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As it is the prerogative of the victors to write the history, the U. S. government produced a history of the war titled "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion" (Their original title was The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion and they were later renamed The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies).
So rather than ask, was it a "revolution", as opposed to a Civil War, we might ask if it was a "rebellion" vs. a "revolution".
I personally prefer the "War of the Rebellion" to the unclarity of the term "War Between the States, if not settling for the "Civil War".
Anyway, here is a link to an interesting (I think) article on just that subject:
We have retrospect on secession. Secession was termed both illegal and secession was rebellion.
In addition, there were several law passed by the Congress and signed by Lincoln that treated secession as rebellion. One of the important bills unheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as constitutional were the Confiscation Acts, that took property away from those considered in rebellion against the United States.
One case involved the confiscation of property from a Mr. Slidell, who was much more famous in history, as one captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy. Slidell's heirs wanted compensation for property confiscated in New Orleans, from one Slidell.
The Supreme Court ruled that Slidell was in rebellion and to suppress insurrection the U.S. Congress and the President had the right to punish rebellion. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government.
Of course, there are many who insist on going back to 1860 and 1861, and assume the opinions of Mr. Slidell were correct, avoiding entirely historical retrospect after the Civil War.
From the perspective of semantics, revolution connotes success; rebellion connotes failure. Each denotes an active attempt to change or overthrow an existing order. Ergo, the Confederacy rebelled.
Gary: Still chortling over the "rebelling/revolting" comment.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Gen. Stuart makes a good point about Idea's being Revolutionary, but in the last paragraph, seems to say that the CW did not have a profound revolutionary effect upon society.
It can be argued that the CW, was about profound changes, that impacted American society. After all freeing several million slaves in a racist society, is still reverberating in that society to this day. The speeding up industrial expansion, the consolidation of power to the Senate from the House of Representatives in Washington D.C., the relationship of states to the nat'l gov't being settled once and for all, etc., are just a few of the effects that could be recongnized as having profound effects on our society.
It was the North that sought to and ultimately did, push through extensive constitutional, legal, political, economic, and social changes:
Abolishing slavery, suspending habeas corpus, instituting military conscription, enfranchising black men, vastly increasing the size of its military and naval establishment, instituting a blockade of what it stated was its own country, putting much of what it regarded as it's own country under military occupation during and even long past the cessation of hostilities, etc.
Sounds revolutionary to me.
The South wanted to maintain its own institutions and way of life. It didn't want to change the North either.
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Gentlemen, I think you should reconsider and reread Capt Coxetter post again and I think you will agree with me that he has hit the nail on the head when it comes to the cause of the war.
The South did not want change. And, as the Capt has observed, it did not want change for the North either. In fact, it dreded change, it resisted change and feared change above all else.
The South resisted change so dramatically and fiercely, that it would gag free speech in Congress for years, thereby restricting the right to speak for the entire nation. The South, which wanted slavery unencumbered and nonrestricted, even though a majority of the citizens of the nation did want it restricted, fought such change, even to the point of bloodshed in Kansas. Even to the point of restricting citizens of both the North and the South of speaking out against slavery. Even the US Mail was searched and those citizens whose rights to use the mail restricted.
No, the South definately wanted no change and was prepared to enforce this view no matter what the rest of the nation wanted even to the point of being the first to institute a military draft before the North, even to the point of stealing arms that belonged to the entire nation, firing on ships, seizing forts, arsenals, mints, ships, custom houses, etc.
During the war in effort to stay where it was, it restricted travel without the consent of its elected representatives, it through those who disagreed with its policies into prision and jail without warrent, it arrested newspaper reporters, in an effort to keep things the same and not to change.
So determined was the South not to change, it even considered having black slaves fight as soldiers in order to keep the South as it was, but then realized to do so would result in a rather significant change, so the idea never really came to anything, because the change it would have involved frightened the South.
Yes, looking back on it, the South definately did not want to change it's institutions, it's culture, it's social behavior nor did it wish to face the reality that change is the only constant in the known physical and social universe.
Pity.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
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Or was it a Rebellion? 
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