<P> The government of the United States ( the Union ) rejected the claims of secession and considered the Confederacy illegitimate . The War began with the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter on April 12 , 1861 , a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston , South Carolina . No foreign government officially recognized the Confederacy as an independent country , although Great Britain and France granted it belligerent status , which allowed Confederate agents to contract with private concerns for arms and other supplies . In early 1865 , after four years of heavy fighting which led to over 620,000 military deaths , all the Confederate forces surrendered and the Confederacy vanished . The war lacked a formal end ; nearly all Confederate forces had been forced into surrender or deliberately disbanded by the end of 1865 , by which point the dwindling manpower and resources of the Confederacy were facing overwhelming odds . By 1865 , Jefferson Davis lamented that the Confederacy had `` disappeared '' . </P>
<P> The government of the United States ( the Union ) rejected the claims of secession and considered the Confederacy illegitimate . The War began with the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter on April 12 , 1861 , a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston , South Carolina . No foreign government officially recognized the Confederacy as an independent country , although Great Britain and France granted it belligerent status , which allowed Confederate agents to contract with private concerns for arms and other supplies . In early 1865 , after four years of heavy fighting which led to over 620,000 military deaths , all the Confederate forces surrendered and the Confederacy vanished . The war lacked a formal end ; nearly all Confederate forces had been forced into surrender or deliberately disbanded by the end of 1865 , by which point the dwindling manpower and resources of the Confederacy were facing overwhelming odds . By 1865 , Jefferson Davis lamented that the Confederacy had `` disappeared '' . </P>
who helped the confederate states in the civil war
who helped the confederate states in the civil war
Great Britain and France
Great Britain and France