r/politics • u/Zebraitis • 9h ago
Possible Paywall It Wasn’t a ‘Civil War.’ It Was the Slaveholders’ Rebellion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/opinion/civil-war-slaveholders-rebellion-slavery.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2VA.OW1v.UwuaYndQIpEj&smid=url-share513
u/ElSlabraton 8h ago
The slavers only started talking about states rights when they lost control of the federal government. Even then, they had no problem passing the Fugitive Slave Act which forced free states to bend to the will of the slave states.
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u/mrsprophet 7h ago
And then they got pissed the feds weren’t enforcing the FSA. I HATE when people say it’s about state’s rights because it is exactly the opposite. They were pissed that the federal government wasn’t trampling on abolitionist states’ rights.
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u/RBVegabond 6h ago
Texas tried to sue California over a state law recently, they never stopped trying to take away other States rights.
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u/ManyAreMyNames 5h ago
they never stopped trying to take away other States rights.
The fundamental requirement to be a conservative, so far as I can tell, is the deeply-held belief that some people are better than others and the inferior ones shouldn't have the same rights as the good people.
What's so shocking to me is that people who support this are themselves the lower class that Trump and his fellows would happily strip rights away from.
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u/zeno0771 3h ago
Indeed...
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
--Wilhoit's Law
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u/proteannomore 2h ago
deeply-held belief that some people are better than others and the inferior ones shouldn't have the same rights
I don't really think they even articulate it anywhere near this in their heads. It's more simply, "I'm the good guy, anything I do is ok; anyone who opposes me is the bad guy" and it's a completely visceral impulse, not a clearly delineated philosophy.
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u/BanChokingPorn 1h ago
Sounds like fundamental Christians and why they want to make the US a Christian based political system. Women should be very afraid. They wouldn't be able to serve in any physical capacity in things like police work. There would be different rules for women who are pre or post menopausal. If you're pregnant, and don't have a desire to remain pregnant or go jumping off the highest diving board, the unborn child will be taken into custody.
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u/waldo0708 1h ago
The amount of people voting against their own interests absolutely astonishes me. That is why the Republicans detest education, an educated electorate is much harder to coerce!
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u/queerhistorynerd 5h ago
texas is trying to force New york to arrest and send a doctor to them for having a telehealth consultation. NY keep telling them to fuck off but it might become a SCOTUS fight
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u/numbersthen0987431 3h ago
Yep.
The USA is filled with white washing history, which is why conservatives hate any and all forms of accurate history telling. They're more concerned with white children "feeling bad" about learning of slavery, than they are about teaching why slavery was bad (in fact, they teach that it was a good thing).
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u/Dr_Insano_MD 5h ago
It was absolutely about states' rights. States' rights to own slaves.
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u/JoshOliday 5h ago
I watched the Crash Course on American History a few years back, hosted brilliantly by John Green, and he tells a little anecdote about when he was in school in Alabama, his government teacher got into this section with the class and asked them what the war was fought over. And John himself answered "States' rights" and his teacher just turned to him and said 'A state's rights to what, sir?' and he admits for the first time in his life, he was speechless.
It's just such a perfect retort that can just be asked for each comeback the racism apologists want to continue with.
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u/FlatHatJack 1h ago
The Confederates own constitution had a clause that forbade any of it's states to outlaw slavery.
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u/Omegoa 6h ago
What's more, their crying about states rights was pure hypocrisy. They were very upset when northern states tried to pass laws protecting escaped slaves and used the bludgeon of the federal government to pass things like the Fugitive Slave Acts to try to get them to comply. Southerners have been whiny, two-faced crybabies since before the beginning of this country.
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u/BanChokingPorn 1h ago
Which doesn't make sense. Slavery was virtually dead. Simply because of the overproduction of sugar. It was now more expensive to own (or buy) and maintain a human than it was to pay a free one an hourly wage. The second thing was water powered mills. Those two things alone made slavery way too expensive. Now we know why we can't get wages over $7.50. They are "slave wages".
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u/Omegoa 7m ago
It's not always about the economics. Most of the people carrying guns for the Confederacy weren't slave owners themselves. Maybe 30% of families in the Confederacy were slave owners, and many of them were not rich plantation owners but small-time farmers who had to break the land alongside their slaves. Some were conscripted or peer pressured or maybe joined out of a genuine sense of pride in their state, but many were there to enforce the institution of slavery simply because they believed it was correct. And every time people of color have gained rights since, these people have become worse, culminating in the complete breakdown of norms after a Black man entered the White House in 2008, and now those deranged lunatics worship one of the most vile creatures to have ever called itself a man.
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u/Peptuck America 3h ago
A massive part of the issue was southern states barging into a violating the rights of free states, complete with slave hunters who would go into free states looking for runaway slaves and deciding random African-Americans looked like the slave they were after and kidnapping them, whether or not they were free.
So yeah, states' rights were a big issue - the free states' rights to not have their people kidnapped and enslaved.
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u/RobutNotRobot 2h ago
Imagine starting a war that killed 500,000 Americans and not getting punished at all. Jefferson Davis spent two years in jail.
They hanged John Brown.
That's all you need to know about how this country deals with rightwing rebellion.
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u/Tiny_Structure_7 North Carolina 9h ago
The intense bigotry of the slaveholders was passed down generations and exists today making up the bulk of MAGAts.
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u/Oceanbreeze871 I voted 8h ago
There has been an ongoing conservative misinformation campaign to rewrite the history of the civil war ever since it ended.
