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September 18, 2000
Elaine Becker wrote: I have come across the word secesh in literature on the Civil War in Kentucky. I gather that it is a term for secessionist, but I would like to know if it was used outside of Kentucky, or even outside of the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, and if it was just a derogatory term used by Union supporters (the book where I have seen the most usage has been in the recent University Press of Kentucky reissue of A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky, the Civil War diary of Frances Peter).Secesh is indeed a short form of secessionist, but it was actually used in a wider range of meanings, and across a range of regions--from states that eventually did secede, such as Arkansas and Virginia, to states that ultimately did not, such as Illinois and Ohio. It's hard to pinpoint the earliest use of the term; our first citations are from 1861, the same year in which the final states that seceded did so. These earliest citations are for the adjective meaning of secessionist rather than the noun: "Miss Cuttle is...strongly 'Secesh.'" "All the 'secesh' women in the south." As frequent visitors to this site will know, the fact that the term secesh is appearing in quotation marks shows that the term was quite new. It does seem to be used almost exclusively by people who were pro-Union, but we do get "I was one of the original 'Secesh'" in Tourgée's Fool's Errand of 1879. Interestingly, we have no citations for secesh being used in the singular to refer to one secessionist. Instead, we get the mouthful secesher (as if "secessionist" weren't hard enough to say three times fast): "The front yard of some secesher's deserted house" (1861); "Thick...as Seceshers down to Memphis" (1862). Sesesh is used as a plural noun: "Presently my dragoon cocked his carbine and exclaimed, 'There's Secesh in the woods'" (1863); "You are the boys who can whip all the G-d d-md Secesh in Arkansas" (1862; author's censorship, not mine). We're not done with the parts of speech on this one. Secesh was also used as a verb: "Under no circumstances whatsomever [sic] will I secesh" (1862); "I woodent hev secesht" (1866). Its other noun role was as a short form of secession: "Secesh doesn't prevail...in this village" (1863); "Secesh is played out" (1892). That last citation is the latest one we have, and nearly all of our citations cluster around the years 1861-1863. This would indicate that secesh was obsolescent as a slang term not very long after the end of the Civil War, and obsolete by the turn of the 20th century. It's now regarded as historical slang, used only by history teachers, historical novel writers, and perhaps the odd elderly Yankee with a long memory.
Wendalyn
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