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(Monday, February 18, 1861, approximately 1:00 p.m. local time) — Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as provisional president of the Confederate States of America today on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery before an audience estimated at ten thousand people.

A band entertained the crowd by playing “Dixie,” a minstrel tune that was performed for the first time on this occasion as a band arrangement.

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Davis was sworn today in upon his arrival from Mississippi, where he had gone upon his resignation from the U.S. Senate.

Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia had taken the oath of office as provisional vice president of the Confederate States of America on Feb. 11, 1861.

Davis and Stephens would be elected to a full six-year term on Nov. 6, 1861, and inaugurated on Feb. 22, 1862.

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The Confederacy had been formed on Feb. 8, 1861, by the seven secessionist slave states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. All seven of the states 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.

Convinced that white supremacy and the institution of slavery were threatened by the November 1860 election of Republican candidate 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 becoming known as the Union during the ensuing American Civil War.