Was the Civil War an actual civil war, or a war between the states? Why?

Question

Just want some opinions...and yes, I have googled it.

Answer 1

Well technecally speaking, it wasn't a civil war at all. Civil War means the country fights for control of the government. The north and the south were just fighting because the south attacked for sumter. Google or wikipedia won't do you any good. You should go to Heritage.com or Americanthinker.com.

Answer 2

An argument can be made that the US civil war wasn't actually a civil war because the confederate states no longer considered themselves part of the US. The counter argument to that would be that the southern states didn't have the legal or constitutional right to secede from the union, so the CSA was never a separate country.

Answer 3

That's just semantics. It was called the Civil War in the North, and the War between the States in the South. In the sense that a civil war is a war within one country, it was certainly that. In the sense that different states took different sides, it was certainly that as well. The titles reflect the spin each side tried (and still tries) to put on the war. It means little.

Answer 4

As has been stated previously, it was NOT a civil war because a civil war requires fighting between divisions of one country for control of the central government of that country. The South was not fighting to take control of the government of the USA, therefore it was not a civil war. It was a war between the US and the Confederate States who had seceded from the union.

Answer 5

The word 'civil' is from Latin, and means 'within a state'.
The US Civil War was partly a dispute about states' rights, which the south thought the Republic would deny. The southern states therefore call it a war between states, and Northern unitary republicans call it a civil war.

Answer 6

It was a war between the States. Several States seceded from the Union and formed their own country: The Confederated States of America. There was no desire to overthrow the Union government in Washington.

Answer 7

A civil war is a war between internal parties,;ie, between the states. duhhh.

Answer 8

Just a semantic issue. It was most certainly a Civil War, which is really brother against brother.

The South likes to sugar-ize the whole affair, as if their entire position wasn't based on the reprehensible moral ground of defending a slave economy.

We don't buy it, nor does history.

Answer 9

Certainly it was NOT, as the defenders of the slavers would have it, a "war between the states."

It WAS a civil war.

Thousands of Southerners fought for the Union. There were regiments in the Union army from every Southern state except South Carolina. Alabama alone had SIX. If you're interested, check out this website for one of them, the 1st Alabama Cavalry, US Volunteers -
http://www.1stalabamacavalryusv.com/roster/stories.asp?trooperid=2005

Claiming that it "wasn't about slavery," as many pro-"Confederacy" types, and even many of the UNION politicians at the time did, is false - that war was all about the economics and politics of slavery.

As an angry pro-Union Southerner said about the slaveowners' rebellion, it was "A rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

(The below is "cut-and-pasted" from various answers I've given on this topic before)

Almost 200,000 blacks, MOST from the SOUTH, were in the Union Army. Over 120,000 *white* Southerners were in the Union Army. Together these added up to, let's be CONSERVATIVE, say, 300,000 men (and a few brave women in disguise!).

Since there were approximately 900,000 in the rebel army, this means that one out of every four Southern soldiers wore BLUE. And it can be argued that without them, the Union might have lost.

Folks who defend the fake nation called the "Confederacy" don't like to deal with the fact that the whole South did not support the slaver "government." The hill areas in Alabama, for instance, and large parts of Virginia, as well as parts of Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, were dangerous for "Confederate" officials to travel in. In Alabama, pro-Union guerrillas used to regularly hang "Confederate" tax collectors. Florida only got a majority vote to join the secession because pro-Union representatives, legally elected by Florida voters, were physically prevented from entering a meeting hall by armed mobs organized by the slavers.

The western counties of Virginia revolted against the "Confederacy" and joined the Union as the separate state of West Virginia.

The Southern Unionists were some of the bravest and most decent people this country ever produced. They also paid the highest price.

(quoted from the above-referenced website)

START QUOTE
P.D. Hall, a Marion-Franklin County resident, joined the 1st Alabama Cavalry and suggested that the Alabama unionists who fought “made a greater sacrifice for the Union than the men of the North.”

“Consider the loyal men in the South, especially as far south as Alabama, what they had to endure for their country. They were exposed and in danger every minute of their lives. They were shot sitting by their firesides or walking on the road; they had to leave their families to the abuse of the enemy; had to keep themselves closely concealed like the vermin in the woods until they could make escape through the lines, and then had to share the same hardships of soldiers life that the comrades of the North bore.”
END QUOTE

The Civil War was a CLASS war. Slavery was no longer economically viable more than thirty years before the Civil War. The slavers had all sorts of laws on their side giving them advantages over capitalists and manufacturers, basically forcing the other classes to subsidize them, otherwise they would have been out of business. They were able to pass these laws because of political advantages, advantages they were losing because of new western states adding anti-slaver senators to the Senate and the increasing Northern population adding anti-slaver representatives to the House.

The slavers tried to maintain their advantage with their stranglehold over the Supreme Court and veto power over the presidency. When it looked like a non-slaver president would be elected, they knew their political power could no longer maintain their weak economic power.

They tried threats, saying if Lincoln was elected they would secede. But he was, and when they did, they lost the war they provoked.

An army made up of workers, small businessmen, and farmers, fighting for big business on the Union side, beat an army of peasants that had been fooled into fighting for the slavers.

Many white Southerners from all walks of life opposed slavery and the slaver dictators, and supported the Union. Besides the thousands who signed up for the Union Army, who do you think helped Harriet Tubman run the Underground Railroad?

And, unfortunately, in the North, racist pro-secessionist mobs rampaged. In New York City on two occasions rioters burned down draft offices and attacked black neighborhoods. The mayor of New York even talked publicly about seceding and setting up an independent city-state, controlling its own port and harbor. Lincoln's reply to these comments was something to the effect that if the country was like a house, he wasn't about to let the front door (New York City) set up housekeeping on its own. At one point Union Army troops were sent to occupy the island of Manhattan.

So the Civil War, our Second Revolution against the slaver dictators, was a CLASS war that had SOME regionalist characteristics.

And when the Third Revolution comes, it will also be a class struggle. The workers, small businesspeople, and farmers will go up against big business.

And they will win. Again.

Answer 10

Uh, YEah. Google it.