ABSTRACT
Historians (mostly Americans) continue to argue about the nature of the American Civil War (1861–1865). A. James Fuller’s chapter portrays the nuances of this Historikerstreit. While one group focusing on the scale and scope of the war, and particularly on quantitative data (especially the number of deaths resulting from war, both direct and indirect), strongly asserts that the Civil War in North America marked the beginning of Total War, the other group of scholars challenge the data. In recent times, the ‘challengers’ have started using a quasi-cultural argument: the meaning of death and the shift in the concept of death during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Further, the role of marginal groups (for instance non-white) is also brought under the historical scanner. Whatever stance one may take regarding the use of terminology to describe the American Civil War, it is hard to deny that several new trends emerged and mutated during the course of this conflict.
