Politicians of the Confederacy Quiz

Answer: Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Finis Davis lived from June 3 1808 to December 6 1889 and served as the president of the Confederate States of America for its entire history during the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. After the Civil War ended Davis was captured on the 10th of May 1865 and charged with treason but the case never went to the trial stage. He lost eligibility to run for public office again until it was restored by Congress in 1978, 89 years after his death! Robert E Lee was the Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Alexander Stephens was the vice president from 1861 to 1865, while Robert Toombs was Secretary of State for 1861 only.

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Answer: James Chesnut

The diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823-1886) covers the years 1861-65, and deals with the events of the American Civil War. As the wife of a prominent politician, she witnessed at first hand many of the events she describes. During the early 1880s she revised it with the intention of publishing it, although she died nearly 20 years before it finally appeared in print in 1905.

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Answer: President

Judah Philip Benjamin was born in the West Indies on August 6 1811. When he was two years old he moved with his parents to the US. There he became a lawyer, and was the first Jewish-American to be nominated for appointment to the Supreme Court by the outgoing president Millard Fillmore in 1853 - an offer which he declined.

When the American Civil War broke out, the Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed him as a Attorney General of the Confederacy due to Benjamin's legal expertise. However, he only served in this post for a few months before becoming the Secretary of War from 1861 to 1862. His last appointment was as the Secretary of State from 1862 to 1865. When the Civil War ended Benjamin went to England and practiced Law for many years. He retired in 1883 due to ill health and moved to Paris to live with his surviving family. He died there on May 6 1884.

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Answer: The Emancipation Proclamation

These words were used by Jefferson Davis to describe Lincoln's declaration on 1 January 1863 that all those slaves in the ten Confederate states that were then in rebellion were to be regarded as free men. Davis believed that the Proclamation would be unenforcable, and would fail.

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Answer: The enrollment of black soldiers in exchange for their freedom

The Confederate Army was faced with an acute shortage of manpower due to desertions and casualties by 1865. In order to rectify this problem, General Robert Lee and Jefferson Davis suggested to the Confederate Congress that they should recruit black soldiers in exchange for their freedom; a suggestion to which the Congress agreed in March 1865.

Votes for Women were not legalised until the the first quarter of the 20th century,Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 where drinking alcoholic drinks was forbidden. The Death Penalty continues in the 21st century.

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Answer: He represented the Cherokee

Elias Cornelius Boudinot was the son of Elias Bourdinot, an editor of the Cherokee Phoenix which was the first Native American Newspaper. He served in the Confederate Army where he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Also, only a tiny minority of the Cherokee supported the Union Forces. He represented Arkansas which was a Southern State, was selected as a member of the Arkansas Secession Convention, and didn't oppose Secession.

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Answer: John H Reagan

John Henniger Reagan lived from 1818 to 1905. He was born in Tennessee but moved to Texas at age 19 where he became a lawyer. However, in 1861 he was appointed as the Postmaster General of the Confederacy by Jefferson Davis. His Department was the most successful out of all the other government departments of the Confederacy. He helped to make a profit for the Post Office Department by not delivering mail on unprofitable routes and also persuading the railroads that delivered the mail to cut their fares.

Another success of Reagan was that he got this department up and running only six weeks into the appointment. Towards the end of the Civil War, Reagan also served as the Treasury Secretary from 27th April to May 10th 1865 in addition to being Postmaster General.

William Yancy was a Confederate Senator who died during the Civil War while William Henry Gist was a governor of South Carolina before the start of the Civil War and also a Secessionist leader. George Davis was the 4th and the last Attorney General of the Confederate States of America.

Answer: Christopher Memminger

Christopher Memminger lived from 1803 to 1888. He was born in Germany but after his father's death his mother brought him to the USA. He became a lawyer as an adult in South Carolina. After Lincoln was elected president, Memminger became convinced that secession was necessary and when South Carolina seceeded he was the chairman of the committee which came up with the Confederate Constitution.

He was elected the Confederacy's first Treasury Secretary on 21st February 1861 by Jefferson Davis. At first he attempted to manage the Confederate states finances by issuing bonds and tariffs but when they failed in their objectives he went towards more extreme measures like raising money through increased income tax and fiat currency. Even these measures failed to achieve the desired objective of rectifying the financing problem. Finally he resigned from his post on July 18th 1864 and was replaced by another South Carolinian, George Trenholm. John Brown was a prominent Abolitionist which was a movement started to end slavery.

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Answer: Robert E Lee

The quotation comes from an article by General Lee's nephew George Taylor Lee, published in the South Atlantic Quarterly in 1927. The nephew recalled dining with the General and some of the family in March 1865, very shortly before the final Confederate surrender. The words were spoken by General Lee to his eldest son Custis.

By that time the Union blockade was successfully preventing the importation of food. Although the Confederate states could still produce home-grown food, they had lost control of the major rivers and their railroads were far less extensive than those of the north. Getting enough food along the lengthy supply lines to Confederate troops in the field was therefore impossible.

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Answer: Jefferson Davis

Houston was not a fan of Davis. Houston had been one of the leading figures in bringing Texas into the United States. So, when the southern states voted to secede from the Union, Houston as governor of Texas, refused to recognise the legality of the vote. Sadly for him, the Texas legislature disagreed with his position and Houston was forced to stand down. To complete the quote from the question, Houston suggested, accurately as history would later prove, that "what [Davis] touches will not prosper."

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