Government of Our Own

The Making of the Confederacy

William C. Davis

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 1994
• Print ISBN: 9780029077351
• eBook ISBN: 9781439105856
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

For four crucial months in 1861, delegates from all over the South met in Montgomery, Alabama, to establish a new nation. Davis (Jefferson Davis: The Man and the Hour, LJ 11/15/91) tells their story in this new work, another example of Davis's fine storytelling skill and an indispensable guide to understanding the formation of the Confederate government. Among the issues Davis examines are revising the Constitution to meet Southern needs, banning the importation of slaves, and determining whether the convention could be considered a congress. Also revealed are the many participating personalities, their ambitions and egos, politicking and lobbying for the presidency of the new nation, and the nature of the city of Montgomery itself.

Notes

Abbreviations Used in Notes

ADAH Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery

B & L Robert U. Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

GDAH Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta

LC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

LSU Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

MCSH Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, Purchaseville, New York

MDAH Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson

NA National Archives, Washington, D.C.

OR United States War Department, War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

ORN United States Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion

PJD Lynda Lasswell Crist and Mary Seaton Dix, Papers of Jefferson Davis

Rowland Dunbar Rowland, comp., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist

SCHS South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston

SCL, USC South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia

SHC, UNC Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

SHSP Southern Historical Society Papers

1. Weld Them Together While They Are Hot

1. Nashville, Daily Gazette, February 17, 1861.

2. Martin J. Crawford to Alexander H. Stephens, April 8, 1861, Alexander H. Stephens Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC)

3. William K. Scarborough, ed., The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, Volume I, Toward Independence, October, 1856-April, 1861 (Baton Rouge, 1972), pp. 456, 463-64.

4. Robert S. Tharin, Arbitrary Arrests in the South; or, Scenes from the Experience of an Alabama Unionist (New York, 1863), p. 62.

5. William H. Gist to A. B. Moore, October 5, 1860, John Ellis to Gist, October 18, 1860, Moore to Gist, October 25, 1860, John Pettus to Gist, October 26, 1860, Thomas O. Moore to Gist, October 26, 1860, Joseph E. Brown to Gist, October 31, 1860, Milton F. Perry to Gist, November 9, 1860, William H. Gist Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. (SCL, USC)

6. Cobb to Marion Cobb, October 11, 1860, in “The Correspondence of Thomas Reade Roots Cobb, 1861-1862,” Publications of the Southern History Association, XI (May 1907), p. 156.

7. Howell Cobb to James Buchanan, March 26, 1861, in U. B. Phillips, ed., The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb (Washington, 1913), p. 555.

8. Montgomery, Weekly Mail, November 16, 30, 1860.

9. Charles E. Hooker to Pettus, January 12, 1861, Governor Record Group, RG 27, Volume 36, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson (MDAH).

10. Benjamin H. Hill to Herschel V. Johnson, December 3, 1860, Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., Collection of Autograph Letters and Portraits of the Signers of the Constitution of the Confederate States, Duke University, Library, Durham, N.C.

11. Montgomery, Weekly Mail, November 16, 1860.

12. Scarborough, Ruffin Diary, I, p. 448.

13. William H. Trescott to Robert B. Rhett, November 1, 1860, William H. Trescott Papers, Miscellaneous Manuscript Collection, LC.

14. Dwight L. Dumond, The Secession Movement, 1860-1861 (New York, 1931), p. 148.

15. John G. Shorter to his daughter, December 9, 1860, John G. Shorter Letters, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery (ADAH).

16. Robert B. Rhett, Jr. to E.C. Wharton, August 2, 1886, Edward C. Wharton Papers, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (LSU).

17. Leroy P. Walker to Robert B. Rhett, Sr., November 1, 1860, Aiken B. Rhett Papers, Charleston Museum, Charleston, S.C.

18. New York, Evening Post, December 13,21, 1860.

19. Steven V. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York, 1970), pp. 290-91.

20. David S. Heidler, “Fire Eaters: The Radical Secessionists in Antebellum Politics” (Ph.D. diss., Auburn University, Auburn, Ala., 1985), p. 401.

21. Ibid., p. 360.

22. Ibid., pp. 359-60.

23. John Horsey to William Porcher Miles, December 10, 1860, William Porcher Miles Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (SHC, UNC).

24. Heidler, “Fire Eaters,” pp. 399-400.

25. Armand J. Gerson, “The Inception of the Montgomery Convention,” American Historical Association Annual Report (Washington, 1910), p. 183; Charles E. Cauthen, South Carolina Goes to War (Chapel Hill, 1950), p. 84.

26. Charleston, Mercury, December 24, 1860; Rhett, Jr., to Wharton, August 2, 1886, Wharton Papers, LSU.

27. Cauthen, South Carolina, pp. 84-85.

28. Montgomery, Weekly Advertiser, January 16, 1861; Gerson, “Montgomery Convention,” pp. 183-84.

29. Cauthen, South Carolina, p. 85.

30. George G. Henry to Jefferson Davis, May 9, 1861, in Lynda Laswell Crist and Mary Seaton Dix, eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis. Volume 7, 1861 (Baton Rouge, 1992), p. 156 (PJD).

31. New York, Herald, February 4, 1861.

32. C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, Conn., 1981), April 2, 1861, p. 40.

33. Joseph E. Davis to Jefferson Davis, January 21, 1861, PJD, VII, p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• PROLOGUE
• WELD THEM TOGETHER WHILE THEY ARE HOT
• A NICE TIDY LITTLE SOUTHERN TOWN
• THEY ARE SELFISH AMBITIOUS AND UNSCRUPULOUS
• WE ARE A CONGRESS
• THE MOST MOMENTOUS EVENT OF THE CENTURY
• GETTING ALONG WITH SEVEN LEAGUE BOOTS
• THE MAN AND THE HOUR HAVE MET
• WE ARE AT WORK
• MAKE UP YOUR ACCOUNT FOR WAR
• A MATTER OF RESTORATION
• ONE MASS OF VULGARITY & FINERY & HONOR
• THE GAGE OF BATTLE
• ALL WE ASK IS TO BE LET ALONE
• WE HAVE CAST THE DIE
• FAREWELL MONTGOMERY
• EPILOGUE APRIL 1886
• Notes
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX