Names of the American Civil War: Difference between revisions

The American Civil War has been known by numerous alternative names that reflect the historical, political, and cultural sensitivities of different groups and regions. Unlike some other civil wars, the conflict was not fought over control of a single government, but rather was fought to defeat or defend a secession movement. The combatants, armies, and battles of the war also had distinctive names used at the time and historically.

The following names have been, or are, used to describe the conflict itself, listed roughly by frequency of use. The first two names have seen enduring usage; the remaining names have been more isolated.

Civil War

The most common term for the conflict, it has been used by the overwhelming majority of reference books, scholarly journals, dictionaries, encyclopedias, popular histories, and the press in the United States since the early 20th century. The National Park Service, the government organization entrusted by the United States Congress to preserve the battlefields of the war, uses this term^[1]. It is also the oldest term for the war. Writings of prominent men such as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, P.G.T. Beauregard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and Judah P. Benjamin used the term Civil War both before and during the conflict. Abraham Lincoln used it on multiple occasions, most famously in his Gettysburg Address ("... Now we are engaged in a great civil war. ...).

Internationalized, disambiguated variations such as American Civil War (or, less frequently, U.S. Civil War), are not colloquial in the United States and they are uncommon in popular or scholarly discussion unless comparisons are made with other nations or the publication is meant for an international audience. Historians outside of the United States rarely use any term for the conflict other than these variations on "Civil War".

War Between the States

This term has been used widely in the South in the 20th century, although with decreasing frequency. It was seldom used during the war itself. The Official Records refer to an 1865 meeting between Maryland politician Francis P. Blair and Jefferson Davis in Richmond, in which Blair stated that he "felt very desirous to see the war between the states terminated." It first became prominent in 1868 when former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens published his work, A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States. He did not elaborate on the origin of the term, but explained in his introduction that he attempted to "present a Constitutional view of the late War between the States of 'the Union', known as 'the United States of America'." Another influential proponent of the term was Raphael Semmes, who also published in 1868 his Memoirs of Service Afloat during the War between the States (despite his writings during the war in which he used "civil war"). General Joseph E. Johnston's 1874 memoirs were entitled Narrative of Military Operations, Directed, During the Late War between the States. (An outlier from this trend of memoirs, General John B. Gordon, prominent in Confederate veterans' affairs, entitled his 1903 work, Reminiscences of the Civil War.) Although appearing in memoirs and some scholarly publications, the term did not become popular in the South until the late 19th century.

In the 1880s, the term War of the Rebellion (see next section) achieved some prominence in the North and in Congress, but it was considered a derogatory term by Southerners. They inferred that it carried a connotation indicating that the rebellion was against legitimate authority, which they denied. (Although Confederates during the war frequently used the term "Rebels" to describe themselves, this was considered to be pejorative when spoken by a Northerner.) It was in reaction to this term that War Between the States was seized upon as an alternative. In 1898 the United Confederate Veterans adopted a resolution:

That the expression "war of the Rebellion," which is frequently indulged by the papers and publishers of the South in alluding to the war between the States, is condemned by this organization, as we deem such expressions a reflection on the patriotism of the Southern people and the cause for which they so heroically fought for four years, and we respectfully request that all such publishers in alluding to the war designate it as the civil war between the States.

Campaigns were held throughout the South, often led by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, to promote War Between the States in periodicals, popular literature, and perhaps most importantly, in the public schools' teaching of history. In the 1920s, prominent UDC historian and speaker, Mildred Lewis Rutherford, wrote:

Reject a text-book that does not give the principles for which the South fought in 1861, and does not clearly outline the interferences with the rights guaranteed to the South by the Constitution and which caused secession. Reject a book that calls the Confederate soldier a traitor or rebel, and the war a rebellion. ... Ours was not a Civil War, ... it was the War Between the States, for the non-seceding States of the United States made war upon the seceding States of United States to force them back into the Union. Please call it so, and teach it so.

There is a modern myth that Congress officially adopted War between the States as the name for the conflict. The UDC created a committee in 1911 to promote this idea in Congress. A resolution was introduced in February 1913 by Congressman Charles G. Edwards of Georgia that stated:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the war sometimes referred to as the "Rebellion" and the "Civil War" be, and the same is hereby, officially and legally designated, named, and known as the "War Between the States."

The resolution died in committee and never reached the full House. Subsequent attempts to move the resolution by appealing to Presidents William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover were rebuffed. There was a resolution passed in 1928 that includes the term, but it related to a claim of the State of Nevada against the United States and the term was used merely to designate the time the claim originated. Since records of the debate regarding the resolution include the sponsor of the bill himself and others using the term Civil War, this resolution cannot be considered an official endorsement of any name for the war.

