Talk:American Civil War/Archive 1

message: The introduction as it was (before 2005-5-5), had almost as many inaccuracies as facts, and bore too much anti-South hatred.  I am not from the South, but there is simply no reason for such hatred and distortion of historical reality.  What is needed is something neutral and intelligent.  As it stands now, the section reads like a comic book or a badly written 140-year-old political tract.
It was so badly organized and so poorly written, that is was largely unreadable.
The current section (2005-5-5) is greatly expanded, very thorough, very fair, and can eventually be integrated (he he) with a stronger Introduction.
* And now its a polemic against Lincoln --JimWae 06:34, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)
:No.  It states exactly what Lincoln indeed said -- without comment.
**2 things
** the name of the war in part depends on outcome.
:That is your very unique POV.
:The War was between the states, which is why that is the favored term among real historians -- not among amateurs.
:As clearly explained, Civil War is the preferred term, because that it the term most often used.  But it is an inaccurate term.
:On the other hand, "English Civil War" is indeed an accurate term, because the factions were distributed throughout the kingdom.  Society was in disarray, and factions were fighting over control of the government</B>.
:Similarly, when England fought Scotland -- even when they were governed by the same monarch -- it is never described as a Civil War.  Scotland and England are too separate territories.
:To call it a war of independence, when they lost is just confusing & an obvious POV 
:You didn't read the correction.  It clearly states that Southern Heritage groups prefer that term, and why they say they do.  
:This is a simple fact.  It says nowhere that we should start calling the war by what the Southrern Heritage groups call it.
*that makes no attempt to cope with the results. The result was 1 nation, so it makes sense to view it as a contest within 1 nation
:You are confusing results with description.  You are proposing a new term for the war:  "The War that Created One Nation."  
 
*you have added your personal POV instead.
:No.  You are proposing a novel interpretation based on your own POV which you are just now inventing.  The war was not named on results.  Nobody has ever said that before you.  That is your own POV.
:The war is named based on what occurred.  It is past tense because it was a historical event.  Lincoln wished to interpret that one way:  Thus the terms "Rebellion,"  "Insurrection," "Civil War."  That, too, is POV.  We conventionally use "Civil War" because that has the most mileage behind it, and because it is shorter.  "Civil War" is by no means neutral.  It is just the term most non-historians are used to.
:It is universally acknowledge by both parties in the war that "War Between the States" is an acceptable compromise -- and it is this term which had official sanction.
* -To call it a war of independence, when they lost is just confusing
That makes no sense.  You are aggressively insisting on your own POV, and expecting people to understand you.
Southerners said they were fighting to maintain the independence they won at secession.  This is clearly explained in the emendation to the section.
**& an obvious POV
You are insisting that anything that is not your POV is POV.  Thus, when you read anything neutral, you see only POV.
**that makes no attempt to cope with the results.
This is irrelevant.  Once again, this is your novel argument that wars are named for results.  It is POV.
:By your thinking, The Mexican-American War should be "Manifest Destiny War" or the "War to Create the American Southwest."  World War II would become the "War to Destroy Nazis and       ts," or the "War that Resulted in the Cold War."
:Come on already.
***The result was 1 nation, so it makes sense to view it as a contest within 1 nation - you have added your personal POV instead -
***do you deny the USA is 1 nation?  
:Irrelevant.  See above.
*the name of the war should also be descriptive from the viewpoint of other nations. From their viewpoint, "civil war" makes complete sense
From the viewpoint of other nations, it was a war that would decide whether the South would be independent or be part of the Union.  Read Lord Acton.  
:It was a war between American States -- even if these states became subdivisions of the Union thereafter.
:However, most are familiar with the very inaccurate "Civil War," which is also shorter and easier to say.  Thus the convention.
:What this article needed was an intelligent definition of civil war at the top, which is indeed provided in the emendation.
:Please read it all next time, before you wipe out the entire section again.--Wighson 03:25, 2005 Feb 6 (UTC)
In the greater context that this article is about a War, it seems out of balance that so much attention is given to the names of the conflict. Maybe a separate article would be appropriate for all this detail about naming convenions. Vaoverland 08:33, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
*'War of Southern Independence is INTRODUCED at least 3 times in Introduction - whole section needs to be made more concise --JimWae 19:23, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
The term "southern partisans" is used in a very redundant manner in the naming section. It's in there about half a dozen times in a row, beginning several successive sentences. This sounds choppy and poorly written. Somebody should clean it upRangerdude 04:53, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Naming Conventions

