To rectify the situation, a separate "Battle Flag" was designed for use by troops in the field. The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern slave states that had declared their secession from the United States. [79], In Missouri, a constitutional convention was approved and delegates elected by voters. But food shortages only worsened, especially in the towns. A mass meeting in Charleston celebrating the Charleston and Savannah railroad and state cooperation led to the South Carolina legislature to call for a Secession Convention. Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads", pp. Bartek, James M. "The Rhetoric of Destruction: Racial Identity and Noncombatant Immunity in the Civil War Era." [126], In Texas, local officials harassed Unionists and engaged in large-scale massacres against Unionists and Germans. [216] Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory placed his hopes in a European-built ironclad fleet, but they were never realized. Two Congresses sat in six sessions until March 18, 1865. Most debts were also left behind. [80] The governor maneuvered to take control of the St. Louis Arsenal and restrict Federal movements. The subtropical climate made winters mild but allowed infectious diseases to flourish. The Antiwar Turn in Civil War Scholarship.". Link, Arthur S. and Rembert W. Patrick, eds. [281] In many cases, the same US Federal District Judges were appointed as Confederate States District Judges. But the troops there remained in place during the Gettysburg Campaign. [236] 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. Freedom of religion and separation of church and state were fully ensured by Confederate laws. [105], Citizens at Mesilla and Tucson in the southern part of New Mexico Territory formed a secession convention, which voted to join the Confederacy on March 16, 1861, and appointed Dr. Lewis S. Owings as the new territorial governor. 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. Lee surrendered a remnant of 50,000 from the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. The lack of adequate financial resources led the Confederacy to finance the war through printing money, which led to high inflation. [180], Many thousands of slaves served as personal servants to their owner, or were hired as laborers, cooks, and pioneers. By late 1864, Lee was calling for more troops. Its armies were defeated or disbanding. 23–26. Unionists held a Convention in Wheeling in June 1861, establishing a "restored government" with a rump legislature, but sentiment in the region remained deeply divided. [111] The Permanent Constitution was adopted there on March 12, 1861. [3] Under Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the permanent Constitution Congress had the authority to admit additional states into the Confederacy, but unlike the United States and Provisional Confederate Constitutions which required a simple majority vote admission of new states to the Confederacy required a two-thirds vote in each House with the Senators from each state voting jointly. [288] The Confederacy arrested pro-Union civilians in the South at about the same rate as the Union arrested pro-Confederate civilians in the North. [63], Developments in South Carolina started a chain of events. [175], 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. Federals there began a war-long policy of burning grain supplies up rivers into the interior wherever they could not occupy. [220] Also in September Confederate General William W. Loring pushed Federal forces from Charleston, Virginia, and the Kanawha Valley in western Virginia, but lacking re-inforcements Loring abandoned his position and by November the region was back in Federal control.[221][222]. [20], The Confederacy was established in the Montgomery Convention in February 1861 by seven states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, adding Texas in March before Lincoln's inauguration), expanded in May–July 1861 (with Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina), and disintegrated in April–May 1865. Prices rose dramatically despite government efforts at price regulation. [2] The Confederacy recognized 13 states, but Kentucky and Missouri were border states represented by governments-in-exile; their pre-war state legislatures never voted to secede, but the Confederacy recognized pro-South provisional governments there as legitimate. The number of people (as of 1860) who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's 1860 population. As with any war, the Confederate States of America (CSA) needed to raise money to finance their huge war effort. New Mexico Territory in the American Civil War, Indian Territory in the American Civil War, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Confederate States Army § Morale and motivations, Military of the Confederate States of America, Lincoln directed states to provide 75,000 troops, List of C.S. The biggest spike in Confederate memorials came during the early 1900s, soon after Southern states enacted a number of sweeping laws to disenfranchise Black Americans and segregate society. Flag images indicative of country of origin and not necessarily primary operator. A few days later General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively signalling the collapse of the Confederacy. The convention rejected secession 89–1 on March 19, 1861. Many old tools had broken through heavy use; new tools were rarely available; even repairs were difficult. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan, eds. Kentucky and Missouri were seated in December 1861. List. Washington was inaugurated in peacetime. Following each battle, Federals maintained a military presence and occupied Washington, DC; Fort Monroe, Virginia; and Springfield, Missouri. [239] Congress passed additional Amnesty Acts in May 1866 with restrictions on office holding, and the Amnesty Act in May 1872 lifting those restrictions. [103] Although slave-holding Delaware and Maryland did not secede, citizens from those states exhibited divided loyalties. The Confederacy was begun by the Provisional Congress in Convention at Montgomery, Alabama on February 28, 1861. [154] European travelers visited and wrote accounts for publication. 809–810. Grant, Susan-Mary, and Brian Holden Reid, eds. Henry Wirz, the commandant of a notorious prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, was tried and convicted by a military court, and executed on November 10, 1865. ", McNeill, William J. ", Brown, Alexis Girardin. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. [17] On February 22, 1862, the temporary government under the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States was replaced with a permanent federal government under the Confederate States Constitution. It was then submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. Mail sent from the North to the South passed at City Point, also in Virginia, where it was also inspected before being sent on. Food that formerly came overland was cut off. The British investors' goal was to get highly profitable cotton. "Rethinking the Confederate home front.". With few exceptions the Confederacy secured excellent general officers. Internal movement within the Confederacy became increasingly difficult, weakening its economy and limiting army mobility. [217], In the east, Union forces could not close on Richmond. Exemption fraud proliferated in medical examinations, army furloughs, churches, schools, apothecaries and newspapers. Those remaining elected majors and colonels whose performance led to officer review boards in October. [198] To administer the draft, a Bureau of Conscription was set up to use state officers, as state Governors would allow. "The Civil War’s Demographic Impact on White Males in the Eleven Confederate States: An Analysis by State and Selected Age Groups.". : The Confederate States of America, List of Confederate arsenals and armories, List of treaties of the Confederate States of America, "Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, 1861–65", "Industry and Economy during the Civil War", "PRIDE OR PREJUDICE? 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. SOUTH CAROLINA | MISSISSIPPI | FLORIDA | ALABAMA | GEORGIA | LOUISIANA | TEXAS | VIRGINIA | ARKANSAS | NORTH CAROLINA | TENNESSEE | MISSOURI | KENTUCKY. The Emperor made the same assurance to British Members of Parliament John A. Roebuck and John A. After several battles Union armies took control of the territory. Neely notes that. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. After some success against the Union blockade, in March the ironclad CSS Virginia was forced into port and burned by Confederates at their retreat. Over half of the American Indian troops participating in the Civil War from the Indian Territory supported the Confederacy; troops and one general were enlisted from each tribe. War would have meant higher taxes in Britain, another invasion of Canada, and full-scale worldwide attacks on the British merchant fleet. [310], The Confederate army experienced a persistent shortage of horses and mules, and requisitioned them with dubious promissory notes given to local farmers and breeders. The executive committee of the constitutional convention called the members together in July. Over 4,000 suspected Unionists were imprisoned without trial.[127]. "'The Finest Kind of Lady': Hegemonic Femininity in American Women’s Civil War Narratives. No person shall be a Represen tative, who shall not have attained the age of twenty-five years, and be a citizen of the Confederate States, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. During 1861 all of these facilities produced small amounts of gold coinage, and the latter half dollars as well. [32] They judged the agents of change to be abolitionists and anti-slavery elements in the Republican Party, whom they believed used repeated insult and injury to subject them to intolerable "humiliation and degradation". At all three, Confederate forces could not follow up their victory due to inadequate supply and shortages of fresh troops to exploit their successes. The Solid South of the early 20th century did not achieve national levels of prosperity until long after World War II. Stephens was inaugurated February 11, Davis February 18.[269]. [309] Railroads came under the de facto control of the military. [137][page needed] Neither secured diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy, much less military assistance. [5] Convinced that white supremacy[6] and the institution of slavery[4][6] were threatened by the November 1860 election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency, on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories, the Confederacy declared its secession from the United States, with the loyal states becoming known as the Union during the ensuing American Civil War. The four states which entered after the attack on Fort Sumter held almost half the population of the Confederacy and voted 53% for pro-Union candidates. [258], Coulter, recognized by today's historians as a Confederate apologist,[259][260][261][262] says Davis was heroic and his will was indomitable. ", Blumenthal (1966) p. 151; Jones (2009) p. 321; Owsley (1959). [315] By April 1863, for example, the cost of flour in Richmond had risen to $100 a barrel and housewives were rioting. Boles, John B. and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, eds. Allowing President Davis to threaten "arbitrary arrests" to draft hundreds of governor-appointed "bomb-proof" bureaucrats conferred "more power than the English Parliament had ever bestowed on the king. The "Confederate Flag" has a color scheme similar to that of the most common Battle Flag design, but is rectangular, not square. When the matter came before the Confederate court, the property owner could not appear because he was unable to travel across the front lines between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederates who had believed that "cotton is king", that is, that Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton, proved mistaken. "[57], North Carolina and Tennessee limited their ordinances to simply withdrawing, although Tennessee went so far as to make clear they wished to make no comment at all on the "abstract doctrine of secession". "Religion and combat motivation in the Confederate armies. Ended locomotive production in 1860 to make arms and munitions, Theories regarding the Confederacy's demise, Alabama Fire-Eater, "The Orator of Secession", Governor of South Carolina, called the Secessionist Convention, Navy Jack – light blue cross; also square, Conscription Bureau chief, April 1862 – May 1863, military recruiter under Bragg, then J.E. "Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities", Cleland, Beau. Bailey, Anne J., and Daniel E. Sutherland, eds. The Confederate Constitution also incorporated each of the 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution that had been ratified up to that point. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. [234] The last confederate military unit, the commerce raider CSS Shenandoah, surrendered on November 6, 1865 in Liverpool. Shortages were much worse for civilians, and the prices of necessities steadily rose. Atlanta, which had not yet supplanted Milledgeville, Georgia, as its state capital, put in a bid noting its central location and rail connections, as did Opelika, Alabama, noting its strategically interior situation, rail connections and nearby deposits of coal and iron. A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot.". [150] Both Confederate and Union agents were allowed to work openly in British territories. [131], On the part of the Confederacy, immediately following Fort Sumter the Confederate Congress proclaimed that "war exists between the Confederate States and the Government of the United States, and the States and Territories thereof". Draft resistance was widespread especially among Texans of German or Mexican descent; many of the latter went to Mexico. Confederates withdrew from northern Mississippi and northern Alabama. Backpedalling six months later, Congress provided overseers under 45 could be exempted only if they held the occupation before the first Conscription Act. For example, the Presbyterian Church in the United States split, with much of the new leadership provided by Joseph Ruggles Wilson (father of President Woodrow Wilson). By 1860, sectional disagreements between North and South concerned primarily the maintenance or expansion of slavery in the United States. The move was used by Vice President Stephens and others to encourage other border states to follow Virginia into the Confederacy. [73], Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution was a contract among sovereign states that could be abandoned at any time without consultation and that each state had a right to secede. Coulter, "Confederate States of America", pp. [244], By 1877, the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction in the former Confederate states. Crofts wrote: The bombardment of Fort Sumter, by itself, did not destroy Unionist majorities in the upper South. On their way to Europe in 1861, the U.S. Navy intercepted their ship, the Trent, and forcibly detained them in Boston, an international episode known as the Trent Affair. In Davis' inauguration speech, he explained the Confederacy was not a French-like revolution, but a transfer of rule. 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. (March 21, 1861), The immediate catalyst for secession was the victory of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in the 1860 elections. [28], Following South Carolina's unanimous 1860 secession vote, no other Southern states considered the question until 1861, and when they did none had a unanimous vote. About 250,000 men never came home, some 30 percent of all white men aged 18 to 40 (as counted in 1860). After the fighting began in April, four additional slave states seceded and were admitted. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, worth just $48 million. The port and region's agriculture were lost to the Union in April 1862. He wrote: The Texas delegation was seated with full voting rights after its statewide referendum of secession on March 2, 1861. Two-thirds of soldiers' deaths occurred due to disease. 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. [73] 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. [62] Charleston's secessionist "1860 Association" published over 200,000 pamphlets to persuade the youth of the South. One of the greatest calamities which confronted Southerners was the havoc wrought on the transportation system. Confederate diplomats found little support for American slavery, cotton trade or no. Because of the destruction of any central repository of records in Richmond in 1865 and the comparatively poor record-keeping of the time, there can be no definitive number that represents the strength of the Confederate States Army. [2] In a speech known today as the Cornerstone Address, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens described its ideology as being centrally based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition".[7]. The Confederacy's last remaining blockade-running port, Wilmington, North Carolina, was lost. 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 ..."). LISTOFSTAFFOFFICERSOFTHECONFEDERATEARMY. Even once–respected voices, including the Chief Justice of South Carolina, John Belton O'Neall, lost election to the Secession Convention on a Cooperationist ticket. 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. After 1863 the tribal governments sent representatives to the Confederate Congress: Elias Cornelius Boudinot representing the Cherokee and Samuel Benton Callahan representing the Seminole and Creek people. The 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. Across the South mobs expelled Yankees and (in Texas) executed German-Americans suspected of loyalty to the United States. Senator James Chesnut, Jr. resigned, as did Senator James Henry Hammond. For decades, there had been widespread fear of slave revolts. See Table of election returns at. After war began in April, four slave states of the Upper South—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina—also seceded and joined the Confederacy. [3], All states and their residents were represented in the Confederate States Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. 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. The Confederate Constitution's equivalent to the U.S. Constitution's general welfare clause prohibited protective tariffs (but allowed tariffs for providing domestic revenue), and spoke of "carry[ing] on the Government of the Confederate States" rather than providing for the "general welfare". For other uses, see, "Confederate States" redirects here. 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. There the fundamental documents of government were promulgated, a provisional government was established, and a representative Congress met for the Confederate States of America. The Confederate Senate was the upper house of the Congress of the Confederate States of America.Its members were, like those of the United States Senate, elected for six year terms by the state legislature of each state, with each state having two senators.The Confederate Senate met only between 1862 and 1865. [160] Davis's message could not explicitly acknowledge that slavery was on the bargaining table due to still-strong domestic support for slavery among the wealthy and politically influential. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. The U.S. Army took control of the Confederate areas without post-surrender insurgency or guerrilla warfare against them, but peace was subsequently marred by a great deal of local violence, feuding and revenge killings. [73], The new 'provisional' Confederate President Jefferson Davis issued a call for 100,000 men from the various states' militias to defend the newly formed Confederacy. The United States Census of 1860[338] gives a picture of the overall 1860 population for the areas that had joined the Confederacy. Martis, Kenneth C., op. His ill health and temporary bouts of blindness disabled him for days at a time. Governor William Henry Gist of South Carolina corresponded secretly with other Deep South governors, and most southern governors exchanged clandestine commissioners. Spencer Jones, "The Influence of Horse Supply Upon Field Artillery in the American Civil War". [213] 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". Home › Learn › Primary Sources › Secession Acts of the Thirteen Confederate States. By the time the fighting took place, undoubtedly some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown. Southerners' refusal to export the cotton crop in 1861 left railroads bereft of their main source of income. There would be no help from the Europeans. As Rable explains, "This contraction of civic vision was more than a crabbed libertarianism; it represented an increasingly widespread disillusionment with the Confederate experiment."[200]. [349] 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, respectively. Following the repulse of Confederate counter-attack at the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, permanent Federal occupation expanded west, south and east. One reason for the regional lag in industrial development was top-heavy income distribution.