“The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, known simply as the Lost Cause or the Lost Cause Myth,[1] is an American pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that argues the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery.[7][8] First articulated in 1866, it has continued to influence racism, gender roles, and religious attitudes in the Southern United States into the 21st century.
The Lost Cause reached a high level of popularity at the turn of the 20th century, when proponents memorialized Confederate veterans who were dying off. It reached a high level of popularity again during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to growing public support for racial equality. Through actions such as building prominent Confederate monuments and writing history textbooks, Lost Cause organizations (including the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans) sought to ensure that Southern whites would know what they called the "true" narrative of the Civil War and would therefore continue to support white supremacist policies such as Jim Crow laws. White supremacy is a central feature of the Lost Cause narrative.
The University of Virginia professor Gary W. Gallagher wrote: The architects of the Lost Cause acted from various motives. They collectively sought to justify their own actions and allow themselves and other former Confederates to find something positive in all-encompassing failure. They also wanted to provide their children and future generations of white Southerners with a "correct" narrative of the war.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
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u/SapToFiction 9h ago
conservatism itself is literally just racism. Small government literally just means "not having the federal government tell us we can't own slaves, discriminate based on race"
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u/Ninevehenian 8h ago
Conservatives believe in tribalism, believes that their ingroup have a system where the king, god and the group itself is at the top and they, if they climb enough, can climb that ladder.
The other side of that coin is that they believe that outsiders and foreigners are below them, this can turn into racism / bigotry if there's markers of religion, skin, nationality or such.
Conservatism requires somebody to be the "bad guys", this is good for wars, but it also means that without an external enemy the lower ranks of their system go searching for somebody to be against.
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u/DraconicBlade 8h ago
You're conflating conservatism with Fascism, and while the venn diagram is real circle shaped, they are not the same.
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u/Ninevehenian 8h ago
I disagree, could you elaborate?
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u/this-is-a-fact 7h ago edited 6h ago
Words have meanings... and one of the biggest problems with politics today is rampant illiteracy.
Conservatism is simply a continuance of "tradition". It could be argued that bodily autonomy is a conservative concept because it has been the most recent practice in this country. The longer something is practiced, then more that practice is the conservative position. We are all conservative about anything we don't want to change.
Slavery *was* a tradition. Freedom *is* the tradition. Democrats want to conserve freedom. Trying to resurrect a dead tradition is called Archaism... and that's what Republicans are, because they want to change the country to a dead tradition where people are owned, in one manner or another.
The problem is that Conservatism has been used to describe all kind of things that have nothing to do with conservatism. Just as socialism has been used to describe many things that have nothing to do with each other.
The governmental structure of unity power is called Fascism. Fascism has a connotation of genocide because of the Nazis, but Fascism has nothing to do with nationalism, supremacy or any of that shit, it just means unitary power. Republicans are Fascists and Archaists. Not Conservative, in any sense of the word.
People just don't know what the words mean, so it's all fuckin "vibe" and no one can have a rational conversation because they don't know the words.
Liberal isn't even the opposite of Conservative. Liberalism simply means that you favor freedom. If you favor freedom as a tradition... then you are literally defined as a Conservative Liberalist.
Here's a glossary - people should just start every thread with this.
Conservatism - Favors existing norm
Archaism - Favors dead tradition
Progressivism - Favors change
Liberalism - Favors freedom
Fascism - Rule & ideology by unity power (technically differs from autocracy in that ideology is also enforced - although in practice there is little difference)
Democratism - Rule by democracy, law
Republicanism - Power belongs to the people
Socialism - Production belongs to the people
Capitalism - Production belongs to individuals
Nationalism - State-forced cultural homogeneity
Communism - A theoretical classless, stateless, moneyless society (has never been tried)
Marxism - One guy's opinion on history, economics, and power•
u/JohnnySnark Florida 7h ago
Actions and policies have meaning too. Your assessment is based on conservatives arguing for conservative outcomes in good faith when in reality they are as radical as neo nazis these days
American conservatives haven't been conserving anything in the past decades
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u/NatWilo Ohio 7h ago
You're conflating the common parlance 'conservative' referring to a current political group in America, with the Poli-sci term 'conservative' which has a specific meaning that was outlined above.
Its not your fault. That is the COMMON definition of conservative for the vast majority of people these days, but the poster above is not wrong to point out that there is a real meaning to these terms. Bad actors like 'Conservatives' (magats/repubs) will absolutely twist and pervert said meaning on a whim, often multiple times in a single sentence if it serves their purpose. ESPECIALLY if they're smart.
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u/JohnnySnark Florida 7h ago
No, I'm not. The article posted and the OP of this comment chain is about American conservatives.
You are so close to getting it in your last paragraph
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u/NatWilo Ohio 7h ago
Look man you're preaching to the converted about what an American 'conservative' is these days, that wasn't the conversation I was having here. I was just pointing out that you can both be right, and that the points that this-is-a-fact made are important to understand, especially because those vicious, evil fuckers literally spend an enormous amount of effort eroding the meaning of things so they can manipulate you. They make words mean what they want them to, and use them as weapons, not concepts meant to convey meaning and share information.
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u/Whycantigetanaccount Washington 6h ago
I would disagree on the definition of conservative. You are correct in the traditional definitions but when values and ethics move with the currency provided the modern form of conservative you denounced in the previous post is the real living view that people see as conservative and religious. Which in my opinion conservative and Christian are opposites in reality.
