Confederate States of America Established

On the road to Fort Sumter. After Lincoln's election, seven Deep South states left the Union between December 1860 and February 1861. They did not wait for the new president to take office. Their leaders argued that each state was sovereign and could withdraw when the federal government threatened slavery and Southern interests.

Montgomery convention. Delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas met in Montgomery, Alabama, in early February. On February 8, 1861, they formed the Confederate States of America and adopted a provisional constitution. The document copied much of the U.S. Constitution but stressed states' rights and protected slavery in several clauses. Slavery was not a side issue; it was written into the new nation's founding rules.

Jefferson Davis as president. On February 9, the convention elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as provisional president and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia as vice president. Davis was a West Point graduate, former U.S. senator, and secretary of war who owned enslaved people. Many Confederates saw him as a steady national leader, even though he would later struggle to unify the states he governed.

Why diplomacy failed. The Confederacy sent commissioners to Washington hoping to be treated as an independent country. President James Buchanan and then Abraham Lincoln refused to recognize secession as legal. Lincoln insisted the Union was perpetual. Once the Confederacy claimed federal forts such as Fort Sumter, peaceful compromise became almost impossible. Both sides prepared for conflict.

Timeline link. The Montgomery government formed weeks before the first shots at Sumter. When those shots rang out in April, four more states, including Virginia, would join the Confederacy. The war that followed was a fight between two governments, not a brief riot.