The most common name for the American Civil War in modern American usage is simply "The Civil War". Although rarely used during the war, the term "War Between the States" became widespread afterward in the Southern United States. During and immediately after the war, Northern historians often used the terms "War of the Rebellion" or "The Great Rebellion", and the Confederate term was "War for Southern Independence", which regained some currency in the 20th century but has since fallen out of use. The name "Slaveholders' Rebellion" was used by Frederick Douglass and appeared in newspaper articles during that era. "Freedom War" is used to celebrate the war's effect of ending slavery in the United States.
During the Jim Crow era of the 1950s, the term "War of Northern Aggression" developed under the Lost Cause of the Confederacy movement by Southern historical revisionists or negationists. This label was coined by segregationists in an effort to equate contemporary efforts to end segregation with 19th-century efforts to abolish slavery.
Several names also exist for the forces on each side. The Union practice was to name their armies for the river valleys where they initially operated, while the Confederacy generally used state names. For example, the Army of the Tennessee was a Union army named for the river, while the Army of Tennessee was a Confederate army, named for the state. The opposing forces named battles differently as well. The Union forces frequently named battles for bodies of water that were prominent on or near the battlefield, but Confederates most often used the name of the nearest town.
Enduring names Civil War In the United States, "Civil War" is the most common term for the conflict and has been used by the overwhelming majority of reference books, scholarly journals, dictionaries, encyclopedias, popular histories, and mass media in the United States since the early 20th century.See titles listed in Oscar Handlin et al., Harvard Guide to American History (1954), pp. 385–398. The National Park Service, the government organization entrusted by the United States Congress to preserve the battlefields of the war, uses this term. 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" during the conflict. Abraham Lincoln used it on multiple occasions.Proclamation, August 12, 1861.Message to the Senate, May 26, 1862
Outside the United States, historiansKeegan, John, The American Civil War: A Military History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. .Wolseley, Garnet, Viscount Wolseley. The American Civil War: An English View. Reprint, Revised. Edited by James A. Rawley. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1964. .Parish, Peter J. (April 1975). The American Civil War. New York: Holmes & Meier, U.S. . writing in the English language usually refer to the conflict as the "American Civil War". Such variations are also used in the United States if the war might otherwise be confused with another civil war such as the English Civil War, the Russian Civil War, or the Spanish Civil War.
War Between the States
The term "War Between the States" was rarely used during the war but became prevalent afterward among proponents of the "Lost Cause" interpretation of the war.
The Confederate government avoided the term "civil war", which assumes both combatants to be part of a single country, and so referred to it in official documents as the "War between the Confederate States of America and the United States of America".Warwick, et al., The Brig Amy, 67 U.S. 635, *636, 673 (1862) European diplomacy produced a similar formula for avoiding the phrase "civil war". Queen Victoria's proclamation of British neutrality referred to "hostilities ... between the Government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America".
After the war, the memoirs of former Confederate officials and veterans (Joseph E. Johnston, Raphael Semmes, and especially Alexander Stephens) commonly used the term "War Between the States". In 1898, the United Confederate Veterans formally endorsed the name. In the early 20th century, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) led a campaign to promote the term "War Between the States" in the media and public schools. UDC efforts to convince the US Congress to adopt the term began in 1913 but were unsuccessful. Congress has never adopted an official name for the war. The name "War Between the States" is inscribed on the USMC War Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The name was personally ordered by Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr., the 20th Commandant of the Marine Corps.
American president Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the Civil War as "the four-year War Between the States".Michael Waldman, My Fellow Americans, p. 111; also, Disc 1 Track 19. References to the "War Between the States" appear occasionally in federal and state court documents, including in Justice Harry Blackmun's landmark opinion in Roe v. Wade.Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 139 (1973), see also Dairyland Greyhound Park, Inc. v. Doyle, 719 N.W.2d 408, 449 (Wisconsin, 2006) ("Prior to the War Between the States all but three states had barred lotteries.")
The names "Civil War" and "War Between the States" have been used jointly in some formal contexts. For example, to mark the war's centenary in the 1960s, the State of Georgia created the "Georgia Civil War Centennial Commission Commemorating the War Between the States". In 1994, the US Postal Service issued a series of commemorative stamps, "The Civil War: The War Between the States".
Historical terms in the United States
War of the Rebellion
During and immediately after the war, US officials, Southern Unionists, and pro-Union writers often referred to Confederates as "Rebels". The earliest histories published in the northern states commonly refer to the war as "the Great Rebellion" or "the War of the Rebellion",Henry S. Foote, War of the Rebellion; Or, Scylla and Charybdis, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866; Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860–64, 2 vols., Hartford, Connecticut: O.D. Case & Co., 1864, 1866; Henry Wilson, The History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols, Boston, Massachusetts: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1872–1877. as do many war monuments, hence the nicknames Johnny Reb (and Billy Yank) for the participants.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered a speech entitled "The Slaveholders' Rebellion" on July 4, 1862, in Himrod, New York,Noel, Tricia (June 20, 2021), "LOOKING BACK: The Slaveholders' rebellion: Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July in Himrod" , Finger Lakes Times, accessed 2021-12-14 and John Harvey wrote The slaveholders' rebellion, and the downfall of slavery in America in 1865.
The official US war records refer to the war as the "War of the Rebellion". The records were compiled by the US War Department in a 127-volume collection, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, which was published from 1881 to 1901. Historians commonly refer to the collection as the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.
War of Separation/Secession "War of Separation" was occasionally used by people in the Confederacy during the war.Coulter, E. Merton (1950). The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865. . pp. 60–61. In most Romance languages, the words used to refer to the war translate literally to "War of Secession" (, , , , ), a name that is also used in Central and Eastern Europe: is commonly used in German, and is used in Polish. Walt Whitman called it the "War of Secession" or the "Secession War" in his prose.
War for Southern Independence/The War of Northern Aggression
The names "War for Southern Independence" or "The War of Northern Aggression" and their variations are used by some Southerners to refer to the war."Davis, Burke (1982), The Civil War: Strange and Fascinating Facts, New York: The Fairfax Press. , pp. 79–80. That terminology aims to parallel usage of the American Revolutionary War. While popular on the Confederate side during the war (Stonewall Jackson regularly referred to the war as the "second war for independence"), the term lost popularity in the immediate aftermath of the Confederacy's defeat and its failure to gain independence. The term resurfaced slightly in the late 20th century.
A popular poem published in the early stages of hostilities was South Carolina. Its prologue referred to the war as the "Third War for Independence" since it named the War of 1812 as the second such war.War Songs and Poems of the Southern Confederacy 1861–1865, H. M. Wharton, compiler and editor, Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2000, , p. 69. On November 8, 1860, the Charleston Mercury, a contemporary southern newspaper, stated, "The tea has been thrown overboard. The Revolution of 1860 has been initiated."The Civil War: A Film by Ken Burns. Dir. Ken Burns, Narr. David McCullough, Writ. and prod. Ken Burns. Public Broadcasting System DVD Gold edition, Warner Home Video, 2002, .
In the 1920s, the historian Charles A. Beard used the term "Second American Revolution" to emphasize the changes brought on by the Union's victory. The term is still used by the Sons of Confederate Veterans organization but with the intent to represent the Confederacy's racist and slave-owning cause positively.
War for the Union Some Southern Unionists and northerners used "The War for the Union", the title of a December 1861 lecture by the abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips.
Ordeal of the Union, a major eight-volume history published from 1947 to 1971 by the historian and journalist (Joseph) Allan Nevins, emphasizes the Union in the first volume's title, which also came to name the series. Because Nevins earned the Bancroft, Scribner, and National Book Award Prizes for books in his Ordeal of the Union series, his title may have been influential. However, the fourth volume is titled Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861, and the next four volumes use "War" in their titles. The sixth volume, War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863, picks up on that earlier thread in naming the conflict, but Nevins neither viewed Southern secession as revolutionary nor supported Southern apologist attempts to link the war with the American Revolution of 1775–1783.
War of Northern/Yankee Aggression The name "War of Northern Aggression" has been used to indicate the Union as the belligerent party in the war. The name arose during the Jim Crow era of the 1950s when it was coined by segregationists who tried to equate contemporary efforts to end segregation with 19th-century efforts to abolish slavery. The name has been criticized by historians such as James M. McPherson, as the Confederacy "took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority" and "started the war by firing on the American flag".
Since the free states and most non-Yankee groups (Germans, Dutch-Americans, New York Irish and southern-leaning settlers in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) showed opposition to waging the Civil War,Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, pp. 28–29 other Confederate sympathizers have used the name "War of Yankee Aggression"Murray, Williamson, and Wei-siang Hsieh, Wayne; A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War, pp. 10–11 to indicate the Civil War as a Yankee war, not a Northern war per se.Lipset, Seymour; Party Coalitions in the 1980s, p. 211