In the permanent Confederate congress, all of the slave-labor States were represented excepting Maryland and Delaware. The oath to support the constitution of the Confederate States was administered to the senators by R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, and to the representatives, by Howell Cobb of Georgia. Thomas Bocock, of Virginia, was elected Speaker of the House. On the following day (February 19) the votes for president of the Confederacy were counted, and were found to be one hundred and nine in number, all of which were cast for Jefferson Davis. Three days afterward Davis was inaugurated president for six years. He chose for his cabinet Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, secretary of state; George W. Randolph of Virginia, secretary of war; S. R. Mallory of Florida, secretary of the navy; Charles G. Memminger of South Carolina, secretary of the treasury, and Thomas H. Watts of Alabama, attorney-general. Randolph resigned, and James A. Seddon, a wealthy citizen of Richmond, who was conspicuous in the famous " Peace Convention " at Washington, was chosen to fill his place.

Measures were adopted by the Confederate Congress to prosecute the war against the Union with vigor. It was declared, by joint resolution, that it was the unalterable determination of the people of the Confederate States "to suffer all the calamities of the most protracted war;" and that they would never, "on any terms, politically affiliate with a people who were guilty of an invasion of their soil and the butchery of their citizens." With this spirit they prosecuted the war on land; and with the aid of the British aristocracy, ship-builders and merchants, and the tacit consent of the British government, they were enabled to keep afloat, on the ocean, some active vessels for plundering American commerce. The hoped-for and expected result was the driving of the carrying-trade between the United States and Europe into British bottoms, and so enriching the British shipping merchants. This was the end to be accomplished, and it was effected.

The most formidable of these Anglo-Confederate plunderers of the sea was the Alabama, which was built, armed, manned and victualled in England. She sailed under the British flag, and was received with favor in every British port that she entered. In the last three months of the year 1862, she destroyed by fire twenty-eight helpless American merchant vessels. While these incendiary fires, kindled by Englishmen in a ship fitted out as a sea-rover by Englishmen commanded by a Confederate leader, were illuminating the bosom of the Atlantic Ocean, a merchant ship (the George Griswold), laden with provisions as a gift for starving English operatives in Lancashire, who had been deprived of work and food by the Civil War in America, and whose necessities their own government failed to relieve, was sent from the city of New York, conveyed by a national war vessel to save her from the fury of the British sea-rover! The sequel of the Alabama story will be told hereafter.

At the beginning of 1863, the National Government had more than seven hundred thousand soldiers in its service; and up to that time the loyal people had furnished twelve hundred thousand troops, mostly volunteers, for the salvation of the life of the Republic. The theatre of war had become co-extensive with the slave-labor States; and at that time the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, on the Mississippi River, was a chief object of the Government. Only between these places was that river free from the patrol of National gunboats; and it was desirable to break this connection between the insurgents on each side of the stream. To this end General Grant concentrated his forces near the Tallahatchee River, in northern Mississippi, where Generals Hovey and Washburne had been operating with troops whom they had led from Helena, in Arkansas. Grant had a large quantity of supplies at Holly Springs. These, through carelessness or treachery, fell into the hands of Van Dorn on the 20th of December (1862), and Grant was compelled to fall back to Grand junction to save his army.