Refuting Confederate Revisionism: Why can't the Civil War be called the "War of Northern Aggression" or a war about states' rights?
Battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. Credit: Wikipedia Why can't the Civil War be called the "War of Northern Aggression" or a war about states' rights? Because those descriptions of the Civil War are deceitful and odious revisionism of history, that’s why. First of all, the Federal government tried to avoid bloodshed from the time of South Carolina’s secession (December 20, 1860) till Lincoln’s Inauguration (March 4, 1861) and on until the morning of April 12, 1861. Lincoln even addressed the issue of slavery in the South in his Inaugural Address, saying that the government was not going to abolish slavery in the states where it was already legal. Second, who fired the first shots of the Civil War? It was not the United States Army (or Navy, for that matter) who did so; it was the Confederate Army that let loose the first cannon shot against Ft. Sumter in Charleston (SC) harbor. So if the Civil War were to be renamed “the War of X Aggression,”...