Rethinking Terminology in Civil War History (Re: Army Univ Press Announcement)

H-CivWar Towards A More Perfect Union: Rethinking Terminology in Civil War History (Re: Army Univ Press Announcement)

Discussion published by John Legg on Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Earlier this week, the Army University Pressannounced that their institution (also see Peter Knupfer's inquiry on the subject here) would stop publishing materials that used the name “Union” or “Union Army” in works on the American Civil War, as well as other non-neutral terms that misrepresent the factual history of that conflict. In terms of this conversation, I will explore the good that comes from recognizing the “Union” as the U.S. Army which expands the geographic and thematic scope of the Civil War.

As a historian of Native American and Civil War era histories, I wanted to write a few words that go beyond Army University Press’s decision, primarily because the editor’s note does not emphasize the significance of this change to the study of the American West and Indigenous communities during the Civil War. The decision is not a function of “cancel culture,” but rather an example of the evolution of the discipline of history. Terminology aids in the evolution of our field to better understand the diverse experiences involved, rather than a top-down official approach that reinforces the Civil War binary of North versus South. The direction of the field is expanding geographies and themes that go beyond the traditional narrative of Civil War history. Language conveys meaning and specificity in our writings contribute to a more comprehensive examination of our past, such as seen in the recent works published by Megan Kate Nelson and others.

The American Civil War remains a central focal point to understanding why the conflict between Indigenous communities and the U.S. government persisted through this period. Debates over the spread of slavery west paralleled with more ambitious efforts by the U.S. Government to expand national boundaries and borders. Of the major legislation passed in 1862, the Homestead Act remains a significant moment where white settlers had new opportunities to move west, and by doing so, encounter more Native communities resisting the migration of white Americans. Violent clashes between white settlers, U.S. soldiers, and Native communities projected a broader vision of the American Civil War. While some historians continue to argue that fighting that raged in traditional Civil War operations had no causal effect on territorial expansion in the American West, these incidents of violence contribute to why we need to refer to the U.S. Army as that and not the “Union Army.” While U.S. soldiers fought to preserve the “Union” or emancipate enslaved people, they also fought against Indigenous communities that stood in their way of expanding the size and scale of the United States in the American West. This fighting helped further acts of erasure by the time of Reconstruction that incorporated legislation that excluded Native Americans from citizenship in the United States.

A few significant events show us how U.S. soldiers used violence against Indigenous people in their quest to expand their nation during the Civil War era. During the U.S.-Dakota War, Minnesota regiments fought at places like Vicksburg, Corinth, or Helena, Arkansas before returning to the Northern Great Plains to fight against Santee Dakota. These federal troops in 1863 set out on expeditions to hunt down fleeing Dakota militants that fought in the Dakota War. At Whitestone Hill (present-day North Dakota), Major General Alfred Sully’s forces utterly destroyed an encampment of

Citation: John Legg. Towards A More Perfect Union: Rethinking Terminology in Civil War History (Re: Army Univ Press Announcement). H-CivWar. 04-28-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/discussions/7636948/towards-%C2%A0more-perfect-union-rethinking-terminology%C2%A0-civil- war Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-CivWar

Dakota and Lakota people, killing hundreds, and burning roughly 400,000 pounds of dried bison meat—a nod towards the hard war tactics used by U.S. generals farther east. January 1863 bore witness to a large massacre of Shoshone people at Bear River as increased tensions between Indigenous and white settlements boiled over. In 1864, Colorado troops massacred hundreds of Arapaho and Cheyenne women, children, and elders along the banks of Sand Creek, and in 1864, after long tension between the U.S. government and Navajo communities, the U.S. Army forcibly removed these Indigenous people from their homeland to a military outpost at Bosque Redondo. All of these events signify the U.S. Army's efforts to subdue Indigenous people as part of the larger settler- colonial agenda of the United States of America. In all of these incidents, thousands of Indigenous people perished by the violent hands of the U.S. Army. To dilute the experiences of the U.S. Army to the binary of North versus South misappropriates the broader goals and experiences in waging war against Indigenous communities resisting colonialism and broken treaty promises.

I applaud the Army University Press for standing their ground to recognize the misnomer of “Union” in describing the military force fighting in the Civil War. We must, however, move forward to better acknowledge the role of the U.S. Army fighting a two-front war: one of emancipation and one of exclusion and destruction.

John R. Legg is a Ph.D. Student at George Mason University researching Dakota movement after the U.S.-Dakota War. He tweets @thejohnlegg.