I'm certainly uninterested in arguing or scoring points, but I don't understand what "officially illegitimate" means. According to the Union, all 13 seceding states were illegitimate (or else "technically part of the Union") and later reconstructed (with the possible exception of Tennessee). According to the Confederacy, however, Kentucky and Missouri had joined the C.S.A.
Almost all historians now say that the rump conventions that declared for the Confederacy represented a definite minority of their states, but that's not a technical judgement about official legitimacy. Virginia, Tennessee and Maryland also sent troops to fight on both sides. I'm not saying you're wrong in counting only 11 states in the Confederacy, but maybe your question about the "last state" could be clarified in some way. |