Confederate States of Americaとは 意味・読み方・使い方

The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, and the C.S.A.) was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S. The U.S. government (The Union) rejected secession as illegal, and, after its army was fired upon at the Battle of Fort Sumter, used military action to defeat the C.S.A. No foreign nation officially recognized the Confederate States as an independent country, but they did allow their citizens to do business with the Confederacy. The Confederate government in Richmond had an uneasy relationship with its member states, with some historians arguing the Confederacy "died of states rights" because of the reluctance of several states to put troops under the control of the Confederate States government. The Confederacy's control over its claimed territory shrank steadily during the course of the American Civil War, as the Union took control of much of the seacoast and inland waterways. The leading Confederate General Robert E. Lee successfully stopped repeated Union attempts to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, but after four years of very bloody fighting, the Confederates ran out of men, supplies and public support. By June of 1865 its armies surrendered, its government collapsed, its slaves were emancipated, and the Union imposed a program of Reconstruction to restore the seceding states to normal status.