> On Apr 8, 2010, at 1:10 PM, SA wrote:
>
>> But the point is that for the majority of the South's population, it
>> wasn't one country. It was one group of states attacking another
>> group of states. It was only called a Civil War in the North.
>
> Well of course the South would say that. But I still don't see how one
> can call a central government's response to secession by a region that
> joined the nation by choice, not conquest, imperialism in the same
> sense as bombing a foreign country and/or changing its government.
Well, there was a military occupation. The occupiers overthrew the indigenous governments, barred the elected leaders from public life, disenfranchised a large share of the hostile population, set up a pro-occupation political party (relying on a traditionally oppressed indigenous minority to support it) and set up new governments under bayonets stacked with allies. There was an underground resistance movement (the KKK) that fought the occupation to restore the pre-occupation regime.
Were the North and the South actually the same country? Each side had legalistic arguments pro and con. But the way the actual occupation proceeded on the ground looked a hell of a lot like the way "normal imperialist" occupations proceed.
SA