Central Confederacy

Before the American Civil War started in 1861, a proposed country called the Central Confederacy was suggested, composed of states in the Upland South. Following Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election, seven southern states seceded from the United States that December and the next January, fearing he would harm slavery, and they created the Confederate States of America. In the Border South and Upper South, some people wanted their states to join the Confederacy, while other prominent figures from the Border Southern States argued that the U.S. should let the southern states leave peacefully.

Two Marylanders—former Congressman John Pendleton Kennedy and Governor Thomas Hicks—called for a Central Confederacy made up of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, North Carolina, and Maryland. Kennedy laid out the idea in a December 15, 1860, pamphlet titled The Border States, and Hicks promoted it in a January 2, 1861, letter to Delaware’s Governor William Burton. As the southern Confederacy took shape, newspapers and people in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York strongly supported forming a Central Confederacy. That sentiment faded, however, after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter.