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The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865.
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List of Confederate states by date of admission to the Confederacy. Map of the Confederate States with names and borders of states. A Confederate state was a U.S. state that declared secession and joined the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.
- Overview
- The road to secession
- The election of Abraham Lincoln and the secession crisis
- Organization of the Confederate government
- The Constitution of the Confederate States of America
- The Confederate flag and postage stamps
- The 1861 Confederate presidential election and the relocation of the Confederate capital
Confederate States of America, in the American Civil War, the government of 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860–61, carrying on all the affairs of a separate government and conducting a major war until defeated in the spring of 1865.
In the decades prior to 1860 there had been developing a steadily increasing bitterness between the Northern and Southern sections of the United States. These disputes gave rise to a fundamental disagreement about the rights of individual states and sparked diverging views about the meaning of important parts of the Constitution. While many economic, social, and political factors would feed into this regional antagonism, the central issue dividing the North and the South was slavery.
From the establishment of the American colonies in the 17th century, the labour of enslaved people had been a key factor in the economic growth of the English settlements. Enslaved people first were brought to Virginia in 1619, and the region would be transformed by cash crops, such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco, as well as the “peculiar institution” that made possible the agricultural economy of the South. During the reign of “King Cotton” (the early to mid-1800s) about one-third of the Southern population consisted of enslaved Black people. Although agriculture remained a significant part of the economy of the North, the Northern industrial and commercial sectors were far more developed than those of the South. After the American Revolution the North had largely given up slavery as uneconomical, although it still took several decades for many states to formally abolish the practice.
In February 1819 the country’s diverging views on slavery reached a critical juncture. Congress was debating a bill that would enable the territory of Missouri to craft a state constitution when Rep. James Tallmadge of New York introduced an amendment that would prohibit the further introduction of enslaved people into Missouri and emancipate all enslaved people already there when they reached age 25. The Tallmadge amendment was approved by the House of Representatives, where the populous North had a majority, but it was rejected in the Senate, where there was an even balance of free and slave states. The deadlock between the two houses lasted more than a year, during which time the nature of slavery was thoroughly debated. Finally, in March 1820, Speaker of the House Henry Clay secured passage of an acceptable compromise. The District of Maine was separated from Massachusetts and permitted to enter the Union as a free state, Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and slavery was excluded from the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′. This kept the balance between free and slave states at 12 each.
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The Missouri Compromise temporarily postponed a final reckoning over slavery, but the long rancorous debate left its mark upon the South. Southerners had heard slavery roundly denounced on the floor of Congress as morally wrong, and Northern domination of the House of Representatives revealed to Southerners their status as a political minority. The South became increasingly preoccupied with the need to defend its social and economic institutions by preserving an equal balance of free and slave states in the Senate. While the North sought to prevent the spread of slavery into the territories, the South declared that its citizens had a constitutional right to take enslaved people there. Of the seeming stalemate produced by the Missouri Compromise, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams observed, “Take it for granted that the present is a mere preamble—a title page to a great, tragic volume.”
The sectional dispute came to a head in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The Southern states held that both Lincoln and the Republican Party threatened their constitutional rights in the Union, their social institutions, and their economic existence. For more than a decade Southern leaders had argued that secession might be their only protection, and the time for it seemed to be at hand. South Carolina began the process by withdrawing from the Union on December 20. The movement quickly spread to Georgia and the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico, and before the end of January 1861 all of them had seceded except Texas, which withdrew on February 1.
The other slave states in the Upper South and on the border were greatly agitated, but they hesitated to secede for the time. On April 12, 1861, a Southern force under Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter in CharlestonHarbor. Sectional tension had given way to war, and Lincoln called upon the states then in the Union for troops to enforce the laws of the land, thus initiating another wave of secession. During April and May nearly all the states of the Upper South withdrew—Virginia (April 17), Arkansas (May 6), Tennessee (May 7, although secession was not formalized until a plebiscite was held on June 8), and North Carolina (May 20). There were also strong secession movements in the border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. In Kentucky a meeting of delegates declared that state out of the Union, and in Missouri a fragment of the legislature passed a secession ordinance. Kentucky and Missouri were admitted to the newly established Confederate States of America (bringing the total of breakaway states to 13, a number that evoked the original British colonies), but the action of both states was irregular. The other 11 states that constituted the Confederacy had all been carried out of the Union by conventions elected by the people—except Tennessee, where the full legislature acted. All except Tennessee had asserted their constitutional right to secede. Tennessee based its withdrawal on the right of revolution.
For many years, some Southerners had dreamed of a distinct Southern polity, and, with six states in secession, they decided to bind these states into a new country. It was necessary to make haste without waiting for the Upper South to follow, as Lincoln would be inaugurated on March 4, 1861, and it was feared that he might take action against the rebelling states immediately. So it was arranged for delegates from these six states (to be joined later by those from Texas) to meet in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4. This convention, presided over by Howell Cobb of Georgia, immediately began to frame a document setting up the new government. Four days later it unanimously adopted the provisional constitution of the Confederate States of America, which was to serve until a permanent constitution could be written.
