Histories are written by the victors, and their choice of language is always going to produce victims, and attackers. The use of " raids" was done as much to put the fear or God into Northern residents living along the OHIO river, where both Southern Sympathizers, and Union loyalists lived, as well as to brand the Southern soldiers who did cross the river to Attack Union positions and supply trains in Indiana and Ohio as " criminals". Remember, that the Unionists considered Secessionists " Traitors", and wanted to hang all of them. Lincoln would have none of it, and was responsible for treating captured Confederate Soldiers as Prisoners of War, and as humanely as possible. Unionists who ran the prison camps, who felt differently, managed to conceal from Lincoln the amount of deaths, disease, and starvation going on in Northern Prison camps. That is why camps in his own State of Illinois, at Rock Island, and North of Chicago, at " Camp Douglas", saw so many confederate deaths- with poor records showing much fewer deaths than actually occurred. There was cruelty on both sides of the conflict, of course. But, Northern newspaper, those that supported the war, represented people who wanted to not only to crush the Confederacy, but to make the South pay. Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, was the " leader " of this faction.
When Lincoln was assassinated, the South lost its best friend, and only hope for a better reconciliation. Instead, they got Stanton, who imposed harsh terms and conditions, and almost succeeded in getting Congress to back his wishes to hang all the Confederate leaders. The public reaction to the hanging of Mary Surratt destroyed what support he had, and those leaders were released from custody. Congress lost its stomach for punishing Americans. Andrew Johnson, coming from a Border State, also helped to curb the lust for revenge. It was his opposition to Stanton that was behind the move to remove him from the Presidency by Impeachment.
Technically, incursions into Northern states can be labeled " raids". Efforts of Union forces to fight battles in Southern States were also " raids", but on a much larger scale.
I think the common understanding of the term is that a raid is a lightly composed force of enemy soldiers, that strikes quickly and then withdraws, rather than trying to hold ground. Battles tend to be larger manned events, that result in someone holding the ground and the survivors of the enemy retreating and giving up ground.
Just don't expect Journalists- then or now- to be the keepers of the English Language. They need to sell newspaper and Ad time. They live on Sensationalism, not accuracy in use of language. Only lawyers have a need to insure that language means the same 100 years from now that it means today, and its the only profession that works hard to protect the meaning and usage of words as language. ( How can a lawyer write a will, that may not be entirely used for more than several generations to settle the distribution of all the property in an estate, if he can't be assured that what he writes NOW will be understood and interpreted by future courts, and lawyers, in the same way??)
I don't want to start a war with Journalists, writers, English Teachers, musicians and composers, or anyone else who uses language in their business. Other professions have other ethics, and other goals for the use of words. Within their sense of ethics, what they do is "right". Americans create and add to the lexicon every year hundreds of words. Its one of the great attributes of the English Language that is NOT shared by other languages in the world, and it is why English has become a dominant language for communication around the world.
Because of lawyer's concerns about how language will be understood in the future, large Wills, with Trusts, and future interests, written today, often include a Glossary of terms, giving the definition of terms used, with instructions that the definitions of the words listed in the glossary shall be used in determining the original intent of the Testator( writer of the will.)
This same kind of thing is also seen in substantial Contracts, particularly if they involved the Government as a party. The purpose is to protect private businesses from The Government changing the "rules " during the performance of a contract, and then using its considerable financial resources to bankrupt the private business if it dares to contest the Government's " Interpretation " in Court. Glossaries of terms often make the difference between a company making a profit, or going under. :hatsoff:
