1.
The Pentagon
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The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D. C. As a symbol of the U. S. military, The Pentagon is often used metonymically to refer to the U. S. Department of Defense, the Pentagon was designed by American architect George Bergstrom, and built by general contractor John McShain of Philadelphia. Ground was broken for construction on September 11,1941, General Brehon Somervell provided the major motive power behind the project, Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U. S. Army. The Pentagon is one of the worlds largest office buildings, with about 6,500,000 sq ft, approximately 23,000 military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi of corridors. It was the first significant foreign attack on Washingtons governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British, when World War II broke out in Europe, the War Department rapidly expanded in anticipation that the United States would be drawn into the conflict. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson found the situation unacceptable, with the Munitions Building overcrowded, Stimson told U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in May 1941 that the War Department needed additional space. On July 17,1941, a hearing took place, organized by Virginia congressman Clifton Woodrum. Reybold agreed to back to the congressman within five days. The War Department called upon its construction chief, General Brehon Somervell, Government officials agreed that the War Department building, officially designated Federal Office Building No 1, should be constructed across the Potomac River, in Arlington County, Virginia. Requirements for the new building were that it be no more than four stories tall, the requirements meant that, instead of rising vertically, the building would be sprawling over a large area. Possible sites for the building included the Department of Agricultures Arlington Experimental Farm, adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery, the site originally chosen was Arlington Farms which had a roughly pentagonal shape, so the building was planned accordingly as an irregular pentagon. Concerned that the new building could obstruct the view of Washington, D. C. from Arlington Cemetery, the building retained its pentagonal layout because a major redesign at that stage would have been costly, and Roosevelt liked the design. Freed of the constraints of the asymmetric Arlington Farms site, it was modified into a pentagon which resembled the star forts of the gunpowder age. While the project went through the process in late July 1941, Somervell selected the contractors, including John McShain, Inc. and Doyle and Russell. In addition to the Hoover Airport site and other government-owned land, construction of the Pentagon required an additional 287 acres, which were acquired at a cost of $2.2 million. The Hells Bottom neighborhood, a slum with numerous pawnshops, factories, approximately 150 homes, Later 300 acres of land were transferred to Arlington National Cemetery and to Fort Myer, leaving 280 acres for the Pentagon. Contracts totaling $31,100,000 were finalized with McShain and the contractors on September 11
2.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
3.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
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Baton Rouge is the capital of the U. S. state of Louisiana and its second-largest city. It forms the seat of East Baton Rouge Parish and is located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. As the Capital City, Baton Rouge is the hub for Louisiana. The metropolitan area surrounding the city, known as Greater Baton Rouge, is also the second-largest in Louisiana, the urban area has around 594,309 inhabitants. Baton Rouge is an industrial, petrochemical, medical, research, motion picture. The Port of Greater Baton Rouge is the tenth largest in the United States in terms of tonnage shipped, the Baton Rouge area owes its historical importance to its strategic site upon the Istrouma Bluff, the first natural bluff upriver from the Mississippi River Delta. This allowed development of a business quarter safe from seasonal flooding, in addition, the city built a levee system stretching from the bluff southward to protect the riverfront and low-lying agricultural areas. The city is a rich center, with settlement by immigrants from numerous European nations. It was ruled by seven different governments, French, British, and Spanish in the era, West Floridian, United States territory and state, Confederate. Human habitation in the Baton Rouge area has been dated to 12000 –6500 BC based on evidence found along the Mississippi, Comite, earthwork mounds were built by hunter-gatherer societies in the Middle Archaic period, from roughly the 4th millennium BC. Eastern Muskogean began to diversify internally in the first half of the 1st millennium AD, at the time, the region appeared to be occupied by a collection of moderately-sized native chiefdoms interspersed with autonomous villages and tribal groups. French explorer Sieur dIberville led a party up the Mississippi River in 1699. The explorers saw a red pole marking the boundary between the Houma and Bayogoula tribal hunting grounds, see also Red Sticks for the ceremonial use of red sticks among the Muscogee. The location of the red pole was presumably at Scotts Bluff and it was reportedly a 30-foot-high painted pole adorned with fish bones. The settlement of Baton Rouge by Europeans began in 1721 when a military post was established by French colonists. Since European settlement, Baton Rouge has been governed by France, Britain, Spain, Louisiana, the Republic of West Florida, the Confederate States, and the United States. In 1755, when French-speaking settlers of Acadia in Canadas Maritime provinces were driven into exile by British forces, popularly known as Cajuns, the descendants of the Acadians maintained a separate culture. During the first half of the 19th century, the city grew steadily as the result of steamboat trade, Baton Rouge was incorporated in 1817
4.
