 }}</ref> In declaring that no state could leave the Union, "except through revolution or through consent of the States", it was "explicitly repudiating the position of the Confederate states that the United States was a voluntary compact between sovereign states".<ref>{{cite book |last=Zuczek |first=Richard |title=Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H80eQweo0V4C&pg=PA649 |chapter=Texas v. White (1869) |year=2006 |isbn=0-313-33073-5 |page=649 |publisher=Bloomsbury }}</ref> In ''Sprott v. United States'' (1874), the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 to reaffirm its conclusion in ''White'' and held that the Confederacy's "foundation was treason" and its "single purpose, so long as it lasted, was to make that treason successful."<ref>[https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/87/459/ ''Sprott v. United States'', 87 U.S. 459, 464 (1874)]</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Treason Clause: Doctrine and Practice |url=https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-3/section-3/clause-1/treason-clause-doctrine-and-practice |access-date=2024-06-18 |website=LII / Legal Information Institute |language=en}}</ref>

===Theories regarding downfall===

Historian [[Frank Lawrence Owsley]] argued that the Confederacy "died of states' rights".<ref name="Frank L. Owsley 1925">{{cite book |first=Frank L. |last=Owsley |title=State Rights in the Confederacy |location=Chicago |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=1925 }}</ref><ref>"Thomas1979" p. 155</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Owsley |title=Local Defense and the Overthrow of the Confederacy |journal=Mississippi Valley Historical Review |volume=11 |issue=4 |year=1925 |pages=492–525 |jstor=1895910 |doi=10.2307/1895910 }}</ref> The central government was denied requisitioned soldiers and money by governors and state legislatures because they feared that Richmond would encroach on the rights of the states. Georgia's governor [[Joseph E. Brown|Joseph Brown]] warned of a secret conspiracy by Jefferson Davis to destroy states' rights and individual liberty. The first conscription act in North America, authorizing Davis to draft soldiers, was said to be the "essence of military despotism".<ref>Rable (1994) 257. For a detailed criticism of Owsley's argument see {{cite book |first1=Richard E. |last1=Beringer |first2=William N. Jr. |last2=Still |first3=Archer |last3=Jones |first4=Herman |last4=Hattaway |title=Why the South Lost the Civil War |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1986 |pages=443–457 }} Brown declaimed against Davis Administration policies: "Almost every act of usurpation of power, or of bad faith, has been conceived, brought forth and nurtured in secret session."</ref><ref>See also {{cite book |first=Richard |last=Beringer |display-authors=etal |title=Why the South Lost the Civil War |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1986 |pages=64–83, 424–457 }}</ref> [[Roger Lowenstein]] argued that the Confederacy's failure to raise adequate revenue led to [[hyperinflation]] and being unable to win a [[war of attrition]], despite the prowess of its military leadership such as [[Robert E. Lee]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Foner |first=Eric |date=March 8, 2022 |title=The Hidden Story of the North's Victory in the Civil War |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/books/review/ways-and-means-roger-lowenstein.html}} Review of Lowenstein, Roger, ''Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War''. New York: Penguin Press, 2022.</ref>

Though political differences were within the Confederacy, no national political parties were formed because they were seen as illegitimate. "Anti-partyism became an article of political faith."<ref>Cooper (2000) p. 462. Rable (1994) pp. 2–3. Rable wrote, "But despite heated arguments and no little friction between the competing political cultures of unity and liberty, antiparty and broader fears about politics in general shaped civic life. These beliefs could obviously not eliminate partisanship or prevent Confederates from holding on to and exploiting old political prejudices ... Even the most bitter foes of the Confederate government, however, refused to form an opposition party, and the Georgia dissidents, to cite the most prominent example, avoided many traditional political activities. Only in North Carolina did there develop anything resembling a party system, and there the central values of the Confederacy's two political cultures had a far more powerful influence on political debate than did organizational maneuvering."</ref> Without a system of political parties building alternate sets of national leaders, electoral protests tended to be narrowly state-based, "negative, carping and petty". The [[1863 Confederate States House of Representatives elections|1863 mid-term elections]] became mere expressions of futile and frustrated dissatisfaction. According to historian David M. Potter, the lack of a functioning two-party system caused "real and direct damage" to the Confederate war effort since it prevented the formulation of any effective alternatives to the conduct of the war by the Davis administration.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=David Herbert |editor-last=Donald |title=Why the North Won the Civil War |year=1996 |pages=112–113 }} Potter wrote in his contribution to this book, "Where parties do not exist, criticism of the administration is likely to remain purely an individual matter; therefore the tone of the criticism is likely to be negative, carping, and petty, as it certainly was in the Confederacy. But where there are parties, the opposition group is strongly impelled to formulate real alternative policies and to press for the adoption of these policies on a constructive basis.&nbsp;... But the absence of a two-party system meant the absence of any available alternative leadership, and the protest votes which were cast in the [1863 Confederate mid-term] election became more expressions of futile and frustrated dissatisfaction rather than implements of a decision to adopt new and different policies for the Confederacy."</ref>

