Confederacy, The

The, a name given to union of the Confederate States of America. It was formed at Montgomery, Alabama, February 9, 1861, by South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected president, and Alexander A. Stephens of Georgia, vice-president. The Confederacy was afterward joined by Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. Missouri and Kentucky were prevented from joining by the efforts of the Unionists, aided by Federal troops. The capital was afterward removed to Richmond, Virginia. The constitution adopted was modeled on that of the United States. The president was to be chosen for six years, and was not eligible for reelection. Protective tariff, that is to say, a tariff for other purposes than revenue, was forbidden. Slavery was expressly recognized and safeguarded. The foreign slave trade, however, was prohibited.

The secession of these states, and the formation of a new union was in itself an express declaration of state sovereignty. The framers of the new constitution insisted that the right of a state to secede went without saying. They incorporated no specific statement of the principle. The Confederacy included a population of about 5,000,000 whites and 3,000,000 slaves. The government of the United States never recognized the Confederacy as a nation or its government as a government. It treated the people of the South as citizens in rebellion against the national authority. A cordon of ships and armies surrounding the Confederacy drew its lines tighter and tighter each campaign. With territory constantly diminishing, and under the necessity of defending itself on all sides, the Confederacy was practically in a state of martial law during its entire existence. Its constitution had little opportunity to be tested, yet its friends were of the opinion before the war ended that it did not give the central government sufficient authority. Certainly President Davis found it necessary to assume far more power than the constitution of the Confederacy contemplated.

Historians are inclined today to say that the Constitution left unsettled the question of the right of secession. Almost every important section of the country had threatened it at one time or another. By 1860, however, the people of the largest section of the Union had grown to regard the central government, that is to say, the president and Congress, as an authority to which each citizen owed personal obedience. The greater part of the Union had grown to consider the national authority superior to that of the state. That being the case, it was too much to expect that they would permit a minority, the small end of the country, to defy that authority. A citizen of Pennsylvania felt that a citizen of South Carolina must be made to obey the government which he himself obeyed, and the North being stronger than the South, made the South do it. The Confederacy lasted a little more than four years.

See Civil War; Secession; Tombs; Jefferson Davis

Confessions of an English Opium Eater, an autobiographical work by Thomas De Quincey, published in the London Magazine in 1821, and in book form in 1822. This work won immediate success, and is by far the most famous of all of De Quincey's writings. A second version, much longer than the first, but containing the whole of the earlier work, was written in 1855-6. The Confessions tells the story of the author's own experiences in acquiring and overcoming the opium habit. In it is found some of De Quincey's most valuable writing. It is original, polished, poetical, and often humorous. The long digressions are all interesting, are held under the author's control, and usually the return to the subject in hand is most happy. Hunter says, "It is only the story of the childhood of a man of genius; curious indeed, full of strangely pathetic incidents, but from the ordinary standpoint, morally blameless." To the first part of The Confessions, as printed in the London Magazine, was appended the following editorial note, "The remainder of this very interesting article will be given in the next number." The October number accordingly contained Part II and Part III of The Confessions, with an editorial note by Thomas Hood as follows: "We are not often in the habit of eulogizing our own work, but we cannot neglect the opportunity...of calling the attention of our readers to the deep, eloquent, and masterly paper which stands first in our present number." See De Quincey