Events
1861
Jefferson Davis becomes president of the Confederate
States of America
1862
Confederacy passes Conscription Act
U.S. Congress passes Confiscation Act
1863
Bread riots in Richmond, Virginia
Key People
-
Jefferson Davis
President of the Confederacy; struggled throughout
the war to unify the Southern states under their central government
Initial Jubilation
A feeling
of triumph erupted throughout the South when the Confederate government
was formed in 1861.
A sense of liberation pervaded the secessionist states, as Southerners
believed they could finally be free from the tyrannous North, which
sought to undermine the slave-based economy and Southern way of
life. Most secessionists saw themselves as neopatriots, carrying
on the revolutionary tradition of their forefathers to safeguard
liberty. Many in the South saw Lincoln as the new King George III
of Britain and viewed the South as the righteous underdog.
Southerners were also optimistic about their chances of
winning the war. They realized that the North would have to fight
an offensive war on Southern territory, whereas the South had only
to fight a limited war to defeat Union armies or match
them in a stalemate. As a result, many Southerners saw victory as
inevitable.
The Confederate Government
Delegates from the first seven states to secede—South
Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana—formed
the government of the new Confederate States of America in Montgomery,
Alabama, in February 1861.
They wrote a new constitution, established a new capital at Richmond,
and chose Jefferson Davis as president.
Federation vs. Confederation
Although the government of the Confederacy looked on the
surface much like the government of the United States—the Confederacy used
the U.S. Constitution as a template—the two were in reality quite
different. As states’ righters, the drafters of the Confederate constitution
made sure that their federal government was relatively weaker than
the governments of the individual states. Whereas the United States
was a federation of states bound by a strong central government,
the South was a decentralized confederation of states loosely
allied with each other for common defense. In many ways, the Confederacy
resembled the United States under the Articles of Confederation.
As it turned out, though, the Confederacy’s weak central government
proved to be a major handicap during the war.
Jefferson Davis
Although Davis had had more political experience than
Lincoln—he had served as secretary of war and as a U.S. senator—he
proved an ineffective commander-in-chief. Unlike Lincoln, he underestimated
the importance of public opinion and as a result did not connect
well with voters. Moreover, his nervousness and refusal to delegate
authority alienated many of his cabinet secretaries, cabinet members,
and state governors. As a result, he often had difficulty controlling
his government.
Confederate Disunity
The Confederacy’s greatest weakness was the difficulty
Davis’s government had in controlling the individual states—the
same problem the national Congress had faced under the Articles
of Confederation. Though Davis attempted to assemble a national
army to match the powerful Union forces, the Southern states
did not work together to facilitate the undertaking, and Davis had
no real way to force the state governors to comply and send men.
As the war dragged on, some governors even refused to let their
troops cross state lines to assist fellow Confederates who needed
backup.
