Video: 'Jefferson Davis - First President of the Confederacy | Mini Bio | BIO'

(Friday, February 9, 1861) — One day after adopting a provisional constitution forming the Confederate States of America (CSA), the Confederate States Congress, meeting today in the Alabama Capitol at Montgomery, unanimously chose former U.S. Secretary of War and U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis as Provisional President and former U.S. Rep. Alexander H. Stephens as Provisional Vice President.

Stephens would take office on Feb. 11, 1861, and Davis would take office on Feb. 18, 1861.

Convinced that white supremacy and the institution of slavery were threatened by the November 1860 election of Republican presidential nominee Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency, on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories, the Confederacy declared its secession in rebellion against the United States, with the loyal states that became known as the Union.

All seven of the Confederate states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) were located in the southeasternmost region of the United States, whose economy was heavily dependent upon agriculture — particularly cotton — and a plantation system that relied upon enslaved Africans for labor.

Four other slave states would join the CSA in the next three months, including Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina.