The author is indebted to Thomas Alexander, Kimberly Geiger, Ira Katznelson, Allan Lichtman, Elizabeth Sanders, Charles Tilly, and the editors of this journal for advice and criticism in the preparation of this article. An earlier version of this article was presented to the annual meeting of the Social Science History Association held November 21–24, 1985, in Chicago, Illinois.

1. Among those who have stressed the Civil War's influence on the strength of the Confederate state are Curtis Amlund, Arthur, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Hill, Louise B., State Socialism in the Confederate States of America, no. 9 (Charlottesville, Va.: Historical Publishing, 1936)Google Scholar; and Luraghi, Raimondo, “The Civil War and the Modernization of American Society,” Civil War History 18 (09 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Beringer, Richard E., Hattaway, Herman, Jones, Archer, and Still, William N. Jr, Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), chap. 1Google Scholar.

2. For evidence of the continuity of the opposition of the South to northern economic policy, see Bensel, Richard Franklin, Sectionalism and American Political Development, 1880–1980 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) chap. 3–6Google Scholar. Also see Russel, Robert Royal, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism 1840–1861, University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 11, nos. 1–2 (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 03–06 1923), 164–66Google Scholar, and Elizabeth Sanders, “Industrial Concentration, Sectional Competition, and Antitrust Politics in America, 1880–1980,” in StudiesinAmericanPoliticalDevelopment, vol. 1: 142–214.

3. Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

4. This interpretation of the Confederate experience does assume that a government designed in accord with commonly held statist principles is the most effective way to mobilize resources in a war (see, for example, Milward, Alan S., War, Economy and Society: 1939–1945 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979], particularly chaps. 1–3)Google Scholar. Obviously, this axiom should be applied to the inherently weaker of the parties involved in military conflict; the stronger side may pursue both guns and butter and still win the war (as did the Union). The best treatment of the North is still Curry, Leonard P., Blueprint for a Modern America: Non-military Legislation of the First Civil War Congress (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. In fact, the economic inferiority of the Confederacy was so great as to, in and of itself, impose limits on central state development. While this theme will resurface in the conclusion, other possible explanations of the failure of the South to win the Civil War will be touched upon only briefly.

The definition of a strong central state put forward here is concerned only with the concentration of authority and interior design of the central state. The political “efficacy” of a strong state—a matter related to state legitimacy, economic efficiency, and social cohesion—is not addressed. To include considerations of efficacy in the definition would implicate textual factors of the political environment that would ultimately reduce every instance of state development to idiosyncratic exceptionalism. While the definition advanced here thus gains in comparative and empirical applicability over more inclusive alternatives, the exclusion of efficacy considerations correspondingly limits the range of the concept. Some have argued, for example, that Confederate conscription policy was counterproductive in that, according to these critics, the southern government lost more in civilian morale than it gained in manpower. In other words, these critics operate within a logic that can maintain that the Confederate state would have been “stronger” without conscription. Such a definition of a strong state allows them to identify and connect political “mistakes” to the effectiveness of the Confederate war effort. While the attractiveness of that logic should be clear, the problematic calculus should be equally obvious. The calculation of advantage in a trade-off between morale and manpower, if such a trade-off indeed existed, is hopelessly grounded in a specific historical context. For my limited purposes in this article, the above assumption (that a state designed according to statist principles maximizes the effectiveness of war mobilization) allows a full analysis of the Confederate performance, but implicitly rules out a consideration of contextual factors that may have influenced the efficacy of individual war measures.

5. Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, “On the Road toward a More Adequate Understanding of the State,” in Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 347–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the theoretical principles underlying state-centered approaches to political development, see Skowronek, Building a New American State, vii–x, 3–46; Skocpol, Theda and Finegold, Kenneth, “State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal,” Political Science Quarterly 97, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 256–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, “Political Response to Capitalist Crisis: Neo-Marxist Theories of the State and the Case of the New Deal,” Politics and Society 10, no. 2 (1980): 155–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Krasner, Stephen D., Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 5–34Google Scholar.

6. Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, 7 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904–05). Abstracts and summaries of the deliberations were printed in the Richmond Examiner and later collected by the Southern Historical Society (published as the “Proceedings of the Confederate Congress” in vols. 44–52 of the Southern Historical Society Papers [Richmond, 1923–59]). Those volumes are hereafter cited as Proceedings.

7. Wiley, Bell cites similar reasons in his introduction to Letters of Warren Aiken (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1959), 1–4Google Scholar.

8. One of the best general reviews of precedent-setting legislative decisions (and one upon which this study has relied) is in Amlund's Federalism in the Southern Confederacy (see, specifically, pp. 44–63).

9. The terminology is taken from Alexander, Thomas B. and Beringer, Richard E., The Anatomy of the Confederate Congress (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1972)Google Scholar, though they mean something different (all districts occupied by Union forces—a category that increases in size throughout the war; see p. 135). They find that the exterior-interior division is the single most important cleavage in the Confederate Congress. Yearns, Wilfred Buck also emphasizes its significance in The Confederate Congress (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960), 225–26Google Scholar.

10. These members composed just over a fifth of the House of Representatives. The failure of officially sponsored conventions to ratify a secession ordinance prevented most objective observers from considering Kentucky and Missouri as integral parts of the Confederacy. Doubt concerning resolve over the retention of “West Virginia” led the Virginia General Assembly to request that the Confederate Congress formally commit the national government to such a policy. The resolution subsequently passed by Congress stated, “That in no event will this government consent to a division or dismemberment of the state of Virginia, but will assert and maintain her jurisdiction and sovereignty to the uttermost limits of her ancient boundaries, at any and every cost” (approved June 4, 1864), but it probably did little to allay the General Assembly's fears (A Digest of the Military and Naval Laws of the Confederate States, Provisional and First Congresses, 315–16).

11. Proceedings, 44: 117. By 1863, major portions of the Confederacy had fallen under the control of Union armies and the normal conduct of elections became impossible in these areas. In the states of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee the Confederate Congress ordered “general ticket” elections by which means refugees and residents of unoccupied territory could cast a vote for a candidate in each of the individual districts of the state. The candidate receiving the greatest number of votes was then declared eligible to serve in the Confederate Congress as the representative from the district in which he was a candidate (Yearns, Confederate Congress, 43). The text of the separate acts appears in Public Laws of the Confederate States of America, Third Session, First Congress (1863). The Louisiana act (pp. 157–58) provided for voting by refugees from districts occupied by the enemy but did not specify a general ticket. In Tennessee (pp. 164–65), Missouri (pp. 173–74), and Arkansas (pp. 189–90), however, use of the general ticket format was specified. The acts providing for elections in the last two states appear in Public Laws of the Confederate States of America, Fourth Session, First Congress (1863–1864) (Richmond: R. M. Smith, 1864).

12. Quoted in Yearns, Confederate Congress, 225.

13. Alexander, and Beringer, , Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 66–67, and Proceedings, 52: 266–69 (01 31, 1865)Google Scholar. For an example of the bitterness between members engendered by the representation of occupied areas, see the exchange between Mc-Mullen, Lafayette and Montague, Robert, both of Virginia, in Proceedings, 51: 229–31 and 246 (06 9 and 11, 1864)Google Scholar.

14. See, for example, Yearns, Confederate Congress, 39, 225.

15. On the reasons that explain the disproportionate support of congressmen from occupied areas for a stronger central state, see Alexander and Beringer, Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 320–28, 336–37. On North Carolina troops (the soldiers' vote) favoring an expanded war effort and stronger central state, see Tatum, Georgia Lee, Disloyalty in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934), 132Google Scholar. On support by Georgia troops for Governor Brown's reelection, see Avery, I. W., History of the State of Georgia: 1850–1881 (New York: Brown & Derby, 1881Google Scholar; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1972), 261. For an example of the arrangements made to accommodate voting by soldiers, see General Order No. 38 (April 7, 1863) which relays “an act of the legislature of Virginia, passed March 26, 1863,” in Robinson, R. H. P., General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863 (Richmond: A. Morris, 1864), 39–40Google Scholar.

16. In their exhaustive analysis, Alexander and Beringer consider only the slaveholding characteristics of the members themselves (Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 59–65).

17. Antebellum party allegiance is not studied here both because Alexander and Beringer have intensively analyzed its influence and because their findings are generally inconclusive. In an important sense, the decision not to study party allegiance concedes the absence of formal party organizations (or effective surrogates) in the Confederacy—a concession that not all Confederate scholars would be willing to make.

18. The total number of standing committees in the Confederate House ranged from twenty-two to twenty-eight in the various sessions. The membership of the permanent House of Representatives was 106.

19. On recognition of Military Affairs' heavy work load, see Proceedings, 45: 185 (August 20, 1862). To more widely distribute the jurisdiction, the House created committees on the Medical Department, Ordnance and Ordnance Stores, and Quartermaster's and Commissary departments, and Military Transportation. None of them filed more than 3 percent of all committee reports in the House.

20. Foote, Henry Stuart, War of the Rebellion (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866), 370nGoogle Scholar. For a general history of conscription in the Confederacy, see Moore, Albert Burton, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (New York: Hillary House Publishers, 1963)Google Scholar. A briefer account appears in Schwab, John Christopher, Confederate States of America: 1861–1865 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), 193–202Google Scholar. Ironically, perhaps, the closest the Confederate government came to using conscription for despotic purposes was when congressmen advocated an end to the exemption of newspaper editors. Otho Singleton of Mississippi, for example, was quoted (paraphrased) by the Richmond, Examiner as saying that “he was for smoking out some disreputable little fellows who were fonder of spilling ink than of blood, and whose occupation it was to bark at the heels of gentlemen” (Proceedings, 48: 48 [02 3, 1863])Google Scholar.

21. The vulnerability of the individual citizen to central state controls was immeasurably enhanced by the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in combination with conscription (Moore, Conscription and Conflict, 86–87).

22. Ibid., 228–304, and Yearns, Confederate Congress, 83–85. Many states had previously or subsequently enacted their own conscription acts. See, for example, “An Act: To render certain persons subject to military service (December 6, 1862),” no. 42 in State of Alabama, , Acts of the Called Session, 1862 and of the Second Regular Annual Session of the General Assembly (Montgomery: Montgomery Advertiser Book and Job Office, 1862), 63–64Google Scholar. For more on the Alabama militia, see Fleming, Walter L., Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1905), 90Google Scholar.

23. Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Extra Session (Richmond: James E. Goode, 1862), 16–17. Governor Francis Pickens sent a similar message to the South Carolina legislature (Richmond Dispatch, November 26, 1862).

24. Proceedings, 45: 203–11 (August 22, 1862) and 48: 88 (February 9, 1863). For other examples of congressional debate on the constitutionality of conscription and its relation to states' rights, see Proceedings, 45: 382 (August 19, 1862); 46: 25–28, 38–40, 49–54, 68–72, 83–85, 95–97, 108–11, 136, 148–52, 167, 252 (September 3–26, 1862).

25. The Richmond Dispatch, for example, reported a decision by the Elbert County Superior Court in Georgia in which the conscription act was declared unconstitutional and a conscript liberated from the enrolling officer (October 1, 1862). For similar cases in Alabama, including those in which it was determined that “the right of the Confederacy to the military service of a citizen was paramount to the right of the state” (see Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 96—97).

26. Moore, Conscription and Conflict, 162–63, 170. For an account of the Asa Jeffers (conscript) v. John Fair (enrolling officer) case, see the Richmond, Dispatch (11 18, 1862)Google Scholar, which contains abstracts from the defendant's brief, the court's decision, and a long quote from Judge Jenkins's majority opinion. The state of Georgia subsequently provided further assistance to Confederate efforts to enforce conscription. In particular, see “An Act to Punish Any Person who May Hereafter Conceal, or Assist any Deserter in Resisting a Legal Arrest in this State” (December 15, 1863), printed in Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia (Milledgeville: Boughton, Nisbet & Barnes, 1863), 63. See also Brummer, Sidney D., “The Judicial Interpretation of the Confederate Constitution,” in Studies in Southern History and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1914), 109–11Google Scholar.

27. From Moore, Frank, ed., Rebellion Record (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1864–1871), 1: 325 (no date)Google Scholar.

28. Kean, Robert, Inside Confederate Government, ed. Younger, Edward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 174Google Scholar.

29. Confederate States of America, War Department, Report of the Secretary of War (Richmond, 1864), 7.

30. Goff, Richard, Confederate Supply (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969), 95, 163Google Scholar.

31. Ramsdell, Charles W., Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1944), 102Google Scholar.

32. Pp. 355—58. Moore also notes that early Confederate conscription policy “had many imperfections,” the most important of which were class or categorical exemptions in which the government was left with little or no discretion and the system of substitution under which conscripts could hire substitutes to serve in their place (pp. 354–55). Both defects were remedied, for the most part, by 1863.

33. Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 63, 71, and Ramsdell, Charles W., “The Control of Manufacturing,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 8, no. 3 (12 1921): 235CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As an example of agricultural price controls, see Goff, Confederate Supply, 162. Goff, adds that the “broad exemption-and-detail provisions” of the third conscription act (02 17, 1864)Google Scholar “put the government in a general position to control farm and factory labor, and in the face of mounting subsistence shortages, the act, together with subsequent War Department rulings, spelled out government controls over agriculture with even greater precision.”

34. Ramsdell, “The Control of Manufacturing,” 234–40, 245–46. For an example of military enforcement of labor in detailed or exempted occupations, see Robinson, R. H. P., General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863 (Richmond: A. Morris, 1864), no. 30 (03 18, 1863)Google Scholar: “conscripts or detailed men leaving their employment without written permission, shall be reported to the nearest enrolling officer, to be tried and punished as deserters” (p.28).

35. Goff, Confederate Supply; Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy: ”A railroad bill enacted in 1863 gave Davis the power to require ‘any carrier to devote its facilities to the support of the army’; under the law Richmond could prescribe railroad adherence to through train schedules. By 1865 the central government was no longer threatening companies that would not cooperate with it; rather it was indicating that the government would place the employees of uncooperative roads into military service” (pp. 47–48); Bradlee, Francis B. C., Blockade Running during the Civil War: And the Effect of Land and Water Transportation on the Confederacy (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1925), 255Google Scholar; and Turner, Charles W., “The Virginia Central Railroad at War, 1861–1865,” Journal of Southern History 12, no. 4 (11 1946): 513Google Scholar.

36. Dozens of different occupations and businesses were assigned specific taxes which could have easily become prohibitive. For example, Section 4, Part IX, stated: “Brewers shall pay one hundred dollars, and two-and-a-half per centum on the gross amount of sales made. Every person who manufactures fermented liquors, of any name or description for sale, from malt, wholly or in part, shall be deemed a brewer under this act” (Laws of Congress in Regard to Taxes, Currency, and Conscription [Printed by Order of the Virginia Senate] [Richmond: James E. Goode, 1864], 3–20).

37. The enforcement of conscription also threatened to turn the Bureau of Conscription into a central manpower agency for employment within the Confederate government itself. For General Order No. 7 (January 19, 1863) which recognized the exempted status of Post Office Department employees, see General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 8. For the implications of conscription enforcement on Ordnance Bureau operations, see Vandiver, Frank E., “Makeshifts of Confederate Ordnance,” Journal of Southern History 17, no. 2 (05 1951): 190Google Scholar. For a conscription-induced shortage of clerks in the Treasury Department, see Todd, Richard Cecil, Confederate Finance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1954), 10–11Google Scholar. On the relationship between departmental operations and conscription enforcement generally, see Goff, Confederate Supply, passim.

38. Schwab, Confederate States of America: 1861–1865, 187; Owsley, Frank Lawrence, State Rights in the Confederacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931)Google Scholar; Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 106. Texts of the various acts can be found in A Digest of the Military and Naval Laws of the Confederate States, Provisional and First Congresses (Columbia, S.C.: Evans & Cogswell, 1864), 132ff.; the text of the February 15, 1864, act can be found in Public Laws of the Confederate State of America, Fourth Session, First Congress, 187–88.

39. Alexander and Beringer, Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 180.

40. For a general history of suspension of the writ in the Confederate state, see Schwab, Confederate States of America, 186–92; Robinson, William M. Jr, Justice in Grey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), 389–415Google Scholar; Yearns, Confederate Congress, 150–60; Alexander and Beringer, Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 166–73.

41. Richmond, Dispatch, 10 8, 1862Google Scholar. For other examples of congressional debate on suspension, see Proceedings, 45: 242–47 (August 26, 1862); 46: 175 (September 17, 1862); 51: 77–80, 101–04, 110–13, and 118–27 (May 16–21, 1864).

42. Letter Addressed to Hon. William C. Rives: On the Existing Status of the Revolution, etc. (Richmond, 1864), 2–3.

43. See, for example, the text of “Resolutions on the Suspension of Habeas Corpus” (March 19, 1864) in Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, 152–54. As has been noted, local judges were often as nationalistic as Confederate officials. In order to ensure judicial conformity with the legislature's interpretation of the suspension acts, the latter passed an Act to Amend the Habeas Corpus Laws of this State (December 14, 1863) which imposed a fine of $2,500 upon a judge of a superior or inferior court who refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus to any individual who applied. The fine was made payable to the applicant (p. 45).

44. Schwab, Confederate States of America, 186—87. See Moore, , Rebellion Record, for the text of proclamations extending martial law to Norfolk, Virginia (02 27, 1862; 4: 216)Google Scholar, to East Tennessee (April 8, 1862; 3: 502), and to Buchanan, Lee, McDowell, Wise, and Wyoming counties in the southwestern corner of Virginia.

45. Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy, 151–52, 157–60.

46. See, for example, the summary of “Sentences by Court-Martial” carried in the Richmond, Dispatch, 12 5, 1862Google Scholar; a separate case in which a civil court intervened, December 15, 1862; and another in which the adjutant and inspector general of the Confederate army ordered the release of detained civilians while allowing the confiscation of contraband liquor, November 28, 1862.

47. This interpretation, related in the last portion of the passage, was supported by a U.S. Supreme Court decision originally handed down in 1830 in a case arising out of the American Revolution (Robinson, Justice in Grey, 385). The Alabama secession convention defined citizenship as including only those born in the state of Alabama and those, if born outside the state, who swore an oath of allegiance to the state of Alabama and an oath renouncing allegiance to any other government (Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 50). This definition effectively gave all individuals the kind of choice anticipated in the text.

48. Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 166.

49. One of the primary reasons for suspending the writ was, of course, the fact that it inhibited the interference of local and individual state courts in the implementation of conscription. See, for example, Moore, Conscription and Conflict, 238–39.

50. The conscription vote chosen for this table was recorded the first time the policy passed the Confederate House of Representatives. The suspension vote was taken on passage of the legislation that renewed authority originally granted on February 27, 1862 (Journal of the Confederate Congress, 5: 228, 518).

51. One additional district in Louisiana and Tennessee, both Florida districts, and two from Virginia are also included in this category. In all, nineteen interior districts produced a total value-added in manufacturing greater than ten dollars per capita according to the 1860 census. Maps of counties included in Confederate districts can be found in Robbins, John Brawner, “Confederate Nationalism: Politics and Government in the Confederate South, 1861–1865” (Ph.D. diss., Rice University, 1964)Google Scholar.

52. About a third (85 of 267) of all Confederate congressmen and senators had previously served in the United States Congress. The percentage was higher in the Senate (55 to 48 percent in the First and Second Confederate Congresses) than in the House (39, 32, and 21 percent in the Provisional, First, and Second Congresses, respectively) (Alexander and Beringer, Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 24–25).

53. Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 22.

54. Ibid., 17–18 (and, generally, 17–27); Thomas, Emory M., The Confederate Nation: 1861–1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 64Google Scholar; Lee, Charles R. Jr, The Confederate Constitution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), 82–140Google Scholar.

55. Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas supported Memminger's restriction; Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi voted for an expansive jurisdiction; and Florida's, delegation split evenly (Journal of the Confederate Congress, 1: 880–81 [03 7, 1861])Google Scholar.

56. Confederate Constitution, 108.

57. Proceedings, 50: 68 (December 16, 1863).

58. Proceedings, 177–78 (August 18, 1862). For other debate on the propriety of secret sessions, see 44: 20 (February 19, 1862); pp. 44–45 (February 24, 1862); pp. 91–93 (March 4, 1862); 45: 180–81 (August 18, 1862). On April 8, 1862, the House of Representatives appointed members to a “Joint Committee on Conference” to “decide what matters shall be considered in secret session” (45: 96).

59. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 5: 224 (April 14, 1862).

60. Ibid., 6: 684 (January 25, 1864).

61. Proceedings, 51: 310 (November 15, 1864); Journal of the Confederate Congress, 7: 277.

62. Proceedings, 52: 22 (December 17, 1864); p. 32 (December 20, 1864); pp. 144–45 (January 13, 1865); p. 176 (January 19, 1865); pp. 215–16 (January 24, 1865). See Letters of Warren Akin for one member's account of the first vote on expulsion (p. 96) and War of the Rebellion, 374–415, for Foote's own account of his peace trip to the North and his expulsion.

63. For a general account of Confederate administration, see Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, chap. 6.

64. A comparison of the texts of the two constitutions is provided in Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. 1 (Reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1958), app. K. On congressional adoption of U.S. laws, see Yearns, The Confederate Congress, 32, 36. The rules and organization of the Confederate Congress were also largely taken from procedures used in the North (pp. 34–35). On similarities between Confederate and Union administrative design, see Van Riper, Paul P. and Scheiber, Harry N., “The Confederate Civil Service,” Journal of Southern History 25, no. 4 (11 1959): 448–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Black, Robert C. described the Confederate quartermaster bureau as a “photographical reproduction of the old United States organization,” in The Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), 50Google Scholar. On the adoption of Union judicial precedents and practice by the Confederacy, see Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 65, 83, and Robinson, Justice in Grey.

65. “The Postmaster-General's Report,” in Confederate States Almanac for 1863, 51–52. The Confederate Post Office Department absorbed the existing Union administration in the South without change. See McCaleb, Walter F., “The Organization of the Post Office Department of the Confederacy,” American Historical Review 12, no. 1 (10 1906): 66–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the following publications of the Post Office Department of the Confederacy: Instructions to Post Masters (Richmond: Ritchie & Dunnavant, 1861); A List of Establishments, Discontinuances, and Changes in Name of the Post Offices in the Confederate States since 1861; Report of the Postmaster-General, April 29, 1861 (Montgomery, Ala., 1861); Report of the Postmaster-General, November 27, 1861 (Richmond, 1861); Advertisement of December 31, 1862, Inviting Proposals for Carrying the Mails … from July 1, 1863 to June 30, 1867 (Richmond, February 28, 1862); Report from the General Post Office Department to the Postmaster General (Richmond, November 22, 1861).

66. Justice in Grey, 27.

67. Despite the progressive innovations and imitative development of the administrative apparatus, the Confederate Congress sought to control bureaucratic expansion—at least at the beginning and in the capital. See, for example, the itemized appropriations for clerks in the appropriations acts of August 24 and 29, 1861, in Acts and Resolutions of the Third Session of the Provisional Congress, 41–43, 47–48.

68. Van Riper and Scheiber, “The Confederate Civil Service,” 450. For a description of the creation, structure, and operation of the Treasury Department, see Todd, Confederate Finance, 1–24; Confederate States of America, Treasury Department, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury (Richmond, n.d.), 2. The reporting period was April 1 to October 1, 1864. For estimated expenses in the first six months of 1865, see p. 44.

69. Confederate States of America, War Department, Report of the Secretary of War (Richmond, November 3, 1864), 23; Goff, Confederate Supply, 127; for a description of War Department structure and operations, see pp. 127–58 (Report of the Secretary of War [November 3, 1864], p. 36). The estimate is misdated as 1864 when it describes projected expenses These projections do not include estimates for the trans-Mississippi region of the Confederacy but, interestingly, do include estimates of $100,000 each for Kentucky and Tennessee—states entirely lost by 1864 (Kean, Inside the Confederate Government, 77; Van Riper and Scheiber, “The Confederate Civil Service,” 452).

70. Letter Addressed to Hon. William C. Rives, 2.

71. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 5: 533–34.

