I have frequently heard the expression that the American Civil War was “the war fought over a verb” because antebellum treaties typically referred to the United States in the plural (“the United States are”), but treaties made after the war referred to the United States in the singular (“the United States is”). I can’t recall where I first heard this “expression,” but it was many years ago, probably in some Reader’s Digest filler that I read in childhood.
I have since tried verifying the expression, but its pedigree is elusive. I have seen it attributed to Lincoln’s biographers Carl Sandburg (Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926); Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939)) and David Herbert Donald (Liberty and Union (1978); Lincoln Reconsidered (1981); Lincoln (1996)), but have scoured their works without finding it or any reference leading to it. I checked a collection of treaties from the early Republic, which generally refer to the “Government of the United States” rather than the “United States” itself (or themselves). I have found some modern speakers who remember it from their own childhoods, but none who mentioned a reference that I can check.
The earliest verifiable reference that I can find is in an unlikely, but venerable, source:
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, Hellas and Hesperia or the Vitality of Greek Studies in America 16 (1909).
Is there a more common source for the expression that the Civil War was “the war fought over a verb”?
The reasons they give seem to be entirely based on preserving slavery, extending slavery into the territories, and complaints that people in the free states prevent their agents from capturing and returning escaped slaves. They even point out with horror that the free states advocate:
“the equality of the black and white races” (Georgia)
“negro equality, socially and politically” (Mississippi)
“proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color” (Texas)
But it’s clear that the free states felt that the USA was one nation, while the slave states felt that it was several individual, soverign states just working together. So free states felt that the “United States” was singular, so they said “the United States is…”. The slave states felt that “United States” was plural, so they said “the United States are…”. Saying that it was ‘a war fought over a verb’ is a rather cutsey term, and seems to minimize the serious differences at the heart of this conflict.
And technically, it’s not a verb, but subject-verb tense agreement.
This is probably going to turn into another interminable “What caused the Civil War” thread. Nearly a century and a half and we still can’t come to complete agreement.
Actually, it is a touch of irony applied to conceptualization in political philosophy.
Since the Civil War, there has been general consensus agreement that the United States is a nation headed by a Congress, President, and Supreme Court, with capital in Washington DC, structured on the federal principle.
But in 1784, the united states of America were thirteen newly-independent small nations along the Atlantic coast of North America who had recently banded together under the Articles of Confederation.
The idea that the USA was a voluntary union of independent states, rather than an indissoluble national entity, died hard. Right down to Gen. Lee feeling that his primary patriotism was to his state, not to the federal union, on the eve of the Civil War.
And that’s the point. The United States is a nation comprised of 50 states. As opposed to the idea that The United States are 50 sovereign states in a voluntary union.
An historian on The History Channel said that ‘are’ became ‘is’ as a result of the Civil War. I’ve never heard anyone claim that the war was fought over a word.
We’re all neglecting that Britishism in which a collective noun takes the plural form of the verb. Maybe it’s merely a difference in dialect of the time.
But did it actually happen? Was the United States referred to in the plural prior to 1860? That is, can you commonly find references like “the United States are”? I’ve heard it asserted that the Civil War turned the “are” into “is” but I’ve never seen this assertion supported.
Yes. You can find frequent references to the United States in the plural before the Civil War – even in the Constitution itself, as recently as the 13th amendment (proposed January 1865, ratified December 1865):
(Emphasis added.) A leading grammarian offers another example from The Federalist Papers (and corroborates Monty’s hypothesis):
Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage 806 (2003).
Was the United States often referred to in the plural prior to 1860?
What is the origin of the assertion that the decline in this usage was one of the results of the war?
What is the origin of the assertion that controversy over this usage was one of the causes of the war?
The latter is the OP’s question, but I can shed no light on it. I never encounered this assertion until now. I think perhaps it is not as common as the OP may believe.
Regarding #2, I first encountered the assertion in James B. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom. Shelby Foote spoke the same assertion in the Burns Civil War mini-series. I don’t know if Foote also wrote it in his Civil War books because I haven’t read them. I doubt that the assertion was original with either McPherson or Foote.
McPherson unfortunately didn’t provide any sourcing or documentation, although he does document the parallel change in usage from “Union” to “nation”. It’s hard to google or search for “United States is” or “are” because you get too many false hits, as in “the economy of the United States is improving”.
Here is what Ken Burns had to say in an interview about his miniseries:
It can’t possibly have been, since my OP quotes a source from 1909. McPherson was born in 1936, Foote in 1916. (By the way, I think that Freddy meant James M. McPherson, the historian, who wrote Battle Cry of Freedom. James B. McPherson was a Civil War general who died in 1864.)
But your source makes a slightly different, and indeed a somewhat inconsistent claim: that the two sides disagreed over which verb form to use before the Civil War, and that this disagreement was a reflection of the underlying differences over the nature of the Union. McPherson and Burns (maybe I’m wrong in remembering Foote from the miniseries; maybe it was Burns himself speaking) assert that the plural usage was common in both sections, and only changed as a result of the war.
Yes, those McPhersons . . . always get them confused.
