Confederate States (Game 17)

* 1857 - 1870

The Confederate States at its greatest extent in 1867

* French (Louisiana)
* Spanish (Florida)
* Indigenous lanuages

The **Confederate States of America** (**CSA**) (commonly referred to as the **Confederate States** or the **Confederacy**) was an independent republic that existed in North America from 1842 to 1870. The Confederacy was made up of U.S. states that seceded from the Union. Nine states declared secession: South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Florida Territory also seceded from the United States, and joined the Confederacy as a territory in 1842 and later as a state in 1845.

The Confederacy was formed in 1842 in response to efforts by the second John Quincy Adams Administration to abolish slavery. The nine states and one territory that seceded had been heavily agricultural economies dependent upon slavery. Hoping to avoid civil war, the U.S. federal government allowed the Confederate States to secede peacefully and establish its own government, electing former U.S. Vice-Presidental candidate John Tyler the first President of the Confederacy. Though there was no immediate bloodshed, in the first two decades after secession the Confederate States and the United States had a deeply mistrustful relationship. A nonaggression pact was signed between the United States and the Confederate States, but its length was limited to only 15 years. The Confederate States began to rely economically more on the United Kingdom than its northern neighbor. With the outbreak of the Transatlantic War in 1846, however, the Confederacy under President James K. Polk cut off ties with Europe and began to thaw relations with the United States, going so far as to aid the United States in driving the Italian Royal Army out of Washington DC. For a brief time, the Confederate States joined the Panama Pact; an pan-american alliance involving Mexico, Gran Colombia, and (during the war) the United States; however the Confederacy was kicked from this alliance in 1850 due to its status as a "slaver's state."

Despite North-South thaw during the Transanatlantic War, the 1850s saw increased tensions between the Union and the Confederacy, and in 1856 the United States under President Winfield Scott attacked the Confederate States in a surprise invasion, violating the 1842 Nonaggression Pact and indirectly causing a methodist rebellion known as the Christian States of America to seize control of the northern half of the Union. The War of Northern Aggresson, as it became known, proved to be the first in a series of major disasters that nearly destroyed the United States, but the swift Confederate capture of Washington DC followed by the election of James Buchanan to President of the United States convinced the Union to sign the Treaty of Philiadelphia, in which it unequivocally recognized the independence of the Confederacy in perpetuity in exchange for Confederate aid against the Christian States.

While the American Civil War (against the Christian States) came to a stalemate, in 1857 the Confederacy launched an invasion of Haiti, whose Emperor Faustin I had been laying claim to Florida among other regions around the Carribean Coast. Though the initial invasion was swift, as the Confederates hoped to occupy as much of Haiti as possible before Mexico and Gran Colombia would be able to launch an intervention of its own against Haiti, the Confederates did not conquer the last Haitian holdout until 1863 and quickly seceded to Gran Colombia in exchange for a guaruntee of independence from any European nations, a deal that was deemed necessary by Confederate President Jefferson Davis due to the ostracization of the Confederate States in the international community.

By the time Gran Colombia made this guaruntee, however, the Confederate States had already been invaded by Mexico, which seeking to conquer Louisiana launched a 12 year war against both the Confederate States and the United States. Using its potent spy network, in 1864 Confederate States secretly initiated the First Mexican Civil War by inciting Mexican socialists to rebellion and assassinating Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna. After less than two years of fighting, however, the Mexican Republic surrendered to the rebels, established a communist state, and launched a massive offensive against the Confederacy, briefly capturing Richmond and for years occupying the states of North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.

Though the United States initally provided little help to the Confederacy, being entrenched in a stalemate with the Christian States during the opening stages of the Mexican-American War, the start of the Mormon Insurrection in Mexico in 1868 and the collapse of the Christian States in 1869 proved to be definitive turning points both in the war against Mexico and in relations between the Union and Confederacy, which from 1868 onward fought side by side against Mexico, the Christian States, and Deseret. The threat that communist occupation posed to the "American way of life" combined with newfound solidarity with the the North and pressure from abroad allowed the "radical" Constitutional Union Party to win sweeping victories in the Election of 1870. The party's leader, John Bell, ran on a platform of reunification with the North and abolition of slavery with reparations, and though a divisive figure and in poor health, managed to win the Presidency. As a result, in 1870 the Congress of the Confederate States voted to rejoin the Union, and the Confederate States of America was dissolved.