A republic formed in February, 1861, and composed of the 11 Southern states that seceded from the United States in order to preserve slavery and states' rights. It was dissolved in 1865 after being defeated in the American Civil War.

Also called the Confederacy. the eleven southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia) that seceded from the United States in 1860 and 1861, thus precipitating the Civil War.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

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Confederate States of America, a breakaway slaveholding republic founded in February 1861 after the secession from the Union of the lower South states. It originally comprised seven states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) but gained four additional members from the upper South (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) in the wake of President Abraham Lincoln's decision to force the seceded states back into the Union after the attack on Fort Sumter in April. The overall population of the Confederate States in 1861 was approximately 9 million, of whom 3.5 million were African American slaves.

Founding

Delegates from the lower South states met in convention in early February in Montgomery, Alabama, to write a new constitution. They quickly agreed on a provisional document, and under its authority elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia as president and vice president, respectively. On 11 March 1861, delegates unanimously adopted a permanent constitution for the Confederate States. Most of the new constitution's provisions were identical to those of its federal counterpart, but some changes reflected the new republic's states-rights origins and distinctive society. There was no general welfare clause; Confederate funding of internal improvements was prohibited and protective tariffs banned; and the Confederate president was to serve a single six-year term. The constitution forbade the passage of any law undermining the holding of slaves—the Confederacy's founders avoided the euphemisms of their federal forefathers—but delegates rejected a reopening of the foreign slave trade, which many radicals had been advocating. The convention also rejected proposals to incorporate into the constitution the right of secession. In general, Confederate founding represented the defeat of "fire-eating" radicalism and a reassertion of the conservative political authority of the South's planter class.

Organization and Mobilization

For the first year of the Confederacy's existence, members of its constitutional convention also served as members of the provisional congress. In May 1861, the congress voted—over President Davis's veto—to move the Confederate capital from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia. The switch was made possible by Virginia's ratification of secession on 23 May and dictated by Richmond's location, size, and commercial and industrial capacity; among other things, Richmond was the site of the Tredegar Iron Works, the largest facility of its kind in the South. Military mobilization began almost as soon as political organization, and throughout 1861 and early 1862, the congress passed numerous acts designed to stimulate and regulate recruitment. This legislation produced a bewildering situation in which volunteers could enter the Confederate army either directly or as members of state militias and could serve for terms that ranged from six months to three years. The number of those willing to serve during the first few months of the war far exceeded the quantity of available arms, thereby limiting the army's capabilities. By the end of 1861, however, enthusiasm for volunteering had begun to decline, and the imminent expiry of the twelve-month recruits' term of service caused the Confederate congress on 16 April 1862 to enact the first conscription law in American history. The law required three years of service from men aged eighteen to thirty-five. The upper age limit was extended to forty-five on 27 September 1862. Finally, on 17 February 1864, the congress required military service from all able-bodied men aged seventeen to fifty, with those under eighteen and over forty-five being reserved for state defense. One of the most contentious aspects of Confederate conscription was the policy of exemption, first defined in April 1862 to include Confederate and state officials and a range of occupations such as telegraph operators, transportation workers, and ministers of religion. On 11 October 1862, the list was considerably expanded to bring in industrial workers and, most controversially, to exempt from military service men responsible for overseeing twenty slaves or more. Widespread abuses prompted congress in the February 1864 act to end industrial exemptions. Conscripts could also avoid Confederate service by hiring substitutes, a policy that encouraged corruption and, like exemption, aroused resentment from those who charged that it discriminated against the poorer classes. As a result, substitution was abolished in December 1863. In total, an estimated 900,000 men served in the Confederate armed forces, or just under half the number of their federal opponents.

Government and Politics

The Confederate government was closely modeled on that of the federal Union. The most conspicuous differences were the single, six-year terms for the president and vice president, and the failure to establish a Confederate supreme court, provision for which had been made in the new constitution. In November 1861, Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens were elected president and vice president under the permanent constitution. As provisional president, Davis had selected his cabinet initially upon the basis of state representation. Filling the most important positions were Robert Toombs of Georgia as secretary of state, Christopher G. Memminger of South Carolina as secretary of the treasury, and Leroy P. Walker of Alabama as secretary of war. Anxious to pursue his military and political ambitions, Toombs resigned in July 1861 and was replaced by Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, the first of many cabinet changes that Davis was forced to make. In total, the Confederacy had four secretaries of state, five attorney generals, two secretaries of the treasury, and six secretaries of war. Probably the most able cabinet member was Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, whose prominent role in the Davis administration aroused resentment because of his Jewish background. Benjamin served the Confederacy between 1861 and 1865 as attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state.

The Confederate congress sat as a provisional unicameral body during the republic's first year and was replaced by a permanent senate and house in February 1862. The congress's contribution to Confederate governance was undermined by its high turnover of personnel: only about 10 percent of members served continuously from 1861 to 1865, with many of the South's planter-politicians preferring to serve in the army rather than the legislature. Overseeing the senate was the vice president Alexander Stephens, who emerged as one of Davis's most passionate critics. Political opposition to Davis was apparent from early in the war, but it intensified after the congressional elections of 1863, which, despite their low turnout, represented a judgment on the Confederate government's conduct of the war, indeed on the Confederacy itself. The second Confederate congress, which convened in May 1864, saw a significant rise in the number of antiadministration members. Despite constant disagreement, however, the Confederate president in the main kept control of policymaking and was generally supported by the legislature on important issues. Jefferson Davis exercised his veto power thirty-nine times, and on every occasion except one—a bill to allow free postage on soldiers' newspapers—Congress upheld his action. As defeat in the war approached in early 1865, the legislature, led by the volatile senator Louis Wigfall of Texas, sought to assert its authority over the president by insisting on changes to the civil and military administration. The demands included the resignation of the cabinet, which Davis resisted even while accepting the departure of James A. Seddon, the secretary of war, and the granting of extra power to the general-in-chief, Robert E. Lee, to which the president acceded.

By far, the Confederacy's most significant departure from previous American practice was the absence of a two-party system. Secession and Confederate founding in many respects had been a reaction against party politics, which Davis and other leaders, reverting to an earlier ideology, regarded as corrupting and antipathetic to their vision of southern unity. But political opposition to the Davis government could not be stilled, and, from the outset, serious differences arose over major aspects of wartime policy, including conscription and impressment. In the absence of political parties, opposition was fragmented, individualistic, and often highly personal in tone. Much of the public opposition to the Davis administration came from governors, who were anxious to protect state prerogatives against the encroachments of Confederate nationalism, and by far the most persistent of the gubernatorial critics was Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, who viewed the policy of conscription as destructive of both states' rights and popular liberty. Although states' rights opposition may have helped undermine public confidence in Davis's conduct of the war, it failed to deflect the president, whose actions were endorsed by Congress and, crucially, by state supreme courts that invariably found the conscription legislation to be constitutional.

Foreign Relations

A number of factors, including widespread contemporary belief in free trade and the legitimacy of secession, caused southern leaders to expect European and especially British support. Nonetheless, the Confederate States used the power of "King Cotton" to try to ensure that support. Cotton accounted for approximately three-quarters of American exports to Britain during the late 1850s, and an estimated 20 percent of the British population earned its livelihood directly or indirectly from the manufacture of cotton products. If cotton was withheld, southerners insisted, Britain and France would be forced to intervene and, at the very least, formally recognize the independence of the Confederate States. Ironically, the strategy backfired, partly as a result of the South's own success as a producer: in 1861, cotton stocks in British warehouses had never been greater, obviating any immediate need for action by the textile industry. As part of the Confederate strategy to gain recognition, diplomats urged European governments to accept that the federal blockade of southern ports was illegal, a "paper" blockade, but were unable to explain why, if that was the case, the South itself was avoiding sending raw cotton to Europe.