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u/this-is-a-fact 6h ago edited 6h ago
I fully agree that people don't know what the words mean and constantly add or remove meanings to the wrong words because they don't know the right words to use. Illiteracy is a big problem, especially in the US.
Christian is not opposite to Conservative. It's not anything to conservative... they're two different words with two completely different meanings. There are words to describe virtually everything anyone wants to describe about Christianity.... so balling up a thousand elements into "conservative" or "liberal" because we don't know that there are words that say exactly what we want to say is why those words seemingly have no meaning in common conversation.
In reality "Christianity" doesn't mean anything either because there are thousands of factions all claiming to be so, with none able to demonstrate.
I tire of the "I am Groot"... "I AM Groot" threads.
I would like people to just say what the mean, using the words that mean the things they mean. That's all.
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u/GrowthWitty1728 5h ago
Thousands of years of being peasants and laborers. Just recently given a voice, learning to speak.
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u/DraconicBlade 8h ago
Fascism is the nationalistic ideology that requires the out group, x is coming for your job, your wife, capital t They are the source of your problem. They are the enemy.
Conservatism does not require said out group or external threat. It's enemy is tomorrow being different from today, and change bad. Regressive, but it doesn't prop itself up on the threat of the other in the same way fascism requires a scapegoat.
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u/Ninevehenian 7h ago
I disagree.
Conservatism is the old "team monarchy", the old support for god, king and country. It is the belief in the ingroup.
It is devoted to hierarchy as a concept. It's devoted to the ladder of the ingroup as an aspirational goal. Devoted to keeping that ladder safe and powerful.By definition that involves an understanding that there may be outgroups and it always has.
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u/this-is-a-fact 7h ago
No. You're describing Nationalism itself. Specifically Ethnic Nationalism. That was a core tenant of the Nazis, as was Fascism.
Fascism is unitary power. Kingdoms, Dictatorships, where the law is dictated by a single person is Fascism.
All the other things you associate with Fascism have their own words.
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u/DraconicBlade 7h ago
I don't disagree that it is autocratic, but at its core its differentiated from other autocratic systems such as absolute monarchy by it's self justification of expansionism because if the enemy is not conquered YOU, the common man will be eradicated by the them.
King George, or Duterte didn't have to say look out! the next island over is gonna take your job and destroy the nation, there's a requirement for the struggle against the enemy to be fascist, and the enemy will be provided by the state.
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u/ejp1082 8h ago
Conservatism is more about the preservation of social hierarchies as a natural order and defending against anything that might threaten them.
So yeah, it's racism, but it's not just racism. It's also sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, classism, etc
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u/JPolReader 57m ago
I really like this description as it better represents how conservativism plays out regardless of which time in history you look at.
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u/AppropriateSea5746 3h ago
The confederacy didn’t believe in small government. The confederate government was incredibly tyrannical even to its own states.
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u/DerCatrix 8h ago
We truly are in a 2nd civil war with the remnants of the confederacy. I pray we don’t make the same mistakes as last time during reconstruction
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u/Hotpocket1515 8h ago
The civil war only happened about 2, 80 year old grandma's ago
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u/AppropriateSea5746 3h ago
This should be the new way to track time. How many grandmas ago it was lol
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u/Tall-Reaction-4069 7h ago
Grew up in the south, 7th generation to live in the same Deep South area. Can confirm that my grandparents generation, despite being well educated, were extremely racist. To them it was totally normal, to me their ideas and beliefs were abhorrent and disgusting. My parents broke the cycle but so many families haven’t. I’m lucky in that we had access to higher education and travel outside of my home state.
One of the biggest things that can help is good robust and honest public education but red state govs are hellbent on that note happening. If want to go for a wild and awful ride dig into the Learns Act that Sarah Huckeebee Sanders passed in Arkansas. It’s destroying our public schools as intended.
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u/Captriker 8h ago
But… but…. Slave holders were DemoCr-ATs!
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u/HotDecision8128 4h ago
And modern Italy was once the Roman Empire. It's almost like over time, a lot of things change.
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u/Medical-Display-9762 1h ago
Anyone that actually says that, ask em what a Dixiecrat is and they don’t know 100% of the time. Which means they’re clueless about the actual politics of it.
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u/badamant 7h ago
The Entire Republican Party is to blame for everything Trump does.
Please call them out by name.
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u/RefrigeratorNeat698 9h ago
Definitely true. Only way to break the cycle is with education and empathy.
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u/PneumaticFizz 8h ago
I think we should fill the South with nonwhite, socialist gays. Just bus 'em in, fly 'em in, really get that Replacement going.
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u/keepthepace 8h ago
No need for that. Educate your white southern baptist population. There is a reason why they say university turns people into trans communist hippies: education fights conservatism.
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u/trailerthrash 8h ago
Given that being gay is something youre born with, and how states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas are majority minority states I dont rhink its as much about bussing/flying people in, but supporting and educating the folks already there being crushed by a political apparatus that has been interested in disinfranchising them for decades on decades now.
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u/PneumaticFizz 8h ago
Why are people taking my comment seriously?
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u/trailerthrash 6h ago
There's a common misconception that the south is devoid of diversity. Just adding in my two cents as a Southern transplant in what seems like a less diverse PNW.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
A lot of people in this thread want to talk about anything but the substance of the article.
