The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States or the Confederacy, was a breakaway republic in the Southern United States from 1861 to 1865, unrecognized as a sovereign nation by either foreign governments or the United States. The Confederacy was formed on February 8, 1861, by seven states that had seceded from the Union. The original seven were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas; they were later joined by Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. These states fought against the United States during the American Civil War in the wake of the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president, with the principal aim of safeguarding slavery amid fears of northern abolitionist influence and federal interference in slave property. The South also feared that Lincoln's insistence that slavery not be permitted to expand into the Western territories would result in the admission of additional free states and the eventual demise of slavery.
The Confederacy adopted a constitution establishing a confederation government of "sovereign and independent states". The federal government in Washington D.C. and the states that remained in it were known as the "Union". The Civil War began in April 1861, when South Carolina's militia attacked Fort Sumter. Four slave states of the Upper South—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina—then seceded and joined the Confederacy. In February 1862, Confederate States Army leaders installed a centralized federal government in Richmond, Virginia, and enacted the first Confederate draft on April 16, 1862. By 1865, the Confederacy's federal government dissolved into chaos, and the Confederate States Congress adjourned, effectively ceasing to exist as a legislative body on March 18. After four years of heavy fighting, most Confederate land and naval forces either surrendered or otherwise ceased hostilities by May 1865. The most significant capitulation was Confederate general Robert E. Lee's surrender on April 9, after which any doubt about the war's outcome or the Confederacy's survival was extinguished.
After the war, during the Reconstruction era, the Confederate states were readmitted to Congress after each ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery, "except as a punishment for crime." Lost Cause mythology, an idealized view of the Confederacy valiantly fighting for a just cause, emerged in the decades after the war among former Confederate generals and politicians, and in organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Ladies' Memorial Associations, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Intense periods of Lost Cause activity developed around the turn of the 20th century and during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to growing support for racial equality. Advocates sought to ensure future generations of Southern whites would continue to support white supremacist policies such as the Jim Crow laws through activities such as building Confederate monuments and influencing the authors of textbooks. The modern display of the Confederate battle flag started primarily during the 1948 presidential election, when it was used by the pro-segregationist and white supremacist Dixiecrat Party.
Origins
Historians widely agree that the preservation of the institution of slavery was the principal aim of the 11 Southern states that declared their secession from the United States (the Union) and formed the Confederate States of America. Seven of these states seceded before the outbreak of the American Civil War and four did so after hostilities began. While there is broad consensus among 21st-century historians that slavery was central to the conflict, there remains debate over which specific ideological, economic, political, or social factors were most influential and over the reasons why the North rejected the Southern states’ attempt to secede. Proponents of the Lost Cause interpretation, a viewpoint rejected by mainstream historians, deny that slavery was the primary cause of secession—a position contradicted by overwhelming historical evidence, including the secession documents of the states themselves.
A central political dispute in the antebellum period concerned whether slavery would be permitted to spread into the Western territories that were destined to become states. Initially, the Congress admitted new states in pairs—one slave and one free—to preserve sectional balance in the Senate, though not in the House of Representatives since free states tended to have larger electorates. By the mid‑19th century, the status of new territories as free or slave had become a defining political issue. Anti‑slavery sentiment was growing in the North, while in the South fear of abolition was intensifying. Another contributing factor was the rise of distinctly white Southern nationalism in preceding decades. The primary reason the North rejected secession was a commitment to preserving the Union, grounded in a sense of American nationalism.
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, and his victory prompted declarations of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South. These states—whose cotton‑based economies depended on enslaved labor—formed the Confederate States after Lincoln's election in November 1860 but before he took office in March 1861. Northern nationalists and Southern “Unionists” refused to recognize these declarations. No foreign government ever officially recognized the Confederacy. The U.S. government, under President James Buchanan, did not cede control of federal forts located in territory claimed by the Confederacy. The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces bombarded the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
Other background factors contributing to the breakdown of the Union included partisan politics under the Second Party System, the growth of abolitionism, disputes over nullification versus secession, regional nationalisms, expansionism, economic tensions such as the Panic of 1857, and differing paths of modernization in the antebellum period. Although slavery and its related conflicts were the primary cause of the break with the Union, it was the act of disunion itself that sparked the ensuing war. Historian David M. Potter observed, "The problem for Americans who, in the age of Lincoln, wanted slaves to be free was not simply that southerners wanted the opposite, but that they themselves cherished a conflicting value: they wanted the Constitution, which protected slavery, to be honored, and the Union, which was a fellowship with slaveholders, to be preserved. Thus they were committed to values that could not logically be reconciled."
Secession
The first secession state conventions from the Deep South sent representatives to the Montgomery Convention in Alabama on February 4, 1861. A provisional government was established. The new provisional Confederate President Jefferson Davis issued a call for 100,000 men from the states' militias to defend the newly formed Confederacy. All federal property was seized, including gold bullion and coining dies at the U.S. mints. 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.
The Confederate administration pursued a policy of national territorial integrity, continuing earlier state efforts in 1860–1861 to remove U.S. government presence. This included taking possession of U.S. courts, custom houses, post offices, and, most notably, arsenals and forts. After the Confederate attack and capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861, Lincoln called up 75,000 of the states' militia to muster under his command. His purpose was to secure possession of U.S. properties throughout the South. The resistance at Fort Sumter signaled his change of policy from that of the Buchanan administration. Lincoln's response ignited a firestorm of emotion. The people of both North and South demanded war, with soldiers rushing to their colors in the hundreds of thousands.
Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution was a contract among sovereign states that could be abandoned without consultation and each state had a right to secede. After intense debates and statewide votes, seven Deep South states passed secession ordinances by February 1861, while secession efforts failed in the other eight slave states.
The Confederacy expanded in May–July 1861 (with Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina), and disintegrated in April–May 1865. It was formed by delegations from seven slave states of the Lower South that had proclaimed their secession. After the fighting began in April, four additional slave states seceded and were admitted. Later, two slave states that had not seceded (Missouri and Kentucky) and two territories were given seats in the Confederate Congress.
The Confederacy's establishment flowed from and deepened Southern nationalism, which prepared men to fight for "The Southern Cause". This "Cause" included support for states' rights, tariff policy, and internal improvements, but above all, cultural and financial dependence on the South's slavery-based economy. The convergence of race and slavery, politics, and economics raised South-related policy questions to the status of moral questions over, way of life, merging love of things Southern and hatred of things Northern. As the war approached, political parties split, and national churches and interstate families divided along sectional lines. According to historian John M. Coski:
The statesmen who led the secession movement were unashamed to explicitly cite the defense of slavery as their prime motive.... Acknowledging the centrality of slavery to the Confederacy is essential for understanding the Confederate.
Following South Carolina's unanimous 1860 secession vote, no other Southern states considered the question until 1861; when they did, none voted for secession unanimously. All had residents who cast significant numbers of Unionist votes. Voting to remain in the Union did not necessarily mean individuals sympathized with the North. Once fighting began, many who voted to remain in the Union accepted the majority decision and supported the Confederacy. Many writers have evaluated the Civil War as an American tragedy—a "Brothers' War", pitting "brother against brother, father against son, kin against kin of every degree".
States
Initially, some secessionists hoped for a peaceful departure. Moderates in the Confederate Constitutional Convention included a provision against importation of slaves from Africa to appeal to the Upper South. Non-slave states might join, but the radicals secured a two-thirds requirement in both houses of Congress to accept them.
Seven states declared their secession from the United States before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops, four more states declared their secession.
Kentucky declared neutrality, but after Confederate troops moved in, the state legislature asked for Union troops to drive them out. Delegates from 68 Kentucky counties were sent to the Russellville Convention that signed an Ordinance of Secession. Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy on December 10, 1861, with Bowling Green as its first capital. Early in the war, the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky but largely lost control in 1862. The splinter Confederate government of Kentucky relocated to accompany western Confederate armies and never controlled the state population after 1862. By the end of the war, 90,000 Kentuckians had fought for the Union, compared to 35,000 for the Confederacy.
In Missouri, a constitutional convention was approved and delegates elected. The convention rejected secession 89–1 on March 19, 1861. The governor maneuvered to take control of the St. Louis Arsenal and restrict federal military movements. This led to a confrontation, and in June federal forces drove him and the General Assembly from Jefferson City. The executive committee of the convention called the members together in July, and declared the state offices vacant and appointed a Unionist interim state government. The exiled governor called a rump session of the former General Assembly together in Neosho and, on October 31, 1861, it passed an ordinance of secession. The Confederate government of Missouri effectively controlled only southern Missouri early in the war. It had its capital at Neosho, then Cassville, before being driven out of the state. For the remainder of the war, it operated as a government in exile at Marshall, Texas.
Not having seceded, neither Kentucky nor Missouri was declared in rebellion in Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The Confederacy recognized the pro-Confederate claimants in 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. Voting for the representatives was done mostly by Confederate soldiers from Kentucky and Missouri.
Some Southern Unionists blamed Lincoln's call for troops as the precipitating event for the second wave of secessions. Historian James McPherson argues such claims have "a self-serving quality" and regards them as misleading:
As the telegraph chattered reports of the attack on Sumter April 12 and its surrender next day, huge crowds poured into the streets of Richmond, Raleigh, Nashville, and other upper South cities to celebrate this victory over the Yankees. These crowds waved Confederate flags and cheered the glorious cause of southern independence. They demanded that their own states join the cause. Scores of demonstrations took place from April 12 to 14, before Lincoln issued his call for troops. Many conditional unionists were swept along by this powerful tide of southern nationalism; others were cowed into silence.
Historian Daniel W. Crofts disagrees with McPherson:
The bombardment of Fort Sumter, by itself, did not destroy Unionist majorities in the upper South. Because only three days elapsed before Lincoln issued the proclamation, the two events viewed retrospectively, appear almost simultaneous. Nevertheless, close examination of contemporary evidence ... shows that the proclamation had a far more decisive impact. ... Many concluded ... that Lincoln had deliberately chosen "to drive off all the Slave states, in order to make war on them and annihilate slavery".
Richard N. Current concluded:
In short, it appears that Lincoln, when he decided to send the Sumter expedition, considered hostilities to be probable. It also appears, however, that he believed an unopposed and peaceable provisioning to be at least barely possible ... He thought hostilities would be the likely result, and he was determined that, if they should be, they must clearly be initiated by the Confederates. "To say that Lincoln meant that the first shot would be fired by the other side if a first shot was fired, ... is not to say that he maneuvered to have the first shot fired."
The order of secession resolutions and dates are: