Civil War Lingo: Birth of a New Language

The fire of the American Civil War forged not only a new national identity but also a new national language. Erudite orators, literary lions, unyielding politicians, gritty generals, boys in the trenches, women on the homefront (and in the field)--all, singed by the fire, spoke and wrote in urgent tones about the flaming grandeur engulfing them. This was not an ordinary war. It was a brothers' war. Love and hate were fused and confused. And out of the heights and depths of those mixed emotions came an incredibly rich range of cries and quips, poems and songs, prayers and speeches, reports and dispatches, letters and diaries. Thus was created a language and literature of the people, not of the scholars; heated and hammered out by the raw experience of life and death, not by study.

Hundreds of words and phrases reflect the time (1861-65) and the people of the American Civil War. The expressions fall into three broad categories: general language of the era, military terms, and soldiers' lingo.

The language of the era includes many expressions still familiar today. For example, the canned food industry began just before the Civil War, but it was the wartime production of canned products, especially the canned rations given to the soldiers, that made most Americans aware of such food. Canned vegetables, canned tomatoes, canned goods, and canned milk became familiar American expressions during the war.

Gasoline, too, was in the early stages of its development during the Civil War. The word gasoline made its first appearance at that time.

The United States mail service was divided into classes in 1863, thus creating the postal terms first class, second class, and third class. In God We Trust, as a motto on United States money, was first authorized by Congress in 1864 for a two-cent bronze coin. A greenback was a legal-tender note (one side of which was printed in green ink) used as currency in place of gold, first authorized by the United States government during the Civil War.