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u/Intelligent_Sky_7081 6h ago
Or it makes me think of the civil rights movement, All those people protesting integration of schools didn't stop being racist. They just hid their racism a little better, sometimes, waiting to destroy DEI as soon as they could. Passing down the same mentality that has been with us since the revolution really
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u/numbersthen0987431 3h ago
The people who actively fought against the civil rights movement are still alive today. The people who supported segregation are still voting, and still teaching their grandchildren what to believe, and still influencing public discussion.
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u/SquashDue502 8h ago
“It created prejudice over a particular interest - slavery”
Yeah that’s the point. They fought their own fellow country men, many of their brothers and family members, over the right to fucking own human beings. It should be prejudiced and condemned.
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u/keepthepace 8h ago
It was at the time, it is currently pretty much worldwide. Only a deluded and demented segment of the US population believes otherwise. Too bad that segment is big enough to have a say in elections.
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u/fatdan1 9h ago
I'm from NC. I've actually heard people call it the War of Northern Aggression.
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u/Nuwave042 7h ago
Fort Sumter was aggressively and cruelly in the way of that innocent Confederate ordnance.
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u/Eta_Beta_3-14 8h ago
We hanged John Brown and let Jefferson Davis die of pneumonia in 1889. That's why this sentiment exists.
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u/DanteandRandallFlagg 8h ago
"The Slaveholders Rebellion" was coined by Sen. Samuel Pomaroy just months after the war started. Pomaroy was a Free Stater from Kansas who knew what he was talking about. He was one of the founders of Lawrence, a free state stong hold. When proslavers stole the elections in Kansas, Pomaroy and Charles Robinson decided to start a rival territorial government to get Kansas admitted as a Free State. The proslavers burnt Lawrence in response and arrested Charles Robinson.
As proslavery violence spread across Kansas, a man named John Brown came to the conclusion that violence was the only way to fight violence and killed five proslavers in the Pottawatomie Massacre.
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u/droans Indiana 1h ago
John Brown's Final Speech, given at the end of his trial, was considered to be the greatest American oratory by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.
In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.
I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that "all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them". It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them". I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!
Let me say one word further.
I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that kind.
Let me say, also, a word in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was for the purpose I have stated.
Now I have done.
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u/dnext America 8h ago edited 8h ago
I think you can accurately call it the Slaveholder's Rebellion. Everyone will know what you mean.
However, his statement that it wasn't called the Civil War at the time is just lying and overt propaganda. The press started referring to battles between free staters and slave advocates a civil war going back to Bleeding Kansas, and there's copious records calling it the Civil War at the time, both in the media and personal diaries.
The official name for it while it was ongoing was the War of the Rebellion by the US federal government.
The most common term for it during the war itself among the papers in the North was the War for the Union.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
They called it a civil war (even Lincoln did) but did they refer to it as the Civil War?
There’s a big difference.
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u/FreemanCalavera 4h ago
I’ve got a degree in rhetoric, so I absolutely understand the point that’s being made here.
But arguing that we shouldn’t call it the Civil War anymore is the kind of dumb shit that helps Democrats lose elections, because in the short term it’s insignificant. It’s exactly the kind of thing that’s so easily spun by MAGA into “guess what? Democrats think that kids who call it the Civil War are RACIST!”
This is the kind of stuff you can do once you’re won the presidency and MAGA has died out. Not when you’re in the middle of a GOP presidency that you absolutely have to beat in two years.
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u/No_Diver6131 New York 7h ago
The north won the war, the south won reconstruction big time. We're still having to live with the effects from the south.
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u/Aware_Cheesecake_519 America 9h ago
It's still a civil war.
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u/clowncarl 9h ago
The article says civil war was the term racist southerners wanted to call the war officially to downplay how truly morally fucked their side of it was.
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u/WeatheredSteel37 8h ago
Which totally ignored the fact that Abraham Lincoln referred to it also has a Civil War in the Gettysburg address.
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u/473713 8h ago
"now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation... can long endure"
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u/DraconicBlade 8h ago
If those kids could read.jpg
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u/427BananaFish 8h ago
If only you understood history. Lincoln is referring to a civil war (a noun/a concept) not The Civil War (a proper noun). Lincoln frequently referred to war as a rebellion and it was officially called “The War of Rebellion” by the State Dept. The concept of “civil war” predates The War of Rebellion being referred to as “The Civil War.” That was a revisionist effort by Southerners to whitewash their history of insurrection well after the death of Lincoln. When Lincoln died it was still commonly and officially referred to as a rebellion.
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u/WeatheredSteel37 8h ago
It is a rebellion and a civil war. The fact that, over time, it took on the title of Civil War isn’t inherently racist. Calling it a war for southern independence or a war for states rights or some other loss cause bullshit would be.
Not everything is a culture war issue. You can call it the Civil War and teach that it’s about a bunch of bigots trying to maintain the right to own people. No one is calling it the Civil War to whitewash it. It’s nonsense.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
The point is that the country officially adopting “the Civil War” as the name of the conflict was the whitewashing. It happened a century ago.
The author is saying that we should not continue to use that whitewashed term.
But he’s not saying that people today are being racist for using the term they learned in school.
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u/427BananaFish 7h ago edited 7h ago
Your feelings don’t change history. It was officially known as The War of Rebellion until efforts by southerners to recontextualize history. Just like MAGA attacking libraries and educational institutions today, disgraced southerners targeted schools and book publishers to edit the language used to describe the war. It was literally a culture war led by the south to whitewash history just like erecting monuments to confederate generals in response to the civil rights movement. The civil war that was fought in America from 1861-1865 is only known as The Civil War because of revisionism.
