Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Confederacy   Listen
noun
Confederacy  n.  (pl. confederacies)  
1.
A league or compact between two or more persons, bodies of men, or states, for mutual support or common action; alliance. "The friendships of the world are oft Confederacies in vice or leagues of pleasure." "He hath heard of our confederacy." "Virginia promoted a confederacy."
2.
The persons, bodies, states, or nations united by a league; a confederation. "The Grecian common wealth,... the most heroic confederacy that ever existed." "Virgil has a whole confederacy against him."
3.
(Law) A combination of two or more persons to commit an unlawful act, or to do a lawful act by unlawful means. See Conspiracy.
Synonyms: League; compact; alliance; association; union; combination; confederation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Confederacy" Quotes from Famous Books



... confederacy; an alliance. Also, a measure of length consisting of three nautical miles, much used in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... famous "Kilpatrick Raid," an expedition wisely planned and full of "great expectations." That it did not produce the fruits hoped for was not the fault of any of "our folks." Lay the blame at the door of the Confederacy. It accomplished much good and the Confederate loss was large. Statistics are not at hand from which to give our casualties in full, but Long's Brigade lost seven officers and eighty-seven men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. The charge at Lovejoy's Station was one of the ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane

... only producers. Yet in the revolutionary outbreaks they are driven about like cattle, and forced into the armies that are raised. Central America declared its independence of Spain in 1823, and constituted itself a republic, under the name of the United States of Central America. The confederacy, which consisted of Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, was broken up in 1840, when each of the States became an independent republic. Ever since, revolutionary outbreaks have been periodical, and the States, with the exception ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... experienced in procuring evidence enough to lead her to the stake as a servant and confederate of Satan! Luther was just beginning his attack upon the papal power, and he was instantly accused of being in confederacy with the Devil. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... hours to get to the bottom of the mystery—hours!' he said with a gaze of deep confederacy which offended her pride very deeply. 'But thanks to a good intellect I've done it. Now, ma'am, I'm not a man to tell tales, even when a tale would be so good as this. But I'm going back to the mainland again, and a little assistance ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... he tore himself loose from the scenes of his childhood, and embracing his fond mother, left Winchester to begin life in the city of Richmond, the capital of the old Confederacy. Through the influence of Mr. King, his benefactor, he secured a position as a teacher in one of the colored schools of ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... to join in the confederacy with her mother, she afterwards kept her secret. For this her motive was commendable, although I will not determine whether she did it well or ill. Two women, who have secrets between them, love to prattle together; this attracted them towards each other, and Theresa, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... the native tribes, who did not require much persuasion to take the royal side. Accordingly when Colonel Guy Johnson fled westward to avoid being captured by the Americans, Brant and the principal warriors of the Six Nations accompanied him. The latter formed themselves into a confederacy, accepted royal commissions, and took a decided stand on the side of King George. To Brant was assigned the position of Principal War Chief of the Confederacy, with the military degree of a Captain. ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... of Ohio, Alexander Long, proposed in the House a recognition of the Southern Confederacy. It must be borne in mind that, before the firing on the supply-steamer at Charleston, which was despatched surreptitiously not "to offend the sympathizers' susceptibilities," many good citizens, dwelling on the silence of the Constitution as to secession, said openly that they ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... justify resistance. "And this is the Union party", was the significant comment of the New York Tribune. This Union Convention, however, believed that Quitman's message was treasonable and that there was ample evidence of a plot to dissolve the Union and form a Southern confederacy. Their programme was adopted by the State Convention the following year. [16] The radical Mississippians reiterated Calhoun's constitutional guarantees of sectional equality and non-interference with slavery, ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster

... asked for time to consider these requests, and for the next six months worked hard to break up the barons' confederacy, to gain friends and supporters, and to get mercenaries from Poitou. It was all to no purpose. As a last resource he took the Cross, expecting to be saved as a crusader from attack, and at the same time he wrote to the Pope to help his faithful vassal. ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... his personal knowledge. We will not anticipate our notice of this event, but we cannot suppress the remark, that the acquisition of this vast region by the United States, now so prosperous, so loyal and efficient a portion of our grand confederacy, by which we were not only saved from a war, but liberty, happiness, and wealth have been spread over a country, before that time neglected, mismanaged, and unproductive, and dispensed to an intelligent and industrious people, who had for a century ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... fashioned or executed human law, from Moses to Caesar, from Mohammed to Genghis Kahn and the Golden Emperor, from Charlemagne to Napoleon, and down through those who made and upheld the laws in the Western world, beginning with Hiawatha, creator of the Iroquois Confederacy—the Great League. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... difference in relation to the Constitution and slavery existing at the present day South, from that which did exist at the time of its ratification universally by the people of the thirteen States. The Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy frankly admits that slavery is its chief corner-stone; that our ancestors were deluded upon the subject of slavery; that the ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence respecting the equality of all men, and their natural right to life, liberty, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... 