The Confederate States have an extremely diverse geography. While it claimed a 3,500-mile (5,630km) coastline, and contained nearly 200 harbors and navigable river mouths, Appalachian Mountain Range and Mississippi River played a vital role in the settlement and development of the entire state.
The Secessionists had many advantages at Civil War's outset. With many mountains and rivers running east-west in the South, they were able to build defensible positions.
In what was then known as the West (Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and northern Georgia), river transportation proved vital to the outcome of the war. The Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee rivers run through the heart of the slave states, and takes hold of the region by controlling them.
The Ohio River would be an international boundary between the Confederate States and the Union if Kentucky joined the Confederacy. A big river like the Ohio is easier to protect than trying to keep an army from crossing the land.
The rolling hills of the Piedmont region end at the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, Tennessee, and New Hampshire rise above 6,000 feet (1,830 m). The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extends north to south across the continental Confederate States.
The Confederate States' highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was the Guadalupe Peak, part of the Guadalupe Mountains range in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. The Appalachian Range that also usually includes the Blue Ridge Mountains, Great Smoky Mountains, Allegheny Mountains stretches from Alabama, northeast across New England, and extending up to Canada.