72. For other examples of legislation relating to the organization of a general staff of the army, see Gilchrist, R. C., General Orders of the Confederate States Army (Columbia, S.C.: Evans & Cogswell, 1864), 86–87, 92–97Google Scholar. A related but separate issue involved the appointment of a ”commanding general” to administer the Confederate military and serve just below President Davis. Because of the president's strong opposition, a commanding general was not created until the war was almost over (Yearns, Confederate Congress, 108).

73. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 172. The amendment was rejected on a roll call vote (24–45). For the text of the law ultimately passed by Congress (without a civil service test), see Public Laws of the Confederate States of America, Third Session, First Congress (Richmond: R. M. Smith, 1863), 98–99. For the military regulations that implemented the statute, see General Order No. 66 (May 22, 1863) in General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 70–71.

74. Nichols, James L., Confederate Engineers, Confederate Centennial Studies, no. 5 (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: Confederate Publishing, 1957), 32Google Scholar. For a general account of the administration of the Engineer Bureau, see chap. 2.

75. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 7: 500–02 (January 26, 1865); Proceedings, 52: 232 (January 26, 1865). A majority (40–36) of the House of Representatives voted to override the veto but fell short of the two-thirds required by the Constitution.

76. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 36–37, 40–41 (January 21–22, 1863).

77. For this and other debate on exemptions, see Proceedings, 47: 173, 181, 183, 205, 211–12 (January 21–27, 1863); 50: 189, 204–07 (January 6–8, 1864).

78. For background on the decision not to organize the court, see Schwab, Confederate States of America, 219–20. On the structure and operation of the Confederate courts generally, see Robinson, Justice in Grey, 39–69.

79. Brummer, “The Judicial Interpretation of the Confederate Constitution,” 107; for the text of the act postponing organization of the court, see Acts and Resolutions of the Third Session of the Provisional Congress, 6–7; Robinson, Justice in Grey, 420–34, 474–91.

80. Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 83; Brummer, “Judicial Interpretation of the Confederate Constitution,” 132; Patrick, Rembert W., ed., The Opinions of the Confederate Attorneys General (Buffalo: Dennis, 1950), xxGoogle Scholar.

81. Brummer, “Judicial Interpretation of the Confederate Constitution,” 133; Robinson, Justice in Grey, 436; Hamilton, J. G. de R., “The State Courts and the Confederate Constitution,” Journal of Southern History 4, no. 3 (11 1938): 425–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 88–92; Moore, Conscription and Conflict, 162–90. But also see congressional debate on a Georgia Supreme Court decision that struck down the impressment law as unconstitutional (Proceedings, 50: 53–55 [December 15, 1863]).

82. Robinson, Justice in Grey, 435–36; Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 84, 93.

83. Although the text of the bill seems to have been lost, some of the provisions can be deduced from amending activity on the floor. See Journal of the Confederate Congress, 7: 652 (February 25, 1865).

84. “The Confederate Civil Service,” 470.

85. For example, see the following descriptions of salt production in the Confederacy: on activity by national and individual state governments, Schwab, Confederate States of America, 267–68, and Goff, Confederate Supply, 78–128; on Confederate salt works in Florida, Davis, William Watson, Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida (New York: Columbia University Press, 1913), 205–10Google Scholar. The best overall treatment is Lonn, Ella, Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933)Google Scholar.

86. For general accounts of individual state activity, see Ringold, May Spencer, Role of the State Legislatures in the Confederacy (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1966), 39–56Google Scholar, and Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, chap. 9.

87. Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 68–74; and Ramsdell, “Control of Manufacturing by the Confederate Government,” 231–49.

88. Cappon, Lester J., “Government and Private Industry in the Southern Confederacy,” in Humanistic Studies in Honor of John Calvin Metcalf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1941), 187Google Scholar. For a description of the manufacture of munitions and other war matériel by Confederate arsenals, see pp. 163–68, 172–74, and 177–78. On the extent of Confederate control of economic production, see Goff, Confederate Supply, 32, 103; General Order No. 85 (June 16, 1863), General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 96–97; Ramsdell, Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy, 73–74.

89. Lee, Confederate Constitutions, 95, 179.

90. Robert C. Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy, 148–49, 162, 200; Journal of the Confederate Congress, 1: 781–82, 819, 821 (February 10, 1862); 5: 260, 480.

91. Black, The Railroads of the Confederacy, 97–98.

92. Proceedings, 45: 162–63 (April 19, 1862). In December 1862, the Alabama legislature passed a similar but more moderate protest concerning Confederate operation of the railroads (see Acts of the Called Session, 1862 and of the Second Regular Session of the General Assembly, 200–01).

93. Black, The Railroads of the Confederacy, 121–22, 164–75, 280–81. The 1863 act gave administrative control to the quartermaster-general (General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1864, 17). By contrast, see General Orders No. 2 (January 3, 1863) and No. 26 (March 7, 1863) issued before the May 1, 1863 law (General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 4–5, 24–25), and Goff, Confederate Supply, 105, 110–11; Ramsdell, Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy, 97; Report of the Secretary of War, 14.

94. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 5: 60 (March 5, 1862); Proceedings, 44: 99–104, 117 (March 5 and 7, 1862).

95. Goff, Confederate Supply, 41–42, 97. For a general history of impressment, see Schwab, Confederate States of America, 202–09. See also General Order No. 31 (March 19, 1863) (General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 29–30).

96. Proceedings, 47: 127 (January 15, 1863); Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 107 (February 13, 1863).

97. For the text of the March 26, 1863, act and an April 27, 1863, amendment, see Public Laws of the Confederate States of America, Third Session, First Congress, 102–04, 127–28. Implementing orders can be found in General Order No. 161 (December 10, 1863) which set out regulations concerning procedures for the appeal of the decisions of impressing officers (General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 223–24. For examples of price schedules used by impressment officers, see, for Georgia, General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 65–70; for Virginia, Ibid., 114–18, 139–44, 158–64, 203–04, 217–22; for South Carolina, Ibid., 154–58; for Virginia, General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1864, 8–13, 75–80, 92–97; and for North Carolina, Wilmington, Daily Journal, 10 13, 1864Google Scholar. For the activities of the impressment board in Florida, see Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, 186. For evidence that price schedules and impressment practices evolved into a fairly centralized form of price control, see Goff, Confederate Supply, 98; General Order No. 34 (April 1, 1863), General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 32–33 (setting prices for beef hides to be paid by the army); and General Order No. 10 (January 30, 1864), General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1864, 13 (which extended impressment authority “to the Impressment of ore, timber, all materials essential to the production and manufacture of iron”—in addition to iron itself).

