Global InformationConfederate States Army information
| Confederate States Army | |
|---|---|
 Battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia | |
| Founded | February 28, 1861 |
| Disbanded | May 26, 1865 |
| Country | Confederate States |
| Type | Army |
| Size | 1,082,119 total who served[1]
|
| Part of |  C.S. War Department |
| Colors | Cadet Gray[2] |
| March | "Dixie" |
| Engagements | American Indian Wars Cortina Troubles American Civil War |
| Commanders | |
| Commander-in-Chief | Jefferson Davis (POW) |
| General in Chief | Robert E. Lee  |
The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces to win the independence of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery.[3] 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 president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. He had also been a United States senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.
An accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the Confederate Army is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed Confederate records; estimates of the number of Confederate soldiers are between 750,000 and 1,000,000 troops. This does not include an unknown number of slaves who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as the construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons.[4] 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 do not include sailors who served in 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 soldiers who were drafted are about double the 6 percent of Union soldiers who were drafted.[5]
Confederate casualty figures also are incomplete and unreliable. The best estimates of Confederate military personnel deaths are about 94,000 killed or mortally wounded, 164,000 deaths from disease, and between 26,000 and 31,000 deaths in Union prison camps. One estimate of the Confederate wounded, which is considered incomplete, is 194,026.[6][citation needed]
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 (officially April 12), and April 18, 1865 (officially April 26). Other Confederate forces surrendered between April 16, 1865, and June 28, 1865.[7] By the end of the war, more than 100,000 Confederate soldiers had deserted,[8] and some estimates put the number as high as one-third of all Confederate soldiers.[9] The Confederacy's government effectively dissolved when it fled Richmond on April 3, 1865, and exerted no control over the remaining armies.
- ^ "Civil War Facts". American Battlefield Trust. August 16, 2011.
- ^ C.S. War Dept., p. 402.
- ^ On February 8, 1861, delegates from the first seven Deep South slave states which had already declared their secession from the Union of the United States of America met at Montgomery, the state capital of Alabama, adopted the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States.
- ^ Records of the number of individuals who served in the United States Army are more extensive and reliable, but are not entirely accurate. Estimates of the number of individual Union soldiers range between 1,550,000 and 2,400,000, with a number between 2,000,000 and 2,200,000 most likely. Union Army records show slightly more than 2,677,000 enlistments, but this number apparently includes many re-enlistments. These numbers do not include sailors who served in United States Navy or United States Marine Corps. These figures represent the total number of soldiers who served at any time during the war, not the size of the army at any given date.
- ^ Albert Burton Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (1924).
- ^ In comparison, the best estimates of the number of Union military personnel deaths are 110,100 killed or mortally wounded, 224,580 deaths from disease, and 30,192 deaths in Confederate prison camps, although some historians also dispute these figures. The best conjecture for Union Army wounded is 275,175.
- ^ Confederate forces at Mobile, Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia, also had already surrendered on April 14, 1865, and April 16, 1865, respectively. U.S. and Confederate units fought a battle at Columbus, Georgia, before the surrender on April 16, 1865, and a small final battle at Palmito Ranch, Texas, on May 12, 1865. In areas more distant from the main theaters of operations, Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi under Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, in Arkansas under Brigadier General M. Jeff Thompson, in Louisiana and Texas under General E. Kirby Smith and in Indian Territory under Brigadier General Stand Watie surrendered on May 4, 1865, May 12, 1865, May 26, 1865 (officially June 2, 1865), and June 28, 1865, respectively.
- ^ Eric Foner (1988). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. Harper Collins. p. 15. ISBN 9780062035868.
- ^ Hamner, Christopher. "Deserters in the Civil War | Teachinghistory.org". teachinghistory.org. Retrieved August 3, 2018.