The Biased Names Assigned to Each Side of the American Civil War During the Heat of Battle

Linguist Patrick Foote of Name Explain looked into US history and found that the term for the American Civil War (1861-1865) was only given after the battles had been fought, noting that each side gave the war names that were biased towards its respective cause.

While this war today is now pretty much universally referred to as the Civil War or the American Civil War for those of us outside the US, this name wasn't really used during the time it was being waged. In fact, there really wasn't one single dominant name for the war as both sides referred to it by different names.

The South, which was pro-slavery, called it The War for Southern Independence", while the North, which was anti-slavery called it The Great Rebellion". These names went back and forth, and included such petty differences over battle naming conventions.

What all of this shows us is that in the midst of this war either side really couldn't agree on anything including the names of the war which also implies heavily what the war was even all about. ...Even the names of individual battles were different on either side. Both sides of this war decided to use completely different naming conventions when it came to the titles of their fights.

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