98. Laws of Congress in Regard to Taxes, Currency, and Conscription, 14.

99. See, for example, Alexander and Beringer, Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 140.

100. Outside the government, however, broad support for legal tender legislation existed. Both the Richmond Dispatch and Charleston Courier backed legislation “as an accommodation to the loyal and a check to the disloyal” and interpreted refusal to accept Confederate notes as evidence of a “latent infidelity to the Southern cause” (Schwab, Confederate States of America, 86–101, 161). The state of Alabama made Confederate notes a legal tender for all future debts (p. 100). An Alabama law also set a ceiling of .25 percent on the annual interest of any debt for which payment in Confederate notes was refused by the creditor (see Acts of the Called Session, 1862 and of the Second Regular Session of the General Assembly, 68–69). For a sample of congressional sentiment on Confederate legal tender proposals, see Proceedings, 47: 45 (October 3, 1862), and 49: 27–28 (March 25, 1863); Lerner, Eugene M., “Money, Prices, and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861–1865,” in Andreano, Ralph, ed., The Economic Impact of the American Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing, 1967), 31–60Google Scholar; Shultz, William J. and Caine, M. R., Financial Development of the Untied States (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1937), 287Google Scholar.

101. For the text of the earlier measure, see Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 466–67 (April 30, 1863). For congressional debate on the second bill, see Proceedings, 50: 102, 105 (December 22, 1863), and 147–48 (December 29, 1863). The text of the later bill appears on pp. 125–26 (December 24, 1863).

102. The two general accounts of the background of this legislation are Stephenson, N. W., “The Question of Arming the Slaves,” American Historical Review 18, no. 2 (01 1913): 295–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hay, Thomas R., “The South and the Arming of the Slaves,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 6, no. 1 (06 1919): 34–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy, 343–49. The state of Alabama impressed slaves as laborers as early as 1862, and the legislature authorized enlistment in “An Act: To authorize the enrollment of the Creoles of Mobile” (November 20, 1862), which provided that “certain persons of mixed blood” would be enrolled in the “militia … if in the opinion of the mayor of the city it is expedient” (Acts of the Called Session, 1862 and of the Second Regular Session of the General Assembly, 37–40, 162). For military regulations relating to slave impressment, see General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1863, 190–92. Also see South Carolina, State of, Journal of the House of Representatives: Session of 1863, 72, for a brief account of Confederate impressment of slave labor in the defense of Charleston. For the text of the second impressment act (February 17, 1864), see Durden, Robert F., The Grey and the Black (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), 51–53Google Scholar. The secretary of war called the impressment of slaves as laborers a success but urged further centralization of impressment authority in order to “relieve authorities from dependence on the State agencies” in his Report of the Secretary of War (November 3, 1864), 6, 14–15. See also Trexler, Harrison A., “The Opposition of Planters to the Employment of Slaves as Laborers by the Confederacy,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 27, no. 2 (09 1940): 211–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103. Hay, “The South and the Arming of the Slaves,” 52.

104. On the difficulty of this transition, see Letters of Warren Akin, 32–33, 40 (letters dated October 31 and December 16, 1864); Rebellion Record, vol. 11, Document 68, pp. 475–76. Chambers spoke on November 10, 1864.

105. Quoted in Trexler, “Opposition of Planters to the Employment of Slaves,” 213. See also Rebellion Record, 11: 476–79. That the employment of slaves as soldiers was viewed as equivalent to the abolition of slavery was evident from congressional debate; Proceedings, 51: 276 (November 8, 1864); 52: 241–42 (January 27, 1865). See also 52: 329–31 (February 10, 1865).

106. Proceedings, 52: 276–77 (February 1, 1865).

107. Proceedings, 52: 337; Journal of the Confederate Congress, 7:611–12 (February 20, 1865). For the complete text of the bill as enacted, see Durden, The Grey and the Black, 202–03. Passage came too late for implementation. On April 28, 1865, for example, “the major-general commanding in Florida directed ten prominent citizens of Florida each ‘to proceed at once to raise a company of negroes to be mustered into the service of the Confederate States for the War’ but Lee had already surrendered at Appomattox on the ninth, nearly three weeks previously” (Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, 227–28). Durden, The Grey and the Black, 249–50, 268–69; Thomas, Emory M., The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 296–97Google Scholar.

108. Ramsdell, “Control of Manufacturing,” 239–40.

109. Inevitably, this selection of measures affecting the control of private property omits other enactments almost as important, if not equally so. One such act, passed in August 1861, provided for the confiscation and sale of property owned by “aliens” residing within the Union (Amlund, Federalism in the Southern Confederacy, 61–62). Another sequestered the property of individuals who evaded conscription (Journal of the Confederate Congress, 7: 366–67 [December 20, 1864]). For congressional debate on sequestration power, see Proceedings, 49: 199–200 (April 22, 1863); 51: 445, 456, 464 (December 10–13, 1864); 52: 31 (December 20, 1864).

110. Proceedings, 49: 52–53 (March 30, 1863).

111. Proceedings, 50: 242–43, 256 (January 15, 18, 1864). For the text of the president's veto, see Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 808–10, and on the override vote, 848–49 (February 17, 1864).