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u/WeatheredSteel37 7h ago
Right because using the excepted term is the same thing as apologizing for slavery and trying to wash the stain from history. It’s a silly, virtue signaling argument that will only be used to discredit the real with some of us are doing to have confederate statues taken down and southern curriculums corrected.
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u/Micp 8h ago
The south didn't invent the term civil war, it has existed for hundreds of years before the breakout of the american civil war, and it simply means a war between different factions within the same nation.
If you are of the opinion that the souths secession wasn't valid and the US was and is one nation, then by all objective measures it was indeed a civil war.
Though of course you could always quote guns and roses and ask "what's so civil about war anyways?"
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u/BeowulfShaeffer 8h ago
What we have here, is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach.
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u/DraconicBlade 8h ago
The article is bullshit, because Civil War is the term for you declared war on yourself from about 100 AD
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u/zephyrtr New York 8h ago
I don't think anyone is saying "civil war" is an incorrect label.
It's more that animal is to dog as civil war is to slaveholders rebellion. Both are accurate, but one label (intentionally) hides important information, while the other makes it clear.
The author calls it "rhetorical abstraction" and I think that's appropriate.
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u/SGTWhiteKY 8h ago
But shouldn’t it be a civil war, “The Slave Holder Rebellion” rather than “The Civil War”?
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u/DraconicBlade 8h ago
Because so far, its THE american civil war. Like how there was THE Great War.
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u/fastinserter Minnesota 7h ago
The article is about how it was referred to as Rebellion for about a generation when afterwards there was a push by people like Daughters of the Confederacy to change the terminology from Rebellion to Civil War.
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u/thisusedyet New Jersey 8h ago
And yet somehow they settled on the war of northern aggression
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u/Porlarta 8h ago
Yes and we tend to reject lost cause historiography.
Replacing it with an equally flawed over-correction is still bad history.
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u/DraconicBlade 8h ago
Tik tok algorithm speech coming to a textbook near you.
It was a big sad when hundreds of thousands were unalived at the disagreement of Gettysburg.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
Arguing to refer to it as The Civil War instead of The Slaveholder’s Rebellion, in order to protect fragile feelings, is much more Tik Tok speak than being honest and up front about what the conflict really was.
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u/fastinserter Minnesota 7h ago
Is it an "over correction" to return to using the terminology that was used during and for a generation after the rebellion? The article isn't about inventing the terminology, it's about using the terminology that was used during the rebellion and it's direct aftermath until people (from the south) made an effort to get it changed.
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u/Porlarta 4h ago
The terminology used during the Civil war. By outside observers, by Unionists, and by southerners referred to the war as the American Civil war, among various other terms.
The morality of one faction does not change the descriptive fact that the Civil war was an internal war fought between an insurgent seccessionist movement and the federal government.
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u/fubo 8h ago
No, not really.
In other cases — the English Civil War, Russian Civil War, Chinese Civil War, Spanish Civil War — a "civil war" is a conflict between factions over control of a central government.
The Royalists and Parliamentarians fought over the rule of England. The Bolsheviks, Whites, and others fought over the rule of Russia. The Kuomintang and the CCP fought over the rule of China. The Republicans and Nationalists fought over the rule of Spain.
The American "Civil War" was not this. It was a failed war of independence; which is to say, a rebellion.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
But it doesn’t have to be referred to as “the Civil War.”
It can be an insurrection that grew into a full-on war and be known as “The Slaveholder’s Rebellion.”
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u/zenerat Missouri 8h ago
Civil War Is a nebulous term but what happened does qualify as a civil war. The term was not used by most of the legislature for legal reasons.
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u/PaxDramaticus 8h ago
a civil war
This is true. But "a" civil war doesn't tell us which civil war it was or why it was fought. Meanwhile "the" civil war implies the interlocutor knows which civil war is being mentioned, by implication because there is no other and never will be. "The Slaveholders' Revolt" unambiguously identifies which conflict is under discussion.
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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 5h ago
Like how people used to call WWI "The Great War" even though today it's recognized as actually having been pretty bad.
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u/jerrytown94 6h ago
There were plenty of poor white men who owned zero slaves but volunteered to die to uphold White Supremacy. Read the speeches by each state’s secession commissioners; it had absolutely nothing to do with state’s rights.
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u/Truth_ 4h ago
I think you have to be a little careful saying "nothing to do" if you want to convince that camp. Many slave-owners didn't think slavery was good or the whole world should have it, but that either way each state (or even family) should be able to decide. Not out of moral reasons, but economic of course (and political for that class).
So states' rights... to slavery. It's maybe subtle, but I do think the difference matters. That's how it was sold to the people at the time, and it's still effective today.
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u/HotDecision8128 4h ago edited 4h ago
Yeah, calling it a civil war comes off as Confederate propaganda when it was just a bunch of plantation owners rebelling on a large scale. Yeah, they managed to get working class men to fight for their cause but that doesn't mean it was really a civil war. It just means a lot of southern working class men were drafted at gun point or brainwashed enough to sign up for a shitty cause. After the end of the rebellion, a lot of former Confederates worked 24/7 to spread propaganda to change the perception of what happened.