message: Why on earth was this moved from its correct name? Tannin
:: I did not move it, but I certainly agree with it.  Civil War is the proper name we have (somewhat egotistically) given to this conflict.  We added American to that proper name to differentiate it from generic civil war elsewhere on the globe.  Given that, all of it should be capitalized.  By changing it to not be capitalized you are referring to ANY American civil war and not the specific one whose proper name is Civil War.  We shouldn't make World War Two into World war two and likewise shouldn't make American Civil War into American civil war. IMO. Ark30inf 13:24, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: War of the Roses is a proper name and is capitalized.  American Civil War is also a proper name even though there could be an article called American civil which would deal with the generic concept of any non-specific civil war in America.  But this is a specific civil war called American Civil WarArk30inf 15:28, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Name of the War

message: Regarding removal of the history table--you do agree that the Civil War was part of U.S. history, right? :) What bothers so much about having it included? Someday there may be other specific events in the table--the Great Depression, World War II. I'm not ultra-hung-up on it, but there will be a big fat hole in the history series without the American Civil War section... jengod 09:53, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)
:The Civil War is a specific event - a subject onto itself. It is not a daughter article of History of the United States is any more than Vietnam War is or yes, even the Great Depression. See Talk:History of the United States for more. --mav
------
Military Developments in the War was missing. Feel free (I'm sure you already do) to murderize it. :) Stargoat 06:30, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: A good point.  Casualties in the U.S. Civil War were several orders of magnitude larger than any war before it.  Until the civil war, the loss of 10% of a fighting force in one battle was considered unusually high.  However, casualty rates of over 30% were not unknown in most of the major battles in the Civil War.  The primary change was technological, with accurate rifles being available on a mass scale that made mass charges a practical suicide mission.  I will try to address this when I'm feeling better :-)--SteveHFish 02:31, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Miscellaneous

message: This may have already been mentioned but is it accurate to refer to the events of the various "Indian Wars" as "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide?"  Granted cases of the attempted destruction of whole tribes are recorded but on the whole the attempts of the U.S are better characterized as "ethnic minimilization," by herding Natives onto reservations, and "culturacide" by force-educating Indian youth out of their "savage" ways.  I don't dispute that it was horrible, just don't think the point was to wipe the Indians, as a racial or ethnic group, from the earth.  It would seem much more accurate to refer to the goverments attempts to culturally intergrate Natives into our society.  Also if you guys are still arguing about the name you could call it "the War Between the States (American Civil War)" t.W.B.t.S was what it was called at the time and immediatley thereafter.
: I agree. The overall treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government, while certainly harsh, cannot be accurately described as "genocide." The general goal of the government was Indian Removal, not quite extermination. The terms ethnocide and cultural genocide are probably more precise to cover what happened.  Funnyhat 00:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Miscellaneous

message: Should the unheaded older talk section be archived (before June this year)?  I find the "contents" section to be near the bottom of the page, disrupting things. --tomf688 19:53, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
:Sounds great to me.  A lot of edit wars over now-irrelevant issues.
:dino 02:59, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archive old talk? 

message: An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the American_Civil_War article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add  to this page. — LinkBot 10:31, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:LinkBot/suggestions/American_Civil_War|Link suggestions]] 

message: Can anyone provide at least a partial list of battles in the naval blockade?  I want to create a campaign box for this, and the only battle I currently know of is the Battle of Hampton Roads.  --brian0918 talk 17:19, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Battles in the Naval Blockade 

message: Why isn't all the bickering over the causes of the war under 
Origins of the American Civil War?  In fairness, all of slavery, tariffs, 
sectional differences, states' rights, blah, blah, blah, all had a role.  Isn't American Civil War about the war, not its causes?  Shouldn't the curious be directed elsewhere to argue the causes?  Perhaps a simple statement, 
"The causes of the war are complex, including all slavery, tariffs, sectional differences, and states' rights, and are discussed more fully under Origins of the American Civil War".
Just my $0.02.
dino 21:21, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with your sentiments. A simple statement plus a link would be better and less redundant. Anybody else? Rangerdude 07:07, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Bickering over the causes of the war

