Yes, exactly.
I'm not. But I do support truth over the propaganda of either side in discussing conflicts all of whose participants are now dead.
The Confederacy was a regional secessionist movement, rather than a nationwide revolt. That its aims were despicable doesn't change that fact.
The definition of a civil war that I have seen is that it is a war between citizens of the ssme country. The War Between the States fits that definitik despite the CSA’s claim because the South lost, they were citizens of the USA as the North maintsined.
That's
a definition of Civil War. But it's disingenuous to declare that the Confederates were citizens of the USA, when that is one of the facts in dispute, and over which the war was fought.
If the classification of the war is dependent on who wins, then IMO it's not a very useful classification from an historian's perspective; Though it's obviously a very useful one from the perspective of the victors.
A comparison with other wars suggests that there are, for purposes of historical understanding, three distinct classes of war: Those where both sides agree that the number of nations involved is one (Civil Wars); Those where one party believes that there is one nation involved, but the other does not (Wars of Secession); and Those where all parties agree that they belong to different nations (which are just 'Wars').
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the Seventeenth Century were, in the main, Civil Wars - each Kingdom was fighting within itself over the form of government, with significant forces of Royalists and Parliamentarians in each of the nations involved.
The French and Russian Civil Wars (the French one was so one sided as to be effectively indistinguishable from the revolution; The Russians had a the revolution first, then fought a Civil War over whether it would stick, albeit that Civil War was dominated by foreign forces on the side of the Whites) are more clear cut examples of genuine Civil Wars.
To categorise the Union/Confederacy conflict in the same way is IMO of little value. There are distinct and important differences between the ACW and these other conflicts. In particular, that a Civil War tends to be hugely fragmented, with front lines that separate numerous unconnected enclaves and exclaves, and that are often difficult or impossible to accurately portray on a map, as significant support for both sides can be found in a majority of the territory under dispute.
To discuss
the definition, as though only one definition were possible or useful, is sophomoric. It's good for passing exams at school, but presumes a level of structure and clarity that is not a characteristic of reality. Challenging such concrete definitions on the basis of their utility (or lack of utility) in understanding the historical events and their contexts, is a useful exercise and can lead to better insights into the reality that hides behind the participants' claims (particularly those of the victors).
To say that the ACW was a Civil War between US citizens, occluding the fact that it was a war of secession fought by a specific set of states against another specific set of states, is as misleading as saying that the war was fought over states' rights without mention of slavery. Both give a distorted and incomplete picture. The Confederacy was, up to its defeat, a clearly distinct nation, with its own currency, government, and military, and with a defined geographical extent. That's not something that is typically characteristic of Civil Wars.
