The Confederate States, officially the Confederate States of America (CASA or C.S.), commonly referred to as the Confederacy, was a confederation of secessionist American states existing from 1861 to 1865. It was originally formed by seven slave states – South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas – in the Lower South region of the United States whose regional economy was mostly dependent upon agriculture, particularly cotton, and a plantation system that relied upon the labor of African-American slaves.
Each state declared its secession from the United States following the November 1860 election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery. A new Confederate government was proclaimed in February 1861 before Lincoln took office in March, but was considered illegal by the government of the United States. After the Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South – Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina – also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The Confederacy later accepted Missouri and Kentucky as members, although neither officially declared secession nor were they ever largely controlled by Confederate forces; Confederate shadow governments attempted to control the two states but were later exiled from them.
The government of the United States (the Union) rejected the claims of secession and considered the Confederacy illegitimate. The Civil War began with the April 12, 1861, Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. In spring 1865, after heavy fighting which led to over half a million deaths, largely on Confederate territory, all the Confederate forces surrendered and the Confederacy dissolved. No foreign government officially recognized the Confederacy as an independent country, although the U.K. and France granted it belligerent status. While the war lacked a formal end, nearly all Confederate forces had surrendered or disbanded by the end of 1865. Jefferson Davis later lamented that the Confederacy had "disappeared" in 1865.
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