The US Navy steamship Star of the West arrives off the coast of Charleston, the secessionist republic of South Carolina, and approaches Fort Sumter, which is besieged by Southerners, who do not hesitate to open fire on the ship. This marks the beginning of the American Civil War. When it came to naming this terrible and crucial conflict, Abraham Lincoln and most Northerners initially referred to it as a civil war or an insurrection, but quickly adopted the term “rebellion,” which emphasized the goal of preserving the Union and stigmatized secession. Frederick Douglass and others later proposed the “war of abolition” or the “slaveholders’ rebellion,” but few Northerners adopted these terms. After Appomattox, Northerners continued to use “Rebellion.” White Southerners protested; they preferred “Civil War,” “War Between the States,” and other names. By 1890, “Civil War” became the most common name, and between 1905 and 1911, Congress effectively made it the official name. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) campaigned unsuccessfully to replace it with “War Between the States.” In the twentieth century, linguistic studies showed that “Civil War” was the most commonly used name. The “Civil War” promoted reconciliation, downplayed the role of slavery, and allowed both sides to adhere to their interpretations of the conflict, but this contributed to obscuring the war’s meaning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Navy steamship Star of the West arrives off the coast of Charleston, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vg-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n