Confederate States of America
▶ Explore on the mapThe Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States or the Confederacy, was a republic in the Southern United States from 1861 to 1865, unrecognized as a sovereign nation by either foreign governments or the United States. The Confederacy was formed on February 8, 1861, by seven states that had seceded from the Union. The original seven were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas; the additional four were Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. These states fought against the United States during the American Civil War in the wake of the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president, with the principal aim of safeguarding slavery amid fears of northern abolitionist influence and federal interference in slave property. The South also feared that Lincoln's insistence that slavery not be permitted to expand into the Western territories would result in the admission of additional free states and the eventual demise of slavery. The Confederacy adopted a constitution establishing a confederation government of "sovereign and independent states". The federal government in Washington D.C. and the states that remained in it were known as the "Union". The Civil War began in April 1861, when South Carolina's militia attacked Fort Sumter. Four slave states of the Upper South—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina—then seceded and joined the Confederacy. In February 1862, Confederate States Army leaders installed a centralized federal government in Richmond, Virginia, and enacted the first Confederate draft on April 16, 1862. By 1865, the Confederacy's federal government dissolved into chaos, and the Confederate States Congress adjourned, effectively ceasing to exist as a legislative body on March 18.
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