And which Civil War would that be?

Maybe my expectations for others are too high because I was a history major, but this kind of thing makes me both laugh and shake my head. Here is a link to a listing for an 1843 large cent. The seller says it was "issued during the Civil War!!" Actually, I don't think it was. 1861-1865.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1843-Young-Head-Cent-/170563821075?pt=Coins_US_Individual&hash=item27b6655e13

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

That's either hilarious... or sad, depending on how one looks at it !

 

That's nearly as sad as the high school senior who planned to drive her car from San Francisco to Honolulu right after graduation. She even got a map and showed me the road (latitude line) she planned to take.

No wonder so many companies recruit employees from overseas.

 

Its typical.....History doesnt matter to many people......that prolly why it keeps repeating

 

Nope your expectations arent too high it is really sad that people don't even know when the civil war took place.

 

This makes my current signature line even more appropriate.

 

Perhaps referring to the Spanish Civil War? Someone needs to ask him, this may keep me up all night.

 

1843 would be about a century too early for that.

 

If history is gonna keep repeating, let's just revise it to be something we want.

 

Well... ok... If you know what a civil war is, then what makes you call the War Between the States a civil war? The War of Southern Secession was not about seizing the federal capital. That would have been a civil war, like the Spanish Civil War or the English Civil War.

But, just as I sometimes call a cent a "penny" I also call the War Between the States, the "civil war." (Apparently, I also start sentences with conjunctions.)

When speaking to normal people, I refer to "the so-called Byzantine empire." When speaking with other collectors of ancients, I say "Romaion." They never called themselves anything but Romaion. Read "What -- if anything -- is a Byzantine?"

 

It's just laziness, plain and simple. The seller could have gone on Wikipedia, or a thousand other websites and found something that happened in 1843, or at least the fact that John Tyler was president. But, this guy probably already knows that Ronald Reagan was fighting in the civil war against the Soviet Union in 1843.

 

Average

Please remember folks,

HALF of us are required to be below average.

......and as far as the War of Northern Aggression went.........

Well, that's history, right?

 

Thats what it is. He's lazy. I mean its one thing to miss it and say 1858 but that far back. You didnt go to history class for no reason

 

It would be so easy to just say "this is 167 years old" or something like that and it still sounds old. You shouldn't make claims if you don't know what the heck you're talking about. As they say, it is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

 

It's a civil war because it was fought by two groups within a nation, not between two nations. But anyway the problem is not the terminology, it's that he's off by 18 years in his chronology.

 

So true! or as i like to say:

If there weren't so many idiots running around, i wouldn't be so smart

 

Are you sure about that? The South had separated from the Union (and the behavior of the north after the war toward the south clearly indicates that they did consider the south to have actually left the union.) And if you don't then by the same logic the war we fought from 1776 to 1783 was also a civil war because it was not a war between two nations. We tend to recognize our Independence from England as having begun when we declared it and not when we won in 1783. From that we would have to recognize the south as being a separate nation once they declared their succession. Back thn we did, which was why the southern states had to pass certain laws and ratify several constitutional amendments before they would be RE_ADMITTED to the Union. If they had to be readmitted, then they must have left. If they were not recognized as having left, as soon as the war ended they would have once again been considered to be part of the Union, and all at the same time. Instead it took several years before they were all back.

 

It is very sad that an American citizen would know so little about our history. The school system has failed yet again. Also, Oxford defines a civil war as "a war between citizens of the same country". Since the states seceeded and had the right to do so, then they were no longer citizens of the same country. This had the same effect as the Declaration of Independence. Though the colonists were English subjects, we don't call the American Revolution a civil war. The War for Southern Independence was just that, the third American Revolution. (The second being the War of 1812, the war to preserve American independence.)

 

History......there's just too much of it...............and every day there's more!

 

I don't know how much I should get off the topic of coins on the Coin Talk message board, but I do enjoy a good discussion of history. Your argument about why it is not a civil war is a matter of perception. From the perception of the North, seceding was an illegal and invalid act, so the Confederacy was never a separate country. Since history is written by the winners, that is how it has been recorded in the history books. Had the Confederacy won, it would be the War of Independence in the South and probably be called something else in the North. The same is true to a certain extent for the Revolution. The Americans considered themselves an independent nation, while the British considered them rebels, just like the North considered the South rebels. The only real difference I see is that as a colony, the Americans were not in quite the same position in the Revolution, as they were in an inferior role to the mother country. The Confederacy was never recognized as a separate nation; that's what the war was about. If it had been, there would have been no need for a war. The Confederacy hoped for foreign recognition throughout the war but it never happened, at least not by any major nations. After the Civil War, the Southern states were in some way similar to the territories (at the time much of the West was not yet organized into states). They were American soil and their residents were Americans, but they were not on the same level as states. The territories had certain requirements they needed to meet to be admitted as states, as did the Southern states after the war. It's not quite the same thing, but the aftermath of the war was a unique situation.