'Of confederacy with superiours, every one knows the inconvenience. With equals, no authority;—every man his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... month of May, 1698. After travelling for many weeks, at a great rate, for the Savages are inconceivably swift walkers, and can endure great fatigues, they arrived at the principal town of the Five Nations. There, and elsewhere within the limits of that confederacy, our traveller abode two full years. The public must not expect to find in this brief introduction a cursory statement, much less a minute journal of his curious observations and discoveries during that period. The Editor would make a very bad use of the confidence reposed in him, if he were to attempt ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... I found that, almost insensibly, as it were, I had become separated from my old companions the Blacks, and that I was more than ever Alone. The greatest likelihood is, that Authority deemed it advisable to break up, for good and all, the Formidable Confederacy they had laid hold of, and to prevent those Dangerous Men from ever again making Head together. But my whole Life was but a kind of Shifting and uncertain Vision, and I took little note of the personages with whom I came in contact, till looking around me, in a dull listlessness ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... invasion of their territory, especially if they were asked to give lands to the school. This decision virtually determined the location. If Mr. Wheelock could not follow his old neighbors and friends to the westward, and plant himself beside the great Indian Confederacy, he must turn his attention to the northward, where other neighbors and friends were settling within easy reach of the far-extended Indian tribes of Canada. Other localities, as we shall see hereafter, presented some inducements, but they were ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... of a fortnight, upwards of six thousand men had joined the Confederacy, and Felix wrote down the names of twenty tribes on a sheet of parchment which he took from his chest. A hut had long since been built for him; but he received all the deputations, and held the assemblies which were ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... to how or why this design for the arrangement of political power in the Southern Confederacy has been confined within such narrow degrees of disclosure. The answer is plain. A bold proposition to change the principles of their government would have alarmed the people of the South into an intensified opposition. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... Court of Hartford to be "copied by the secretary into the book of public records," it gave the institution legal sanction. This code was signed on the 5th of September, 1646. It recognized the lawfulness of Indian and Negro slavery. This was done under the confederacy of the "United Colonies of New England."[446] For some reason the part of the code recognizing slavery is omitted from the revised laws of 1715. In this colony, as in Massachusetts, only members of the church, "and living within the jurisdiction," could be admitted to the rights ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... finally resulted in the battle of the Metaurus and the triumph of Rome may be summed up as follows: To overthrow Rome it was necessary to attack her in Italy at the heart of her power, and shatter the strongly linked confederacy of which she was the head. This was the objective. To reach it, the Carthaginians needed a solid base of operations and a secure line of communications. The former was established in Spain by the genius of the great Barca ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... writer's object to indicate the nature of the struggle which will confront the public of this country for the achievement of political and industrial democracy when the war is over. The economic roots of Militarism and of the confederacy of reactionary influences which are found supporting it—Imperialism, Protectionism, Conservatism, Bureaucracy, Capitalism—are subjected to a critical analysis. The safeguarding and furtherance of the interests of Improperty and Profiteering are exhibited as the directing and ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... advantages arising from innovation and the advantages arising from prescription, have been combined to an extent elsewhere unknown, we may attribute this happy peculiarity to the strenuous conflicts and alternate victories of two rival confederacies of statesmen, a confederacy zealous for authority and antiquity, and a confederacy ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... chief named Meha, or Meta, had established his supremacy among the disunited clans of the Mongolian Desert, and had succeeded in combining for purposes of war the whole fighting force of what had been a disjointed and barbarous confederacy. The Chinese rulers had succeeded in keeping back this threatening torrent from overflowing the fertile plains of their country, as much by sowing dissension among these clans and by bribing one chief to fight ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... sought with an avidity equal to Herod's, but who was protected with a fidelity which defeated every attempt to capture him. Alternately the guest of his aunts married to the chiefs of Offally and Donegal, the sympathy everywhere felt for him led to a confederacy between the Northern and Southern Chiefs, which had long been wanting. A loose league was formed, including the O'Neils of both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the Earl of Desmond, and the chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The lad, the object of so much natural and chivalrous affection, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... possessions: Our compassion and kindness the only check, by which they curb our lawless will: And as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of a power, so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally USELESS, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... a terrible time getting along during those years. I don't believe we could have done it except for the Northern soldiers. You might say the Confederacy was kept up by private subscription, but the Yankees had the whole Federal government back of them. They had good rations which were issued uncooked. They could get them prepared anywhere they liked. We were good cooks so that is the way we got our food—preparing ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... confederacy having been formed between a party of English under a Captain Wright and the San Blas Indians of Darien, which was brought about by Captain Wright's taking two San Blas boys to be educated "in the country of the Moskitoes," and afterwards faithfully restoring them, and which opened ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various

... Benjamin, the rebel Secretary of State, in a circular letter written for the purpose of giving the rebel account of that visit. We are told by the rebel chief himself, that as preliminary to any negotiations, the independence of the Southern Confederacy must be first acknowledged. Why does not the Chicago platform suggest a way of avoiding this difficulty? Why has it left the country in uncertainty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... fearful of what might follow, declared all that occurred, and how he had bound himself to the devil. The preceptor, grieved at the communication, induced the youth to confess himself, and renounce this fearful confederacy. When this was done he became a holy man; and after a well-spent life, gave ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... satisfaction they were called up, but, as in the case of Dr. Dee and other adepts, by means of a viewer, an ignorant Nubian boy, whom, to prevent imposition, the English gentlemen selected for the purpose, and, as they thought, without any risk of imposture by confederacy betwixt him and the physician. The process was as follows:—A black square was drawn in the palm of the boy's hand, or rather a kind of pentacle with an Arabic character inscribed at each angle. The figures evoked were seen through this space ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... undertook to tell him that "Jefferson Davis did more than any other person to take the South out of the Union. He was chief among the secessionists. Then, as President, he made so many mistakes, he did more than any other man to prevent the success of the Confederacy. He did more to bring about the freedom of the slave than any other man. Since the emancipation of your race came on as a consequence of secession, why should you not be grateful to Jefferson Davis and ...
