Confederate States of America

The Confederate States (C.S.), also known as "the Confederacy", was a declared but unrecognized country that existed in the continent of North America from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War.

Quotes

Sir, if a Confederacy of the Southern States could now be obtained, should we not deem it a happy termination—happy beyond expectation, of our long struggle for our rights against oppression? I fear that there is no longer hope or liberty for the South, under a Union, by which all self-government is taken away. A people, owning slaves, are mad, or worse than mad, who do not hold their destinies in their own hands. Do we not bear the insolent assumption by our rulers, that slave labour shall not come into competition with free? Nor is it our northern brethren alone—the whole world are in arms against your institutions. Every stride of this Government, over your rights, brings it nearer and nearer to your peculiar policy; and even now, it stands, with the Bill of Blood in one hand, and the Sword in the other, and Carolina must bow her dishonoured head, and breathe forth the slavish or hypocritical profession of "ardently attached to the Union of these States." Sir, let slaves adore and love a despotism—it is the part of freemen to detest and to resist it.
- Robert Barnwell Rhett, speech in the aftermath of the nullification crisis, March 11, 1833, as printed in Speeches Delivered in the Convention, of the State of South-Carolina, Held in Columbia, in March, 1833 (Charleston: E. J. Van Brunt, 1833), 25

I wish I was in de land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten.
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land!
In Dixie’s land, we’ll took our stand,
To lib an’ die in Dixie!
- Dan Emmett, "Dixie" (1859), in C. B. Galbreath, Daniel Decatur Emmet (1904), pp. 14, 18
- "Dixie" originated in the minstrel shows of the 1850s and quickly became popular throughout the United States. During the Civil War, it was adopted as a de facto national anthem of the Confederacy, along with "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "God Save the South". Pro-Union variants emerged, one of which is known as the "Union Dixie":
  Away down south in the land of traitors,
  Rattlesnakes and alligators,
  Right away, come away, right away, right away.
  Where cotton's king and men are chattels,
  Union boys will win the battles,
  Right away, come away, right away, right away.

We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil,
Fighting for our liberty with treasure, blood, and toil;
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far,
Hurrah! for the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a single star.
- Harry McCarthy, "The Bonnie Blue Flag" (1861), st. 1. The second line is sometimes given as "Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil."

The truth is, we shall see the Southern Cross ere the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave is accomplished. That destiny does not stop short of the banks of the Amazon. The world of wonders in the animal and vegetable kingdom, of riches incalculable in the vast domain, watered by that gigantic stream, is the natural heritage of the Southron and his domestic slave. They alone can achieve its conquest and lay its untold wealth a tribute at the feet of commerce, the Queen consort of King Cotton.
- George Bagby, "Editor's Table", Southern Literary Messenger (January, 1862), p. 68 [1]

The South has been reduced to the defensive, but offensive operations were its only chance of success. Deprived of the border states and hemmed in by the Mississippi in the west and the Atlantic in the east, the South has conquered nothing — but a graveyard.
- Karl Marx, on the Maryland campaign, "Comments on the North American Events", in Die Presse (October 12, 1862) [2]

It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled "His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the 'Confederate States of America.'" The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost "His Excellency" less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!
- David Dixon Porter, recalling the captured cargo of two blockade-running steamers – Stag and Charlotte – on Cape Fear River, North Carolina (January 19, 1865), in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1886), p. 274