From a message to Lee Daniel Crocker -
"Hi! On False document/Talk you wrote, "Confederate currency was the legitimate, useful currency of a sovereign country." A few months ago I got interested in this issue - whether the Confederacy should or should not be viewed as having been a sovereign country (I consider myself emotionally neutral on this issue). I discovered that no foreign government recognized the CSA. Since this is, I think, the most general, and probably one of the most useful, limtus tests for judging an administration sovereign/not-sovereign, I think we have to say that the CSA "was" "really" a "territory in rebellion" and not "really" a "sovereign state"."
see also American Civil War