Confederate States of America

The Confederacy was formed on February 8, 1861, by seven slave states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.^[10] All seven are in the Deep South region of the United States, whose economy was heavily dependent upon agriculture, especially cotton, and a plantation system that relied on slave labor.^[11][12] The Federal Government in Washington D.C. and states under its control were known as the Union.^{[9][10][13][14]}


Convinced that the South's plantation economy was threatened by the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency, the seven slave states seceded from the United States. No foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy as an independent country, although the United Kingdom and France granted it belligerent status.^[1][15][16]


On February 8, 1861, before Lincoln took office, a provisional constitution was adopted, and established a confederation government of "sovereign and independent states".^[4] The confederation functioned similarly to the European Union.^[17][18] Prior to adopting the first Confederate constitution, the Southern states were sovereign republics, e.g. "Republic of Florida", "Republic of Louisiana", "Republic of Texas" etc.^[19]


The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when the South Carolina militia attacked Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. After war began, four slave states of the Upper South—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina—also joined the Confederacy. Four Northern slave states, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, remained in the Union and became known as border states.


On February 22, 1862, one year into the war, Confederate States Army leaders re-established a federal government in Richmond, and enacted the first Confederate draft on April 16, 1862. In the Cornerstone Speech, Vice President Alexander H. Stephens described the new government's ideology as centrally based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."^[20]


By 1865, the Confederacy's federal government dissolved into chaos: the Confederate States Congress adjourned sine die, effectively ceasing to exist as a legislative body on March 18. After four years of heavy fighting, nearly all Confederate land and naval forces either surrendered or otherwise ceased hostilities by May 1865.^[21][22]


The war lacked a clean end date: the most significant capitulation was Confederate general Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, after which any doubt about the war's outcome or the Confederacy's survival was extinguished, although another large army under Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston did not formally surrender to William T. Sherman until April 26. Contemporaneously, President Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 14. Confederate President Jefferson Davis's administration declared the Confederacy dissolved on May 5, and acknowledged in later writings that the Confederacy "disappeared" in 1865.^[23][24][25] On May 9, 1865, U.S. President Andrew Johnson officially called an end to the armed resistance in the South.


After the war, during the Reconstruction era, the Confederate states were readmitted to the Congress after each ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing slavery. 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 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.^[26] The Modern display of the Confederate battle flag primarily started during the 1948 presidential election, when the battle flag was used by the Dixiecrats. During the Civil Rights Movement, segregationists used it for demonstrations.^[27][28]

The first official flag of the Confederate States of America—called the "Stars and Bars"—originally had seven stars, representing the first seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. As more states joined, more stars were added, until the total was 13 (two stars were added for the divided states of Kentucky and Missouri). During the First Battle of Bull Run, (First Manassas) it sometimes proved difficult to distinguish the Stars and Bars from the Union flag. To rectify the situation, a separate "Battle Flag" was designed for use by troops in the field. Also known as the "Southern Cross", many variations sprang from the original square configuration.


Although it was never officially adopted by the Confederate government, the popularity of the Southern Cross among both soldiers and the civilian population was a primary reason why it was made the main color feature when a new national flag was adopted in 1863.^[337] This new standard—known as the "Stainless Banner"—consisted of a lengthened white field area with a Battle Flag canton. This flag too had its problems when used in military operations as, on a windless day, it could easily be mistaken for a flag of truce or surrender. Thus, in 1865, a modified version of the Stainless Banner was adopted. This final national flag of the Confederacy kept the Battle Flag canton, but shortened the white field and added a vertical red bar to the fly end.


Because of its depiction in the 20th-century and popular media, many people consider the rectangular battle flag with the dark blue bars as being synonymous with "the Confederate Flag", but this flag was never adopted as a Confederate national flag.^[337]


The "Confederate Flag" has a color scheme similar to that of the most common Battle Flag design, but is rectangular, not square. The "Confederate Flag" is a highly recognizable symbol of the South in the United States today and continues to be a controversial icon.

Much of the area claimed by the Confederate States of America had a humid subtropical climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. The climate and terrain varied from vast swamps (such as those in Florida and Louisiana) to semi-arid steppes and arid deserts west of longitude 100 degrees west. The subtropical climate made winters mild but allowed infectious diseases to flourish. Consequently, on both sides more soldiers died from disease than were killed in combat,^[350] a fact hardly atypical of pre-World War I conflicts.