Although the term was most popular in the South, there are isolated examples of others using it, generally in efforts to promote comity between the regions or to avoid controversy. The USMC War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery uses this term, for example. In 1994 the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative set of postage stamps entitled "The Civil War" / "The War Between the States". In the 1960s, an official group was named with an all-encompassing compromise: the Georgia Civil War Centennial Commission Commemorating the War Between the States.

War of the Rebellion

People in the streets and officials in Washington from Lincoln down usually referred to the war as "the rebellion" in official proclamation, correspondence, and everyday conversation. Likewise it was the common term used in newspaper reports and editorials, and by soldiers in the field. In the late 19th century the favored term in the North was the "the late rebellion". The 1880 U.S. War Department report and compilation of Union army and Confederate army records (the Official Records) was entitled The War of the Rebellion. An alternative, less-common usage is War of Southern Rebellion. The term had some prominence in the late 19th century and is often seen on Northern war monuments, but was completely overshadowed by the adoption of Civil War and War Between the States.

War between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America

This was the official term used in documents in Richmond during the war. This term in shortened form may be the genesis of "War Between the States".

War of Southern Independence

While popular on the Confederate side during the war itself, this term's popularity fell in the immediate aftermath of the South's failure to gain independence. It made a comeback in the late 20th century among Confederate heritage groups such as the League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

War of Northern Aggression

This term emphasizes claims by Confederate partisans that the North invaded the South. It never was a popular usage as an explicit name for the war.

War for States' Rights

This is a neo-Confederate term coined in the late 20th century to promote a political agenda. It was not used by historians before 1990, nor by the people of the 1860s.

Other terms for the war have seen even less frequent usage, particularly in modern times. In the South: War in Defense of Virginia, Mr. Lincoln's War, and War of Secession. In the North: War of the Insurrection, War to Save the Union. Later writers invented terms such as War for Abolition and War to Prevent Southern Independence, which were rarely used in print or conversation.

Immediately after the war, the following expressions were common: The War, The Late Unpleasantness, and The Lost Cause. (The author of the 1866 book, The Lost Cause, Edward A. Pollard, was another example of one who use the term Civil War in that period.)

U.S. forces were popularly referred to as "the Union,", "Federals", "the North," or "Yankees"; their Confederate counterparts were commonly referred to as "the Confederacy," "the South," "Rebels," or "Dixie." Soldiers who fought for the North were referred to as "Billy Yanks"; those who fought for the South were called "Johnny Rebs."

In addition to differences in naming the war between North and South, there is a disparity between the sides in naming some of the battles of the war. In the North, battles were frequently named for rivers or creeks that were prominent on or near the battlefield; in the South, the nearest town was used. Not all of the disparities are based on this land-versus-water conflict. Most modern accounts of Civil War battles use the names established by the North. However, for some battles, the Southern name has become the standard. The National Park Service frequently uses the southern names for their battlefield parks located in the South, presumably in deference to local sensibilities or because the town names are more frequently found on maps accessible to tourists than are river names. Some examples of battles with dual names are:

Civil War armies were also named in a manner reminiscent of the battlefields: Northern armies were frequently named for major rivers (Army of the Potomac, Army of the Tennessee, Army of the Mississippi, etc.), Southern armies for states or geographic regions (Army of Northern Virginia, Army of Tennessee, Army of Mississippi).

Units smaller than armies were named differently in many cases. Union brigades were given numeric designations (1st, 2nd, ...), whereas Confederate brigades were frequently named after their commanding general (Hood's Brigade, Gordon's Brigade, ...). Confederate brigades so-named retained the name of the original commander even when commanded temporarily by another man; for example, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Hoke's Brigade was commanded by Isaac Avery and Nicholl's Brigade by Jesse Williams. Nicknames were common in both armies, such as the Iron Brigade and the Stonewall Brigade. Union artillery batteries were generally named numerically, Confederate batteries by the name of the town in which they were recruited.

1. ^ National Park Service site on the Civil War

• Catton, Bruce, The Coming Fury: The Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume 1, Doubleday, 1961, ISBN 0641685254.
• Coski, John M., "The War between the Names", North and South magazine, vol. 8, no. 7., January 2006.
• U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies], U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.

• National Park Service
• Civil War Battle Names
• Musick, Michael P., "Civil War Records: A War by Any Other Name." Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives. Summer 1995, Vol. 27, No. 2.