Item description: A reprinted editorial from the Toronto Leader (22 July 1861) as found in the Wilmington Daily Journal of 13 August 1861. In it, the editors claim that the Canadian press should refrain from using the term “rebel” when referring to citizens of the Confederate States. They go on to explain that the separation of the Confederate States should be viewed as a separation of equals and that the Southern states were never under the subjection of the Northern states.
Item citation: The Daily Journal. 13 August 1861. Wilmington, N.C.: Fulton & Price. C071 W74jd. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Official United States documents call our civil war, “The War of the Rebellion.”
If the Southern secessionists had won their cause, then the rebellion would’ve become a revolution, but they didn’t, and so never transcended their status as mere insurrectionists.