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I enjoy using an older title: “War of Northern Aggression”.
Nothing wrong with it, but people who have no clue might think every state was at war with every other state. lol
“War Between The States” is more accurate than “Civil War” because it was a war for independence and not a war for one faction inside a nation to exert control over the other.
Of course, from Lincoln’s point of view (and that of the victors, who write the history) the Confederate States of America never left the USA, so they see it as a Civil War.
But, the CSA did secede and the USA did defeat them in war and re-annexed them as conquered territory for the duration of “Reconstruction”. To claim that the CSA had no legal right to secede requires an honest person to admit that the colonies had no legal right to present the Declaration of Independence to the legal ruler of those colonies.
Call it the ‘War over Slaves’ and be done with it.
:)
I think “the War Between the States” is pretty accurate but AMerican Civil War is shorter.
I remember hearing it called the War Between teh States about half the time as a kid, maybe because my grandparents were transplanted Southerners, but not so much anymore.
Don’t know why.
Well, as soetoro links himself to Lincoln, who could blame a secessionist?
That used to be an important term of distinction in the Old South.
The Confederate states claimed that the Constitution gave them authority to secede.
Lincoln and the North claimed that no such authority existed.
Thus, the North called Southern soldiers “rebels,” and the North called the conflict a “Civil War.”
How about “The War Against State’s Rights”.
Nothing is wrong in calling it “The war between the states.” It is simply a fact that most of us call it the Civil War.
My dear southern grandmother referred to that time as “The Great Unpleasantness”.
My SIL (hubby’s ancestors are from the south) still calls it the “War of Northern Aggression”
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Civil War works for me. The country was divided in half
FWIW, War Between the States always struck me as the most neutral term.
Civil War implies war within a nation, whereas the whole point of the war was over whether it was now one or two nations. The term at least implies acceptance of the single-nation idea.
There are also variants of more extreme terminologies. War of Northern Aggression vs. The Great Rebellion.
WBTS is most accurate, IMO, because to a very large extent that’s exactly what it was, especially in the beginning. The Federal and Confederate governments just did not have the machinery in place to run a war of such size, with much of the organization defaulting back to states as a result.
If Union states had just refused to support the war wholeheartedly, it would have quickly petered out.
How about “The War of Slavery-Endorsing Democrats against the Republicans, founded and financed by those who believe in the dignity of Human Life”?
(I am well aware there were more issues at stake, and the federalism questions involved...so no need to flame. I just want to re-emphasize the oft forgotten FACT that Democrats are the party of slavery, segregation, and subsidies that result in dependence on government. Democrats are also the party of abortion and welfare—all designed to keep the population SUBSERVIENT to the bureaucracy.)
“Why would the use of the term “War Between the States” particularly catch one’s attention when reading about that topic, also known as the Civil War?”
Loosely speaking, maybe because the States in Union created the Federal Government as their agent, not their ruler and the author of the quote:
a. Doesn’t realize this
or
b. Does realize this but also realizes that in the view of those who believe the Fed Gov should be the ruler instead of the agent, the use of the term undermines their belief as it recognizes the place of the states.
The inexorable expansion of the federal government and decline of relative importance of states followed the WBTS (though not for some decades), therefore it was caused by the WBTS.
Let us posit a world in which Africa was missing, and so no Africans had been imported to America. No slavery, no WBTS.
America would still have been settled by Europeans, and eventually probably have broken away from the mother country. Industrialization and its discontents would still have grown up during the later 19th and early 20th centuries, with resultant calls for government action to address those discontents.
In America the movement to do so was called the Progressive movement. But the exact same calls for expansion of central government power occurred in every other country that reached a similar stage in its development. Precise political issues varied by country, but the general trend is clear.
To believe that Lincoln "caused" the growth of federal power is just silly, IMO. He provided a significant precedent for such expansion, but the notion that TR, Wilson, etc. would have been unable to advance their notions without such a precedent is not logical.
Most of the federal growth during the war went away for the next few decades, not starting up again till the Progressives got going. AFAIK, they seldom cited Lincoln or the War as justification for the proposals.
It’s a great phrase.
We have one helluva war between the states of New York and New Jersey going on right now over Bridgegate.
Which will be the first to secede?
The first secession war of 1861-1865. When the red states secede again and there is another war, that will be the second secession war.