Re: Making Sense of It All

[Bradford DeLong]

>
>Technically, this is not true.  Indeed, the U.S. Civil War is now 
>called the War Between the States by most because it was not a true 
>civil war.  The southern states wished to succeed from the Union; 
>they didn't want to gain control of the Union.

I'm not sure who "most people" are. But I still call it the Civil 
War, as does my ten-year-old's textbook.

This ascription of a "wish" to southern states strikes me as totally 
false: a majority of the voters in, say, South Carolina at the start 
of 1861 wished to secede from the union, but it seems very likely 
that a majority of the people in South Carolina at the start of 1861 
wished to stay in the union.

Brad DeLong