Louisiana
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Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Louisiana is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States and its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the state in the U. S. with political subdivisions termed parishes. The largest parish by population is East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana is bordered by Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, Texas to the west, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Much of the lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh. These contain a rich southern biota, typical examples include birds such as ibis, there are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a process in the landscape. These support a large number of plant species, including many species of orchids. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized. Before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the current Louisiana State had been both a French colony and for a period, a Spanish one. In addition, colonists imported numerous African people as slaves in the 18th century, many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture. Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715, when René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane. The suffix -ana is a Latin suffix that can refer to information relating to an individual, subject. Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of related to Louis, the Gulf of Mexico did not exist 250 million years ago when there was but one supercontinent, Pangea. As Pangea split apart, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico opened, Louisiana slowly developed, over millions of years, from water into land, and from north to south. The oldest rocks are exposed in the north, in such as the Kisatchie National Forest. The oldest rocks date back to the early Tertiary Era, some 60 million years ago, the history of the formation of these rocks can be found in D. Spearings Roadside Geology of Louisiana. The sediments were carried north to south by the Mississippi River
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
James Gadsden
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James Gadsden served as Adjutant General of the U. S. Army from August 13,1821 – March 22,1822. He was commonly known as General Gadsden, although he never held a rank above Colonel, little is known about the life of Gadsden, especially his early life. It is known that he was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1788, and it is also known that Gadsden earned his bachelors degree from Yale University in Connecticut, completing this degree in 1806. Soon after his graduation, Gadsden entered the U. S. Army and he served as a commissioned officer under the command of General Andrew Jackson, who was to be elected the President in 1828. Gadsden served under Gen. Jackson both during the War of 1812 against the British Army, and against the American Indians in the newly purchased Territory of Florida during the early 1820s. He also helped to establish Fort Brooke with George Mercer Brooke at the site of the city of Tampa. Gadsden next decided to leave the U. S. Army, years later Gadsden County, Florida, was named in his honor, and also the city of Gadsden, Alabama, and the town of Gadsden, Arizona. Later Gadsden served as the president of the South Carolina Railroad company from 1840 to 1850, in this role, Gadsden and his associates decided to promote the construction of a transcontinental railroad from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Finally, after crossing the Colorado River into California, it would have crossed the Mojave Desert and the mountains to the seaport city of San Diego, California. After a lot of surveying work had been done in the Southwest, it was decided that a railroad across the land later became central New Mexico. Gadsden had supported nullification in 1831, in 1850 he advocated secession by South Carolina when California was admitted to the Union as a free state. Gadsden considered slavery “a social blessing” and abolitionists “the greatest curse of the nation and they proposed that the southern half would allow slavery. Gadsden planned to establish a colony there based on rice, cotton. He would use slave labor to build a railroad and highway, originating in either San Antonio or on the Red River, the petition stimulated some debate, but it finally died in committee. In 1853, Gadsden was appointed by the U. S and this treaty is called the Gadsden Treaty, and it led to the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico of about 30,000 square miles of land in northmost Mexico for $10,000,000. As events unfolded in the decades, and well-over a century. Nearly all of this federally owned land was, in the run, set aside as a large, sparsely inhabited American Indian reservation, testing. Gadsden was buried in St. Philips Church Cemetery in Charleston, richards, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War
7.
