Confederate States of America

A couple of weeks ago, I was the keynote speaker at the annual service of the Sons of Confederate Soldiers and United Daughters of the Confederacy at the Resaca Confederate Cemetery. This was a great honor for me and it caused me to do a lot of research on the War between the United States and the Confederate States. We often call this the Civil War, but it was anything other than civil. There were instances of fathers on one side and sons on the other. There were instances of brother against brother. More than 640,000 were killed in this war as a total of both sides. Possibly 300,000 were wounded and crippled for the rest of their lives. By comparison, America lost about 537,000 in World War I and World War II combined. Cities, towns, farms and homes were burned. Farm animals were killed and crops were burned in the fields. The entire war was fought on American soil. We have never had another experience like this war. Georgia was the last state to surrender and the Union General Sherman showed no mercy as he marched through Georgia destroying everything in his path.

When I was in high school, we studied the history of the war and I remembered many of the names of the people involved. At the meeting in Resaca, I sat beside and talked to a lady who was an educator with a doctorate’s degree. She told me that the Department of Education had instructed the schools to de-emphasize the teaching of the history of the Confederacy and only teach it one time in the eighth grade. To me this is a subject that should be thoroughly explored. We never want to experience another war on the grounds of our country.

Today, none of us believe that permanent forced slavery should be permitted anywhere in the world. In the beginning of our country, all 13 states allowed slavery and the largest group of slaves were in New York City. The farms in the South that were growing cotton for the northern textile mills had the limiting problem of getting the seed out of the cotton and when it was done by hand it was a very time consuming issue. After Eli Whitney invited the cotton gin, and removing the cotton seed became a commercial process, the growing of cotton became a major farm activity. The slaves assisted in this activity and were very important to the agricultural activity of the South. By 1860, the nation had grown to 34 states and all of the states above the Mason-Dixon Line had made slavery illegal. The southern states all had slavery legally.

In the beginning of the nation, the two leading political parties were the Democratic Party and the Whig Party. About 1854, there had been some Republican Party members elected to the state legislatures and the Republicans had run an unsuccessful candidate for president in 1856. In 1860, the leading candidates for president were Abraham Lincoln for the Republicans and Steven Douglas for the Democrats. Both of them were from Illinois. They traveled around the country to the same cities and held debates to try to get votes. In this election, the Republicans captured most of the northern states and the south was a solid Democratic stronghold. The main issue in the debates was slavery. Steven Douglas promoted allowing the south to keep their slaves and the north to remain a free state territory and still remaining together as the United States. New states would be allowed to choose which they prefer. Abraham Lincoln said that the country could not survive with this kind of division and he wanted all of the states to abandon slavery. It was a matter of history that President George Washington was not in favor of slavery even though he owned slaves at his Mount Vernon home. When he died, he freed all of his slaves as a condition of his will. Some of the southern political leaders stated that if Abraham Lincoln became president, they would withdraw from the United States.

Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860, along with a number of the Republicans who were elected to Congress. The leaders from the South could see the writing on the wall and believed that Congress would abolish slavery for the entire nation. The inauguration of the president was in March 1861. In February 1861, prior to the inauguration, the southern states had a meeting in Columbia, S.C., and they drew up a constitution for a new nation to be called the Confederate States of America. Just a few days later, the State Government of South Carolina met and declared that they were seceding from the United States and were no longer a state in the United States. In the months after the inauguration, in March, another meeting was held in Montgomery, Ala., and six more states joined with South Carolina in leaving the United States. Within a few more weeks, four more states joined with them and the Confederate States of America was legally formed with eleven states. The United States was down to twentythree states. The Confederates had about ten million citizens and the United States had about twenty million citizens. The land area was in the same proportion as the population with the United States having about double the area of the Confederate States. The founders of the Confederate States appointed Jefferson Davis to be the president until an election could be held. Because of the war, no election was ever held.

The United States maintained Fort Sumter at entrance to the port of Charleston in South Carolina. On April 12, 1861, the Confederates captured and took control of this fort. President Lincoln considered this an act of war and began to call up volunteers to add to the United States Army. He ordered United States ships to blockade the southern ports and called for Robert E. Lee to meet with him. He offered Lee the opportunity to be over the military of the United States. Robert E. Lee turned him down and the following day he resigned his position in the U.S. Army and joined the Army of the Confederacy. He eventually was the commander of all of the Confederate military.

The Confederacy won a number of battles in the early part of the war, but eventually the power in the numbers began to affect the war and the Confederacy surrendered and ended the war. The last Confederate Brigadier General to surrender was born in New Echota near Calhoun, Georgia. His name was Stand Watie and he was a Cherokee Indian in charge of all of the Confederate Army west of the Mississippi River.