Origin

During the American Civil War, the Confederate Army was formed by soldiers from the slavery-supporting states that had seceded from the Union. They formed the Confederate States of America, which was composed of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

Kentucky and Missouri were declared neutral and ultimately claimed as territory, along with Oklahoma, West Virginia and parts of New Mexico and Arizona, without formal secession. Soldiers in the army were mostly drawn from these states. Southern sympathizers in states that remained in the Union did exist, such as, John Wilkes Booth, who was from Maryland.

The Confederate States of America were led by President Jefferson Davis, their first and only president, from secession in 1861 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. The most famous military leader in the Confederacy was General Robert E. Lee, who fought many successful campaigns for the Confederates before ultimately surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9th, 1865. All told about 258,000 Confederate soldiers were killed either in action or by disease and 137,000 were wounded.