<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> Insignia </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Flag </Th> <Td> </Td> </Tr> <P> The Confederate States Army (C.S.A.) was the military ground force of the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis (1808 - 1889), a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy on the Hudson River at West Point, New York, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican--American War (1846 - 1848), later a United States Senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War in the administration of 14th President Franklin Pierce (1853 - 1857). By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army . </P> <P> An accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the Confederate Army is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed Confederate records; all but extremely improbable estimates of the total number of Confederate soldiers range between 600,000 and 1,500,000 men . The better estimates of the number of individual Confederate soldiers are between 750,000 and 1,000,000 men . This does not include an unknown number of slaves who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons . Since these figures include estimates of the total number of individual soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the army at any given date . These numbers do not include men who served in Confederate naval forces (Confederate States Navy). </P>

Who joined the army during the civil war