Episode 1 of 2

Confederate Congress Vote

When: 13 March 1865
Where: Confederate Capital
Part of: The Confederacy agrees to use African American troops

The Confederate Senate passed General Order 14 by a single vote, authorizing the enlistment of African American troops.

On March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed General Order 14. The vote in the Senate was extremely narrow, passing by a single margin. This decision followed acrimonious debate and was driven by the recognition that victory was unlikely without additional manpower.

Sources

Confederate States Army Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.