The Confederate States of America was established under a constitution signed on March 11, 1861. The new republic consisted of the Deep South states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. The number of Confederate states eventually grew to 11 when Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia left the Union following Abraham Lincoln’s post-Fort SuMTER call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Southern rebellion. Four years of CiViL War failed to secure Confederate independence, and the nation ceased to exist after the surrender of its principal armies in April and May 1865.
Abraham Lincoln’s election on the Republican presidential ticket in 1860 caused many white Southerners to fear for the future of their slave-based society and provided the trigger for South Carolina’s SECESSION convention. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina’s 169 convention delegates voted unanimously to leave the Union. Similar conventions soon met in the other states of the lower South. By February 1, 1861, the first wave of secession was completed.
Delegates from the seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, during the first week of February 1861. Moderates controlled the convention and quickly drafted a provisional, or temporary, constitution closely modeled on the U. S. Constitution. JEFFERSON DaviS of Mississippi, a moderate secessionist, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, who had been opposed to secession, were chosen as president and vice president. The delegates in Montgomery, selected by their respective state conventions rather than in popular ELECTIONS, converted themselves into the new nation’s unicameral Congress. Together with Davis and Stephens, members of the Congress would serve until national elections could be held in November 1861. Congress also set up executive departments similar to those in the United States, as well as a postal system and other elements of a national government.
The Davis administration soon faced a crisis at Fort SuMTER in Charleston, South Carolina. Under increasing pressure to assert Confederate nationality, Davis ordered Southern forces to bombard and seize the United States’s last remaining Southern fort during the second week of April 1861. Lincoln responded to the loss of Sumter by issuing a call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. That threat convinced four more slave states, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee, to secede from the Union. The slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware remained loyal to the Union, although some of their citizens were active in support of the Confederacy.
The Confederate government operated under a temporary constitution for one month. The permanent constitution, written and approved by the Montgomery delegates, generally followed the U. S. Constitution except for a few important differences. The Confederate Constitution limited national power and stressed STATES’ RIGHTS. Most important, it protected slavery in the states and all territories. The new document’s preamble affirmed that each Confederate state acted “in its sovereign and independent character.” The first 12 amendments to the U. S. Constitution appeared in the body of the Confederate version. The Confederate constitution created a national executive and bicameral legislature very similar to those of the United States, although it departed from the U. S. model in limiting the president to one six-year term.
The Confederate executive department included President Davis, Vice President Stephens, and the cabinet secretaries of state, war, the navy, and the treasury, a postmaster general, and an attorney general. The brilliant JuDAH P. Benjamin served as attorney general, secretary of state, and secretary of war at different times. Stephen R. Mallory worked at the head of the Navy Department, and John H. Reagan was postmaster general. George Wythe Randolph and James A. Seddon stood out as the most important among several men to hold the post of secretary of war, while Christopher G. Memminger directed affairs at the Treasury Department for more than three years. Cabinet members faced huge problems as they sought to plan and pay for war while also overseeing day-to-day governmental operations.
Richmond, Virginia, replaced Montgomery as the capital of the Confederacy in 1861 and became the nation’s most visible geographic symbol. The move was made because it was the capital of Virginia, the most populous Confederate state, and also the leading manufacturing center in the South. The first permanent Confederate Congress convened in Richmond on February 18, 1862. Elected by voting-age white male citizens the preceding November, congressmen and senators had not run on specific political party tickets, like the Democratic or Republican Parties of the North. The Confederacy deliberately sought to avoid partisan politics. Although parties never developed, bitter divisions soon arose between congressional supporters and opponents of Davis and his policies.
The burden of conducting a protracted war against a powerful opponent placed enormous strains on Confederate society. Well before the end of the conflict, the South underwent changes and confronted challenges no one
Confederate president Jefferson Davis with his cabinet and, center, General Robert E. Lee (Hulton/Archive)
Could have anticipated in 1861. Moreover, the Davis government passed laws and regulations that conflicted with the states’ rights philosophy so often associated with the Confederacy. Still, the Confederacy held some advantages over the North. It sought to win independence and could achieve that by defending itself and persuading the Northern people that the effort to restore the Union would be too expensive in lives and money. The North, in contrast, had to invade the Confederacy, destroy its capacity to make war, and crush the Southern people’s will. Many Confederates looked to the American Revolution as proof that a weaker power could defeat a more powerful foe. They expected the great size of the Confederacy and the unity of its people to be crucial factors in bringing Southern victory.
