The 2nd Confederate Congress met in two sessions following an intersession during the military campaign season beginning November 7, 1864, and ending on March 18, 1865, shortly before the conclusion of the Civil War and the downfall of the Confederacy.

Most Deep South residents and many in the border states believed the new nation about to be born in a revolution to perpetuate slavery was the logical result of defeats in sectional contests.

[2] The 1859 raid at the federal Harpers Ferry Armory in Harper's Ferry, then in Virginia, at the confluence of the Shenandoah with the Potomac River, by abolitionist John Brown to free slaves in Virginia was hailed in the North by other abolitionists, who proclaimed that it was a noble martyrdom, while many in the South saw Brown as a provocateur and dangerous extremist, seeking to incite servile insurrection and violent social upheaval.

[3] The increasing economic rivalry and gap of wealth between Northern industry and more mechanized farming versus Southern slave cash-crop agriculture seemed to be a losing battle that would permanently subject the South as diminished colonists dependent on an aggressive business world.

A new nation of secessionist states exclusive to the South, would assure uncompromised slavery and deliver an independent economic security based on the King Cotton agriculture crop.

Southern members of Congress repeatedly addressed their constituents, saying that all hope of sectional relief and redress was done and that "the sole and primary aim of each slaveholding State ought to be its speedy and absolute separation from an unnatural and hostile Union.

"[12] During the Provisional Congress, the expected political rivalries between secessionist fire-eaters and conservative conditional unionists did not appear, nor did the older factions of former Democrats versus former Whigs.

Davis spoke in states' rights terms, but his actions were increasingly nationalist from early on, and he freely used his veto power against bills meant to limit national policy in a way that led to charges of "military despotism".

[26] The permanent Confederate Constitution served for the duration of the government, with only one Amendment on May 21, 1861, when Congress was given the right to draw multiple federal judicial districts in the large states.

[30] Arizona secessionists met in convention at La Mesilla and resolved to leave the Union on March 16, and duly sent a delegate to Montgomery to lobby for admission.

During the spring and summer of 1861, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Creeks, and Cherokees held tribal conventions that resolved themselves into independent nations and began negotiations with the Provisional Congress.

[40] While the initial response to calls to rally to the Confederate Army and state militias was overwhelming in the short run, Davis foresaw that substantial numbers of the twelve-month volunteers would not re-enlist.

During this time, the states of Missouri, Kentucky and northwest Virginia were occupied by Union forces and used as staging areas for further advances into Confederate territory.

[56] In addition to its "class-exemption system" deferring school teachers, river pilots, and iron foundry workers, Congress in October 1862 exempted owners or overseers of twenty or more slaves.

[58] Thus, by the spring of 1862, it was obvious that, if the Confederacy were to survive, Southerners were of necessity changing their ante-bellum worldview, including constitutional principles, economic markets, and political axioms.

Thomas H. Watts, an Alabama Whig, became the Attorney General, and, without a Confederate Supreme Court, he became the de facto final arbiter of legal questions involving the national government.

Border-state senators, who generally were staunch allies of Davis's, aligned with non-planting elements of the Confederate House to restrict the plantation exemption to one white man at all times.

The battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville stymied Union attempts to advance in the eastern theater, but it achieved victories along the Mississippi at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Fort Hindeman, Arkansas.

Both House and Senate passed enabling legislation, but Davis pocket-vetoed the measure at the close of session in May for fear of alienating a state that was virtually neutral in the conflict.

[69] Historian Emery Thomas has noted that, in the name of wartime emergency, Davis "all but destroyed the political philosophy which underlay the founding of the Southern Republic," and Congress furthered his purposes.

There was widespread abuse of the system of class exemptions, including teachers, apothecaries, newly minted artisans with scant business, and small state government employees hired at less than subsistence wages.

It extended the tax law of 1863, and, although there was some relief from the earlier double taxation of agricultural products, it generally required greater material sacrifice for the war effort.

Finally, the Congress authorized requiring half of all cargo space aboard ships running the blockade to be dedicated to government shipments, and forbade any export of cotton or tobacco without Davis's express permission.

Unlike elections to the First Congress, which often were personality contests over who showed the most enthusiastic support of secession, Congressmen facing re-election had roll-call voting records that they had to defend.

[91] As historian Wilfred B. Yearns concluded, "Only the nearly solid support from occupied districts enabled President Davis to maintain a majority in Congress until the last days of the nation.

Preston, the Superintendent of Conscription, and Lee, Davis recommended to Congress that the entire exemption system be replaced by a regime of executive detail, allowing him to decide who would work and who would fight.

All such proposals died in committee, and the passed legislation to replace existing commissary officers and quartermasters with bonded agents was vetoed as "seriously impairing our ability to supply armies in the field".

On November 7, 1864, Davis responded to that battlefield experience with the request for a law empowering him to organize, arm, and train all state militias for central government deployment.

In a final effort to increase manpower by tinkering with exemptions, Congress abolished the Bureau of Conscription, replacing it with one administered by the army, netting some 3,000 employees.

Davis and the War Department responded by fiat in General Order Number Fourteen asserting emancipation: "No slave will be accepted as a recruit unless with his own consent and with the approbation of his master by a written instrument converting, as far as he may, the rights of a freedman."