Louisiana (New Spain)
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Louisiana was the name of an administrative district of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1762 to 1802 that consisted of territory west of the Mississippi River basin, plus New Orleans. Spain acquired the territory from France, who had named it La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV in 1682 and it is sometimes known as Spanish Louisiana. The district was retroceded to France, under the terms of the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, in 1802, King Charles IV of Spain published a royal bill on 15 October, effecting the transfer and outlining the conditions. However, Spain agreed to continue administering the colony until French officials arrived and formalized the transfer. The ceremony was conducted at the Cabildo in New Orleans on 30 November 1803, Spain was largely a benign absentee landlord administering it from Havana, Cuba, and contracting out governing to people from many nationalities as long as they swore allegiance to Spain. During the American War of Independence, the Spanish funneled their supplies to the American revolutionists through New Orleans, in keeping with being absentee landlords, Spanish efforts to turn Louisiana into a Spanish colony were usually fruitless. For instance, while Spanish officially was the language of government. Even official business conducted at the Cabildo often lapsed into French, when Alejandro OReilly re-established Spanish rule in 1769, he issued a decree on December 7,1769, which banned the trade of Native American slaves. Although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, and that of others. A group of maroons led by Jean Saint Malo resisted re-enslavement from their base in the swamps east of New Orleans between 1780 and 1784, on May 4,1795,57 slaves and three local white men were put on trial in Point Coupee. Spanish colonial officials divided Luisiana into Upper Louisiana and Lower Louisiana at 36°35 North, in 1764, French fur trading interests founded St. Louis in what was then known as the Illinois Country. The Spanish referred to St. Louis as the city of Illinois, in 1778, several ships embarked for Louisiana with hundreds of settlers. The ships made stops in Havana and Venezuela, where half the settlers disembarked, in the end, between 2,100 and 2,736 Canarians arrived in Louisiana and settled near New Orleans. They settled in Barataria and in what is today St. Bernard Parish, however, many settlers were relocated for various reasons. Barataria suffered hurricanes in 1779 and in 1780, it was abandoned, in 1782, a splinter group of the Canarian settlers in Saint Bernard emigrated to Valenzuela. In 1779, another ship with 500 people from Málaga, arrived in Spanish Louisiana and these colonists, led by Lt. Col. Francisco Bouligny, settled in New Iberia, where they intermarried with Cajun settlers. In 1782, during the American Revolutionary War and the Anglo-Spanish War, Bernardo de Gálvez recruited men from the Canarian settlements of Louisiana and Galveston to join his forces. They participated in three military campaigns, the Baton Rouge, the Mobile, and the Pensacola, which expelled the British from the Gulf Coast
8.
Louisiana (New France)
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Louisiana or French Louisiana was an administrative district of New France. Under French control 1682 to 1762 and 1802 to 1803, the area was named in honor of King Louis XIV, by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Louisiana was divided into two regions, known as Upper Louisiana, which began north of the Arkansas River, and Lower Louisiana. The U. S. state of Louisiana is named for the historical region, although French exploration of the area began during the reign of Louis XIV, French Louisiana was not greatly developed, due to a lack of human and financial resources. France regained sovereignty of the territory in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800. But strained by obligations in Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to sell the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States ceded part of the Louisiana Purchase to the United Kingdom in the Treaty of 1818. This section lies above the 49th parallel north in a portion of present-day Alberta, in the 18th century, Louisiana included most of the Mississippi River Valley, from what is now the Midwestern United States south to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Both areas were dominated numerically by Native American tribal populations, at times, fewer than two hundred soldiers were assigned to all of the colony, on both sides of the Mississippi. In the mid-1720s, Louisiana Indians numbered well over 35,000, to the east was territory disputed with the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, the French claim extended to the Appalachian Mountains. The Rocky Mountains marked the extent of the French claim. The general flatness of the land aided movement through the territory, the topography becomes more mountainous towards the west, with the notable exception of the Ozark Mountains, which are located in the mid-south. A colonial government soon emerged, with its capital originally at Mobile, later at Biloxi, the government was led by a Governor-general, and Louisiana became an increasingly important colony in the early 18th century. French exploration of the area began with the 1673 expedition of Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, as noted above, Upper Louisiana was primarily settled by colonists from French Canada. There was further substantial intermarriage and integration with the local Illinois peoples, French settlers were attracted by the availability of arable farmland as well as by the forests, abundant with animals suitable for hunting and trapping. Genevieve across the river in todays Missouri, the region was initially governed as part of Canada, but was declared to be part of Louisiana in 1712, with the grant of the Louisiana country to Antoine Crozat. Thus, Vincennes and Peoria were the limit of Louisianas reach, the outposts at Ouiatenon, Chicago, Fort Miamis, and Prairie du Chien operated as dependencies of Canada. Those fleeing British control founded outposts such as the important settlement of St. Louis and this became a French fur-trading center, connected to trading posts on the Missouri and Upper Mississippi rivers, leading to later French settlement in that area. In the 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau, France ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain, its ally in the war, even after France had lost its claim to Louisiana, settlement of Upper Louisiana by French-speakers continued for the next four decades. French explorers and frontiersmen, such as Pedro Vial, were employed as guides and interpreters by the Spanish
9.
