Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

by Ty Seidule

I called the side wearing the dark blue, almost blue-black, uniform, the Union army. I refuse to use that terminology any longer. Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and more than two million soldiers didn’t fight in the Union army as though they belonged to an organization that fought only one war.17 An army relegated to the dustbin of history, as Karl Marx would say. No, the boys in blue fought in the U.S. Army for the United States of America.

Words certainly matter....U.S. Army for the United States vs the Confederacy certainly puts it into proper perspective more than the Union vs Confederacy.

The United States fought against a rebel force that would not accept the results of a democratic election and chose armed rebellion.

Those who do not learn from history....

“The War Between the States” created the impression of two equal sides, two sovereign nations. Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy’s first and, thankfully, last president, wrote, “A sovereign cannot rebel … You might as well say that Germany rebelled against France, or that France rebelled against Germany.”18 Using the phrase “the War Between the States” erroneously gives the rebelling states constitutional claim to a righteous cause.

“The War of the Rebellion” is the most accurate description of the American Civil War. Frederick Douglass’s description has merit too: the “Slaveholders’ Rebellion.”20 When I hear “the War of Northern Aggression” or “the War Between the States,” I know a Confederate sympathizer or argument against equal rights will soon follow.