The Confederate States of America (CSA or C.S.), commonly referred to as the Confederacy, was an unrecognized republic[1] in North America that existed from 1861 to 1865.[2] The Confederacy was originally formed by seven secessionist slave-holding states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—in the Lower South region of the United States, whose economy was heavily dependent upon agriculture, particularly cotton, and a plantation system that relied upon the labor of African-American slaves.[3] Convinced that white supremacy[2][4]and the institution of slavery[2][4] were threatened by the November 1860 election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories, the Confederacy declared its secession in rebellion against the United States, with the loyal states becoming known as the Union during the ensuing American Civil War. Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens described its ideology as being centrally based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition
<span>Thomas Jefferson stressed that civil liberties needed to be protected. He also stressed that there needed to be a capital where they could keep track of everything going on in the country.</span>
