Confederate “Heritage” Month 2023, April 4: Language for talking about the Civil War

Was it the Union Army or the US Army?

Kevin Levin has been writing a blog for years on Civil War and Reconstruction history and the distortions of Lost Cause pseudohistory. He tends to be a bit more polite about the latter than I am, but he does great work. Including his 2019 book, Searching for Black Confederates¹, which deconstructs a favorite trope of today’s Lost Cause fans, one that is staggeringly dishonest even by the very low neo-Confederate standard.

His Civil War Memory blog is currently on Substack. In a recent post, he offered some observations about the ever-changing language we use to discuss history:

Another area in which we are seeing a shift in language revolves around whether we should continue to refer to the “Union” army or “United States” army. I have a good friend in Georgia who has been collecting primary sources that seem to show that the latter was widely embraced and that this constitutes a reason to follow suit. It’s a compelling argument.

I’m not quite there yet. In my current project about Robert Gould Shaw I use a number of different references. One argument in favor of dispensing with Union for United States army is in the recognition that the United States did not cease to exist between 1861 and 1865. Others have suggested that Lost Cause apologists have hijacked the idea of Union as a way to more easily reintegrate after the war. ² [my emphasis]

It's an informative post, which he closes with this characteristic expression of his approach:

We will not likely see a consensus emerge in regards to some of these issues nor is it necessarily a desirable end given the nature of language. It’s a reminder that language is a tool that when properly and thoughtfully applied helps to illuminate some aspect of the past that remains just beyond our understanding.

The literate discussion in the comments to his post is also worthwhile.

If the topic of the actual history of the Civil War is of interest to you, Kevin’s blog is one you need to be following!

While writing this post, this good ole Union song kept running through my head:

Oh we're springing to the call for three hundred thousand more,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

[Chorus:]
The Union forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitors, up with the stars;
While we rally round the flag, boys, we rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!³

In a more recent post, Kevin asks whether their is a new historical narrative about the Civil War emerging to address very recent concerns and experiences. He includes this historians’ conference from 2012⁴:

1. Levin, Kevin N. (2019): Searching for Black Confederates: the Civil War’s most persistent myth. Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press.

2. Levin, Kevin (2023): What's in a Word: Language and the American Civil War. Civil War Memory 02/28/2023. <https://kevinmlevin.substack.com/p/whats-in-a-word-language-and-the> (Accessed: 2023-24-03).

3. Lyrics from: Wikipedia (2022): Battle Cry of Freedom 12/18/2022. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_Cry_of_Freedom&oldid=1128135227>

4. The American Civil War: Legacies for Our Own Time. YaleUniversity YouTube channel 04/02/2012. (Accessed: 2023-24-03).