Well, for over a hundred years our constitution was called the British North America Act, but we didn’t call ourselves any variant of “Americans.” That term means folks from the US.
You’re basically trying to move the goalposts here. Nobody has any objections to calling the Confederates the Confederates. That’s what the Confederates called themselves and it’s been normal usage ever since.
The issue (go back and look) was over what we call the other side; the United States. People don’t object to calling the people from the United States Americans in other contexts. It was the Americans vs the British or the Americans vs the Mexicans or the American vs the Germans or the Americans vs the Japanese or the Americans vs the Iraqis. But for some reason, in discussions of the Civil War it becomes the Union vs the Confederacy or the north vs the south. Which is nonsense; the United States didn’t split into a Union half and a Confederate half. The Confederates left the United States and the United States was still there. The Confederates gave up on being Americans.
I feel the problem is modern Confederate wannabees want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to pretend they’re rebels and patriots at the same time; rebels against the United States and patriots loyal to the United States. Which, as I’ve already said, is bullshit.
The first constitution of the United States was called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, yet the country wasn’t called any variant of “Confederacy”.
In any event, the “of America” in both the USA and the CSA refers to “of the American land mass”.
If you dispute that your continent is called “North America”, we can discuss this further.
Interesting article by a history professor in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette last year. He argues that the Confederates saw themselves as the true Americans, the inheritors of the Revolutionary cause from before the 1789 Constitution:
Patrick Henry would probably have agreed.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand your point? 
I don’t think this is as contradictory as it sounds. One can rebel against what the USA has become, while being loyal to the USA they prefer/like/remember.
Suppose that Trump’s America turned into a fascist dystopia, and many liberals flocked to California and wanted California to secede and become a liberal haven from Trump’s America. In that situation they could plausibly claim to be ‘American patriots’ - they wanted American values to be preserved, and they wanted to recreate or stay loyal to their notion of a good America, while opposing what Trump’s America had turned into.
Well, the feeling’s mutual. You appear to object to the notion that the “of America” in the USA and the CSA refers to the American continent, on the basis that other countries on that continent aren’t called “America” or “American”. I don’t know what to say to that, other than what I already have.
Compare your language here to that of Texas v. White:
Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union. If this were otherwise, the State must have become foreign, and her citizens foreigners. The war must have ceased to be a war for the suppression of rebellion, and must have become a war for conquest and subjugation.
Oddly, in your contempt for the Confederacy, you grant them the aim of their treasonous actions: the status of a sovereign nation, as opposed to citizens of the United States engaged in rebellion.
Far from it.
I’m saying that the term “American” has in English usage come to mean folks who live between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel. I don’t think it’s limited to the adherents of the 1789 Constitution, as Little Nemo argues.
It’s not a term that in English is used to mean anyone that lives on the North American continent.
And I’m not objecting to than usage, which (a) doesn’t bother me and (b) would be silly in any event to get my knickers in a twist about.
Perhaps this discussion could use it’s own thread?
Spoilsport! 
But I’m done. 
I’m not agreeing with their cause or saying it was right. But I’m acknowledging what it was they were doing. They were forming a new and separate country from the United States. They weren’t claiming that they could be both Confederates and Americans at the same time. It’s only modern people who think you can fly a Confederate flag and an American flag at the same time and claim loyalty to both.
No doubt. I’ll admit we’re wandering off the thread topic with this side-issue.
I see where you’re going, but I still think that this secession movement is a bit different than most: the people seceding didn’t view themselves as different people than the state they were leaving. Perhaps it’s better to compare it to the Northern Irish desire to remain free of the Republic of Ireland: they view themselves as both Irish and as part of the United Kingdom. While they’re Protestant rather than Catholic, they aren’t a different people.
Most secession movements include a nationalist component: people in northeastern Spain adopt the nationality of Catalonia while rejecting rule from Madrid.
The American Civil War just didn’t have that. The South viewed themselves as fully American and fully the descendants and inheritors of theretofore American history and culture. Perhaps it’s easiest to view it like the various wars between Austria and Prussia, where both sides were German; or if we were talking about a speculative war between the PRC and the RoC, where both sides would be Chinese. Nations of people don’t have to correspond to a single state. During the early 1860s, there were just two de facto states of Americans.
Sorry, I hadn’t reached the bottom of this thread while posting that last remark. Perhaps a Mod could split the Confederate/American discussion into its own thread (if that’s possible.)
During the Franco-Prussian war, when both sides had needle rifles, frontal attacks could still be effective. Although at great cost.
Based on the name, “needle gun” sounds like it should be a militarized sewing machine.
Pretty sure you know this, Flyer, but the name came from the firing pin. See: Needle gun - Wikipedia