In a few threads and various other places I’ve seen and heard people refer to the U.S. Civil War as the “War of Northeern Aggression,” an obvious Southern-apologist spin name.
My question: Is this a recent innovation? Did anyone call it “The War of Northern Aggression” prior to 1865, or has it been invented since? When did people start using this team, and why?
It is a new term. In fact I’ve only heard it used a few times. I grew up in the south and the war was just called the war between the states. Since the south started it, it would be hard to call it northern aggression. Though, if the south had won, they could call it what ever they wanted. 
Actually, according to one of my professors, that IS what the South called it.
I grew up in the south and I have always heard it called that.
The reasoning is that the south didn’t start the war. The southern states only wanted to seperate from the union. It was when mean agressive northerners wouldn’t let them that the war started.
Not very good reasoning I know. But, “The Great War of Northern Aggression” has a nice ring to it when said with a drawling southern accent.
It is a term used (historically and occasionally in more modern times) by fire-eating southern Confederate-cause sympathizers.
The more moderate everyday term used in the south was/is “War Between the States”.
The north tended to use the phrase “Civil War”.
Lest there be any doubt about lingering anger in the South over the “War of Northern Aggression”, I overheard this exchange while visiting Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor about ten years ago while standing at a diorama of the the battle…
Adorable innocent-looking little 8 year old blond kid: “Which are the good guys, mommy?”
Mommy, in classic southern drawl: “The people in gray, Billy…” (name has been changed to protect the innocent)
Of course, being a born and bred Wisconsinite, I knew for damn sure that the good guys were in blue.
By the way, the Rebs did fire the first shot at Fort Sumter. I realize that the War was pretty much inevitable no matter who fired the first shot but to say the North “started” the war is a bit unfair. But that’s just my Yankee heritage talking perhaps.
How 'bout “The War To Keep Our Cheap Slave Labor”. Considering that the South wouldn’t’ve prospered with out it, it’s no wonder they were willing to start a war to defend it.
BTW, my great-great-grandfather, killed in that war (no matter what you call it), is buried in Lee’s backyard, aka Arlington National Cemetary.
Mostly after the fact, when we were trying to be civil to the losers. During the war the North commonly called it the Great Rebellion or the War of the Rebellion.
Was it the War to Set the South Straight?
Or the War to Kick the South’s Ass? 
The “Northern Aggression” terminology would have been easy for those in the South to relate to-- after all, most of the war was fought on their territory. To them, that factor outweighed the question of who seceded and who fired the first shot.
My great-great-grandfather fought in the war and got to spend some time on the lovely, scenic Texas Gulf Coast (albeit behind the walls of a CSA military prison.) AWB, was your ancestor buried right in Lee’s backyard (next to the mansion), or are you referring to the whole cemetery as his “backyard”? Some of the earliest graves are within mere feet of the walls of the mansion. (Arlington Natl. Cemetery is only a few blocks from where I live.)
I prefer the term “Civil War,” because it’s easier to say than “War Between the States” and means the same thing.
I just took a walk across the street to the VA State Library and Archives, and the history of the conflict compiled by the Federal gov’t not long after the whole thing ended is entitled “Record of the War of Rebellion.”
From what I remember of Lincoln’s writings, he did refer to “a great civil war,” but not in the sense of the conflict being “THE Civil War.” I don’t know when that term came into general usage.
My great-grandfather (still hard for me to believe that I’m only three generations removed from all of that - my grandfather was fathering kids late in life) fought with Co. A of the 30th VA. Infantry. For his 3 years of sacrifice he got paid, at his mustering out, exactly nothing. He actually owed the Commonwealth of VA. $63.00 for his last set of clothing. I would like to have met him.
His brother was captured at Gettysburg and sent to Fort Delaware as a POW. He took the pledge of allegiance to the Union, was paroled, and promptly came back to VA and re-enlisted in the Confederate army. The man was nothing if not dedicated.
You basically cross two little streets from the mansion, and that’s the area he’s buried in. Not quite what Mainers would call the dooryard, but pretty close.
