Origins of the American Civil War battle began the American Civil War, as an overwhelming demand for war swept both the North and South, with only Kentucky attempting to remain neutral. According to Adam Goodheart (2011), the modern meaning of the American flag was also forged in the defense of Fort Sumter. Thereafter, the flag was used throughout the North to symbolize American nationalism and rejection of secessionism. Abraham Lincoln's rejection of the Crittenden Compromise, the failure to secure the ratification of the Corwin amendment in 1861, and the inability of the Washington Peace Conference of 1861 to provide an effective alternative to Crittenden and Corwin
Names of the American Civil War American flag". Given that in the free states non-Yankee groups – Germans, Dutch-Americans, New York Irish and southern-leaning settlers in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois – showed majority opposition to waging the Civil War, other Confederate sympathizers have used the name "War of Yankee Aggression" or "Great War of Yankee Aggression" to indicate the Civil War as a Yankee war, not a Northern war "per se". Conversely, the "War of Southern Aggression" has been used by those who maintain that the Confederacy was the belligerent party. They maintain the thought that the Confederacy started the war when they initiated combat at