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MONTGOMERY TO RICHMOND: The Confederacy Selects a Capital Jerrell H. Shofner and William Warren Rogers During the early months of 1861, Montgomery became the provisional seat of the Confederate government. The small Alabama city met the practical requirements of Southern leaders who were then dissolving one nation and establishing another. In the brief period between Lincoln 's election in November and inauguration in March, divided opinions and loyalties in the several slave states made it impossible for them to secede in unison. They kept themselves informed of events in neighboring states by commissioners who visited the various state capitals. In the lower South, where secession sentiment was strongest, six states soon followed South Carolina out of the Union. Opinion remained more evenly divided in the border states. None seceded immediately , and considerable doubt existed that some of them would leave the Union at all. The seceded states felt unable to wait for border state action, although they particularly desired Virginia's assistance in forming a new government. The Old Dominion's prestige as the home of great national leaders of the past would enhance the Confederate psychological position , and Virginia's proximity to Washington was considered a tactical advantage. But there was no time to waste on contingencies, and the deep South acted without Virginia and the other border states. Robert Barnwell Rhett and other South Carolinians suggested that delegates from the several states meet in Montgomery on February 4 to form a provisional government.1 The Alabama secession convention invited the other states to Montgomery.2 Alabama's capital city was a suitable site: it was centrally located in the lower South, it was served by rail and water transportation, and Montgomery newspapers and 1 Dunbar Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches (Jackson, 1923), V, 45; John Witherspoon DuBose, The Life and Times of Willhm Lowndes Yancey (New York, 1942), II, 581; Charles E. Cauthen, South Carolina Goes to War (Chapel Hill, 1950), pp. 84-85; Wilfred Buck Yearns, The Confederate Congress (Athens, 1960), p. 7. 2 A. J. Gerson, "The Inception of the Montgomery Convention," American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1910 (Washington, 1911), p. 185; DuBose, Yancey, II, 558. 155 156civil war history public opinion supported William Lowndes Yancey and other outspoken secessionists. The Montgomery convention rapidly drafted and approved a provisional constitution. After some maneuvering by the Georgia delegates , the assembly unanimously elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, respectively, President and VicePresident of the provisional Confederate government. Montgomery became the capital of the embryonic Confederacy, but it was by no means agreed upon as the permanent headquarters. As early as February 22, 1861, Atlanta citizens petitioned the Confederate Congress to make their community the permanent capital,3 and during the next three months various cities and villages offered to house the new national government. The struggle to find a capital was partisan and emotional. The final selection may not have affected the war's outcome, but it certainly was one of a number of top-level decisions that determined the subsequent nature of the conflict. In 1860 Montgomery possessed almost nine thousand inhabitants nearly equally divided between Negroes and whites. As the capital of Alabama it had suitable buildings for offices, and these it made available to the incipient government. Three hotels and several rooming houses afforded accommodations of varying quality for statesmen and their famibes, reporters, patriotic observers, hopeful military officers , and miscellaneous opportunists. Many newcomers found the quarters as well as the menus deficient at the outset, and in a short time the demand far exceeded the supply. It was estimated that Montgomery 's population doubled in the spring of 1861. William Howard Russell , the London Times correspondent, complained about his inferior lodgings, where pests besieged him. Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent South Carolina delegate, also bitterly criticized the available accommodations, predicting that Southern statesmen, who loved dieir ease, would leave the city for more auspicious surroundings at an early date.4 Montgomery citizens displayed mixed reactions to possessing the Confederate capital. According to Thomas C. DeLeon, ". . . The choice of the Capital had turned a society, provincially content to run in accustomed grooves, quite topsy...

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