In the absence of exact records, estimates of the percentage of Confederate soldiers who were draftees, are about double the 6 percent of Union soldiers who were conscripts. These numbers do not include sailors who served in Confederate States Navy.Īlthough most of the soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were volunteers, both sides by 1862 resorted to conscription, primarily as a means to force men to register and volunteer. Since these figures include estimates of the total number of individual soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the army at any given date. This does not include an unknown number of slaves who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as the construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.Īn accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the Confederate Army is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed Confederate records estimates of the number of individual Confederate soldiers are between 750,000 and 1,000,000 troops. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. He had also been a United States senator from Mississippi and U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces to win the independence of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery.
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