In 1861 (the first year that the USA invaded the CSA), the USA had a standing army, with equipment and mobility. The CSA did NOT have a standing army and did not have immidiate plans to form one. Their first priority was to establish the framework of civilian leadership; to include elected houses of congress patterned after the USA. After all, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was copied word for word from the US Constitution except for the title and a few adjatives and adverbs. And, of course, they inserted that one Article specifiying that the importation of slaves from outside of the CSA was illegal. THAT would have been the first step to abolishing slavery altogether, but the invasion halted any further growth in the new country. The US Army was able to move in quickly and destroy a lot of the railway structure. All of us who have gone to school in the post-war era have been taught that it was a civil war which, of course, it was not. One dictionary defines a civil war as, "A war between citizens of the same country." Another one says it is "a war between factions or regions of one country." As we all know--the areas of the USA that were known as the South, seceded from the US and organized together to form a new, sovereign country they named The Confederate States of America. Too many folks today mock those facts and call them bogus.
