# Best Name For American Civil War **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 9, 2009, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835 "2009-08-09T16:09:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/41 "2009-08-10T19:54:21Z")
The Glorious Buttwhipping of the Southern Pansies. At least, that is what I call to tweak my southern cousins. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/42 "2009-08-10T20:14:24Z")
The First Annual Blue-Grey Game? ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/43 "2009-08-10T23:00:03Z")
“The War That Made ‘The United States of America’ Singular” ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/44 "2009-08-11T07:48:50Z")
I read somewhere that the official name in the annals of the U.S. Army is The War Of The Rebellion. FWIW, anyone who’s interested in this should go to NPR’s website and try to find a story they had about a convention of Gettysburg veterans, both USA and CSA, held about 1929. They played excerpts from the radio reports of the time and it’s really amazing to think that the voices of these men who were had been at the battle in 1863 were preserved so many years later. There’s one of very few surviving recordings of the Rebel Yell, not that the man had much wind left to give it. Come to think of it, it wasn’t 1929, it had to have been around 1934, since they openly provided the men with whiskey. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/45 "2009-08-11T10:27:28Z")
I like calling it _The Blue and The Grey_ after the old TV-series. But then, our country’s major interaction with the affair is a minstrel song called “[There Comes the Alabama](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Alabama#.22Daar_kom_die_Alibama.22)” ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/46 "2009-08-11T12:04:13Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Slight hijack. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had the Confederacy not fired on Fort Sumter, if the southern leaders had shown the patience of Castro over Guantanamo. There would (presumably) been no war. The Dred Scott decision would have been null and void (since slave owners would have no standing to sue), the western territories would have been made free, the small pockets of slavery in the north would have disappeared, perhaps by something like the 13th amendment. After ten, twenty, fifty years, the secession would have become de facto accepted throughout what remained of the US. The south? Well, I don’t know, but when I took US History in college, the instructor (who was from Texas) opined that the south would have stagnated economically, stuck in a dying way of life. Perhaps, even asked to rejoin the union. One of mine opined that the Confederacy would have gone the way of South Africa. Slavery was becoming abhorrent to other nations, and unless they wanted to isolate themselves, they’d have had to have gotten rid of it over the next 30 years or so. But they’d have had apartheid. That would have kept them in international relations for another 50 years or so, but then that, too, would have become abhorrent to their international neighbors - assuming that the World Wars would have played out the same. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/47 "2009-08-11T14:15:56Z")
The War the South Lost Already, Get Over It. But if that’s no good, I think “The Civil War” will do in a pinch. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/48 "2009-08-11T15:08:48Z")
The War of Southern Revisionism ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/49 "2009-08-11T15:11:58Z")
The Slaver War ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/50 "2009-08-11T15:43:15Z")
A case study in the failed implementation of a dual currency system as a means for social and economic stability. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835/51 "2009-08-11T17:40:53Z")
I live in the South (barely --Northern Virginia) and have “Confederates in the woodshed” in my family tree. Although I cannot escape some of the romanticism associated with the war itself, I suppose I agree with Grant’s assessment: [I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant) I did, however, get a huge kick out of an argument I had with a co-worker regarding the practice of flying the Confederate battle flag over the Georgia capitol. She was not only a supporter of the practice and an unreformed rebel, she also maintained that the state’s decision was irreversible. “It’s not like the Federal government can go down there with guns and _make_ them take that flag down,” she said, smugly. “Why not? Sherman did,” was my reply. I don’t think she ever talked to me again. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-name-for-american-civil-war/505835.md?page=2)