The eleven states that comprised the Confederacy during the American Civil War each filed their own articles of Secession over a span of seven months, from December 1860 to June of 1861. Three states (Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee) filed their own articles after the war had already “started” with the attack on Fort Sumter in April of 1861.
This is all the while Jefferson Davis was already leading a provisional Confederate government starting on February of 1861.
So how did the Confederate government form, both the provisional government and the “official” one that was created in February of 1862?
Was Davis’s presidency and the authority of the provisional government automatically recognized in each seceding state?
How did the Federal government react to the creation of a rebelling provisional government and a former Secretary of War calling himself its president in the months leading up to the Civil War?
What was the structure and nature of the provisional government, both in the lead up to the war and in the interim ten months between the attack on Fort Sumter and the formation of the “official” Confederate Government?
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