[billbears]

Well that's not necessarily true now is it?

Illustrous and Honorable President, Greeting: We have just received, with all proper benevolence, the persons sent by you to deliver to us your letter of the 23rd of September ultimo. We have learned with pleasure through the said persons and through your letter what was the nature of the feelings of joy and gratitude which were excited in you, illustrious and honorable President, when given information about the letters written by us to our venerable brothers, John, Archbishop of New York, and John, Archbishop of New Orleans, on the 18th of October of the preceding year, wherein we made an earnest appeal to their compassionate feelings and episcopal solicitude, and exhorted them to endeavor, with fervent zeal and in our name, to induce the people of your country to put an end to the disastrous civil war which is raging there, so as to secure for your people the benefits of peace and concord and charitable love for each other.

It has been particularly gratifying to us to be informed that you and your people are animated by the same desires of peace and concord which we in the letters above referred to inculcated in the venerable brothers of ours to whom they were addressed. May God be willing to grant that the other people of America, and of the authorities who are at their head, seriously considering what a grave thing civil war is and how much misfortune and wrong it carries with it, should listen to the inspirations of a calmer spirit, and resolutely adopt a policy of peace!

As to us, we shall never cease to address the most fervent prayers to Almighty God, requesting him to inspire in the whole people a spirit of peace and charity and to free them from the great evils which now afflict them. We pray at the same time to merciful God to bestow upon you the light of his grace, and cause you to be attached to us by a perfect union.

Given at St. Peter, Rome, December 1. 1861. the eighteenth of our pontificate. --Pope Pius IX

Now considering that the Vatican is accepted as a separate and equal entity from Italy, it seems to me that the Pope's acceptance was at least a legal recognition of the Confederate States

[Non-Sequitur]

Letter aside the confederate envoy was not accepted as the envoy of an independent country or treated as an ambassador. No ambassador was sent to the cofederacy by the Vatican or any other country. Nobody officially treated the confederacy as anything but a rebellious part of the United States. Nobody.