British West Florida
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West Florida was a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain from 1763 until 1783 when it was ceded to Spain as part of the Peace of Paris. British West Florida comprised parts of the modern U. S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, effective British control ended in 1781 when Spain captured Pensacola. The territory subsequently became a colony of Spain, parts of which were annexed piecemeal by the United States beginning in 1810. In 1762 during the Seven Years War a British expedition attacked and occupied Havana, to secure the return of this valuable city, Spain agreed to cede its territory of La Florida to Great Britain under the 1763 Treaty of Paris. France also ceded a large segment of New France to Great Britain, including everything on the east bank of the Mississippi River, except for the city of New Orleans. The British divided these new territories into two separate colonies East Florida, with its capital in St Augustine and West Florida, with the former Spanish settlement of Pensacola as its capital. By a separate treaty Spain was given the western side of the Mississippi, many of the existing Spanish inhabitants of Florida were evacuated to Cuba, and new British and American settlers arrived to take over the land. In 1763 British troops arrived and took possession of Pensacola, george Johnstone was appointed as the first British Governor, and in 1764 a colonial assembly was established. The structure of the colony was modeled after the existing British colonies in America, as opposed to Quebec, once the American War of Independence had broken out, the colonists remained overwhelmingly loyal to the Crown. In 1778 the Willing Expedition proceeded with a force down the Mississippi, ransacking estates and plantations. In the wake of this, the received a small number of British reinforcements. Following an agreement signed at Aranjuez, Spain entered the American Revolutionary War on the side of France, Spanish troops under Bernardo de Galvez advanced and seized Baton Rouge and Mobile. In 1781 Spain captured Pensacola and its garrison, as part of the 1783 Peace of Paris, Great Britain ceded the territories of West Florida and East Florida back to Spain. When Spain acquired West Florida in 1783, the eastern British boundary was the Apalachicola River, the purpose was to transfer San Marcos and the district of Apalachee from East Florida to West Florida. West Florida East Florida British America Dominion of British West Florida Spanish West Florida Calloway, the Scratch of a Pen,1763 and the Transformation of North America. Spain and the Independence of the United States, An Intrinsic Gift, university of New Mexico Press,2003
10.
Confederate States Army
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The Confederate States Army was the military ground force of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. S. Military Academy and colonel of a regiment during the Mexican War. In March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a more permanent Confederate States Army, the better estimates of the number of individual Confederate soldiers are between 750,000 and 1,000,000 men. This does not include a number of slaves who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as construction of fortifications. Since these figures include estimates of the number of individual soldiers who served at any time during the war. These numbers do not include men who served in Confederate naval forces, although most of the soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were volunteers, both sides by 1862 resorted to conscription, primarily as a means to force men to register and to volunteer. In the absence of records, estimates of the percentage of Confederate soldiers who were draftees are about double the 6 percent of Union soldiers who were conscripts. Confederate casualty figures also are incomplete and unreliable, one estimate of Confederate wounded, which is considered incomplete, is 194,026. These numbers do not include men who died from causes such as accidents. Other Confederate forces surrendered between April 16,1865 and June 28,1865, by the end of the war, more than 100,000 Confederate soldiers had deserted. The Confederacys government effectively dissolved when it fled Richmond in April, by the time Abraham Lincoln took office as President of the United States on March 4,1861, the seven seceding slave states had formed the Confederate States. The Confederacy seized federal property, including nearly all U. S. Army forts, Lincoln was determined to hold the forts remaining under U. S. control when he took office, especially Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Under orders from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, C. S. troops under the command of General P. G. T, Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13,1861, forcing its capitulation on April 14. The Northern states were outraged by the Confederacys attack and demanded war and it rallied behind Lincolns call on April 15, for all the states to send troops to recapture the forts from the secessionists, to put down the rebellion and to preserve the Union intact. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy. The Confederate Congress provided for a Confederate army patterned after the United States Army and it was to consist of a large provisional force to exist only in time of war and a small permanent regular army. Although the two forces were to exist concurrently, very little was done to organize the Confederate regular army, the Provisional Army of the Confederate States began organizing on April 27. Virtually all regular, volunteer, and conscripted men preferred to enter this organization since officers could achieve a rank in the Provisional Army than they could in the Regular Army
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This article incorporates public domain material from the National Park Service document "[1]".
