LANGUAGE MISCONCEPTION

O PERSON IN THE UNITED STATES from the 1830s through the 1850s thought in terms of an “antebellum” era. Latin for “before the war,” the word came into use only after the Civil War ended and participants, historians, and others sought to label the decades preceding the outbreak of fighting at Fort Sumter. Commonplace in the historical literature for many generations, it summons thoughts of a young republic lurching toward political collapse. Deployment of antebellum can create an impression of inevitability, of citizens increasingly obsessed with sectional differences, and of time ticking inexorably toward bloodshed on a massive