On the evening of Christmas Day, 1991, the iconic hammer and sickle flag of the then Soviet Union was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin in Moscow. The USSR disintegrated into Russia and fourteen independent countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia. Most people born in the 1980s and before remember that momentous day – when a communist superpower disintegrated.
But exactly 130 years before that, in 1861, another superpower – ‘the world’s oldest democracy’ – the United States – then a federation of only 34 states, not 50 like today – had broken apart into two countries – the United States. States and Confederate States of America, reducing the size of the United States to less than a quarter of what we know today. This continued for about five years, during which there was an all-out war between the two countries. That war came to be known as the American Civil War.
Although the CSA declared itself an independent nation with its own president, flag, capital city, and established its own government and administration, the US never acknowledged it as a separate country. And although it did not receive global recognition in that era, many countries started trading with it. British and French companies also sold ships and raw materials to the Confederacy, which declared itself an independent republic.
Just a decade earlier, in 1846, the U.S. Union had gone to war with Mexico, known as the Mexican–American War. At that time, the states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Kansas were part of Mexico – some partially, some completely. At the end of the war that lasted more than two years, Mexico suffered a devastating defeat, resulting in it ceding all these states to the US in a declaration of defeat, known as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848. goes. 55 percent of its total territory from the United States in exchange for $15 million.
But the American Union broke up in 1861. 11 Southern states seceded and came together to form the Confederate States of America. The new country had its own president – Jefferson Davis, who served from 1861 to 1865. He was from Mississippi. The 11 states that declared secession from the US Union were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. It completely separated from America and established its own government.
Jefferson Davis – The first and only President of the Confederate States of America. (Photo credit: Senate.gov)
Although growing bitterness between the states of the North and the states of the South had been going on for many years, the main reason for the decline of the United States was its policy on slavery. There were also differing views on how the United States Constitution should be interpreted. Economic, political and social factors also contributed to the partition.
Initially, six of the eleven states seceded. Leaders and stakeholders from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana met in Montgomery, Alabama, in February, 1861 to declare independence from the American Union, officially calling themselves the Confederate States of America, or CSA. A new country, Richmond, Virginia, was declared its capital. Texas broke away and joined them a month later. Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia joined the CSA when the Civil War broke out.
While the United States fought the war under the Stars and Stripes flag, also known as the Star-Spangled Banner, which at the time had only 34 stars representing 34 states, the Confederate States of America used their own flags. Fought the war under what is known as the Stars and Bars or Southern Cross.
The flags of the USA (top-left) and CSA (bottom-left), and the Confederate flag (right). (Photo credit: iStock)
Secession was a response to the electoral victory of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln, who strongly opposed slavery and promised to abolish it, while these 11 Confederate states wanted to continue the practice of slavery.
Abraham Lincoln – 16th President of the United States ,Photo credit: whitehouse.gov)
At the end of the Civil War, the United States defeated the Confederate States and took control of the lost 11 states, and with the victory of the Mexican states in the war a decade earlier, the US became a nation of 48 states with the addition of Alaska. Purchased from Russia, and Hawaii much later became the last two states to join the United States. And although the Confederate States of America is now mentioned only in history books and archived documents, its flag – the Confederate flag – which represents slavery and white supremacy – has resurfaced time and again.