112. The largest such group was composed of the families of soldiers who, if impoverished by the absence of their father and husband, were eligible for state-supported indigent relief. These programs spread rapidly throughout the South and by the end of the warconstituted a large fraction of all individual income. In Alabama, for example, 10,263 families were on relief during 1862 (10.6 percent of all families). This total rose to 31,915 (33.3 percent) in 1863 and to 37,521 (37 percent) in 1864. In one rural hill county, 59 percent of all families were on indigent relief in 1863. Most indigent families, in fact, held no slaves, and the absence of their father and husband deprived them of their primary source of income (Martin, Bessie, Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army [New York: Columbia University Press, 1932], 128–34, 174–87)Google Scholar. The suffering of their families, Martin argued, was the major cause of desertion among Alabama soldiers. See also State of Alabama, Acts of the Called Session, 1862 and of the Second Regular Session of the General Assembly, 17–18, 26–29; Acts of the Called Session of the General Assembly of Alabama, 1861, 76–80; Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, 1862–1863, 49–52, 66–74; Acts of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina: December, 1861, 15–16. South Carolina relief was later expanded to include the “families of free negroes who have been employed in the military service of [either South Carolina or the Confederacy], as laborers or otherwise … at the discretion of the respective [local] Boards” (Acts of the General Assembly: Sessions of 1864–1865 [Columbia: Julian A. Selby, 1866, 239–44). Through relief to soldiers' families, the state of Florida “was contributing to the support of approximately one non-combatant for every soldier in the field” by 1863–64 (Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction, 188–89). On the general response of state governments, see Ringold, Role of the State Legislatures in the Confederacy, 77–80.

113. An attempt to eliminate the tax on overseers was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Representatives on the same day (Journal of the Confederate Congress, 5: 474–77). For executive and administrative actions undertaken by the Confederacy in support of local relief efforts, see Escott, Paul D., “‘The Cry of the Sufferers': The Problem of Welfare in the Confederacy,” Civil War History 23, no. 3 (09 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114. As offered by Goode, John of Virginia, the amendment read, “Provided further, That the owner of such farm or plantation shall sell all his surplus provisions hereafter raised for the use of soldiers' families and for the use of the Government at prices not greater than those fixed for the time being by the commissioners appointed under the impressment acts” (Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 742–43 [02 3, 1864])Google Scholar. In its final, statutory form, the section read. “Such person shall further bind himself to sell the marketable surplus of provisions and grain now on hand, and which he may raise from year to year, while his exemption continues, to the government, or to the families of soldiers, at prices fixed by the commissioners of the state under the Impressment act: provided, that any person exempted as aforesaid shall be entitled to a credit of twenty-five percent on any amount of meat which he may deliver within three months from the passage of this act” (General Order No. 26 [March 1, 1864], General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1864, 35). On the relationship between conscription and price control in Florida, see Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction, 214–15.

115. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 688 (January 25, 1864).

116. Yearns, Confederate Congress, 165. Journal of the Confederate Congress, 5: 104–05 (March 15, 1862).

117. Acts and Resolutions of the Third Session of the Provisional Congress, 53–54. Moore, ed., Rebellion Record, 1: 359–60.

118. Proceedings, 48: 65 (February 5, 1863). For additional debate, see 47: 152–53, 167–58 (January 19, 21, 1863). For the text of the act, see Public Laws of the Confederate States of America, Third Session, First Congress (1863), 167–68. For the vote, see Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 488 (May 1, 1863).

119. Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 295; Journal of the Confederate Congress, 84–85 [May 23, 1864); Yearns, Confederate Congress, 176, and generally, 171–83.

120. Russel, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 259–60, 273–74. Although important as a precedent, the export duty produced almost no revenue for the government (about $6,000 total in specie during the war) (Schwab, Confederate States of America, 240–42; Todd, Confederate Finance, 123–24. For Confederate tariff schedules, see the Richmond, Daily Examiner, 04 12 and June 18, 1861)Google Scholar.

121. Richmond, Daily Examiner, 05 25, 1861Google Scholar. On May 28, the paper published an analysis of why the Northwest should allow the South to secede. See also Yearns, Confederate Congress, 162–67.

122. May 27, 1861. The text of this law was published June 5.

123. Proceedings, 44: 123. See, more generally, Todd, Confederate Finance, 128.

124. Proceedings, 45: 59–61 (April 2, 1862). For the roll call on this bill, see Journal of the Confederate Congress, 5: 170–71. See also Todd, Confederate Finance, 128.

125. Yearns, Confederate Congress, 135–38. On the importance of blockade running to the Confederate war effort and its scale in general, see Bradlee, Blockade Running during the Civil War; Wright, Gordon. “Economic Conditions in the Confederacy as Seen by the French Consuls,” Journal of Southern History 7, no. 2 (05 1941): 200–02Google Scholar; and in Florida, Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction, 198–203; Hill, State Socialism in the Confederate States of America, 8–9.

126. General Order No. 43 (April 16, 1864), General Orders of the Confederate States Army, 1864, 84–86 (includes implementing regulations). For the text of the statute, see Public Laws of the Confederate States of America, Fourth Session, First Congress, 181—83; Journal of the Confederate Congress, 6: 703; Hill, State Socialism in the Confederate States of America, 14–23. These vetoes indicate once again that the legislative decisions analyzed in the text are at the cutting edge of Confederate state formation. The fact that the southern Congress attempted at times to retreat from the major advances attained earlier should not constitute a major qualification of the state-building achievement as a whole.

127. On the most general level, see Nichols, Roy F., “The Operation of American Democracy, 1861–1865: Some Questions,” Journal of Southern History 25, no. 1 (02 1959): 31 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. David Donald cited southern reliance on the election of military officers by enlisted men, excessive leniency in controlling dissent, and civil libertarian obstacles to effective administrative performance as aspects of broader cultural defects in the structure of southern society (“Died of Democracy,” in Donald, David, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960], 89–90Google Scholar). See also Donald's, “The Confederate as a Fighting Man,” Journal of Southern History 25, no. 2 (05 1959): 192–93Google Scholar.

128. Within the political failure thesis, four additional distinct themes can be identified:(1) that the Confederacy collapsed because of the decentralizing impetus of states' rights sentiment; (2) that the political talent available to the Confederacy—particularly Jefferson Davis and his cabinet—was inadequate to the challenge presented by the war and generally inferior to the administrative and political ability of Union leaders; (3) that the administrative performance of the Confederate state, for a wide variety of reasons, fell short of what reasonably might have been expected and was the proximate cause of military failure; and(4) that the incompetence and political immaturity of the Confederate Congress frustrated the executive branch in the latter's effort to centralize mobilization of the South's resources and manpower. The first three are not directly addressed in this article. The fourth is approached, albeit indirectly, through evidence that the Confederate Congress did respond to the urgent state-building requirements presented by the Civil War. See Owsley, State Rights in the Confederacy; Kruman, Marc, “Dissent in the Confederacy: The North Carolina Experience,” Civil War History 27, no. 4 (12 1981): 293–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alexander and Beringer, Anatomy of the Confederate Congress, 54–58, 332, 342.

