I'm having an argument here. I say that neither the United States nor any European or international power ever gave the Confederacy diplomatic recognition, so it is not a country. However, I am being told that the CSA was a country because it drafted a constitution, created its own currency, and raised an army.
Who is right?
The US Supreme Court addressed this issue in 1869.
"Considered as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention, and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union."
Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869)
So the Confederacy never existed, and the Confederate army was like our present day LARP groups, just with real bullets.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/74/700