In order for you to be able to ifconfig the connection up, you must have the proper ethernet modules loaded, or at least configured in /etc/modprobe.conf. That's good. That's 50% of the battle. Now, why can't you use system-config-network to configure the (now working) ethernet card to active at boot time? [From the GUI, click the Fedora -> System Tools -> Network Device Control From there, select your ethernet device and push the "Configure..." button, (supply your root password, if necessary), select your device in the Network Configuration window, and push the "Edit" button in the toolbar. Check the box that reads: "Activate device when the computer starts"]
You also might want to check 'allow all users to enable & disable the device' option especially if there are multiple NICs on the machine. This is especially useful on laptops where there is both a wireless & wired NIC, I've got mine set up to start neither on boot since having the default eth interface unavailable on boot will cause a significant delay on boot. I use the network device control applet to bring up/down as required.