The Birth of the Confederacy

After the Civil War between 1865 and 1877, the country went into Reconstruction. They had to rebuild the south because of Sherman’s plan of total war. In Sherman’s plan, his army took food and burned property, destroying everything that could be used by the Confederates during the war. President Lincoln helped by giving amnesty for Confederate soldiers and a plan for readmission to the Union of the Southern states. He also proposed the Ten Percent Plan. The plan allowed states to be readmitted to the Union if ten percent of its voters swore a loyalty oath to the Union and agreed to the end of slavery. President Johnson took office once Lincoln got assassinated, this changed the course of Reconstruction because he was a southerner and a democrat. He had more sympathy for southerners and many former Confederates assumed political office as soon as their state was readmitted to the Union.

The romanticized version of the Civil War creates a picture of the North versus the South with the North imposing on the South. However, after reading “The Making of a Confederate” by William L. Barney, one can see that subdivisions existed before the war was declared. The documents analyzed by Barney primarily focus on the experiences of Walter Lenoir, a southern confederate and a member of the planter elite. His experiences tell a vivid story of a passionate and strongly opinioned participant of the Civil War as well as demonstrate a noticeably different view involving his reasoning when choosing a side. Between analyzing this fantastic piece of literature and other resourceful documents from “Voices of Freedom” by Eric Foner, one

To begin with, immediately after the election and inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, the newly-established Republican Party’s presidential nominee, eleven states of the South seceded from the Union. These events marked the beginning of the Civil War and the war was a result of many political tensions that had emerged between the North and the South in the prior decades, all of which were associated with the institution of slavery installed in the Southern United States. President Lincoln began the Civil War with the South in response to states’ secession from the Union, and therefore, the war was not solely concentrated over the issue of slavery in American society. The North fought to preserve the Union while the Confederacy fought to

On April 12,1865 Confederate warships bombed the union at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and this marked the beginning of one of the worst and deadliest wars fought in the world. It was a war that only lasted around four years but yet took 620,000 of our brothers, sisters, and children with it. Families were torn apart, sons had lost their fathers, mothers lost their sons, and whole towns lost every man they had to give. A war that we fought on our land, a war that made brother fight brother, killed almost as many men as every war America has fought since combined. At First the Union believed they were going to fight at least a couple battles and it would all be over with, but oh was the Union wrong. They under estimated the wholeheartedly fighting Confederate soldiers, the Confederates were not going to give up that easily what they needed, what they wanted, and their way of life.

Before the Civil War started, the North and the South argued on two main topics: slavery and state rights. In my opinion, it was because of slavery that state rights were argued. When Western territories were annexed from Mexico, they were admitted to the Union with the condition that that slavery be banned through the Wilmot Proviso (History.com). Because of this, slave states felt they were unfairly treated and outnumbered. The religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening also gave way to new ideology. Combined with the growing abolitionist sentiment, Northern states began taking action against Southern states. Because their rights as

By the time 1860 came by, the North and South had a deep rift between them. With several issues such as slavery, it divided them in two. The South became the confederacy the moment Abraham Lincoln was elected for President of the United States of America. The North became the Union because unlike the South, the North had not seceded from the United States. Abraham Lincoln’s election drew the southerners over the edge, and on top of that the Civil War broke out in April of 1861.

After the secession of Texas, the Confederacy was established on February 8, 1861 (Eicher). Before this, the two parts of the United States were unsure of the outcome caused by recent violence. The North still had hoped to preserve the Union, and stop the South from completely seceding(History.com). However, the creation of the Confederate States of America was a declaration of permanent secession from the North. The Confederacy was considered a whole new country, creating their own constitution to emphasize this fact (Eicher).

Confederates quickly shed their American identity and adopted a new Confederate nationalism. Confederate nationalism was based on several ideals, foremost among these being slavery. This mindset brought problems into the infrastructure of the new government. Since the Confederacy was newly founded, it had little funds to operate as a country so the rich southerners used their money to fund it with controlling interest. Since the south lacked industry, it heavy relied on the plantations as the main income for the country’s economy. They had to rely on the export of resources from the plantations to acquire funds, but since production relied on a lot of conditions it was not a stable source of income like the industrialized north. Since the government was founded on slavery there were a lot of countries that disagreed with the slave trade so the confederacy did not gain many allies that would help them in the shirt time that they were in control. With the Union government having contracts and business with most of the countries in this time, when Lincoln declared his inaugural address, that the secession was legally

Beauregard. Four more southern states–Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee–joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. Outskirt slave states like Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland did not withdraw, but rather there was much Confederate sensitivity among their nationals.

With no hope of bringing the South back into the United States by protecting slavery, Lincoln had a new dilemma. His own political party, the Republicans, had formed around their opposition to slavery. Many of the more radical politicians in the party saw the secession of the South as the best opportunity to abolish slavery once and for all. As the US war dead piled up, more and more Northerners began to push Lincoln to punish the states that had seceded by making abolition a major goal of the war. The problem with abolishing slavery, however, was that there were still four slave states that had not seceded from the United States: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Lincoln feared that if he advocated emancipation he would provoke those states into joining the Confederacy, making the war even more difficult to win. Of the border states, Maryland was particularly worrisome, because the US capital at Washington D.C. sat on its border with Virginia. If Maryland decided to join the Confederacy, Washington D.C.

In 1860 the South decided to secede from the Union. The reason that the South decided to secede was because they did not share the same views as the North. The South was in favor for slavery, unlike the North who up the Mason-Dixie Line had begun to gradually ban slavery. The South was more reliant on slavery for plantation matters. The North did not care much for the reasons why the South needed slavery, since they relied on cheap labor. The South had to secede because they would not be getting their slave economy if they stayed in the North. Once Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 the South seceding the Union vas creating their own Confederacy. South Carolina decided to secede for the Union first. Then they dispatched delegates

The capture of this vital southern city was a huge blow to the Confederacy. In early 1862, the Confederates concentrated their forces in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee to prevent the Yankee invasion. Many of these troops fought at Shiloh in Tennessee on April 6 and 7. Eight Rebel gunboats were dispatched up the great river to stop a Union flotilla above Memphis, leaving only 3,000 militia, two uncompleted ironclads, and a few steamboats to defend New Orleans. The most imposing obstacles for the Union were two forts, Jackson and St. Philip. In the middle of the night of April 24, Admiral David Farragut led his troops in a daring run past the forts.

The election of Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for secession.[74] Efforts at compromise, including the "Corwin Amendment" and the "Crittenden Compromise", failed. Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives, were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and Electoral College against an increasingly powerful North. Before Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven slave states had declared their secession and joined together to form the Confederacy.

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America was the supreme law of the Confederate States of America, as adopted on March 11, 1861, and in effect from February 22, 1862 through the conclusion of the American Civil War.[1] The Confederacy also operated under a Provisional Constitution from February 8, 1861 to February 22, 1862.[2] The original Provisional Constitution is currently located at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia,[3] and differs slightly from the version later adopted. The final, hand-written document is currently located in the University of Georgia archives at Athens, Georgia.[3]

Although the Confederacy lacked the exuberant population and wealth of the Union, the Confederacy possessed several key advantages that allowed them to command large stretches of the Civil War. Since the savage war was fought primarily on southern soil, the South had the unique advantage of fighting on their own land, and therefore were able to fight a defensive war. In sharp contrast to the Union, the people of the Confederacy passionately believed in the purpose of the Civil War, and these numerous individuals fervently fought for the concept of independence. The Confederacy also boasted a large arsenal of phenomenal generals, highlighted by Virginia native Robert E. Lee. Despite its numerous advantages, the South also possessed several glaring