Confederate Currency A $2 note from the Monticello Bank featuring a three-masted sailing vessel. [127], 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 uniformed conflict. The three big turnout states voted extremes. Toggle Government and politics subsection, 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. [337], Support for the Confederacy was also low in parts of Texas, where Unionism persisted in certain areas. [130] Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy, and Alexander H. Stephens, its former vice-president, both wrote postwar arguments in favor of secession's legality and the international legitimacy of the Government of the Confederate States of America, most notably Davis' The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. The Cherokee Nation aligned with the Confederacy. Backpedaling six months later, Congress provided overseers under 45 could be exempted only if they held the occupation before the first Conscription Act. The Confederacy nevertheless recognized two of them Missouri and Kentucky as members, accepting rump state assembly declarations of secession as authorization for full delegations of representatives and senators in the Confederate Congress; In the early part of the war the Confederacy controlled and governed more than half of Kentucky and the southern portion of Missouri, but they were never substantially controlled by Confederate forces after 1862, despite the efforts of Confederate shadow governments, which were eventually defeated and expelled from both states. Those remaining elected majors and colonels whose performance led to officer review boards in October. Hatchett passed the exam, was admitted to the Bar and went on to become a man of many firsts and now he has a courthouse named after him. American Civil War historian James M. McPherson suggested that, for Southerners, the most ominous feature of the Republican victories in the congressional and presidential elections of 1860 was the magnitude of those victories: Republicans captured over 60 percent of the Northern vote and three-fourths of its Congressional delegations. 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. The Confederacy controlled no ports, harbors or navigable rivers. [78] In his inaugural address Lincoln endorsed the proposed amendment. [154], 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". [71], Developments in South Carolina started a chain of events. As a result, inflation increased and remained a problem for the southern states throughout the rest of the war. Previous party affiliation played a part in voter selection, predominantly secessionist Democrat or unionist Whig. The Provisional Confederate Congress was a unicameral assembly; each state received one vote. Coulter concludes he was not the ideal leader for the Southern Revolution, but he showed "fewer weaknesses than any other" contemporary character available for the role. The resistance at Fort Sumter signaled his change of policy from that of the Buchanan Administration. "'Rarin'for a Fight': Texans in the Confederate Army.". [citation needed] To rectify the situation, a separate "Battle Flag" was designed for use by troops in the field. The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutionsAfrican slavery as it exists among usthe proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. Following the repulse of Confederate counter-attack at the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, permanent Federal occupation expanded west, south and east. 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. The first Confederate capital was Montgomery, Alabama in 1847. These regiments were assigned to recruit conscripts ages 1750, recover deserters, and repel enemy cavalry raids. There the fundamental documents of government were promulgated, a provisional government was established, and a representative Congress met for the Confederate States of America. He unwittingly caused much internal dissension from early on. 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. Presbyterians were even more active with 112 missionaries in January 1865. July brought short-lived counters, Morgan's Raid into Ohio and the New York City draft riots. Many slaves became spies for the North, and large numbers ran away to federal lines. It had a checkered career of "contention, opposition and futility". 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. Cuba was a Spanish colony and the CaptainGeneral of Cuba declared in writing that Confederate ships were welcome, and would be protected in Cuban ports. Baptists and Methodists together formed majorities of both the white and the slave population (see Black church). 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.[300]. In fact, the Confederate citizen may have been in some ways less free than his Northern counterpart. In 2019, she said in an interview that the [296], A third count of the pre-capitalist Southern economy relates to the cultural setting. Later, mail that crossed lines had to be sent by 'Flag of Truce' and was allowed to pass at only two specific points. The victories of 1861 were followed by a series of defeats east and west in early 1862. [85], Seven states declared their secession from the United States before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. [8] All seven were in the Deep South region of the United States, whose economy was heavily dependent upon agricultureparticularly cottonand a plantation system that relied upon enslaved Americans of African descent for labor. [326] Some women welcomed the freedom of not having to marry. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. His ill health and temporary bouts of blindness disabled him for days at a time. Many areas of Southern Appalachia harbored pro-Union sentiment as well. [236] Congress passed additional Amnesty Acts in May 1866 with restrictions on office holding, and the Amnesty Act in May 1872 lifting those restrictions. The Second Conscription Act of October 1862 expanded exemptions in industry, agriculture and conscientious objection. In 1860, the areas that later formed the eleven Confederate states (and including the future West Virginia) had 132,760 (1.46%) free blacks. [285], Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order of the U.S. government on January 1, 1863, changed the legal status of three million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy from "slave" to "free". Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers, teamsters and laborers. [214] Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory placed his hopes in a European-built ironclad fleet, but they were never realized. This exclusion and a weakened Republican Party remained the norm until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. [30] The Southern Cause transcended the ideology of states' rights, tariff policy, and internal improvements. The Second Congress met there in two sessions, from May 2, 1864, to March 18, 1865.[123]. Across the South mobs expelled Yankees and (in Texas) executed German-Americans suspected of loyalty to the United States. As war dragged on, Richmond became crowded with training and transfers, logistics and hospitals. [74], In the antebellum months, the Corwin Amendment was an unsuccessful attempt by the Congress to bring the seceding states back to the Union and to convince the border slave states to remain. [338] According to Ernest Wallace: "This account of a dissatisfied Unionist minority, although historically essential, must be kept in its proper perspective, for throughout the war the overwhelming majority of the people zealously supported the Confederacy "[339] Randolph B. Campbell states, "In spite of terrible losses and hardships, most Texans continued throughout the war to support the Confederacy as they had supported secession". Efficiency in the lower officers was "greater than could have been reasonably expected". 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. During the four years of its existence under trial by war, the Confederate States of America asserted its independence and appointed dozens of diplomatic agents abroad. The British had stocks to last over a year and had been developing alternative sources of cotton, most notably India and Egypt. Should Confederate And Union Be Capitalized? The plantations of the South, with white ownership and an enslaved labor force, produced substantial wealth from cash crops. Mass production requires mass markets, and 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. Governor William Henry Gist of South Carolina corresponded secretly with other Deep South governors, and most southern governors exchanged clandestine commissioners. [210] Civil War scholar Allan Nevins argues that 1862 was the strategic high-water mark of the Confederacy. Figures for Virginia include the future West Virginia. "Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities", Cleland, Beau. It abolished industrial exemptions, placing detail authority in President Davis. Historian Mark Neely found 4,108 names of men arrested and estimated a much larger total. The move was used by Vice President Stephens and others to encourage other border states to follow Virginia into the Confederacy. The British investors' goal was to get highly profitable cotton. But his "tenacity, determination, and will power" stirred up lasting opposition from enemies that Davis could not shake. ", W. Harrison Daniel, "Southern Presbyterians in the Confederacy. 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. [168], The Confederacy relied on external sources for war materials. Kentucky and Missouri were seated in December 1861. [149] European travelers visited and wrote accounts for publication. International relations of the Great Powers (18141919), Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man. The Restored Government of Virginia later recognized the new state of West Virginia, which was admitted to the Union during the war on June 20, 1863, and relocated to Alexandria for the rest of the war. [264][11], The Montgomery Convention to establish the Confederacy and its executive met on February 4, 1861. Keegan, John. Navy Jack light blue cross; also square canton, white fly. After intense debates and statewide votes, seven Deep South cotton states passed secession ordinances by February 1861 (before Abraham Lincoln took office as president), while secession efforts failed in the other eight slave states. Outright recognition would have meant certain war with the United States. "[234], When the war ended over 14,000 Confederates petitioned President Johnson for a pardon; he was generous in giving them out. These crowds waved Confederate flags and cheered the glorious cause of southern independence. Combined with captured munitions and those coming via blockade runners, the armies were kept minimally supplied with weapons. That view would change for some, as the occupiers became perceived as oppressive, callous, radical and favorable to Freedmen. [190], Confederate conscription was not universal; it was a selective service. Southern Unionists' favorite presidential candidate was John Bell of Tennessee, sometimes running under an "Opposition Party" banner. Do you capitalize the north and the south civil war? Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. [25], These losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men, materiel, and finance. On the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (a presumed supporter of slavery) was 83 years old and ailing. states by date of admission to the Confederacy, Constitution of the Confederate States of America, President of the Confederate States of America, Cabinet of the Confederate States of America, Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States, Economy of the Confederate States of America, concept was promoted within certain circles, Confederate railroads in the American Civil War, Flags of the Confederate States of America, Charleston, South Carolina, in the Civil War, Wilmington, North Carolina, in the American Civil War, Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, General officers in the Confederate States Army, Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps, C.S.A. [41] By 1860, sectional disagreements between North and South concerned primarily the status of slavery in the United States. [232], Historian Gary Gallagher concluded that the Confederacy capitulated in early 1865 because northern armies crushed "organized southern military resistance". The Confederacy was established by 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 MayJuly 1861 (with Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina), and disintegrated in AprilMay 1865. The state governments and some localities printed their own paper money, adding to the runaway inflation. Union offensives continued with Sherman's March to the Sea to take Savannah and Grant's Wilderness Campaign to encircle Richmond and besiege Lee's army at Petersburg.[209]. Southerners' refusal to export the cotton crop in 1861 left railroads bereft of their main source of income. ", The constitutionality of the Confederacy's dissolution is open to interpretation at least to the extent that, like the, David R. Zimring, "'Secession in Favor of the Constitution': How West Virginia Justified Separate Statehood during the Civil War.". On February 22, 1862, Davis was inaugurated as president with a term of six years. 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. One reason for the regional lag in industrial development was top-heavy income distribution. These beliefs could obviously not eliminate partisanship or prevent Confederates from holding on to and exploiting old political prejudices. After four years of heavy fighting, nearly all Confederate land and naval forces either surrendered or otherwise ceased hostilities by May 1865. In December, the Battle of Nashville ended Confederate operations in the western theater. By March 1865 conscription was to be administered by generals of the state reserves calling out men over 45 and under 18 years old. The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. In 1863 the Confederacy expelled European diplomatic missions for advising their resident subjects to refuse to serve in the Confederate army. [38] 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". Nevertheless, close examination of contemporary evidence shows that the proclamation had a far more decisive impact. [227], The first three months of 1865 saw the Federal Carolinas Campaign, devastating a wide swath of the remaining Confederate heartland. Wallenstein, Peter, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, eds. His U.S. Senate resignation speech greatly impressed with its clear rationale for secession and his pleading for a peaceful departure from the Union to independence. Alexander, Thomas B., and Beringer, Richard E. Martis, Kenneth C., "The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America 18611865" (1994). The Confederate government sent James M. Mason to London and John Slidell to Paris. The port and region's agriculture were lost to the Union in April 1862. 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. 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. [23], Confederate control over its claimed territory and population in congressional districts steadily shrank from three-quarters to a third during the American Civil War due to the Union's successful overland campaigns, its control of inland waterways into the South, and its blockade of the southern coast. It took over plantations and the abandoned slaves. The proposal was tabled with only the South Carolina delegates voting in favor of considering the motion. Defensive strategy sought dispersal to meet demands of locally minded governors. Banks and insurance companies were mostly bankrupt. Centers requiring off-loading included Vicksburg, New Orleans, Montgomery, Wilmington and Richmond. [196] To administer the draft, a Bureau of Conscription was set up to use state officers, as state Governors would allow. During 1861 all of these facilities produced small amounts of gold coinage, and the latter half dollars as well. Delegates from those seven formed the CSA in February 1861, selecting Jefferson Davis as the provisional president. 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. [28][29] Confederate nationalism prepared men to fight for "The Southern Cause". G. Clinton Prim. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. This prevented their clients' property from being sold until a supreme court could be constituted to hear the appeal, which never occurred. The amnesty of December 25, 1868, by President Johnson eliminated any possibility of Jefferson Davis (or anyone else associated with the Confederacy) standing trial for treason.[238][239][240]. The eleven states of the Confederacy were outnumbered by the North about four-to-one in military manpower. [44], The Cornerstone Speech is frequently cited in analysis surrounding Confederate ideology. As women were the ones who remained at home, they had to make do with the lack of food and supplies. Robert E. Lee's strike into Pennsylvania was repulsed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania despite Pickett's famous charge and other acts of valor. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. [160][161], 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". [33] There were minority views everywhere, especially in the upland and plateau areas of the South, being particularly concentrated in western Virginia and eastern Tennessee. A series of slave narratives about American slavery was being published in London. The Confederacy had no plan to expand, protect or encourage its railroads. This led to confrontation, and in June Federal forces drove him and the General Assembly from Jefferson City. [213], During the Civil War fleets of armored warships were deployed for the first time in sustained blockades at sea. And former South Carolina Gov. During the winter of 186263, Lee observed that none of his famous victories had resulted in the destruction of the opposing army. The Confederacy's last remaining blockade-running port, Wilmington, North Carolina, was lost. British Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone, convinced of the necessity of intervention on the Confederate side based on the successful diplomatic intervention in Second Italian War of Independence against Austria, attempted unsuccessfully to convince Lord Palmerston to intervene. There was a great deal of discussion in 1865 about bringing treason trials, especially against Jefferson Davis. 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. 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". [222] For the remainder of the war fighting was restricted inside the South, resulting in a slow but continuous loss of territory. The Confederacy recognized the pro-Confederate claimants in both 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. In November 1863, Mann met Pope Pius IX in person 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. Lindsay. The United States Census of 1860[345] gives a picture of the overall 1860 population for the areas that had joined the Confederacy. The North, by contrast, absorbed its material losses so effortlessly that it appeared richer at the end of the war than at the beginning. The Capital was moved to Richmond May 30. The charges against him involved conspiracy and cruelty, not treason. [230] Perman (2010) says historians are of two minds on why millions of soldiers seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years: 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. Other missionaries were funded and supported by the Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans. Confederate armies successfully reoccupying territory could not be resupplied directly by rail as they advanced. As Rable concludes, "For Stephens, the essence of patriotism, the heart of the Confederate cause, rested on an unyielding commitment to traditional rights" without considerations of military necessity, pragmatism or compromise. 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. Texas resolutions further stated that governments of the states and the nation were established "exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity". Aggressive strategy called for offensive force concentration. All principals benefiting earlier were made eligible for service. [314][315], State governments requested that planters grow less cotton and more food, but most refused. There was no consensus in President Johnson's cabinet, and no one was charged with treason. Congress authorized a uniformed Volunteer Navy, many of whom were British. Church attendance was very high and chaplains played a major role in the Army. It was formed by delegations from seven slave states of the Lower South that had proclaimed their secession from the Union. As with the Federals, political appointees could be indifferent. [210] Federal forces disrupted Missouri and Arkansas; they had broken through in western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana. [241], By 1877, the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction in the former Confederate states. One name was placed in nomination for president, one for vice president. He found that Confederate diplomacy projected multiple contradictory self-images: The Southern nation was by turns a guileless people attacked by a voracious neighbor, an 'established' nation in some temporary difficulty, a collection of bucolic aristocrats making a romantic stand against the banalities of industrial democracy, a cabal of commercial farmers seeking to make a pawn of King Cotton, an apotheosis of nineteenth-century nationalism and revolutionary liberalism, or the ultimate statement of social and economic reaction. [225] Beginning in April 1864 the ironclad CSS Albemarle engaged Union gunboats for six months on the Roanoke River in North Carolina. [191], Rich men's sons were appointed to the socially outcast "overseer" occupation, but the measure was received in the country with "universal odium". Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not lead to interracial violence, let alone a bloodbath, but it did give the friends of the Union strong talking points in the arguments that raged across Britain. The letter was indeed used in propaganda, 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. [118] Two sessions of the Provisional Congress were held in Montgomery, adjourning May 21. 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. 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. The Union Blockade captured Fort Fisher in North Carolina, and Sherman finally took Charleston, South Carolina, by land attack.[209]. 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. Monuments honoring Confederate heroes across the nation began coming down, including those in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the South. Blumenthal, Henry. The boards caused a "rapid and widespread" thinning out of 1,700 incompetent officers. War would have meant higher taxes in Britain, another invasion of Canada, and full-scale worldwide attacks on the British merchant fleet. U.S. coinage was admitted as legal tender up to $10, as were British sovereigns, French Napoleons and Spanish and Mexican doubloons at a fixed rate of exchange. Confederate veterans had been temporarily disenfranchised by Reconstruction policy, and Democrat-dominated legislatures passed new constitutions and amendments to now exclude most blacks and many poor whites. After several battles, Union armies took control of the territory. Much of the Confederate States Constitution replicated the United States Constitution verbatim, but it contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery including provisions for the recognition and protection of slavery in any territory of the Confederacy.