Graph 2

I compiled a database on books published on the Civil War between 1861 and 1920 that are in the Library of Congress through an on-line search of its catalogue, using the key word terms “War of the Rebellion” and “Civil War”—which included most books on the war no matter the title. (For example, both Pollard’s Lost Cause and Alexander Stephens’ Constitutional View of the Late War were included). I then compiled a database of titles, by year published, author, name, general name, and where the book was published. Here, too, the raw numbers were converted into percentages of names used in each year. I then created a cross tab and graphs. As with newspapers, the graph here includes only the two dominant names for the war.
William Pencak, “The American Civil War Did Not Take Place,” Rethinking History 6, 2 (2002): 217-21, uses a different sample, of memoirs and general histories catalogued in Civil War Books, and finds an emergence of Civil War as the common name in 1910, slightly later than the graph here.