His headstone’s a little akilter. At first I thought that a tree root had grown under it. Then I met someone who worked there when he was a teenager. He said when they mowed, they sometimes went a little too fast and bonked some of the headstones. :rolleyes:
I work in Crystal City, so I could and should visit more often, even though he died 100 years before I was born.
plnnr said
Which is why Grant said no more parole or exchange. Not the fault of plnnr’s great uncle specifically, but he added to the problem. The Union could afford to have a large number of troops held as POWs, the South could not. In a way Grant was responsible for Andersonville in that the population soared once there was no more parole or exchange. BTW, if he was exchanged then returning to the fight was appropriate. If he was paroled it was dishonorable as part of the parole was the oath not to take up arms.
South fired the first shots at Ft. Sumter because northern troops were occupying it and the South considered it part of its country. The northern troops wouldn’t vacate it. What would we do now if a foreign country came here and set up camp in our country and wouldn’t get out? Wouldn’t we fire upon them? And, then, who started the war? (BTW, I lived 50 years in Illinois and am no way a southerner altho I now live in SC.)
And even tho the south fired the first shots, no one was killed by them. One Northern soldier died due to a mishap, but not by enemy fire. And do you know what happend to the troops that were at Ft. Sumter after they surrendered? They were allowed to return home. There was no thought of them being able to rejoin the war effort since no one considered that a war was on. The south wanted to evict the troops, which they did, and that would’ve been the end of it, except for one thing: the North declared war.
So I submit to you that the phrase “the War of Northern Aggression” is not a misnomer. Of course there was a revolution. We won the Revolutionary War, so we refer to it as the Revolutionary War. The North won the unpleasantness in the 1860’s and since the South were the rebels, the North refers to it as the Civil War. I guess the South cannot refer to it as the 2d Revolutionary War for one reason: they lost.
“The War of Northern Aggression” is a name that has spun out of a school of historical research referred to as “The Lost Cause.”
Southern scholars have tended to view the Civil War a bit differently than Northern scholars. I don’t which historian first used the term, but I don’t think it came into vogue until the 20th Century.
The big set of records is officially titled “The war of the rebellion. Official records of the Union and Confederate armies.”
In the set’s preface, the unpleasantness is referred to as “the civil war”, almost always in lower case. The preface was written in 1901.
Re Fort Sumter & its location, barbitu8 writes:“What would we do now if a foreign country came here and set up camp in our country and wouldn’t get out? Wouldn’t we fire upon them? And, then, who started the war?”
HUH? Fort Sumter was not established by one country in the midst of another country, not even if you buy for argument’s sake that the post-secession South was a separate nation. And Fort Sumter wasn’t put there to suppress rebellion. Fort Sumter was built LONG before the rebellion, in or before the 1850s IIRC, to DEFEND Charleston and its harbor from naval attack and/or invasion by sea. Fort Sumter was only one of several forts up and down the East Coast – in both northern and southern port cities – designed and intended for coast defense. Indeed, after the Civil War, Ft. Sumter was restored to an active coastal defense role and had (then) modern artillery in it at the time of the Spanish-American War.
http://www.nps.gov/fosu/fosu.htm
http://www.geocities.com/~jmgould/seacoast.html
http://www.cdsg.org/cdlist1.htm
So your argument that Ft. Sumter was put there with the purpose of provoking the South or serving as a foreign presence is nonsense.
My high school history teacher told us that the Revolutionary War, strictly speaking, was not a revolution but a rebellion, because the basic system of government did not change. The only thing that changed was who was running the show.
Anyway. I’ve never understood why people born in the 20th century make such a big deal about the Confederacy. They have no stake in defending slavery. I mean, it’s cool if you know your family history back that far, but do they really, really care that their great-great-whatever had to fight off the Yankees? Come on.
I have always heard it mentioned humorously.
It’s just a form of protest. The Confereracy not an issue in the 1900s. Then, in the 1960s, right about 100 years after [insert favorite name of the war], the civil rights movement became prominant. The federal government began to force the states to let blacks exercise their rights. The southern states responded with states rights vs federal power. Confederate flags started popping up, a reminder of the last big dispute between the southern states and the federal government. The states lost again.
So, as used today, the Confederacy and its symbols are not about slavery. That’s too far back. It’s about a fight 40 years ago when people invoked these symbols to try to deny other people their rights as US citizens.
The civil war wasn’t about slavery
The war was fought here, therefore it will be hundreds of years before people forget. Just look at the Balklands (sp) of today. They are still fighting a war from 500 years ago.
Now off to GD we go.
Ya didn’t think a civil war question would stay out of GD did you.
It is also called, by Southern Gentlepersons, “That mild unpleasantness with the North.”