We Americans still argue about our Civil War. Even the name for the war is controversial, 150 years after the guns fell silent. The official records, published by the victorious Union side, called the conflict the War of the Rebellion, while the defeated South preferred such names as the War for Southern Independence, or at least the more neutral War Between the States. There was certainly nothing civil about the Civil War.

Americans who study the war are struck by the fact that many of the greatest battles of the war have two names, such as Bull Run (Union) or Manassas (Confederate), Shiloh (Confederate) or Pittsburgh Landing (Union), and Antietam (Union) or Sharpsburg (Confederate).

The division over the war was so great that the sides could not even agree as to what the war was all about — even today, historians differ on the exact role such contentious issues as slavery and the tariff played in bringing about the conflict, or if they were even the real issues of the war.

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