Confederate States Army


The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate army or the Southern army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, fighting against the United States forces to support the rebellion of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate States president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the United States Military Academy, on the Hudson River at West Point, New York, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. He had also been a United States senator from Mississippi and served as U.S. Secretary of War under 14th president Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the new Confederate States government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston Harbor in Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia had besieged the longtime Federal Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison under the command of Major Robert Anderson. By March 1861, the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States meeting in the temporary capital of Montgomery, Alabama, expanded the provisional military forces and established a more permanent regular Confederate States Army.
An accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the Military forces of the Confederate States is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed/burned Confederate records; and archives. Estimates of the number of Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines are between 750,000 and over 1,000,000 troops. This does not include an unknown number of enslaved Black people who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as the construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons. Since these figures include estimates of the total number of soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the army at any given date. These numbers also do not include sailors/marines who served in the Confederate States Navy.
Although most of the soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were volunteers, both sides by 1862 resorted to conscription as a means to supplement the volunteer soldiers. Although exact records are unavailable, estimates of the percentage of Confederate Army soldiers who were drafted are about double the 6 percent of Union Army soldiers who were drafted.
According to the National Park Service, "Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records." Their estimates of Confederate military personnel deaths are about 94,000 killed in battle, 164,000 deaths from disease, and 25,976 deaths in Union prison camps. One estimate of the total Confederate wounded is 194,026. In comparison, the best estimates of the number of Union military personnel deaths are 110,100 killed in battle, 224,580 deaths from disease, and 30,218 deaths in Confederate prison camps. The estimated figure for Union Army wounded is 275,174.
The main Confederate armies, the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee and the remnants of the Army of Tennessee and various other units under General Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered to the U.S. on April 9, 1865, and April 18, 1865. Other Confederate forces further south and west surrendered between April 16, 1865, and June 28, 1865. By the end of the war, more than 100,000 Confederate soldiers had deserted, and some estimates put the number as high as one-third of all Confederate soldiers. The Confederacy's government effectively dissolved when it evacuated the four-year old capital of Richmond, Virginia, on April 3, 1865, and fled southwest by railroad train with President Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet. It gradually continued moving southwestward first to Lynchburg, Virginia, and lost communication with its remaining military commanders, soon exerting no control over the remaining armies. They were eventually caught and captured near Irwinville, Georgia, a month later in May 1865.

Prelude

By the time Abraham Lincoln took office as President of the United States on March 4, 1861, the seven seceding slave states had formed the Confederate States. They seized federal property, including nearly all U.S. Army forts, within their borders. Lincoln was determined to hold the forts remaining under U.S. control when he took office, especially Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. On February 28, shortly before Lincoln was sworn in as president, the Provisional Confederate Congress had authorized the organization of a large Provisional Army of the Confederate States.
Under orders from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, C.S. troops under the command of General Pierre Gustave Toutant / P. G. T. Beauregard military forces surrounding the city harbor began bombarding Fort Sumter on April 12–13, 1861 and forced its capitulation on April 14. The remaining loyal United States in the North, outraged by the Confederacy's attack, demanded war. It rallied behind new 16th President Lincoln's call on April 15 for all the loyal states to send their state militia units avolunteer troops to reinforce and protect the national federal capital of Washington, D.C., to recapture the various forts, arsenals, shipyards and other seized federal installations from the secessionists, to put down and suppress the rebellion and to save the Union. Four more upper border slave states then joined the Confederacy, making eleven seceded states, rather than fight fellow Southerners. The Confederacy then moved its national capital from temporary Montgomery, Alabama to the state capital of Virginia in Richmond. Both the United States and the Confederate States began in earnest to raise large, mostly volunteer, armies, with the opposing objectives: putting down the rebellion and preserving the Union on the one hand, and establishing Southern independence from the northern United States on the other.

Establishment

The Confederate States Congress provided for a regular Confederate States Army, patterned after its parent in the United States Army. It was to consist of a large provisional force to exist only in time of war and a small permanent regular army. The provisional, volunteer army was established by an act of the Provisional Confederate Congress passed on February 28, 1861, one week before the act which established the permanent regular army organization, passed on March 6. Although the two forces were to exist concurrently, little was done to organize the Confederate regular army.
  • The Provisional Army of the Confederate States began organizing on April 27. Virtually all regular, volunteer, and conscripted men preferred to enter this organization since officers could achieve a higher rank in the Provisional Army than they could in the Regular Army. If the war had ended successfully for them, the Confederates intended that the PACS would be disbanded, leaving only the ACSA.
  • The Army of the Confederate States of America was the regular army and was authorized to include 15,015 men, including 744 officers, but this level was never achieved. The men serving in the highest rank as Confederate States generals, such as Samuel Cooper and Robert E. Lee, were enrolled in the ACSA to ensure that they outranked all militia officers. ACSA ultimately existed only on paper. The organization of the ACSA did not proceed beyond the appointment and confirmation of some officers. Three state regiments were later denominated "Confederate" regiments, but this appears to have had no practical effect on the organization of a regular Confederate Army and no real effect on the regiments themselves.
Members of all the military forces of the Confederate States are often referred to as "Confederates", and members of the Confederate army were referred to as "Confederate soldiers". Supplementing the Confederate army were the various state militias of the Confederacy:
  • Confederate States State Militias were organized and commanded by the state governments, similar to those authorized by the United States' Militia Act of 1792. Some of these militia forces, in the early days of the Confederacy, had operated as stand alone military forces before being incorporated into the Confederate Army; one of the more well known was the Provisional Army of Virginia.

    Control and conscription

Control and operation of the Confederate army were administered by the Confederate States War Department, which was established by the Confederate Provisional Congress in an act on February 21, 1861. The Confederate Congress gave control over military operations, and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the President of the Confederate States of America on February 28, 1861, and March 6, 1861. On March 8, the Confederate Congress passed a law that authorized President Davis to issue proclamations to call up no more than 100,000 men. The C.S. War Department asked for 8,000 volunteers on March 9, 20,000 on April 8, and 49,000 on and after April 16. Davis proposed an army of 100,000 soldiers in his message to Congress on April 29.
On August 8, 1861, the Confederacy called for 400,000 volunteers to serve for one or three years. Eight months later in April 1862, the Confederacy passed the first conscription law in either Confederate or Union history, the Conscription Act, which made all able bodied white men between the ages of 18 and 35 liable for a three-year term of service in the Provisional Army. It also extended the terms of enlistment for all one-year soldiers to three years. Men employed in certain occupations considered to be most valuable for the home front were exempt from the draft. The act was amended twice in 1862. On September 27, the maximum age of conscription was extended to 45. On October 11, the Confederate States Congress passed the so-called "Twenty Negro Law", which exempted anyone who owned 20 or more slaves, a move that caused deep resentment among conscripts who did not own slaves.
The C.S. Congress enacted several more amendments throughout the war to address losses suffered in battle as well as the United States' greater supply of manpower. In December 1863, it abolished the previous practice of allowing a rich drafted man to hire a substitute to take his place in the ranks. Substitution had also been practiced in the United States, leading to similar resentment from the lower classes. In February 1864, the age limits were extended to between 17 and 50. Challenges to the subsequent acts came before five state supreme courts; all five upheld them.