The American Civil war was the result of conflicts arising between American states that wanted slavery in the south versus American states that wanted more rights for black Americans. The war took place from 1861 to 1865. Over those 4 years, over a million soldiers died due to brutal war.
A lot of the battling ensued in the southern territories also known as the Confederacy during this time. The Confederate states included a myriad of states such as : Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.
The war ended over 150 years ago which is relatively recent in history, which is why to this day a lot of individuals associate the term “Confederate” or “confederacy” with a negative connotation of some sorts. The term confederacy has a relatively neutral tone to it, meaning a “league or alliance, especially of confederate states”. Majority of Americans have now associated the neutral charged word of confederate with something relatively devious or even untrustworthy.
We can find this relatively inconvenient when we use the term confederate when it comes to research methods and experimentation. Confederate in the usage of research is when an individual participates in the experiment but is not being recorded and watched by the experimenter, often they are even prompting the participant to have a certain response. In this usage, confederate has nothing to do with slavery or war but simply as a tool to realize the individual that is the confederate is working with the researcher and not being a random participant.
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The usage of the term confederacy or confederate is not a relatively new idea. Simply googling confederacies in the past will lead you to a long list: The Gaya Confederacy from 42 to 532, the Toltec Empire from 496 to 1122, the Old Swiss Confederacy from 1291 to 1798, the North German Confederation from 1867 to 1871 or even the well known Soviet Union from 1922 to 1936. Through this simple search we can see that the idea of confederacies is not relatively new at all, but due to English 's close relationship to America we have come to assume that the word confederate is bad or even something to avoid.
The etymology of the word confederacy is also something to view since we see the usage of this term since old times. We see the prefix of the word con within the term confederate and we can see the origins of the word federal within those two words. Beginners with root words may think with the combination of these root words we have foedus from latin which means a league or covenant and con meaning the opposite of a league or group so being rebellious. However the truth is that the root prefix of con is not opposite but contra- such as in the usage of contradict or contraband. The true prefix we are using is con of latin origins which is derived from the word cum, meaning together, We can see this prefix of con in words such as connect, congregate or even contract. The distinction between the latin prefixes or contra- and con- is important to be able to identify in this context. In modern usages we are quick to assume con- means something bad such as a pros and cons list, since pros comes from the greek root of proti which means towards another putting con and pro as opposing ideas.
Compounding the recent usage of the term confederate in a negative connotation within the American civil war and the easy misuse and misidentification of the root prefix con- has led to individuals to subconsciously associate the term confederate or confederacy in a negative way.