376 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
18 B&W FIGURES
Paperback
Release Date:11 Jul 2023
ISBN:9780817360917
Congress of States
Proceedings of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America
Edited by David Carlson
University of Alabama Press
A landmark publication of public reports that reveal the founding of the Confederate government
Past publications of the proceedings of the Confederate Congress have focused on the public sessions of the Regular Confederate States Congress that met in Richmond, Virginia from February 1862 to March 1865. Omitted were the formative early sessions of the Montgomery, Alabama and Richmond, Virginia Provisional Congresses of 1861 and 1862. In Congress of States, David Carlson reveals these critical early meetings.
To illuminate this pivot point in American and Southern history, Carlson has drawn on detailed and often verbatim minutes reported in Richmond, Montgomery, Charleston, New Orleans, Savannah, and Augusta newspapers, assembling here a unique set of transcriptions that reveal the birth of the Confederate government.
Congress of States provides an introduction to the Provisional Confederate Congress and the purpose of this work relative to the Southern Historical Society’s landmark 1923 publication “Proceedings of the Confederate Congress,” which detailed the 1962–1865 Regular Confederate Congress. He also includes a chronology outlining the major events of the secession crisis, annotated minutes for the Provisional Confederate Congress’s five sessions, appendices featuring the leadership and committees of the Provisional Congress, and fascinating examples of the proposed Confederate emblem and flags debated by the delegates.
A key set of primary sources that scholars, historians, librarians, and political scientists will value for years to come, Congress of States will also be essential reading for the general reader interested in American and Southern history, the Antebellum South, and the Civil War.
Past publications of the proceedings of the Confederate Congress have focused on the public sessions of the Regular Confederate States Congress that met in Richmond, Virginia from February 1862 to March 1865. Omitted were the formative early sessions of the Montgomery, Alabama and Richmond, Virginia Provisional Congresses of 1861 and 1862. In Congress of States, David Carlson reveals these critical early meetings.
To illuminate this pivot point in American and Southern history, Carlson has drawn on detailed and often verbatim minutes reported in Richmond, Montgomery, Charleston, New Orleans, Savannah, and Augusta newspapers, assembling here a unique set of transcriptions that reveal the birth of the Confederate government.
Congress of States provides an introduction to the Provisional Confederate Congress and the purpose of this work relative to the Southern Historical Society’s landmark 1923 publication “Proceedings of the Confederate Congress,” which detailed the 1962–1865 Regular Confederate Congress. He also includes a chronology outlining the major events of the secession crisis, annotated minutes for the Provisional Confederate Congress’s five sessions, appendices featuring the leadership and committees of the Provisional Congress, and fascinating examples of the proposed Confederate emblem and flags debated by the delegates.
A key set of primary sources that scholars, historians, librarians, and political scientists will value for years to come, Congress of States will also be essential reading for the general reader interested in American and Southern history, the Antebellum South, and the Civil War.
Congress of States is an impressive undertaking, recovering a crucial and complex year in the history of the United States. Unfolding in time, the documents show a would-be nation taking shape before our eyes, one symbolic and substantive step at a time.’ —Edward L. Ayers, founding chair of the board of the American Civil War Museum and executive director of New American History
R. David Carlson is lecturer of history at Troy University. He is coauthor of Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia. He has also authored several peer-reviewed articles on Confederate Georgia and Civil War conscription policy.
Related Titles
King Cotton Diplomacy
Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America
By Frank L. Owsley; Foreword by Howard Mumford Jones