— The American Missionary Vol. XLIV. No. 2. • Various

... that the numerous pieces of this volume will be found creditable to the genius and culture of the Southern people, and honorable, as in accordance with their convictions. They are derived from all the States of the late Southern Confederacy, and will be found truthfully to exhibit the sentiment and opinion prevailing more or less generally throughout the whole. The editor has had special advantages in making the compilation. Having a large correspondence in most of the Southern States, he has found no difficulty in procuring his material. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... each other, he mixes the Caninesates among them, whose Custom in Electing their Kings was, (as I shall hereafter shew) the very same with that of the Franks.—"Ambassadors (says he) were sent to the Caninesates, to persuade them to enter into the Confederacy: That People inhabit one part of the Island, equal as to their Descent, Laws and Valour, to the Batavians; but inferior in Number.—And again—Brinnio being set upon a Shield (according to the Custom of the Country) and hoisted up on Men's Shoulders, was chosen their Commander." Which ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... office of "The Examiner" on Washington street near Sansome and carried everything that was movable into the street and piled it up with the intention of burning. It seems that this paper was so pronounced in its sympathy with the cause of the Confederacy that it aroused such a feeling as to cause drastic measures. The police authorities were informed of what was going on and Colonel Wood, captain of police, got a squad of policemen together and proceeded ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley

... for us, and yet we have never felt like having an alliance with them. Do you ever take much stock in Russia, boys? Don't ever forget Russia. During our war between the North and South, we were once in a tight place. England and other countries were about to recognize the Southern Confederacy, and England was doing everything possible to break us up, furnishing privateers, and harboring confederate gunboats, and making it warm for us. Boys, your Uncle Abraham Lincoln was perspiring a good deal those days. They say he couldn't ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck

... that they were brought about under the leadership of Agesilaus. But the day came when, after the disaster which had occurred at Leuctra, the rival powers in conjunction with the Mantineans fell to massacring his friends and adherents (26) in Tegea (the confederacy between all the states of Boeotia, the Arcadians, and the Eleians being already an accomplished fact). Thereupon, with the forces of Lacedaemon alone, (27) he took the field, and thus belied the current opinion that it would be a long while before the Lacedaemonians ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon

... this I feel confidence also that here in South Carolina at least I shall meet with an earnest response. The time is not yet remote when local self-government worked salvation for South Carolina, as for her sister States of the Confederacy. You here will never forget what immediately followed the close of our Civil War. As an historic fact, the Constitution was then suspended. It was suspended by act of an irresponsible Congress, exercising revolutionary but unlimited powers over a large section of the common country. You then had ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... mountains, though the common people were from Greece or its colonies. These people of Greek descent were called Etruscans, and it has been discovered that they had advanced so far in civilization, that they afterwards gave many of their customs to the city of Rome when it came to power. A confederacy known as the "Twelve Cities of Etruria" became famous afterwards, though no one knows exactly which the twelve were. Probably they changed from time to time; some that belonged to the union at one period, being out of it at another. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... raiding, of lonely scouting within the enemy's lines, of severe wounds, hardship, and suffering, had left their marks on both body and soul. His father had fallen on the field at Antietam, and left him utterly alone in the world, but he had fought on grimly to the end, until the last flag of the Confederacy had been furled. By that time, upon the collar of his tattered gray jacket appeared the tarnished insignia of a captain. The quick tears dimmed his eyes even now as he recalled anew that final parting following Appomattox, the battle-worn ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... on the fly-leaves. But it had been rather a biased version of the period connected with the Civil War which she had learned, for Miss Eliza was very bitter about those years of her country's existence. Her only brother, and her twin, had been killed fighting for the Confederacy. Miss Eliza seemed to be unable to believe that he had been killed in battle, however, for she always spoke of him as "murdered" by the Yankees. So Arethusa's ideas of events connected with this time was hardly very favorably inclined towards ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... mine, and fancy you did not come honestly by it? or are you imagining he would be too much flattered by seeing round your lovely throat an ornament which his money purchased three years ago, before he knew there was such a throat in the world? or perhaps"—looking archly—"you suspect a confederacy between us, and that what I am now doing is with his knowledge and at ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... a general combination of the neighboring Indians against the settlements of New England; and apprehensions were also entertained of hostility from the Dutch of Manhadoes. A sense of impending danger suggested the policy of forming a confederacy of the sister-colonies for their mutual defence. And so confirmed had the habit of self-government become since the attention of England was absorbed in her domestic dissensions that it was not thought necessary to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... not describe them, for the description of costume is the most inventive province of our historical novelists, and we never like to be unfair, or trench upon our neighbour's lands or rights; but the Alhambra button indicated a mystical confederacy, and made the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... that the Pharaohs set out with their troops, when summoned to Kharu by a hostile confederacy; it was to Zalu they returned triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom. The road ran for some distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the Nile during six months of the year; it then ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... English Parliament, and from the Westminster Assembly, were appointed to proceed to Edinburgh, to be present at the meeting of the General Assembly in August, and to seek a conference, respecting the best method of forming the basis of a religious and civil confederacy between the two kingdoms, in their time of mutual danger. These Commissioners, accordingly, attended the meeting of the Assembly in Edinburgh, and the result of their conferences was the framing of that well-known bond of union between the two countries, THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT—"a ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... about thirteen years old when the Confederacy declar's herse'f a nation, elects Jeff Davis President, an' fronts up for trouble. For myse'f I concedes now, though I sort o' smothers my feelin's on that p'int at the time, seein' we-all could look right over into the state of Ohio, said state bein' heatedly inimical ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... hand Nordlingen dissolved the confederacy of the Protestant German princes against Ferdinand the Second. The Elector of Saxony, who had ever been vacillating and irresolute in his policy, was the first to set the example by making peace with the emperor. The Elector of Brandenburg, Duke William of Weimar, the Prince of Anhalt, the Duke ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... bottle, and spent much of his time on shore; but he remained on board that night, which did not, however, frustrate their design, because he had taken his usual dose, and so went to bed. The men who were not in the confederacy went also to bed, leaving none upon deck but the conspirators. At the time agreed upon, the long boat of the other ship came, and Avery hailing her in the usual manner, he was answered by the men in her, "Is your drunken boatswain on board?" which was the watchword agreed between ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... generation next to come, Southerners there will be yielding allegiance to the Union, feeling all their interests bound up in it, and yet cherishing unrebuked that kind of feeling for the memory of the soldiers of the fallen Confederacy that Burns, Scott, and the Ettrick Shepherd felt for the memory of the gallant clansmen ruined through their fidelity to the Stuarts—a feeling whose passion was tempered by the poetry imbuing it, and which in no wise affected their loyalty to the Georges, and which, it may be added, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... day of that Declaration, the constituent power of the people had never been called into action. A confederacy had been substituted in the place of a government, and State sovereignty had usurped the constituent sovereignty ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams

... plan to hold on for a time longer, and then to retire before the axe fell, with an immense fortune. Therefore, about the time set for my execution, he began to close with the overtures of the Governor, and presently the two formed a confederacy against the Marquis de Montcalm. Into it they tried to draw Doltaire, and were surprised to find that he stood them off as to anything more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... But if you consider the European situation you will have no difficulty in perceiving the motive. The whole of Europe is an armed camp. There is a double league which makes a fair balance of military power. Great Britain holds the scales. If Britain were driven into war with one confederacy, it would assure the supremacy of the other confederacy, whether they joined in the war or not. Do ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... earnest attempt before he surrendered the Union cause to secure the guarantees he thought sufficient for slavery within the Union. The Southern statesman (for the soldiers were not statesmen) whose character most attracts sympathy now was Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, and though he was the man who persisted longest in the view that slavery could be adequately secured without secession, he was none the less entitled to speak for the South in his remarkable words on the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... alliance, but the personal intimacy, was broken when their political ways sundered on the Home Rule division. Friendship remained; but it was not possible that men of that mark, who had met incessantly in the closest confederacy, could meet easily when the very groundwork of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... organization, which was instituted by John C. Calhoun, William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, has for its sole object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern Empire;—Empire is the word, not Confederacy, or Republic;—and it was solely by means of its secret but powerful machinery that the Southern States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a majority ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... it, this tone and temper will never be changed so long as the Rebels have any considerable armed force in the field ready for service. Unless we are willing to consent to a divided country, a dissevered Union, and the recognition of a Southern Confederacy,—in a word, unless we are prepared to acquiesce in all the demands of our enemies, we have no alternative but a vigorous prosecution ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... the residence of Mr. David Rose, near Launceston, and escaping a diligent pursuit, they re-appeared at Bagdad, a distance of 100 miles. Their scouts had informed them that property to a large amount would be found there: their confederacy was extensive, and it was asserted by Howe, that some most active in his pursuit, had been sharers in the profits of his crimes. The tone assumed by this robber, was that of an independent chief, and in the management ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... seldom gained but by conformity in vice. Virtue can stand without assistance, and considers herself as very little obliged by countenance and approbation: but vice, spiritless and timorous, seeks the shelter of crowds, and support of confederacy. The sycophant, therefore, neglects the good qualities of his patron, and employs all his art on his weaknesses and follies, regales his reigning vanity, or stimulates ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... The Confederacy was a failure in '62, held together by external pressure of hostile armies. It converted civil office into bomb-proofs for the unworthy by exempting State and Federal officials; it discouraged agriculture by levying on the corn and bacon of the small farmers, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... his salary not from Washington, D. C., but from a State capital several hundreds of miles removed from Washington. Moreover, he was a zealous believer in the principle of State sovereignty. As a soldier of the late Southern Confederacy, he had fought four years to establish that doctrine. Conceded, that the cause for which he fought had been defeated; nevertheless his views upon the subject remained fixed and permanent. He had plenty ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant in saying, they did it for hire. Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... superintendent was appointed. As affecting the Negro the southern district was naturally of vastly more importance than the northern. In the eastern portion of this, mainly in what are now Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and eastern Alabama, were the Cherokees and the great confederacy of the Creeks, while toward the west, in the present Mississippi and western Alabama, were the Chickasaws and the Choctaws. Of Muskhogean stock, and originally a part of the Creeks, were the Seminoles ("runaways"), who ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... the overwhelming tide of public opinion over the wheels of that machinery which Abolitionists are working here. He is now lecturing to Britons on American Slavery, to the subjects of a King, on the abject condition of the slaves of a Republic. He is telling them of that mighty confederacy of petty tyrants which extends over thirteen States of our Union. He is telling them of the munificent rewards offered by slaveholders, for the heads of the most distinguished advocates for freedom in this country. He is moving the British Churches ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... her ingratitude. In attacking it he is attacking her guilt, in its inferior forms and obscure disguises. It is the nest of her depravity, and the small vices are but hers in the shell, and the whole is a vast confederacy of evil. Here are no "superfluous activities," no desultory talk; Hamlet's preoccupation is one throughout. He alternates between the desire to escape from so vile a world, and the pleasure of exposing its vice and fraud. The one gives us soliloquies, the other dialogues. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... with few exceptions that alignment held. Those who were Union sympathizers went north into Kentucky and joined the Federal forces, and those on the side of the South went for enlistment in the armies of the Confederacy. The men who remained at home were compelled by public sentiment to take sides, and the bitterest of feeling was engendered. The raids of passing soldiers was the excuse for the organization, by both sides, of bands who claimed they were ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... denied that he had ever had any appointment with Curio. However, he did not long stick to that, but immediately claimed the protection of the state as giving information. There was a shout of "no" to this;[273] but he went on to state that there had been a confederacy of young men under the leadership of Curio, to which Paullus had at first belonged, and Q. Caepio (I mean Brutus[274]) and Lentulus, son of the flamen, with the privity of his father: that afterwards C. Septimius, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... are but the thieves of the trade, there is a method as effectual to get money as possible, managed with more appearing honesty, but no less art, by which the wagerer, in confederacy with the office-keeper, shall lay vast sums, great odds, and yet be always ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... marched rapidly and were on their good behavior, all marauding being forbidden, and they were singing a new song, entitled "My Maryland," thus trying to woo this loyal border State over to the Confederacy. We were told that Lee hung two soldiers for stealing chickens and fruit just before ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... admission for them into all parts of his nation, but the time was not ripe, nor was his influence equal to his good-will. Though called a "king", he was only chief of a small tribe living some four or five miles from Savannah, part of the Creek Confederacy, which was composed of a number of remnants, gradually merged into one "nation". The "Upper Creeks" lived about the head waters of the creeks from which they took their name, and the "Lower Creeks", including Tomochichi's people, ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... tannery down by the river beyond the Settlement doubled, tripled and then quadrupled its capacity and next to it the little old saddle and harness factory in which Mr. Cockrell and old Mr. Sproul had been making saddles and harness since the days of the Confederacy, did the same and sent out consignment after consignment of saddles and bridles which were paid for in huge checks of Russian origin which almost paralyzed the Goodloets Bank and Trust Company and which worked pale Clive Harvey into the night until he managed to get young Henry Thornton in to assist ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... felt the evil tidings conveyed by the exaggerated tenderness of a special kiss? But while on the platform and among the porters she said nothing of herself. She asked after Theodore and heard of the railway confederacy with a show of delight. "He'd like to make a line from Hyde Park Corner to the Tower of London," said Florence, with a smile. Then she asked after the children, and specially for the baby; but as yet she spoke no word of Harry ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... the 11th we spoke the Chatham, which ship had also been sent to look-out for the enemy. She had taken a prize, and from her had gained the information that a large fleet of merchantmen was in the neighbourhood, bound from Saint Domingo to Philadelphia under the convoy of the Dean and Confederacy State frigates. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... pleasant and fertile district in the kingdom of Chili. Its extent from the sea to the foot of the Andes, was formerly reckoned at 300 miles; but as the Puelches, a nation inhabiting the western side of the mountains, joined the confederacy of the Araucanians in the seventeenth century, its present breadth cannot be less than 420 miles, and the whole territory is estimated at 78,120 square miles or nearly 50 millions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... different. The Rhine, dashing against the piers of the bridge which joined the Great and Little towns, brought fresh air and coolness and health. The University, founded in 1460, was active and liberally minded. The town had recently (1501) thrown in its lot with the confederacy of Swiss cantons, thereby strengthening the political immunity which it had long enjoyed. Between the citizens and the religious orders complete concord prevailed; and finally, except Paris, there was no town North of the Alps ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... artifice and cunning; as on spiders, some of which weave a sort of net to entrap and destroy whatever falls into it, others sit on the watch unobserved to fall on their prey and devour it. The naker—by the Greeks called Pinna—has a kind of confederacy with the prawn for procuring food. It has two large shells open, into which when the little fishes swim, the naker, having notice given by the bite of the prawn, closes them immediately. Thus, these ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... mine affliction and the labor of mine hands and reproved thee yesterday. Laban answered to him: My daughters and sons, and thy flocks, and all that thou beholdest are thine, what may I do to my sons and nephews? Let us now be friends, and make we a fast league and confederacy together. Then Jacob raised a stone, and raised it in token of friendship and peace, and so they ate together in friendship, and sware each to other to abide in love ever after. And after this Laban arose in the night, and kissed ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... function at the centre. It became more and more their theory that the States, rather than the individuals of the national body politic, had been the parties to the Constitution, so making this to be a compact like the old Articles, and the government under it a confederacy as before 1789. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... southern leaders to make the Ohio River the northern boundary of a great slave empire, with everything lying to the south of that, even the countries of South and Central America, as parts of their system. Though this dream was never to be realized, the Confederacy finally came to number eleven States (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia), and to cover a territory of more than 750,000 square miles—larger than England, ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... the keeping!—Tell me, if yet there are more evils reserved for me; and whether thou hast entered into a compact with the grand deceiver, in the person of his horrid agent in this house; and if the ruin of my soul, that my father's curse may be fulfilled, is to complete the triumphs of so vile a confederacy?—Answer me!—Say, if thou hast courage to speak out to her whom thou hast ruined, tell me what farther I am to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... proclaimed the will of the Master of Life as revealed to the Delaware prophet, and then announced the details of his plan. Everywhere the appeal met with approval; and not only the scores of Algonquin peoples, but also the Seneca branch of the Iroquois confederacy and a number of tribes on the lower Mississippi, pledged themselves with all solemnity to fulfill their prophet's injunction "to drive the dogs which wear red clothing into the sea." While keen-eyed warriors sought to keep up appearances by lounging about the forts and begging in their ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... Admiralty Courts with regard to the right of search, great efforts were made by the Baltic powers to recall and enforce the doctrines of the armed neutrality of 1780. This attempt is generally known as the Armed Neutrality of 1800, and was met, promptly overpowered, and the confederacy finally dissolved, by the naval power of England. Russia gave up the point, and by her convention with England of the 17th of June, 1801, expressly agreed, that enemy's property was not to be protected on board of neutral ships.[198] ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... former union was a mere confederacy. A confederacy is a league, a federal compact. The word federal is from the Latin fadus, a league, or alliance. Hence a confederacy is a combination or union of two or more parties, whether persons or states, for their mutual benefit and assistance. And ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... hour from the time our lines were formed. In this short space of time, one of the most important places in Confederacy fell, it being situated in the midst of their iron regions, was of itself a solid machine shop, where a large portion of their ordnance was made, together with their niter works. Some of the most formidable iron works on the continent ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin

... which had occasioned some stir in the scientific world some twenty years previously: "the Delphic problem" proposed by Hobbes to the Royal Society on the duplication of the cube, which might have come to the ears of Buckingham as well as to those of the court,[3] or perhaps to the triple confederacy of Essex, Halifax, and Sunderland.[4] But to the Restoration reader the phrase "Three-fold Might" would rather have suggested the Triple Alliance, to which Dryden reverts in The Medal (lines 65-68) when he claims that Shaftesbury, ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... belongs to the United States of North America, and will, doubtless, in a short time, form several distinct states in that already powerful confederacy." ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... might march. This mixed us considerably, and we could not make out just what service we were embarked in; but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and phrase-juggler, was not similarly in doubt; he knew quite clearly that he had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour, colonel Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey; and he accompanied this act ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... retire, which they did in good order. As they passed through the town, on their way to Huntsville, some rash, inconsiderate rebel sympathizers jeered at and insulted them, cheering lustily for Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy. One or two of them, also, seized their guns, and when the rebel forces made their appearance, joined them in pursuit of our soldiers. A feeling of vindictive wrath sprang up in the minds of the boys of the 18th, and when they met the 19th Illinois and ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... of a higher lawmaker. In Europe, it is true, the constitutions place formal difficulties in the way of changing their specifications, but almost everywhere it is the lawmaker himself who decides upon the change. Even in the Swiss Confederacy judicial control over the observance of these forms is nowhere to be found, although there, as in the United States, the constitutional laws proceed from other organs than those of ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... captivity among the Arrapahoes, I had often reflected upon the great advantages which would accrue if, by any possibility, the various tribes which were of Shoshone origin could be induced to unite with them in one confederacy; and the more I reflected upon the subject, the more resolved I became, that if ever I returned to the settlement, I would make the proposition to our chiefs ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... still be some hard work for our armies in order to put a final end to the great rebellion. But the failure of this last desperate enterprise gives the deathblow to the wicked and ambitious power of the usurpers at the head of the pretended confederacy. They may obstruct our march and harass our armies, but they can no longer hope to place any permanent obstacle in the way of our progress toward the restoration of the Union. The tide has turned at last. We have seen the darkest day ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... claims of all shades of Republican opinion, from that of the most violent abolitionist to that of the mere unionist. In the Democracy, opinion ranged from that of the strong war Democrat to that of the Copperhead whose real sympathies were with the Confederacy. ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... days of Julius Caesar, during the latter part of whose government in Gaul, a dangerous conspiracy broke out among the Bellovaci, the Caletes, and the Velliocasses, assisted by the inhabitants of other neighboring districts. This confederacy is supposed to have given rise ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... uncle, Davidge Gould. This reasonable hope of the six "Infants" was however, according to their grandmother, wholly disappointed. For their uncle Davidge and his co-trustee, one William Day, allowed Edmund Fielding to receive the rents, nay "entered into a Combination and Confederacy to and with the said Edmund Fielding," refusing to intermeddle with the said trust, whereby the children were in great danger of losing their means of maintenance and education. And this was by no means all. Lady Gould proceeds to point out that her ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... discussion of the French Constitutions which might arise on the Quebec Bill, could tend to make Mr. Fox pass for a republican, except he should take occasion to extol that state of things in France which affects to be a republic or a confederacy of republics. If such an encomium could make any unfavorable impression on the king's mind, surely his voluntary panegyrics on that event, not so much introduced as intruded into other debates, with which they had little relation, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... which were its effects. But in coming more within the light of authentic history, I contend that political economy is better known, and that in that proportion it explains much of what ought to be known. For example, I contend that the condition of Athens, for herself and for the rest of the Greek confederacy, nay, the entire course of the Athenian wars, of all that Athens did or forbore to do, her actions alike, and her omissions, are to be accounted for, and lie involved in the statistics ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... and of the permanency of that separation which is to take place, be allured by the partition you mention? To anticipate, therefore, the efforts of the enemy by sending instantly American ambassadors to France, seems to me absolutely necessary. Delay may bring on us total ruin. But is not a confederacy ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... the last fought by the "Alliance" during the Revolution, and with it we practically complete our narrative of the work of the regular navy during that war. One slight disaster to the American cause alone remains to be mentioned. The "Confederacy," a thirty-two-gun frigate built in 1778, was captured by the enemy in 1781. She was an unlucky ship, having been totally dismasted on her first cruise, and captured by an ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... the Five Nations to the building of a French fort at Niagara, Vaudreuil trusted chiefly to his agent among the Senecas, the bold, skilful, and indefatigable Joncaire, who was naturalized among that tribe, the strongest of the confederacy. Governor Hunter of New York sent Peter Schuyler and Philip Livingston to counteract his influence. The Five Nations, who, conscious of declining power, seemed ready at this time to be all things to all men, declared that they would prevent ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... quieted by the assurances of the opposite party, who ridiculed the idea that a convention, similar to that which in each State adopted the Constitution, could not thereafter, in representation of the popular will, withdraw such State from the confederacy. You have, in proof of this, but to refer to the ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... Mississippi valley had been early realized by the United States Government. In its hands the great stream would become an impassable barrier between two large sections of the Southern Confederacy; whereas in the possession of the latter it remained a link binding together all the regions through which it flowed, or which were penetrated by any of its numerous tributaries. The extensive territory west of the river also produced a large part of the provisions upon which ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... strongly enlisted in all these troubles, but Palmerston would not allow her to proceed to the point of breaking the peace. From 1861 to 1865, while the Civil War was being fought out in America, his government was prompt to recognize the belligerent status of the Confederacy, and to favor the South by allowing privateers like the "Alabama" to be built and manned in English ports. But the actual break with Mr. Lincoln's government did not come, and the old Whig statesman lived to see ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... still marching in, and "We'll rally round the flag, boys," was sung by an immense choir. The rebels in the streets gazed wonderingly at the men on the spire, and listened to the song, and the triumphant shouts of the conquering army, which proclaimed the beginning of the downfall of their confederacy. ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon

... this performance; in which, though by some artifice of action it yet keeps possession of the stage, it is not possible now to find any thing that might not have been written without so long delay, or a confederacy so numerous. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... silence by the Marquis of Lucchesini, his affected absence from some of our late Court circles, and the number of spies who now are watching his hotel and his steps, seem to indicate that Prussia is tired of its impolitic neutrality, and inclined to join the confederacy against France. At the last assembly at our Prince Cambaceres's, a rumour circulated that preliminary articles for an offensive alliance with your country had already been signed by the Prussian Minister, Baron Von ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... has acted with littleness toward him. In spite of all his misdeeds he is a noble fellow [pace Madame de Remusat], and I am confident will eclipse, in the eyes of posterity, all the crowned wiseacres that have crushed him by their overwhelming confederacy. If anything could place the Prince Regent in a more ridiculous light, it is Bonaparte suing for his magnanimous protection. Every compliment paid to this bloated sensualist, this inflation of sack and sugar, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave trade) "the internal slave trade." It is, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... of this originally peaceful confederacy were, curiously enough, laid in war, and that of the baser sort—war for the sake of pillage. The Vikings, finding themselves unable to realize the spoil with which they were sometimes gorged, conceived the idea of founding a ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... the Mohawk and Hudson rivers formed a direct avenue for the fur-trade from the region of the great lakes to the finest harbour on all the Atlantic coast. In a military sense it was important for two reasons; first, because the Mohawk valley was the home of the most powerful confederacy of Indians on the continent, the steady allies of the English and deadly foes of the French; secondly, because the centre of the French power was at Montreal and Quebec, and from those points the route by which the English colonies could be most easily invaded was formed ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... talking simply about yourselves and your office-holders and your dirty profits. You're calling that mess of nasty confederacy 'Our Party,'" declared General Waymouth, passionately. "When honesty kills a party, let it die—let its men get out and organize another one. But I tell you, you can't kill it by being honest, Thelismer. The trouble is you're sitting here and building for to-night—for to-morrow. I'm a Republican—you ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... remembering the wide occult sway claimed by Colonel Von Sendlingen, suspected that the girl was not so much her ally as she wished. She had begun to watch her under the impression that she was in confederacy with Mademoiselle Daniels. She had perceived no signs of that, but she believed she intercepted an exchange of glances with the false Marseillais. They were of the same nationality and this fact caused Cesarine ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I have idled, I ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Street, William Smith, and diverse other persons to the number of twelve, to your subject unknown, did about the eight and twentieth day of December, in the one and fortieth year of your highness reign, and sithence your highness last and general pardon, by the confederacy aforesaid, riotously assembled themselves together, and then and there armed themselves with diverse and many unlawful and offensive weapons, as namely swords, daggers, bills, axes, and such like, and so armed did then repair unto the said Theatre, and then and there armed as aforesaid, in very ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... Those two peaceably inclined nations might, at some future day, be disposed to step in and help them out—in a quiet way. It was not so much humanity as a matter of profitable trade with these two great nations, and if things should take a successful turn, they might see the confederacy in a strong light, and give it material as well as moral help, notwithstanding it had slavery for its foundation. In short, these Southern gentlemen acted on the wise axiom, that it will not do to make enemies in a direction where you may need ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams

... even a sketch of the numerous and complicated operations of the war, and I have therefore confined myself to the central point of the great struggle—the attempts of the Northern armies to force their way to Richmond, the capital of Virginia and the heart of the Confederacy. Even in recounting the leading events in these campaigns, I have burdened my story with as few details as possible, it being my object now, as always, to amuse as well as to give instruction in ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... with truth be said that the extent of the service rendered by Loudoun in this, as well as preceding wars, will never be fully known or adequately appreciated. However, certain it is that thousands of her sons espoused the cause of the Confederacy, hundreds died in its defense, and not a few, by their valor and devotion, won enduring fame and meritorious mention in ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head



Words linked to "Confederacy" :   Peach State, FL, federation, Georgia, TN, conspiracy, machinator, Tar Heel State, Magnolia State, Show Me State, Louisiana, ar, mo, Old Dominion State, Confederate States of America, North Carolina, slave state, understanding, plotter, dixie, Pelican State, nation, conspirator, geographic area, circle, Volunteer State, sc, Empire State of the South, TX, Hanseatic League, Alabama, Tennessee, conspiracy of silence, Land of Opportunity, la, Virginia, band, Palmetto State, al, geographic region, Confederate States, Texas, lot, confederate, southern, Mississippi, Old North State, Camellia State, Sunshine State, Lone-Star State



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com