First, the nation needed soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of men volunteered for Confederate service in 1861, after which the rate of enlistment drastically declined. The Conscription Act of 1862 made all white males between the ages of 18 and 35 eligible for service but exempted men in several occupations deemed essential to the war effort (the most controversial exemption allowed one white man on each plantation with twenty slaves or more to avoid service). Later acts extended the age limits to 18 and 45 and then to 17 and 50 and modified the roster of exemptions. Until December 1863, any man drafted could pay a substitute to serve for him. The CONSCRIPTION acts were designed to promote volunteering rather than to draft men directly, and they generally worked well. Severe manpower shortages caused Congress to approve the enrollment of slaves into the CONFEDERATE ARMY very late in the war, but the legislation came too late to have any impact on the war.
Both the Davis and Lincoln governments understood that French aid had tipped the balance in favor of the colonists during the American Revolution. Confederate diplomatic efforts therefore concentrated on achieving recognition from Great Britain or France. Initial hopes rested on the belief that by withholding cotton exports, the Confederacy could produce such economic hardship among British textile manufacturers and their employees that the London government would intervene to assure a steady flow of cotton. Among other things, such intervention likely would bring the Royal Navy into conflict with the United States’s naval blockade of the Confederacy. But “King Cotton” diplomacy failed miserably because Britain had a surplus of cotton on hand in 1861, rapidly developed new sources of cotton in India and Egypt, and saw increased production in arms manufacturing and other areas boost EMPLOYMENT when textile production lagged in the summer and fall of 1862.
During the war, the Confederacy suffered immense economic dislocation. Much of the problem was due to the fact that the antebellum Southern ECONOMY was not prepared to wage war. With most capital tied up in land and slaves, the Confederacy struggled to pay for its war effort. The Davis administration relied on three sources of income: taxes that raised about 5 percent of revenues, bonds that raised another 35 percent, and paper treasury notes that raised the remaining 60 percent. This overproduction of paper money helped fuel inflation that eventually reached
9,000 percent. Shortages of goods contributed to inflation, as the Union blockade limited trade with Europe. Union military successes throughout the war also played a role in disrupting industrial and agricultural production and TRANSPORTATION networks.
Richmond adjusted to growing economic problems with a number of measures, such as IMPRESSMENT, which allowed the national government to seize goods—food, supplies, and slaves—for the war effort. Impressment caused considerable dissension but also provided invaluable war-related goods that helped keep the Confederate armies in the field.
The Confederacy registered impressive accomplishments in the area of war industry as well. The government created the largest powder works in North America at Augusta, Georgia, and established arsenals and ironworks in Richmond; Charleston; Selma, Alabama; and elsewhere. During 1863, war-related industries in Selma employed more than 10,000 people. No Confederate army ever lost a battle because it lacked weapons, ammunition, or other materiel.
The demands of fighting a war created serious political tensions in the Confederacy. In the absence of formal parties through which disagreements could be expressed, Confederate political opinion divided into pro - and anti-Jefferson Davis factions. Davis and military figures such as Robert E. Lee insisted that winning the war should take precedence over everything else. Other political figures insisted that the central government must protect essential state and individual rights, even if doing so hindered the Confederate war effort. Relations between Davis and the national Congress were tense. Disagreement over conscription, the suspension of HABEAS CORPUS, and policies that promoted economic centralization divided the leadership of the Confederacy. Congressional critics blasted Davis as a dictator and warned that winning independence would be worthless unless the values that made the new nation distinctive were preserved.
Vice President Stephens broke with Davis in 1862 over conscription and other issues, becoming another outspoken critic. GOVERNORS such as JOSEPH E. Brown of Georgia and Zebulon Vance of North Carolina deliberately withheld supplies from the government and flaunted or circumvented national laws. Despite great opposition, President Davis worked extremely hard, set an example of selfless service, and created and sustained a national army and government. At the same time, Davis’s inability to delegate military responsibilities hurt the war effort. In addition, Davis was not an eloquent public speaker and failed to inspire public faith in the Southern cause. For that, the nation turned to Gen. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Victories over the Union’s army of the Potomac helped to maintain the Confederacy after public support of Davis’s government died. As the war continued, the Southern government suffered from divisions that prevented the most effective use of limited resources. Many historians argue that the Confederacy’s inability to resolve the contradiction of nationalism versus states’ rights and individualism caused the ultimate defeat of the South.
Military losses, particularly during and after the summer of 1863, along with inflation, scarcity of goods, and loss of loved ones led to dissent and disaffection behind the lines. DESERTION from Southern armies escalated dramatically during the winter of 1864-65. In early April 1865, Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia abandoned Richmond. On April 9, Lee surrendered to ULYSSES S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Vir-GINA. Appomattox marked the end of the war for most Confederates, though additional surrenders of large forces would take place over the next month. Jefferson Davis, who fled southward with part of his cabinet just before the fall of Richmond, was captured on May 10 near Irwinville, Georgia.
The South paid a high price for its rebellion. Nearly
260,000 Confederate soldiers died from wounds or disease and another 200,000 were wounded in combat. Two-thirds of the region’s assessed wealth was destroyed. Approximately 40 percent of all Southern livestock perished. Much of the infrastructure of the region—banks, factories, railroads, bridges, levees, and the like—lay in ruins. One comparative figure is especially revealing: Between 1860 and 1870, Northern wealth increased by 50 percent while Southern wealth decreased by 60 percent.
The Confederate States of America failed because of internal dissent and military defeat. No other white group in U. S. history suffered the kind of catastrophe that was the fate of white Southerners. This regionally distinctive legacy has been, and continues to be, explored in LITERATURE, song, political culture, and symbols, such as the conflict over the Confederate battle flag.
See also eoreign policy; industrial development; MUSIC; Tredegar Iron Works.
Further reading: William J. Cooper Jr., Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Knopf, 2000); William C. Davis, Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America (New York: Free Press, 2001); Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Confiscation Acts (August 6, 1861, and July 17, 1862) The Confiscation Acts authorized Union troops to seize private property from individuals supporting the Confederacy during the CiViL War. This provided valuable supplies for the Union war effort while undermining the Southern will to fight. At the same time, the Confiscation Acts played an important role in bringing an end to the institution of SLAVERY.
In the first Confiscation Act, passed on August 6,
1861, Congress authorized the Union army to seize any property used in “promoting. . . insurrection or resistance to the laws.” On its face, the act might have aroused little controversy in the North, because seizure of such “contraband” occurred in most wars. However, Southern property included slaves. This opened up an important question: If soldiers confiscated slaves, would those slaves be free?
Certain Union commanders, most notably Gens. John C. Fremont and Benjamin F. Butler, believed that confiscated slaves were indeed free. President Abraham Lincoln, however, forbade Union officers from freeing slaves on their own authority. Lincoln’s 1861 repudiation of Fremont and Butler stemmed from his fear that any action that hinted at the abolition of slavery would enrage the citizens and soldiers of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri. Though none of these “border states” had joined the Confederacy, all of them still permitted slavery. Any perceived threat to the institution created the possibility that the states would throw their support to the Confederacy. Lincoln also worried that freeing captured slaves would cost him significant political support in Congress.
As the war dragged on through 1862, however, Lincoln’s position changed. Southern resistance proved stronger than most Northerners had anticipated. By the spring of that year, both Lincoln and most congressional Republicans had concluded that victory would require a more determined and ruthless policy. In this new mood, Congress passed the second Confiscation Act on July 17,
1862. The act required that Union soldiers free any slaves that came into their hands. The act also authorized Lincoln to “employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion. . . and use them in such manner as he may judge best.” Lincoln was now free to arm former slaves to fight against the Confederacy.
The second Confiscation Act was not an abolitionist measure. Instead, it was a military tactic intended to undermine the South’s economy and social institutions. However, it took no great leap of imagination to predict that if Union forces advanced far enough into Confederate territory, slavery might actually collapse.
The second Confiscation Act thus paved the way for Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863.
The Proclamation took the next logical step, declaring that all slaves in rebellious states were free, whether they had been captured by Union soldiers or not. The Emancipation Proclamation, in turn, was superseded after the war by the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery forever. And so the end of slavery came not in one great stroke, but in steps; the Confiscation Acts were an important part of this process.
Further reading: Herman Belz, A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and the Freedmen’s Rights, 1861-1866 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1966); Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedmen: Federal Policy toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973); Bell Irvin Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1938).
—Tom Laichas
World History
