The Trust’s 2019 Teacher Institute: Naming the War

During Friday night’s “think tank” at the American Battlefield Trust’s Teacher Institute, teachers discussed the question, “How does where you live affect how you teach the Civil War?”

One of the threads of discussion that spun from the main thread included the question, “What other monikers do you use for the American Civil War?”

I was surprised by the variety of responses:

• War Between the States (NC, NH, DE)
• War of Southern Aggression
• War of Northern Aggression (NJ)
• War of the Rebellion
• War between the states (NC, GA)
• The Civil War (NY, IL, PA, IA, OH, TN, TX, MO, MA, NE)
• The American Civil War
• The War for West Virginia Independence, WV
• Second American Revolution (PA)
• War for States’ Rights
• The War for Slavery (TX)
• The War Between the Brothers (MD)

(States in parenthesis indicate where the respondent was from.)