The first Confederate commission to Europe—William L. Yancey, A. Dudley Mann, and Pierre A. Rost—failed to capitalize on the opportunities arising from Britain and France's neutrality proclamations of, respectively, May and June 1861. In November, two new envoys, James M. Mason and John A. Slidell, were appointed. Seized by the Union navy from the British steamship Trent, Mason and Slidell were eventually released and arrived in Europe in January 1862. Throughout 1862 and 1863, Mason and Slidell continued to press the British and French governments on the recognition issue but without success. Their diplomatic effort was assisted by a propaganda campaign spearheaded by the Swiss-born Henry Hotze, who in May 1862 established The Index, a weekly newspaper published in London. In the second half of that year, both the British and French governments considered mediation proposals but the former was unprepared to act without significant evidence of Confederate military progress and the latter would not act without Britain. The onset of Lincoln's emancipation policy in 1862 also changed the debate about the nature of the American conflict, rendering it more difficult for Britain and France to consider action on behalf of a slaveholding republic.

The following summer, 1863, southern diplomatic spirits briefly revived when the British parliament debated a motion for Confederate recognition proposed by John A. Roebuck, who had privately discussed intervention with the French emperor. However, Roebuck's initiative collapsed after failing to gain the support of either the British government or Tory opposition. Military setbacks at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863 further frustrated southern attempts to persuade skeptical Europeans about the need for intervention, and after the withdrawal of Roebuck's motion, Confederate diplomacy in Europe was in retreat. Particularly significant was the British government's change of policy over Confederate warships being built in Britain. In July 1862, the Alabama had escaped from the Laird shipyards near Liverpool to begin a destructive career against Union commerce, but the following year the government accepted the U.S. argument that permitting the construction of such vessels violated British neutrality. By 1863, anti-British feeling in the Confederacy was running high, and in October, following several months of incidents, the Davis cabinet unanimously agreed to the expulsion of all British consuls in the South. Confederate relations with France, which invaded Mexico in 1863, proved more productive, particularly on the commercial front, though again failed to achieve the desired aim of recognition. In early 1865, the Confederacy played its final diplomatic card when it dispatched Duncan F. Kenner of Louisiana to Europe with an offer to emancipate the slaves in exchange for recognition. The mission predictably proved a failure, as by this time both Britain and France were convinced of the Confederacy's imminent defeat.

Economy and Society

An agricultural society overwhelmingly geared to the production of staple crops, the Confederate States of America was seriously deficient in the economic resources necessary to fight a protracted war for independence. Southern industrial capacity was dwarfed by that of the federal states, which on the eve of the conflict had produced approximately 90 percent of the nation's manufactured goods. Broadly self-sufficient in food production, the South lacked an adequate transportation system, with its railroads in particular comparing poorly in mileage and quality to those of the industrializing North. During the war, the Confederate government through its various War and Navy Department supply bureaus made great strides toward remedying its industrial shortfall, and by 1863 the South had begun to meet its military-industrial needs. Driving the development in state-sponsored manufacturing was the Pennsylvania-born ordnance chief, General Josiah Gorgas. His overall contribution to the Confederate war effort was immense; without his energy and organizational genius, the southern republic's armed forces would have proved even less capable of resisting its far better equipped and resourced northern rival.

Financing the war also proved a problem for a society that traditionally was not persuaded by the merits of taxation. Initially, the Confederacy raised funds through a variety of bonds, loans, and taxes; the latter included an export tariff of one-eighth cent a pound on raw cotton. In August 1861, under the provisional constitution, the Confederate congress passed a direct tax on all property, including slaves. The measure largely proved ineffective as the majority of the states, who had been encouraged to assume responsibility for the tax, chose to raise the money by borrowing rather than by direct imposition on the people. Over the next two years, debate raged about the expediency and constitutionality of direct taxation. Finally, on 24 April 1863, the Confederate congress passed into law a comprehensive bill whose provisions included occupational and license taxes, a graduated income tax, and a tax-in-kind on agricultural products, including livestock. The 1863 act was resented by many sections of society, including hard-pressed farmers; it proved costly and difficult to enforce, and evasion was widespread. In total, the Confederacy raised only about a twentieth of its revenue from taxation. Overwhelmingly, the war was financed through loans, both Confederate and state-issued, and by the printing of a constant supply of redeemable treasury notes. The Confederacy's currency never became legal tender, however, and the number of notes in circulation soon far outstripped need, fueling inflation. In early 1863 the government also sought to harness its most valuable agricultural commodity by negotiating a cotton-backed loan of $15 million with the French financiers, Erlanger and Company, but the initiative proved a failure as military defeats gradually undermined the Confederacy's international credit.

