What defines civil disobedience is that:
- it is peaceful, it does not resort to force but to protest,
- it is an civilian movement.
These two features distinguish it from wars in that wars are:
- not fought by the civil society but by armed forces (usually the military, but not always, it can be independent guerillas or paramilitary groups),
- the opposite of peaceful. In the case of the American Civil War, it was even extremely violent, resulting in between 600,000 and 1,000,000 casualties.
