What was the character of the War? Though one of the greatest wars of
modern times, having its rise and fall before the eyes of all the world,
yet men are to-day in doubt as to the true term by which to describe it.
Was it a Civil War? Such a conception omits the claim of the North that
the Federal Government as such fought to maintain its constitutional
supremacy, and the claim of the South that the seceding states but
exercised their constitutional rights in seceding, and as states fought
to maintain that principle. A civil war betokens one people, in the same
country, subjects of the same power, at war among themselves. Here,
though afore-time countrymen, when the battle was joined, there were two
rival governments, and the territories of the contending parties were
distinguished, not by shibboleths and banners, but by rivers and
mountain ranges. It was a sectional rather than a community war, a
conflict between governments rather than between citizens of the same
government.
Was it a Rebellion? Such a conflict indicates a revolt of citizens or
subjects against their acknowledged sovereign. Whether in the United
States the citizen owed allegiance to the Federal Government as against
his State Government was a question upon which men had divided since the
birth of the Republic. The men of the North responded to the call of the
sovereign to whose allegiance they acknowledged fealty—the men of the
South did the same. It was a battle between rival conceptions of
sovereignty rather than one between a sovereign and its acknowledged
citizens.
Was it a Revolution? A revolution is a successful movement of citizens
or subjects against their sovereign. Here the identity of the Sovereign
was in dispute, and the effort, though of unexampled magnitude, was
unsuccessful. In addition the parties to the conflict held
irreconcilable conceptions as to what constituted the right of
revolution—one insisting that it was a God-given right inherent in any
people sufficiently numerous to maintain a National existence; the
other, that it was a mere power to strike, dependent upon success to
prove the legitimacy of the claim.