The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
William Lewis Sharkey was an American judge and politician from Mississippi. A staunch Unionist during the American Civil War, he opposed the 1861 declared secession of Mississippi from the United States. After the end of the war, President Andrew Johnson appointed Sharkey as provisional governor of Mississippi in 1865.
The governor of Georgia is the head of government of Georgia and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor also has a duty to enforce state laws, the power to either veto or approve bills passed by the Georgia Legislature, and the power to convene the legislature. The current governor is Republican Brian Kemp, who assumed office on January 14, 2019.
Augustus Hill Garland was an American lawyer and Democratic politician from Arkansas, who initially opposed Arkansas' secession from the United States, but later served in both houses of the Congress of the Confederate States and the United States Senate, as well as becoming the 11th governor of Arkansas (1874–1877) and the 38th attorney general of the United States (1885–1889). He wrote several books.
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states were four, later five, slave states that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
Cumberland School of Law is an ABA-accredited law school at Samford University in Homewood, Alabama, United States. It was founded in 1847 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee and is the 11th oldest law school in the United States. The school has more than 11,000 graduates, and its alumni include two United States Supreme Court Justices, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Cordell Hull, "the father of the United Nations", over 50 U.S. representatives, and numerous senators, governors, and judges.
Robert Looney Caruthers was an American judge, politician, and professor. He helped establish Cumberland University in 1842, serving as the first president of its board of trustees, and was a cofounder of the Cumberland School of Law, one of the oldest law schools in the South. He served as a Tennessee state attorney general in the late 1820s and early 1830s, and was a justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court in the 1850s and early 1860s. He also served one term in the United States House of Representatives (1841–1843). In 1863, he was elected Governor of Tennessee by the state's Confederates, but never took office.
Isham Green Harris was an American politician who served as the 16th governor of Tennessee from 1857 to 1862, and as a U.S. senator from 1877 until his death. He was the state's first governor from West Tennessee. A pivotal figure in the state's history, Harris was considered by his contemporaries the person most responsible for leading Tennessee out of the Union and aligning it with the Confederacy during the Civil War.
John Calvin Brown was a Confederate Army officer and an American politician and businessman. Although he originally opposed secession, Brown fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of major general. He later served as the 19th Governor of Tennessee from 1871 to 1875, and was president of the state's 1870 constitutional convention, which wrote the current Tennessee State Constitution.
John Henninger Reagan was an American politician from Texas. A Democrat, Reagan resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives when Texas declared secession from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America. He served in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis as Postmaster General.
The Confederate States Congress was both the provisional and permanent legislative assembly of the Confederate States of America that existed from 1861 to 1865. Its actions were, for the most part, concerned with measures to establish a new national government for the Southern proto-state, and to prosecute a war that had to be sustained throughout the existence of the Confederacy. At first, it met as a provisional congress both in Montgomery, Alabama, and Richmond, Virginia. As was the case for the provisional Congress after it moved to Richmond, the permanent Congress met in the existing Virginia State Capitol, a building which it shared with the secessionist Virginia General Assembly.
John Buchanan Floyd was the 31st Governor of Virginia, U.S. Secretary of War, and the Confederate general in the American Civil War who lost the crucial Battle of Fort Donelson.
John Jones Pettus was an American politician, lawyer, and slave owner who served as the 23rd Governor of Mississippi, from 1859 to 1863. Before being elected in his own right to full gubernatorial terms in 1859 and 1861, he served as acting governor from January 5 to 10, 1854, following the resignation of Henry S. Foote. A member of the Democratic Party, Pettus had previously been a Mississippi state representative, a member and president of the Mississippi State Senate. He strongly supported Mississippi's secession from the United States in 1861 and sought cooperation with the Confederate States of America.
Henry Horatio Wells, a Michigan lawyer and Union Army officer in the American Civil War, succeeded Francis Harrison Pierpont as the appointed provisional governor of Virginia from 1868 to 1869 during Reconstruction. A Radical Republican labeled a carpetbagger, Wells was defeated for election in 1869 by Gilbert C. Walker, who also became his appointed successor. Wells then served as U.S. Attorney for Virginia and later for the District of Columbia.
George Washington Bridges was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for the 3rd congressional district of Tennessee from 1861 to 1863. A Southern Unionist, he was arrested and jailed by Confederate authorities during the first few months of the Civil War in 1861. Though he eventually escaped, he did not take his seat in Congress until February 25, 1863, a few days before his term expired.
Texas declared its secession from the Union on February 1, 1861, and joined the Confederate States on March 2, 1861, after it had replaced its governor, Sam Houston, who had refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. As with those of other states, the Declaration of Secession was not recognized by the US government at Washington, DC. Some Texan military units fought in the Civil War east of the Mississippi River, but Texas was more useful for supplying soldiers and horses for the Confederate Army. Texas' supply role lasted until mid-1863, when Union gunboats started to control the Mississippi River, which prevented large transfers of men, horses, or cattle. Some cotton was sold in Mexico, but most of the crop became useless because of the Union's naval blockade of Galveston, Houston, and other ports.
The Confederate government of Kentucky was a shadow government established for the Commonwealth of Kentucky by a self-constituted group of Confederate sympathizers and delegates sent by Kentucky counties, during the American Civil War. The shadow government never replaced the elected government in Frankfort, in which the state legislature had strong Union sympathies while the governor was pro-Confederate. Neither was it able to gain the whole support of Kentucky's citizens; its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent in 1861 and early 1862 encompassed over half the state. Nevertheless, the provisional government was recognized by the Confederate States of America, and Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Kentucky, the final state admitted to the Confederacy, was represented by the 13th (central) star on the Confederate battle flag.
John Baxter was an American attorney and jurist who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Circuit Courts for the Sixth Circuit from 1877 to 1886. Initially a Whig, he had previously served several terms in the North Carolina House of Commons, including one term as Speaker, before moving to Knoxville, Tennessee to practice law.
James William Deaderick was an American attorney who served as chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1876 to 1886. Prior to becoming Chief Justice, he was an associate justice of the court, having been elected to the bench in 1870 after the enaction of the new state constitution. He had previously served one term in the Tennessee Senate (1851–1853), and campaigned as an elector for presidential candidate John Bell in 1860.
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