Wikipedia: United States Civil War/Talk

Google has 950,000/1,100,000 results, that's far from universally. 'US Civil War' is unambigious and thus better; nobody will get lost because of redirection. --Yooden

I rewrote the first paragraph to give the actual name of the Confederate States of America. "The Confederacy" is as much a nickname as "the Union" was. It is extremely important to distinguish between "Southern States" and "the Confederacy." Several slaveholding states did not (or were not allowed by direct federal troop intervention, i.e., Maryland) secede. They were culturally and politically 'the South,' but are commonly called 'the Border states' --MichaelTinkler, semireconstructed and spatially-displaced-in-Upstate-NY Southerner

Several slaveholding states did not secede.

Never heard of this before. Please tell us which. --Yooden

Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland?, others?

Delaware, too. Yes, Yooden, the whole slavery thing is much more complicated that Federalist historians like to admit. Slaves were freed LAST OF ALL in the non-seceding Union states. --MichaelTinkler

The war is also known in the South as the War Between the States or (now half-humorously) as The War of Northern Aggression.

Ummm.. no one of my mother's generation (born in 1940) would consider that as even half humourously. Many people in the deep south (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, etc.) believe completely that it was a war of Northern Agression. Generally, the closer their families lived to the land desecrated by General Sherman, the deeper it is believed.

I've only heard it mentioned as a humorous name by people whose forefathers didn't have to live through the after effects of the war. (Though honestly, I expect this is true of most wars)