Confederate States Of America Essay -- essays papers

Confederate States Of AmericaConfederate States of America, the name adopted by the federation of 11 hard worker holding Southern states of the United States that seceded from the northern and were arrayed against the national political relation during the American Civil War. Immediately after confirmation of the election of Abraham Lincoln as president, the legislature of South Carolina convened. In a unanimous vote on December 20, 1860, the state seceded from the Union. During the next two months ordinances of secession were adopted by the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. chairperson James Buchanan, in the last days of his administration, declared that the federal government would not forcibly prevent the secessions. In February 1861, the seceding states sent representatives to a convention in Montgomery, Alabama. The convention, presided over by Howell Cobb of Georgia, adopted a provisional constitution and chose Jefferson Davis of M ississippi as provisional president and Alexander Hamilton Stephens of Georgia as provisional sin president. The convention, on March 11, 1861, unanimously ratified a permanent constitution. The constitution, which closely resembled the federal Constitution, prohibited the African slave trade but allowed interstate work in slaves.Jefferson Davis (1808-89), first and only president of the Confederate States of America (1861-65). Davis was born on June 3, 1808, in Christian (now Todd) County, Kentucky, and educated at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, and at the U.S. Military Academy. after his graduation in 1828, he saw frontier service until ill health forced his resignation from the army in 1835. He was a plantation owner in Mississippi from 1835 to 1845, when he was elected to the U.S. Congress. In 1846 he resigned his seat in order to serve in the Mexican War and fought at Monterrey and Buena Vista, where he was wounded. He was U.S. senator from Mississippi f rom 1847 to 1851, secretary of war in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce from 1853 to 1857, and again U.S. senator from 1857 to 1861. As a senator he often stated his bear out of slavery and of states rights, and as a cabinet member he influenced Pierce to sign the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which favored the South and increased the bitterness of the struggle over slavery. In his second term as senator he became t... ...llion those of the North at $331 million. It was thus obvious that the South was dependent on Europe and on the North for veridical goods. The lack of resources forced the Confederacy to levy war taxes and borrow heavily on future cotton crops. An inflationary period in 1863 and later government actions almost destroyed the Confederate credit.In addition the South was hampered by the lack of powder mills and of suitable iron works only peerless plant, the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, was equipped to turn out large field guns. The railroad system was ina dequately developed and equipped, and although the South made larger-than-life attempts to maintain itself in a battle against overwhelming odds, the struggles left it financially and industrially ruined at the close of the Civil War. The process of restoring the Confederacy to the Union was called Reconstruction . The U.S. Supreme Court, in 1869, in the case of Texas v. White, declared secession unconstitutional.Bibliography1. Comptons Online Encyclopedia2. America Is, Merrill Publishing Company and Bell and Howell Company, 1987, Columbus, Ohio3. The American Nation, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1994