This document was rudimentary, and its chief purpose was to provide the framework of a central government. It called for a president and a vice president, to be elected by the states (each state having one vote); a supreme court composed of the district judges; a unicameral congress (with the existing convention to continue as that body); the capital to be at Montgomery until the congress should change it; and the government thus established to continue for only one year. The leaders were anxious that there should appear to be no factions in this convention. After various conferences they chose Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia as vice president. Davis, who was not a member of the convention and who had no desire for the presidency, set out immediately from his Mississippi home. He was inaugurated on February 18 after a grand procession, which included a band playing “Dixie,” marched up the hill to the Alabama State Capitol.
The convention, which was the congress under the provisional constitution—when not busy providing for the needs of the new government—turned its attention to framing a permanent constitution. On March 11 its work was completed when it adopted the document by a unanimous vote. The proposed constitution was then submitted to the states that had seceded, and all of them ratified it. This constitution throughout its framework was a modified copy of the Constitution of the United States, for the Southerners had time and again insisted that they had no quarrel with that document. Their objection was to the way the North was interpreting it. There were, however, significant additions, changes, and clarifications. A bicameral Congress of the Confederate States would be established, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The president was to serve for a term of six years and be ineligible for reelection; the president might veto separate items in appropriation bills. With the consent of Congress, cabinet members might have seats on the floor of either house; a budget system was adopted, and Congress was not authorized to increase items in a budget except by a two-thirds majority; after the first two years, the post office department was required to be self-sustaining; foreign slave trade was prohibited; and no law could relate to more than one subject. By way of clarification, Congress was forbidden to foster any industry by a protective tariff, appropriate money for internal improvements, or limit the right to take enslaved people into a territory. Although there was a provision for a supreme court, Congress never set one up, largely through fear of the power it might assume.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one striking difference between the U.S. and Confederate constitutions was the latter’s overt enshrinement of the institution of slavery. Neither the word slave nor the word slavery appears in the unamended U.S. Constitution. Even the three-fifths compromise (Article 1, Section 2), which allowed Southern states to count three-fifths of their enslaved populations for the purposes of apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives, euphemistically referred to enslaved people as “other Persons.” The Confederate constitution retained the three-fifths compromise for matters of taxation and representation but removed any doubt about its subject by applying it to “three-fifths of all slaves.”
Elsewhere in the Confederate constitution, slavery was established as an immutable aspect of the Confederate state. Article I, Section 9, declared, “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves, shall be passed.” On the matter of the possible expansion of the Confederacy into new territory, Article IV, Section 3, noted, “In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves, lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”
On March 21, 10 days after the adoption of the Confederate constitution, Stephens delivered an address in which he attempted to explain the goals of the Confederacy and the significance of “one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world.” In his “Cornerstone Speech,” the vice president of the Confederacy stated, “The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization” He rejected the notion of “equality of races” and proclaimed:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
The Confederacy would be, at its core, a government firmly rooted in notions of white supremacy.
The attachment to the old Union was reflected not only in copying the Federal constitution but also in the search for a flag. The congressional committee appointed to design a flag received many suggestions for a modification of the Stars and Stripes and even considered claiming that flag as its own. The result was the Stars and Bars, which continued the red, white, and blue motif but had only three stripes; the field was blue with seven white stars. However, this design was similar enough to the United States flag that it led to confusion. Confederate troops at the First Battle of Bull Run had difficulty, in the heat and dust of battle, in distinguishing their own reinforcements from those of the enemy.
To prevent a repetition of this, a new banner, the Confederate Battle Flag, was designed, its red field crossed diagonally by a blue cross with 13 white stars. Despite its wide use, however, this most recognizable of Confederate flags was never officially adopted. In May 1863 the Confederate Congress adopted a second national flag, known as the Stainless Banner. It was pure white with the Battle Flag in the left corner. Because this flag, when hanging limp, looked too much like a flag of truce, the Confederate Congress on March 4, 1865, changed it by placing a broad red bar across its end. This Blood Stained Banner was the last flag of the Confederacy.
In November 1861, as provided by the permanent constitution, elections for president, vice president, and members of Congress were held throughout the Confederacy. Davis and Stephens, who had been serving provisionally up to this time, were elected to full six-year terms, and a Congress of two houses was chosen for the first time. In the meantime, the convention changed the capital city from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, and the government moved there during the summer.
Davis’s second inauguration took place in the Virginia capital on February 22, 1862, on a bleak, cold, rainy day—a sombre occasion as the president looked out on a sea of black umbrellas and read his address. It was a great contrast to the balmy day in Alabama when he was first inaugurated. Already the superstitious were thinking that it was a harbinger of dark days ahead.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865.
The Confederate States of America (a.k.a. the Confederacy, the Confederate States, or CSA) were the eleven southern states of the United States of America that seceded between 1861 and 1865. Seven states declared their independence from the United States before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president; four more did so after the American ...
John Brown. The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union [e] ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"). The Confederacy had been formed by states that had seceded from the Union.
Nov 9, 2009 · Learn about the 11 states that seceded from the United States in 1860 and formed the Confederacy, led by Jefferson Davis. Explore the causes, events and outcomes of the Civil War that ended the Confederacy in 1865.
