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Abraham Lincoln and most northerners initially referred to a civil war or an insurrection but quickly adopted "Rebellion," which stressed the goal of preserving the Union and stigmatized secession. Frederick Douglass and others proposed "Abolition war" or the "Slaveholders' Rebellion," but few northerners adopted them. After Appomattox, northerners continued to use "Rebellion." White southerners protested; they preferred "Civil War," "War between the States," and other names. By the 1890s "Civil War" had become the most common name, and between 1905 and 1911, Congress made it virtually the official name. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) then campaigned, but failed, to replace it with "War between the States." In the twentieth century, linguistic surveys demonstrated, "Civil War" was the most widely used name. "Civil War" promoted reconciliation, deemphasized the role of slavery and allowed both sides to hold to their interpretation of the conflict, thereby helping obscure the war's meaning.
Historians of the U.S. Civil War once hotly debated whether it was the first modern war. They might well instead have considered it America's first postmodern one. Since 1989, the American military has consciously chosen nicknames for military operations, the author of an Army War College thesis explains, "with an eye toward shaping domestic and international perceptions about the activities they describe." Those nicknames then often served as the name of the war, as in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Naming has not always been easy or successful; for example, a dispute developed over the name for the war on terror. Even so, along with the military, many other Americans have come to believe that the name is important in defining the purpose of a war and shaping support for it. Or, as one national security think tank put it in appropriately postmodern terms, wars "are socially constructed, as are their names."1
Both during and after the Civil War, northerners and southerners displayed an appreciation for the importance of naming the conflict. As the war started, Abraham Lincoln, Congress, and most northerners at first referred to a civil war or an insurrection, but quickly came to call it the "Rebellion," a name they hoped would reinforce the goal of preserving the Union even as it stigmatized secession and the South. Frederick Douglass and others...