What type of war was the Civil War?

Answer 1

It was a war between the Northern States and Southern States.

It was a war between two groups in the U.S.

IMPROVEMENT.

It was a war that started from the tactical and strategical point of view like a war fought during Napoleonic Era, but after its early stage it evolved more and more becoming what that the historian called "The first Modern War".

the factors which determined this evolution were:

the industrial, civilian and moral mobilization of the resources of both the Union and Confederacy for the war purposes;

the adoption of new tactics and strategies aimed to the better exploitation of the new weapons and military devices invented or developed during the conflict.

In the last 8 months of the war the growing attrition made the conflict assume a character of "Total War", an aspect mainly due to the military and political necessity for the Union to annihilate the Confederacy, being a peace of compromise impossible to conceive, since the South was determined not to give up the principles on which the Secession was based upon: Southern Independence as a new nation, slavery, Right of the States, etc.

In a few words it was a war in which both sides had no other perspective than win or being cancelled in their original identity.