129. David M. Potter, “Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors in Confederate Defeat,” in Donald, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War, 113; McKitrick, Eric L., “Party Politics and the Union and Confederate War Efforts,” in Chambers, William Nisbet, Burnham, Walter Dean, eds. The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 117–51Google Scholar; Van Riper and Scheiber, ”The Confederate Civil Service,” 470. Patronage, as pointed out above in the text, is a relatively primitive mode of recruitment and, because of the incompetence and corruption that often attends its use, can be employed in wartime only by a relatively resource-rich state. Compared to the well-endowed Union (where administrative corruption and incompetence were rampant), the South could not afford to draw loyalty through a calculated squandering of limited national resources.

130. This line of argument strongly implies that northern Democrats should have disbanded for the duration in order to more effectively frustrate the Union war effort and that Lincoln's strategy of creating a nonpartisan “Union” party was counterproductive. See McKitrick, 141–42.

131. Other variants of the thesis experience similar difficulties. For example, an organized administration party might have better served the propaganda needs of the Confederacy or better calculated the trade-off between coercive efficiency and civilian morale. While not directly addressed here, upon inspection these variants would also almost certainly degenerate into idiosyncratic exceptionalism. Whether propaganda needs are better served by an organized administration party (and an organized opposition) or a fluid, co-opting consensus in which all major societal groups alternately participate can probably be answered only through a consideration of specific contextual factors. Similarly, questions addressing implementation of formal policy decisions must consider the effect upon the South of the serious decentralizing forces of communication difficulties, transport deterioration, and local anxiety over invasion. (Even conceding that such factors operated upon the Confederate state, their broad effect seems to have been to increase the autonomous discretion of national officials in the field: for example, Kirby Smith's administration of the trans-Mississippi region after the fall of Vicksburg.)

132. Chapter 11 and pp. 7, 409–18. Alexander and Beringer do not expand the theoretical basis of their roll call assignments beyond this quote. Their scores, which run from 0 through 9, are based on roll calls that include six of the thirty studied here. In each case, the “stronger war effort” alternative is the same as the statist option. In the course of their analysis they indicate a “strong” position on an additional fifteen decisions analyzed in this chapter and the statist and “strong” sides agree on all but two measures: the imposition of a civil service test for military engineers and, inexplicably, the legislation proposing the elimination of import duties. From a statist perspective, their identification of the first measure with a weaker war effort indicates a tendency to pull their dimension toward “executive dominance” where that differed from “state capacity.” Indeed, Alexander and Beringer favor executive discretion on all measures where they indicate a “strong” position and omit two of the three roll calls where executive interests and state capacity conflict: the creation of a general staff and the veterans' home veto (the other is the civil service test). In addition to the partial identification of administration interests with a “stronger war effort,” they omit any analysis of client group legislation apart from the amendment redistributing income to soldiers' families. Thus, although more broadly conceived and empirically grounded than Yearns's formulation, the Alexander and Beringer list of scale positions is still, more or less, a proxy for administration support. Unlike Yearns, their scale includes all members of the House of Representatives. For the purpose of analysis here, the scale has been reduced to a dichotomous identification of “supporters” and “opponents” of a stronger war effort.

133. These twelve measures are those in which expanded executive discretion constituted a major issue in legislative consideration. Outside “administrative capacity” and “centralization of authority” dimensions, however, the scope of executive discretion was ultimately less important, overall, than the substantive content of central state expansion. The comparatively statist orientation of Davis and his supporters conforms to an almost universal American experience: every American president has urged a more state-centered war mobilization (with the possible exception of that for the Spanish-American War) on a reluctant Congress.

134. The statist tendencies of the Judiciary Committee were well recognized in the House of Representatives as a whole. Nationalist members, for example, attempted to enlarge the panel's jurisdiction by sending the midshipmen appointment bill to that committee after Davis had vetoed it. The proposed referral would have prevented the House from considering (and possibly overriding) the veto, (Journal of the Confederate Congress, 7: 502 [01 26, 1865])Google Scholar. The bill would have denied President Davis the authority to appoint midshipmen to the naval academy, giving that prerogative to individual congressmen. See also Proceedings, 44: 110 (March 6, 1862), where Charles Conrad of Louisiana hoped the bill to authorize the destruction of cotton and tobacco would “not be referred to that committee [Judiciary]; he knew very well what their report would be” concerning the compensation of property owners. The predilections of the committee are relatively silent evidence of the statist orientation of the speaker of the House of Representatives. Although no other corroborating information has been discovered, the speaker appointed a disproportionately large number of Confederate centralists to this strategic committee, which held jurisdiction over authority to retaliate on Union soldiers captured by Confederate forces for abuses suffered by southern prisoners, the creation of a Confederate supreme court, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the impressment of property.

135. Four nations—the United Kingdom, China, India, and France—had a total manufacturing output greater than the United States in 1860. Without the South, the manufacturing output of the North may, in addition, have fallen below that of Russia. See Bairoch, Paul, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980,” Journal of European Economic History 11, no. 2 (Fall 1982): 269–334Google Scholar. In terms of “modern” industrial capacity, the United States may have ranked as high as third, after the United Kingdom and, possibly, France.

136. Goff, Confederate Supply, 157–58. Once established, the Confederate bureaucracy rapidly became a disciplined and statist-oriented institution. Even after the evacuation of Richmond just days before Appomattox, instructions were sent to an impressment officer in Louisiana informing him that “the duty intrusted to you is a delicate one, and care will be taken not to interfere with any planter so as to curtail the provision crop which he may be cultivating” (Trexler, “The Opposition of Planters to the Employment of Slaves,” 218).

137. A comprehensive comparison of the Confederate and Union states will be under-taken in Yankee Leviathan: The Origins and Exercise of Central State Authority in America (in preparation).

138. Proceedings, 52: 242 (January 27, 1865).

139. Paraphrased in Moore, ed., Rebellion Record, 8: 393–94. This decision upheld the right of the Confederate state to end substitution practices in conscription.

140. Potter, David M., The Impending Crisis: 1848–1861 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976), 118–20Google Scholar.