Washington DC:
On Christmas Day 1991, at dusk, the iconic hammer-and-sickle flag of the former Soviet Union was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin in Moscow. The USSR was dissolved into Russia and fourteen independent countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union, making Boris Yeltsin president of Russia. Most people born in the 1980s and earlier remember that momentous day – when a communist superpower collapsed.
But exactly 130 years earlier, in 1861, another superpower – the “world's oldest democracy” – the United States of America – then just a union of 34 states, not 50 as it is today – had collapsed into two countries fell apart. the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, making the US less than a quarter of the size we know it today. It remained that way for almost five years, during which all-out war raged between the two countries. That war was known as the American Civil War.
Although the CSA declared itself an independent nation with its own president, flag and capital, and established its own government and administration, the US never accepted it as a separate country. And although it did not gain worldwide recognition at the time, several countries had begun to trade with it. British and French companies even sold ships and raw materials to the Confederacy, which declared itself an independent republic.
Just over a decade earlier, in 1846, the American Union had gone to war with Mexico, known as the Mexican-American War. Until then, the states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Okhlahoma and Kansas were part of Mexico – some partially, some completely. At the end of the more than two-year war, Mexico suffered a catastrophic defeat, which led to it ceding all these states to the US in a declaration of defeat known as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848. Mexico had to cede 55 percent of its total territory in exchange for $15 million from the United States.
But in 1861 the American Union collapsed. Eleven Southern states came together to secede and 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 eleven states that seceded from the American Union were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. It set up its own government and completely cut itself off from the US.
Jefferson Davis – First and only President of the Confederate States of America. (Photo Credit: senate.gov)
Although increasing acrimony between the states of the North and those of the South had been going on for several years, the central issue that led to the fall of the United States was the policy of slavery. There were also differing views on how to interpret the United States Constitution. Economic, political and social factors also contributed to the gap.
Initially, six of the eleven states disintegrated. Leaders and stakeholders from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana gathered 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, with Richmond, Virginia declared its capital. Texas broke away and joined them a month later. Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia joined 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 the 34 states, the Confederate States of America fought the war under their own flag, called the Stars and Bars or the Southern Cross.
Flags of the US (top left) and CSA (bottom left), and the Confederate Flag (right). (Photo credit: iStock)
The secession was a response to the election victory of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate who strongly opposed slavery and had promised to abolish it, while these eleven Confederate States wanted to continue the practice of slavery.
Abraham Lincoln – 16th President of the United States of America (Photo credit: whitehouse.gov)
At the end of the Civil War, the United States defeated the Confederate States and took control of the eleven states that had been lost, and when the Mexican states won the war ten years ago, the US became a nation of 48 states, including 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 are now only mentioned in history books and archived documents, their flag – the Confederate flag – which represents slavery and white supremacy – has resurfaced from time to time.