What the American Civil War really a Civil War?

Was the American Civil War truely a civil war? A civil war is fought bewteen a nation and an internal faction. But my history teacher told me today when me and him were having a private discussion due to a high number of absents, that it was techinally called the "War of Northern Aggression" because the Confederacy was independent, because the Union enacted a blockade, which he said was an act that could techinally only be undertaken against another soveign nation.

was the american revolution........a revolution? no, it was a rebellion and war for independence.

Sounds like your teacher is from the south?

Semantics are a wonderful thing.

The South was not ALLOWED to leave the union, therefore they were forcibly kept in it. They were never independent.

Originally posted by Flatlander Fox
Sounds like your teacher is from the south?

Semantics are a wonderful thing.

The South was not ALLOWED to leave the union, therefore they were forcibly kept in it. They were never independent.

Click to expand...

Not too sure about that. The US Constitution doesnt say anything about leaving the US.

However, it was a civil war since the Sout broke off of the US, but was never recognized by European countries.

I think it does say something about states not being able to do their own thing, I think that was one of the big reasons for getting rid of the Articles of Confederation.

It was a civil war as it was more or less a war between different factions within a single country.
Of course the point of the "single country" is a bit tricky when it comes to the United States of about 1860, as it was in fact (and somehow still is) a union of states. But that's states, not countries.

Befroe the United States were reformed under the Constitution, States were countries. As much as anything that was the genius of the Constitution.

That being said the Civil War was as much a civil war as any ever was. In the endit was about the governmental franchise.

J

PS It was not very civil for the most part. Quite the opposite in fact.

The American Civil War is probably the saddest chapter of our history.

Over 600,000 dead. More US casualties than both World Wars combined.
Countrymen fighting countrymen, cousins fighting cousins, brothers fighting brothers.

Americans killing Americans.

Its no wonder we were isolationist after that, and tried to stay out of European wars.

It was a civil war in every sense of the word, the political circumstances are just details.

But my history teacher told me today when me and him were having a private discussion due to a high number of absents, that it was techinally called the "War of Northern Aggression" because the Confederacy was independent...

Click to expand...

Funny how some people still think this. The south fired first, at Fort Sumter. Yet for many years, this is what the Civil War was refered to by many southerners.

BTW, in official government documents, the war was termed "The War of Rebellion."

To have stopped being a civil war, I think you would have had to have seen mass international recognition of the South as an actual state. That did not happen. In international eyes, the south was not really a country because it hadn't really secured its own soveriegnty.

R.III

Originally posted by napoleon526

Funny how some people still think this. The south fired first, at Fort Sumter. Yet for many years, this is what the Civil War was refered to by many southerners.

BTW, in official government documents, the war was termed "The War of Rebellion."

Click to expand...

This was the point i tried to make also.

Originally posted by Richard III
To have stopped being a civil war, I think you would have had to have seen mass international recognition of the South as an actual state. That did not happen. In international eyes, the south was not really a country because it hadn't really secured its own soveriegnty.

R.III

Click to expand...

Another very valid point i tried to make.

IMO, The Civil War was fought between two Factions.

Killing 600,000 people doesn't seem civil behaviour to me;
so it can not have been a civil war.

Originally posted by EdwardTking
Killing 600,000 people doesn't seem civil behaviour to me;
so it can not have been a civil war.

Click to expand...

And this what we call spam.

Hard to define it as either.

I lean towards that it was not a civil war because there was the north, and the south. A civil war has no fronts.

Though what is in a name, anyway...

Archer_007 wrote:

Was the American Civil War truely a civil war? A civil war is fought bewteen a nation and an internal faction. But my history teacher told me today when me and him were having a private discussion due to a high number of absents, that it was techinally called the "War of Northern Aggression" because the Confederacy was independent, because the Union enacted a blockade, which he said was an act that could techinally only be undertaken against another soveign nation.

Was your teacher by any chance named Trent Lott...?

I am amazed this foolishness about a "Northern War of Aggression" still persists. My impression from friends from the South was that this died out in the 1970s at the latest. As Napoleon 526 mentioned, since the South actually launched the war it's a bit of a stretch to call it a Northern war of aggression. The British historian Paul Johnson mentions that the states' rights argument was a bunch of bullsh*t, that the war from the Southern perspective was all about protecting the rights of an entrenched elite (plantation owners) and their lifestyle. The poor whites who fought in the Confederate Army so well were really fighting for their continued impoverishment. The Southerners did the one thing by firing at Fort Sumter (so says Johnson) that really could give the North the opportunity to break their power; by starting the war they brought about their own destruction. If they'd just stuck to speeches, Congress would surely never have dared ban slavery until slavery collapsed of its own dead economic weight. Also, as RIII said, usually to be considered independent a state requires the recognition of at least one or two other states - something the Confederacy never achieved.

As for what constitutes a civil war, I think all you need is two or more sides from within a state fighting each other. EdwardTKing's comment was not really spam, as the Civil War killed more Americans than any other conflict. In the popular histories much has been glorified and whitewashed, with a lot of the nasty bits edited out. It was indeed a most uncivil war.

Agreed Vrylakas. Me and my friend had a conversation about the ignorance of his comments after he had left the room (we were in another class when he said this). I was just setting up a question for debate. I do not personally buy into this view at all.

In the movie Gettysburg Tom Berringer, playing Gen. James Longstreet, said something interesting. When talking to the British observer Col. Freemantle, he says "We should have freed the slaves, then fired on Fort Sumter." This makes sense, because it would have showed the world that the Confederacy was about more than just an attempt to uphold an archaic and immoral economic system (which it was).

Towards the end of the war, some southern politicians proposed to the Confederate congress that slaves should be armed and trained to fight for the Confederacy, and receive their freedom as a reward. The question was, how far was the Confederacy willing to go to achieve independence? Far enough to arm the very people they held in servitude? This proposal was of course rejected, since the southern elite cared more about maintaining slavery than it did about winning southern independence.

That, and the slaves proboly would have turned on them.