Inflation was economically and socially corrosive and helped to undermine the confidence of ordinary southerners in the Confederacy. By 1863, many families were experiencing severe hardship. Although Confederate supply never entirely failed, numerous factors, including labor depletions, the crumbling transportation system, and the tightening of the Union blockade, left communities bereft of food and other essential items. In 1863, "bread" riots broke out in many southern towns and cities. The largest incident occurred in April, when female-led demonstrators, fueled by anger over military impressment of food supplies, attacked stores in the capital, Richmond, and were only dispersed after the arrival of President Jefferson Davis. Such localized unrest, however, reflected a broader pattern of social disaffection. As the screws of war tightened, class resentments between small farmers and planters intensified. Many nonslaveholders came to believe that the conflict was no longer being fought in their interest, and they pointed to the Confederate policies of exemption, substitution, and impressment as evidence of a "rich man's war, poor man's fight." By 1864 the disillusionment of many ordinary people was being reflected in increased levels of desertion from the army and in the growth of disaffected areas in states such as Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. While many southerners continued to support the Confederate war effort, their patriotism now focused on General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia rather than the government in Richmond.

The greatest breakdown occurred in black-white relations. Despite their public confidence in slave loyalty, owners could not afford to relax their guard as the war made deep incursions into the South's economic and social life. Fears of insurrection were common from the beginning of the conflict. Although no large-scale black uprisings occurred between 1861 and 1865, the Confederacy's African American population rarely failed to demonstrate its preference for freedom over slavery when the chance arose. As federal troops approached, masters were often forced to move their slaves into the interior. This movement, known as "refugeeing," helped loosen the bonds of slavery as familiar plantation routines were abandoned. Slave discipline was also undermined by the Confederate government's impressment of black labor for service on military defenses and other installations, and by rapid wartime urbanization that drew large numbers of rural slaves into towns and cities where white supervision was harder to maintain. In areas penetrated by the Union army, disruption of the plantation system was extensive. From early in the war, refugees from slavery sought sanctuary in the camps of the northern invaders. In 1862, the Union began to accept black troops into its armed forces; after Lincoln's emancipation proclamation of 1 January 1863 increasing numbers of slaves escaped from the South to enlist in the struggle against their former masters. Of the 180,000 Africans Americans who fought in the Union army, approximately three-quarters had been slaves. In late 1864, faced with an acute manpower shortage, the Davis government began to contemplate arming the South's slaves. Although the proposal aroused virulent opposition from all sections, in March 1865 the Confederate congress passed a bill providing for the enlistment of black troops while at the same time rejecting the guarantee of emancipation. However, the war ended before the legislation could be implemented.

Defeat

The surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865 effectively ended the Confederate States of America's bid for independent nationhood. Members of the Davis government, including the president, had evacuated Richmond on 2 April, fleeing south, but lingering hopes of continuing the struggle were soon quashed when the Confederacy's other main surviving force, General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee, capitulated on 26 April near Durham Station, North Carolina. Davis himself was captured at Irwinville, Georgia, on 10 May.

The collapse of the Confederate States resulted from a military defeat in which the superior human and material resources of the Union proved decisive. Other factors that contributed to the South's final inability to resist federal power include the lack of political unity, the failure of King Cotton diplomacy, and popular demoralization. Postwar southern ideology insisted that the Confederacy had been united in its opposition to the North. In truth, large numbers of southerners, black and white, had failed consistently to support the bid for independence and in many cases had actively resisted it.

Bibliography

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We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a more permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—invoking the favour and guidance of Almighty God—do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

—Preamble to the Constitution of the Confederate States

SOURCE: Reprinted from James D. Richardson, The Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, 2 vols. New York, 1983

Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong—but they won't make soldiers.

—Howell Cobb to James A. Seddon, 8 January 1865

SOURCE: From Vol. 3 of War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series IV. 130 vols. Washington, D.C., 1888–1901.

—Martin Crawford

The Confederate States of America; the government formed in 1861 by southern states that proclaimed their secession from the United States. Jefferson Davis was its president. The Confederacy was dissolved after the Civil War. (Compare Union.)