Talk:President of the Confederate States of America
Davis election
Was Jefferson Davis elected in the manner described? Also, has any anyone else, perhaps a leader of some fringe group, ever declared themselves "President of the Confederate States"?--Pharos 22:03, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
State of Confederacy
I took this line out:
- Instead of a "State of the Union" speech the President of the Confederacy was to give a "State of the Confederacy" speech to a joint session of Congress once a year.
First of all, I don't think the fact that it has a slightly different name makes it a "key" difference. Also, it's not true that it has to be a speech; until Woodrow Wilson, the State of the Union was a written address delivered to Congress by courier. I assume it worked the same way in the Confederacy. --Chowbok 18:34, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
Not a difference
Removed:
- The Confederacy did not indicate who succeeds to the office of President following the removal or death of both the President and Vice President. The constitution states that Congress will appoint an officer to act as President in such cases. In the United States, the Presidency is passed to the Speaker of the House of Representatives then a long list of other offices.
This is the same as the US. That "long list of other offices" is provided by a law passed by Congress according to the provisions of the US Constitution
CS Constitution [1]
- In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President; and the Congress may, by law, provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President; and such officer shall act accordingly until the disability be removed or a President shall be elected.
US Constitution [2]
- In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
Only minor, unimportant, differences in wording, capitalization, and punctuation. -- Nik42 07:40, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Term limit
After the war, this innovation gained considerable popularity in the re-constituted Union, most notably being endorsed by Rutherford B. Hayes in his inaugural address.
Did this really gain greter popularity after the war than it had before? The writers of the CS Constitution didn't come up with this from scratch, after all. The idea had existed long before the Civil War, and had even been one proposal during the initial Constitutional Convention (along with such peculiar notions as a three-man presidency) -- Nik42 07:44, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Jefferson Davis the ONLY president?
According to their respective pages, Robert Woodward Barnwell and Howell Cobb were both "Heads of the Confederacy" at one point, and their pages point to Davis as their sucsessor. What exactly dose "Head of the Confederacy" mean in comparason to presidency? I think this article should reference them as leaders before the office of the president of the Confederate States was established. It should be noted that Barnwell's article states
- "At the congress' first meeting on February 4, 1861, William P. Chilton moved that Barnwell be appointed to preside temporarily over the Congress until its permanent organization. The Congress approved that proposal, but later that day, Barnwell handed the presidency over to Howell Cobb, who was elected president. In that Congress, he cast the vote (February 9, 1861) that ensured the election of Jefferson Davis as the Confederate President,"
Wouldn't this technicaly make Davis the third president of the CSA?--ThrashedParanoid★ 03:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
- They are not included as presidents for the same reason men like Peyton Randolph and John Hancock are not included in the list of US presidents: They were only presiding officers of Congress, like the Speaker of the House, with little to no executive poweres. They were not heads of government or formed an executive branch of government, not until the Constitutional Office of the President had been created and adopted, leaving Jefferson Davis as the sole President of the Confederacy.--Supersexyspacemonkey 17:23, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
- User:Vital Component keeps adding this to the article, and I keep removing it. Howell Cobb was never the Confederate President. --JW1805 (Talk) 18:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Provisional President
Davis was Provisional President from February 18, 1861 to February 22, 1862. GoodDay (talk) 22:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Question
I have a question. Since the Confederacy was never officially recognized by the Union as an official form of government, would that make it a non-legitimate body? Or would it still be legitiamte whether or not the Union accpeted it? For example, if Great Britain had never accepted America as being a legitimate government body of its own accord, would that non-recognition in itself have made the American Colonies non-legitimate?
Also, is the Confederacy now recognized by the U.S.A. as an official legitimate former (historical) government body?Wolfpeaceful (talk) 15:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
- I've found it confusing. The USA viewed secession as illegal, yet they had reconstruction to 're-admit' the former Confederate states. GoodDay (talk) 15:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
- If Great Britain had never accepted the U.S. as independent, but everyone else in the world did, and the "colonies" were in fact conducting themselves as an independent state or states without the British being able to do anything to stop them, then at some point the British would just look sort of stupid. (Bearing in mind that at the time Britain was the leading world power, so their P.O.V. did count for more than that of Portugal or the Two Sicilies.) There are regions of the Earth right now that for all practical purposes conduct themselves as states, but are not officially recognized as such by anyone else, or in some cases are recognized by some countries and not recognized by others. (See Abkhazia or Transnistria for example.)
- In the end, no one recognized the Confederacy as a sovereign state--not the U.S., not Britain, nor any other power--and furthermore the U.S. government was able to successfully end the Confederacy as a de facto government by military force.
- The U.S. has never recognized the government of the Confederate States as an "official legitimate former (historical) government body"; some individual Americans romanticize or revere or honor the Confederacy to varying degrees; the U.S. government has on occasion named things after Confederate leaders.
- Strictly speaking, the U.S. did not "re-admit" any states to the Union, since after all it was the position of the U.S. government that they had never left. Rather, states were re-admitted to representation in Congress, mostly (except for Tennessee) after a period of direct Federal military rule. -- 139.76.224.67 (talk) 03:50, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
- Didn't Britain give assistance of some military kind to the Confederacy during the war? Seems to me that would count as British "recognition" of the Confederacy. However, admittedly, this seems hypocritical, since the British had abolished slavery decades before and would have been supporting a slavery nation. The only justification I can think of for British backing of the Confederacy was that they had some kind of dispute with the USA and "the enemy of my 'enemy' (dispute opponent) is my friend". GBC (talk) 14:10, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Sidestepping that (i.e. my question above): What would the answer be from a modern non-biased historian scholar's point of veiw? I have read both "Union" and "Confederate" history books, and it does seem that there is much bias and contradiction between the two. To put it candidly and in layman's terms: The Union says "I'm right, the South was never independent from the Union" ; but the Confederacy says "We were independent according to the clause 'it is the right of the people... for a redress of grievances' and we were fighting for just that!" Wolfpeaceful I'm Bisexually biased... get over it! 14:13, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
Request Move
It has been proposed in this section that President of the Confederate States of America be renamed and moved to President of the Confederate States. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}} . Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. |
President of the Confederate States of America → President of the Confederate States – as we've got President of the United States & not President of the United States of America. GoodDay (talk) 16:44, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose (though this should have been a multi-move; consider this !vote to apply to the VP article as well); "the United States" is a common term for the nation, but I don't think "the Confederate States" was ever in wide use as a proper noun without "America" on the end. Powers T 20:03, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose per LtPowers above and my comments at the first one. Dicklyon (talk) 07:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)