Davis was a graduate of the United States Military Academy, on the Hudson River at West Point, New York, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War (1846-1848).

[9] The Confederacy's government effectively dissolved when it evacuated the four-year old capital of Richmond, Virginia, on April 3, 1865, and fled southwest by railroad train with President Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet.

Men employed in certain occupations considered to be most valuable for the home front (such as railroad and river workers, civil officials, telegraph operators, miners, druggists and teachers) were exempt from the draft.

[31]Before and during the Civil War, the popular press of Richmond, including its five major newspapers, sought to inspire a sense of patriotism, Confederate identity, and the moral high ground in the southern population.

[40] He stated that while the American rebel colonists of the 1770s saw an incongruity between owning slaves on the one hand, and proclaiming to be fighting for liberty on the other, the later Confederacy's soldiers did not, as the Confederate ideology of white supremacy negated any contradiction between the two: Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their liberty while holding other people in slavery.

[53] One Confederate Army officer at the time noted, "The deserters belong almost entirely to the poorest class of non-slave-holders whose labor is indispensable to the daily support of their families" and that "When the father, husband or son is forced into the service, the suffering at home with them is inevitable.

[55] A growing threat to the solidarity of the Confederacy was dissatisfaction in the Appalachian Mountains districts caused by lingering Unionism and a distrust of the power wielded by the slave-holding class.

[58][59] Young Samuel Clemens (1835-1910, later to be known as Mark Twain) soon deserted the Southern army long before he became a world-famous writer, journalist and lecturer, but he often commented upon that episode in his life comically, even writing a book about it.

[60] Because of the destruction of any central repository of records in the capital at Richmond in 1865 and the comparatively poor record-keeping of the time, there can be no definitive number that represents the strength of the Confederate States Army.

[71] Many of the Confederacy's senior military leaders (including Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, and James Longstreet) and even President Jefferson Davis, were former U.S. Army and, in smaller numbers, U.S. Navy officers who had been opposed to, disapproved of, or were at least unenthusiastic about secession, but resigned their U.S. commissions upon hearing that their states had left the Union.

To avoid postponing recognition for their valor, those nominated for the awards had their names placed on a Roll of Honor, which would be read at the first dress parade after its receipt and be published in at least one newspaper in each state.

The lack of central authority and the ineffective railroads, combined with the frequent unwillingness or inability of Southern state governments to provide adequate funding, were key factors in the Confederate army's demise.

[81] As a result of severe supply problems, as well as the lack of textile factories in the Confederacy and the successful U.S. naval blockade of Southern ports, the typical Confederate soldier was rarely able to wear the standard regulation uniform, particularly as the war progressed.

Confederate soldiers also frequently suffered from inadequate supplies of shoes, tents, and other gear, and would be forced to innovate and make do with whatever they could scrounge from the local countryside.

Individual commanders often had to "beg, borrow or steal" food and ammunition from whatever sources were available, including captured U.S. depots and encampments, and private citizens regardless of their loyalties.

Coupled with the U.S. blockade of all ports the devastation of plantations, farms and railroads meant the Confederacy increasingly lost the capacity to feed its soldiers and civilians.

British merchants and bankers funded the purchase of arms and construction of ships being outfitted as blockade runners which later carried war supplies bound for Southern ports.

[85] It was estimated the Confederate Army received thousands of tons of gunpowder, half a million rifles, and several hundred cannons from British blockade runners.

[90][92] During the Civil War, 28,693 Native Americans served in the U.S. and Confederate armies, participating in battles such as Pea Ridge, Second Manassas, Antietam, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and in Federal assaults on Petersburg.

Following the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, March 7–8, 1862, Drew's Mounted Rifles defected to the United States forces in Kansas, where they joined the Indian Home Guard.

In the summer of 1862, U.S. troops captured Chief Ross, who was paroled and spent the remainder of the war in Washington and Philadelphia proclaiming Cherokee loyalty to the United States Army.

Webb Garrison, a Civil War historian, describes their response: when Confederate Brigadier General Albert Pike authorized the raising of regiments during the fall of 1860, Seminoles, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Cherokees responded with considerable enthusiasm.

"[95] With so many white males conscripted into the army and roughly 40% of its population unfree, the work required to maintain a functioning society in the Confederacy ended up largely on the backs of slaves.

Let us put the negro to work, but not to fight.Prominent Confederates such as R. M. T. Hunter and Georgian Democrat Howell Cobb opposed arming slaves, saying that it was "suicidal" and would run contrary to the Confederacy's ideology.

Opposing such a move, Cobb stated that African Americans were untrustworthy and innately lacked the qualities to make good soldiers, and that using them would cause many Confederates to quit the army.

"[110][111][112] The overwhelming support most Confederates had for maintaining black slavery was the primary cause of their strong opposition to using African Americans as armed soldiers.

Former Confederate secretary of state Robert Toombs said "In my opinion, the worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves... instead of our own... " and complained using black troops would be "a surrender of the entire slavery question.

The order was issued March 23, but as it was late in the war, only a few African American companies were raised in the Richmond area before the town was captured by the U.S. Army and placed back under U.S.

But there was no official recruitment of black soldiers in the Confederate army until the very end of the war..." He continued, "But Appomattox came only a few weeks later, and none of these men were ever put in uniform to fight.

[124][125] The usage of black men as soldiers by the Union, combined with Abraham Lincoln's issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, profoundly angered the Confederacy,[126] with the Confederates calling it uncivilized.