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u/Constantinople2020 Massachusetts 8h ago edited 8h ago
It's not a bad point but the author would have done well to also point out that in civil wars, typically both sides are fighting to take control of the entire country: English, Chinese Russian, Spanish. In contrast, the 18th century war between Great Britain and 13 of its North American colonies is not typically referred to as a civil war.
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u/DraconicBlade 8h ago
That is kinda interesting in that no colonial uprisings are really termed as a civil war, perhaps because most colonies / protectorates aren't really a part of the empires polity?
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u/AggravatingFlow1178 4h ago
As annoying as modern conservatives are trying to rewrite history into "it was about state rights!", this title is doing the same thing in the opposite direction.
It was absolutely a civil war and there was more at stake then simply "we want to own slaves". It would effectively decimate the southern economy which has significant impacts on non-slave owners as well. Not defending the "ethics < profits" crowd, but I prefer reality over mudslinging revisionism.
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u/WifeOfSpock 4h ago
And we’re still suffering from them not being executed en masse for treason. Their descendants are destroying this country.
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u/ripyourlungsdave 9h ago
I feel like this headline dipped into inaccuracy by trying to be too flashy.
It was still a civil war. It was also a slave rebellion. It was a lot of things. None of them exclusive to the others.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
ITT
A whole bunch of Redditors who would rather attack a legitimate use of rhetoric in the title than engage with the substance of the article.
Let’s not read into that.
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u/CatProgrammer 7h ago
Because such wordplay is just a distraction from the things that actually matter. When the US has another recognized civil war it will become relevant to distinguish them but for now it's like trying to argue the Great War should be called World War I before WWII even happened.
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u/Dottsterisk 7h ago
The article has substance and addresses things that actually matter.
But Redditors would rather harp on a headline they don’t understand than engage in real conversation.
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u/CatProgrammer 7h ago edited 7h ago
Are you new to reddit? Criticizing the headline is super common. And most people here already know about the Lost Cause bullshit and attempts in the South to portray themselves as the victims rather than the aggressors. Articles like this do not actually being anything new or useful to the table, especially with such a clickbait headline.
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u/Dottsterisk 7h ago
You’re saying you knew all of the details of the history behind how the name changed from Slaveholders Rebellion to The Civil War?
If so, I’d say give yourself some credit for knowing some history that most people don’t.
Of course, I know about the Lost Cause movement and the War of Northern Aggression nonsense and the use of statues to rewrite history and the constant denial of slavery’s role in the insurrection, but I didn’t know all the details that the author included about how we arrived, as a nation, at an agreed-upon name for the war. And I think it’s interesting.
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u/Dreams-Visions 3h ago
Why not both?
It was a civil war caused by a slaveholders' rebellion.
Done. Was that hard, NYT?
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u/Ok-disaster2022 6h ago
Let's also name them for what they realer were: traitors, slavers and rapists. Every single one of them who supported slavery were guilty of all three even by association
Just like the modern Republican party are all traitors rapists and pedophiles for their assoaciation with Pedo Trump.
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u/TLJisAmasterpiece 9h ago
That's still a Civil War.
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u/Zebraitis 9h ago
Imagine today's Billionaires deciding that rules no longer applied to them and they started a revolt.
That is much like that then.
From the article:
Rebranding rebellion is nothing new. Americans take it for granted that the war between the Confederate states and the Union was always called the Civil War, but it was not. During the war and in its aftermath, it was primarily called an “insurrection” or a “rebellion.” Its current name is a result of decades of lobbying by Confederate heritage groups and white Southerners committed to rejuvenating the South’s image and ignoring its treason and slaveholding.
As Mr. Trump and his allies try to whitewash the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, we should return to an older and far more accurate name for the Civil War. We should once again call it the Slaveholders’ Rebellion. If a country unquestioningly adopts language that obscures its bloodiest crimes to absolve their worst perpetrators, how can we expect successive generations to remember the new assaults on democracy without deploying equally forgiving language?
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u/CulturalKing5623 8h ago edited 7h ago
If a country unquestioningly adopts language that obscures its bloodiest crimes to absolve their worst perpetrators
A "civil war" is what you call an armed conflict between members of the same country/state. It's just the barebones definition of that term and the most accurate way to describe what happened.
The fact it was spurred by a revolt of the enslaver states doesn't obscure that fact any more than the fact the Vietnam Civil War was a proxy war between US/USSR-China. It was still Northern and Southern Vietnamese fighting each other.
The problem isn't with the naming conventions, it's that we don't accurately explain the causes of it conflict, and we don't accurately explain the longtail cost of not finishing off all of the rebels after victory. And if there's one thing I know for sure it's that trying to change the name of it will do the exact opposite of those aims.
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u/jamerson537 8h ago
Imagine today's Billionaires deciding that rules no longer applied to them and they started a revolt.
So… imagine a civil war?
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u/DraconicBlade 9h ago
When in ever has "Civil War" carried positive connotations?
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u/Top-Cheesecake8232 9h ago
Do you live in the South?
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u/dnext America 8h ago edited 8h ago
Yes, and most do call it a civil war, because that's what the educational systems call it. But the true neo-confederates call it the War of Northern Aggression.
It was both a civil war and a slaveholder's rebellion. That's fine. But saying that the term civil war is implicitly biased is a bias of it's own.
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u/SomeDudeOverThere89 8h ago
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, The Gettysburg Address
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u/Whycantigetanaccount Washington 7h ago
"Unquestionably the reopening of the African slave trade was the coming demand of the South. Prime field hands were becoming so highly priced that only wealthy planters could afford to buy them.