message: I don't object to this change, but a better solution would have been to create a new article on the subject and just retain a sentence or two in this big page. Same for 'Origins of the War', which already has a separate page, but more and more creeps in here. How many objections would there be if I did this? big_hal 15:11, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me.  Really, naming is a sidenote issue compared to the war as a whole, though it is an interesting sidenote issue.  You might also mention that the Union forces were also called Federalists. --Martin Osterman 18:51, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving 'Naming the War' to end 

message: There actually were two new states admitted during the war--West Virginia in 1863 and Nevada in 1864.  (A lot of people forget Nev., but its nickname is the "Battle-born State.")  So we need a third U.S. flag image to show one more star. Funnyhat 03:30, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  U.S. flag with 36 stars needed 

message: A discussion is going on at Talk:Abraham Lincoln#Did the South really secede?
- Pioneer-12 19:23, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me that this issue has been settled by scholars previously. Since I do not have enough of a scholarly background in this matter, I defer to Hlj and others who have a better background than I do. --Martin Osterman 19:41, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Texas v. White settled that matter way back in 1869.  Not much to discuss. Rogue 9 01:05, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did the South really secede? 

message: According to the military records of the U.S. Government, the American Civil War was officially "The War of the Rebellion of the States." Does anybody agree that this should be included in the article?Afro Squirrel 8:33, 13 June 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See Naming the American Civil War. It was "The War of the Rebellion" and that was only one document in the last 140 years. Hal Jespersen 16:24, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Official" name for the war 

message: I've created a List of notable victims of the American Civil War. Feel free to add to it.  BRIAN0918  20:17, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: List of victims

message: Why is there no mention of the party affiliation of the South during this time?  It was majority slave-holding Democrats who wanted this secession.  And no mention of the anti-slave Republicans and their role in the North.  There's a reason they're called Dixicrats.
:While I don't see anything wrong with mentioning that the south was a one-party state, the Dixiecrats have nothing at all to do with the civil war.  The term only came into existence during the 1948 Democratic Party convention. -Ben 13:35, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Party affiliations

message: Someone added the above text.  Umm, the Taiping Rebellion in China, (1851–1864) which killed 20 million?  Is there any cite for this?  Or where in the scheme of things the American Civil War landed?
Just wondering.  Is the American Civil War second to the Taiping Rebellion?  Napoleon's invasion of Russia?  Uhh, probably not that one either.
dino 20:27, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: It was the second-costliest conflict in the 19th century and cost more American lives than any other conflict in history ???

message: I've recently been trying to do more research on the Civil War because I've tended to have a feeling that it has actually been connected with contemporary American foreign interventionism.  The theory I've got is that the Civil War was primarily about racism; that not only did the South need cheap black slave labour, but that even back then they saw any ethnic group other than themselves as literally less than human, and thus resented/did not understand the Union wanting to go to war (at least partly) for the sake of the black population's welfare.  In terms of where I believe this ties in with the present, I once read an account by Jimmy Carter of him growing up in or spending time in Georgia in the 1960s, and he implied that the level of inherent racism among the population there was virtually identical to what it had been when Lincoln was in office.  That led me to believe that Vietnam and the other international conflicts since could well have been at least partially motived by Southern racism; that Southern factions within the government either simply wanted an excuse to commit attrocities against other ethnic groups, (the talk during Vietnam of going off to "kill the gooks," for instance) or felt that because other ethnic groups were in their minds less than human, there should be nothing wrong with taking their natural resources. (a la Iraq)
I've tended to wonder though if this was the cause not only of the Civil War, but of just about all of America's foreign interventionism; the idea that the Civil War was the first conflict between those in the country who were racists and those who weren't.  Extending that theory, to me it makes sense that the foreign interventionist conflicts could have been partly caused by Southern resentment of the fact that they no longer had moral/legal sanction to kill members of the African-American population domestically, and thus felt driven to extend their genocidal impulses beyond their own borders.
Am I completely off here, or do people think I might be onto something?
Petrus4 10:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's an interesting theory, although seems to contain substantial stereotypes about southerners. I could say more, but we try to avoid political discussions on these talk pages that are not related to the article itself. There are several internet message boards related to the Civil War where I'm sure you could get into some vicious debates! Tfine80 18:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link between Civil War and contemporary conflicts 

message: I'm surprised that this hadn't been mentioned in the main article after so many edits. What do people think of the new section? Should it be moved further up in the article, perhaps after the battles? Tfine80 18:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diplomacy