The enemies of President Davis proposed that the Confederacy "died of Davis". He was unfavorably compared to [[George Washington]] by critics such as [[Edward Alfred Pollard]], editor of the most influential newspaper in the Confederacy, the ''[[Richmond Examiner|Daily Richmond Examiner]]''. Beyond the early honeymoon period, Davis was never popular.<ref name="Coulter pp 105-06">Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 105–106</ref> [[E. Merton Coulter|Ellis Merton Coulter]], viewed by historians as a [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Confederate apologist]],<ref name="Bailey, 2001">Fred A. Bailey, "E. Merton Coulter", in ''Reading Southern History: Essays on Interpreters and Interpretations'', ed. Glenn Feldman (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001, p. 46).</ref><ref>Eric Foner, ''Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory Of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1993; Revised, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996, p. xii</ref><ref>Foner, ''Freedom's Lawmakers'', p. xii</ref><ref>Eric Foner, ''Black Legislators'', pp. 119–20, 180</ref> argues that Davis was unable to mobilize Confederate nationalism in support of his government effectively, and especially failed to appeal to the small farmers who made up the bulk of the population. Davis failed to build a network of supporters who would speak up when he came under criticism, and he repeatedly alienated governors and other state-based leaders by demanding centralized control of the war effort.<ref>{{cite book |first=Paul |last=Escott |title=After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-8071-1807-9 }}</ref>

==See also==
{{Div col|colwidth=20em|gap=2em}}
* [[American Civil War prison camps]]
* [[Cabinet of the Confederate States of America]]
* [[Commemoration of the American Civil War]]
* [[Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps]]
* [[Confederate colonies]]
* [[Confederate Patent Office]]
* [[Confederate war finance]]
* ''[[C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America]]''
* [[History of the Southern United States]]
* [[Knights of the Golden Circle]]
* [[List of Confederate arms manufacturers]]
* [[List of Confederate arsenals and armories]]
* [[List of Confederate monuments and memorials]]
* [[List of treaties of the Confederate States of America]]
* [[List of historical separatist movements]]
* [[List of civil wars]]
* [[National Civil War Naval Museum]]
{{div col end}}
{{clear}}

==Notes==
{{notelist|30em}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

===Sources===
{{refbegin}}
* Bowman, John S. (ed). ''The Civil War Almanac'', New York: Bison Books (1983)
* Crofts, Daniel W. ''Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis''. The University of North Carolina Press (1989)
* Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J. ''Civil War High Commands'', [[Stanford University Press]] (2001) {{ISBN|0-8047-3641-3}}
* Martis, Kenneth C. ''The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America 1861–1865'' (1994) {{ISBN|0-13-389115-1}}
* Rable, George C. ''The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1994). {{ISBN|0807821446}} {{OCLC|232667648}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{Main|Bibliography of the American Civil War}}

==External links==
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<!--Please:
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* Civil War Research & Discussion Group – [https://web.archive.org/web/20081206024047/http://fax.libs.uga.edu/canu/ ''Confederate States of Am. Army and Navy Uniforms''], 1861
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081206024037/http://fax.libs.uga.edu/AP2xC84/ ''The Countryman'', 1862–1866], published weekly by Turnwold, Ga., edited by J.A. Turner
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090111231646/http://fax.libs.uga.edu/ccsus/ ''The Federal and the Confederate Constitution Compared'']
* [http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/confed.html Photographs of the original Confederate Constitution] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120303004450/http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/confed.html |date=March 3, 2012 }} and other Civil War documents owned by the [http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/speccoll.html Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120429160002/http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/speccoll.html |date=April 29, 2012 }} at the [http://www.libs.uga.edu/ University of Georgia Libraries].
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081206024042/http://fax.libs.uga.edu/E468x7xM647/ ''Photographic History of the Civil War'', 10 vols., 1912.]
* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html DocSouth: Documenting the American South] – numerous online text, image, and audio collections.
* The [http://cdm.bostonathenaeum.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16057coll14 Boston Athenæum] has over 4000 Confederate imprints, including rare books, pamphlets, government documents, manuscripts, serials, broadsides, maps, and sheet music that have been conserved and digitized.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20121024013411/http://www.library.okstate.edu/okmaps/ Oklahoma Digital Maps: Digital Collections of Oklahoma and Indian Territory]
* [https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/050.html Confederate States of America Collection at the Library of Congress]
* [http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/article-summary/civil_war_religion#.Xs_0q2hKizk Religion in the CSA: ''Confederate Veteran Magazine'', May, 1922]
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Confederate States of America}}
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