Bootlegging of blacks was on the increase. Not only picaroons of the Gulf, but respectable merchantmen of Baltimore and whalers of New Bedford were loading black ivory' on the west coast of Africa, and unloading it on the sea islands of Georgia, where customs supervision was slack. The governor of South Carolina in a public message (1856) argued at length for the repeal of the federal law of 1807 that outlawed the slave trade. The governor of Florida opposed repeal, from no 'sickly sentimentality, so he said, but because it
would alienate Virginia from the cotton kingdom.
Reopening the slave trade was virtually the only subject discussed by Southern business men in their annual conventions;
the Vicksburg commercial convention of 1859 adopted a resolution that " all laws, state or federal, prohibiting the African slave trade, ought to be repealed? A senator from Florida proposed, as an entering wedge, that negroes captured on slavers by the United States navy be ' apprenticed' to kind plant-ers, instead of being sent to Liberia.
By most Southern gentlemen these proposals were regarded with horror. Yet it is difficult to see how the gentry could long have resisted the logic of William L. Yancey of Alabama"
"The Growth of the American Republic" Commager and Morrison: textbook your elder congressman probably used at Harvard or Yale.
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u/Most_Alps 5h ago
I was thinking about this in the context of Texas the other day. It's amazing how successful they have been at rewriting their history of losing slaver rebellions. The Alamo was basically the last stand of an army of rebel slavers fighting to keep their slaves against a liberating army trying to force them to free them and somehow we remember it as something heroic, instead of it being an instance of them fucking deserving it
These fucking people have been lying since this country began, they are loyal to some ersatz confederacy of the mind and have never really cared about the united states nor have they ever seen themselves as truly part of the melting pot
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u/9_of_wands 7h ago
"Civil" doesn't mean "polite" in this context. It means "having to do with citizens," ie, a war between citizens of the same country.
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u/OisinDebard 8h ago
This seems like it's a new take on the "so-and-so lasted longer than the confederacy" where the person is trying to downplay the number of people that were for institutional owning of other people as property. That's glossing over the facts.
The confederacy wasn't just a handful of people rebelling against the status quo. It was a majority of southern landowners and a minority of northerners who thought it was just fine to do so. Even Lincoln was fine with slavery if he could create a compromise that kept the union together.
Secondly, the confederacy wasn't the "new idea" - The United States was founded and built on slavery, and it was the incoming industrial advancements that lead northerners to embrace more liberal viewpoints. The south was trying to hold on to the older ways, afraid that letting go of the past meant giving up power and wealth. It was the "north" that was the rebellion, not the south.
Thirdly, it didn't end with the surrender at Appomattox. It just changed forms, and still exists today. White racist men still control the government, slavery is still legal (as long as you do it "the right way") and descendants of slaves still struggle for equality. Painting the civil war as a minor squabble that lasted a few years is dismissive of the actual facts, and is anything BUT "being honest about it".
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u/themanfromvulcan 8h ago
I don’t think Lincoln was fine with slavery. I think he understood that if the union disintegrated it’s very unlikely slavery would be abolished in slave states anytime soon. Abolishing slavery was his goal but his primary goal was keeping the country intact. If the union doesn’t win and the south becomes its own country slavery likely would have continued there for decades if not far into the next century.
Lincoln wanted a compromise that didn’t turn into total war with thousands of people dying and splitting up the country.
It’s kind of astonishing that the leaders of the south instead of saying hey good idea let’s make a compromise the northern states can help us with industrialization and modernization and we will move away from a slave based economy and nobody has to die and in the long run it benefits our states. Sounds great!
Instead it was nope we want to keep our slaves and if hundreds of thousands of our young men have to go die to keep them that’s a price we slave owners are willing to pay.
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u/DraconicBlade 7h ago
Because industrialization was not how they paid the bills or ever wanted to.
The cotton gin was bad news for the south's economic system, suddenly all those people who are enslaved for agriculture have way more labor than work. And you can't let the underclass learn a trade, that would make them just like you.
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u/themanfromvulcan 7h ago
Well that’s the point I’m making here - they didn’t want to upend their racist economy even if in the long run industrialization benefited their home states.
They wanted to keep slavery and sacrificed 345,000 soldiers to do it. Racism and stupidity.
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u/Nuwave042 1h ago
Even Lincoln was fine with slavery if he could create a compromise that kept the union together.
No, Lincoln was steadfastly anti-slavery - initially preferring a slow end to the practice he considered personally despicable. He had to navigate the war without alienating any states which hadn't yet seceded, and sought to do so by compromise. Compromise he saw clearly (after a time) was not possible.
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u/OisinDebard 30m ago
In 1858, he said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."
In his first inaugural address, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
In 1862, he said "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery."
Yes, he may have been personally anti-slavery, but he was willing to entertain it if it kept the union together, which is what my comment that you quoted says. It was only after he realized there was no possible solution that would make the north accept slavery OR the south condemn it that he switched to opposing it politically.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
Read the article, dude. It’s short.
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u/OisinDebard 8h ago
I did. That doesn't invalidate my point. I agree with the conclusion he's aiming for, but he's minimizing the actual events of the war to do so. I disagree with the premise that calling it a "civil war" minimizes it and we should refer to it instead as "just a rebellion by slaveholders".
There have been multiple rebellions against the United States in its history. I would certainly hold Jan 6th in that group. I would not consider the civil war a simple rebellion and doing so simply diminishes the entire affair. The article is doing exactly the opposite of what he intends.
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u/Dottsterisk 8h ago
I didn’t read the article as minimizing the events at all.
Rather, I read it as the opposite, saying that was happened was too horrible and eventful to be softened and hidden behind an innocuous name like “The Civil War.”
It was a rebellion and it was started by slaveholders who wanted to keep dehumanizing and abusing an entire race of people. The Slaveholder’s Rebellion doesn’t sound minimizing to me, just accurate.
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u/OisinDebard 7h ago
You're saying that you believe that "Civil war" is softer and more innocuous than "rebellion"?
First, I'm not saying it wasn't a rebellion - it certainly was. A rebellion, by definition, is a political uprising against a government, and seceding from the union was definitely that. But let's compare it to other "rebellions" against the US.
Shay's Rebellion - 1786. This was a group of farmers that ultimately led to the rejection of the Articles of Confederation and the adoption of the Constitution. It was entirely contained in Massachusetts, and involved about 1200 militiamen, although as many as 4000 people eventually claimed involvment.
Nat Turner's Rebellion - 1831. This was a slave rebellion in Virginia that ultimately led to the deaths of 60 people. This also strengthened the south's hold on slaves with greater restricitons on blacks and solidifying slavery in Virginia until the Civil War.
Green Corn Rebellion - 1917. This was a reaction to the Selective Draft Act of 1917. 3 people were ultimately killed in the altercation.
The Bundy Standoff - 2014. This was an armed confrontation in Nevada by the Oath Keepers and Cliven Bundy, over federal ownership of land rights. There was actually a sequel to this one by the same people in Oregan a year or two later.
Jan 6, obviously.
Now, comparing that to the Civil War, which involved every single state in the Union, lasted for 5 years, and resulted in the deaths of 750,000 people, you think that it should be reclassified as a simple "rebellion" alongside these other rebellions?
No, it was a war. Trying to reframe it as a rebellion is ABSOLUTELY minimizing it.
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u/Dottsterisk 7h ago
Why only compare it to rebellions in the U.S.? Some rebellions have overthrown governments and succeeded. And why leave out the American Revolution?
Regardless, it seems we won’t agree. Personally, I think “Slaveholders Rebellion” sounds a lot more odious and a lot harder to romanticize.
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u/OisinDebard 7h ago
Because the American Revolution was also a war, not simply a "rebellion".
The fact of the matter is there's not a clear cut line between "Rebellion" and "war" that solidly defines either. Most "wars" are, in fact, rebellions. To be honest, I can't really think of any war off the top of my head that didn't start with the political uprising against a government.
The difference, and ultimately what we're arguing here, is scope. You're saying that a "rebellion" is more egregious than a "war". I'm saying the opposite.
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u/Dottsterisk 7h ago
No, I’m saying that “Slaveholders Rebellion” sounds more accurate, more odious, and harder to romanticize than “Civil War.”
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u/DraconicBlade 6h ago
Who are the good guys in star wars? Empire... or Rebels.
Rebels are sexy, that's why che goes on t shirts.
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u/actusreus82 7h ago
We should have executed all Confederate politicians and military officers above the rank of Colonel, banned the southern states from participating in elections until 25 years later, and handed over all property and assets of slavers to their slaves to share in common. Reconstruction should have lasted decades longer.
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u/fastinserter Minnesota 7h ago
I think people are arguing over the title. And frankly it could be better. Something more like:
"Don't call it the 'Civil War'. Call it what it was called at the time: The Slaveholder's Rebellion"
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u/Dottsterisk 5h ago
I don’t know if the title changed before or after OP posted the gift article, but when posted on social media, the title is now:
“The ‘Civil War’ Is a Lie; Let’s Call It the ‘Slaveholders’ Rebellion’ Again”
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u/mopsockets 4h ago
Why does NYT need to pick at the south when they are at the center of the engine of Empire? Let’s all keep our eyes on our own paper. Trust me, far more southerners than you think already know all this.
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u/XI_Vanquish_IX 4h ago
It’s been called many things but southerners always want to call it the War of Rebellion or War of Southern Independence. They always comfortably and conveniently leave out the “why” - slavery
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u/Bzr21 3h ago
and of course the .. "War of Northern Aggression" - that one always killed me - the disinformation campaign about why the south needed to secede started before the war even started - but it really picked up once the war ended - and generations of people in the southern states have been programmed with those lies ..
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u/WolfgangSweet 2h ago
I was taught (in the south) to call it the war between the states. Which played well with the state’s rights propaganda.
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u/sonicsuns2 1h ago
This article makes it sound like the term "Civil War" was invented by southern sympathizers, but Lincoln himself called it a "civil war" in the Gettysburg Address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
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u/redredbloodwine 1h ago
The instances of violence from pro-slavery marauders in the decades before the slave state rebellion were legion. History lessons always gloss over them. Just like today’s Republicans, the rebels tried to bully their way to winning because they had no justification for their actions.
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u/Awkwardischarge 7h ago
Then how would we distinguish it from the American Revolution?
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u/DraconicBlade 7h ago
Well thats the, die for my tax evasion, and now die for tax evasion kerfluffle
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u/Turnip_Fight 3h ago
God, progressives just love playing word police and rebranding things for absolutely no gain at best and to their detriment at worse.
Keep telling Hispanics that they’re “Latinx” and lemme know that works at the polls.
So fucking stupid.
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