<P> The Confederate States Army ( C.S.A. ) was the military land force of the Confederate States of America ( Confederacy ) during the American Civil War ( 1861 - 1865 ) . On February 28 , 1861 , the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president , Jefferson Davis ( 1808 - 1889 ) . Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy on the Hudson River at West Point , New York , and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican -- American War ( 1846 - 1848 ) . He had also been a United States Senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War in the administration of 14th President Franklin Pierce ( 1853 - 1857 ) . On March 1 , 1861 , Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston , South Carolina on behalf of the Confederate States government , where South Carolina state militia threatened to seize Fort Sumter , an island fortification in Charleston harbor from the small U.S. Army garrison . By March 1861 , the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army . </P>
the actual name of the confederate force at gettysburg was
The Confederate States Army ( C.S.A. )