By chance I just read parts of William C Davis s book The Cause Lost Myths and Realities of the Confederacy Lawrence KS University of Kansas Press 1996 ISBN 978 0 7006 1254 3 Note that he is a professor at Virginia Tech former editor of Civil War Times Illustrated and the only three time winner of the Jefferson Davis Prize for Confederate history according to his Wikipedia article He wrote the following paragraph on page 178 of the book Many of the myths are simply frivolous and none more so than that suggesting that ever since the conclusion of the Civil War we have been calling the conflict by the wrong name During the war it was known by several titles The North called it the Civil War or the Southern Insurrection or most commonly just the Rebellion the last two reflecting a definitely regional viewpoint The Confederates usually called it the war or occasionally the War for Southern Independence In the years after the conflict these and other terms were used and Alexander H Stevens 1868 work A Constitutional View of the War Between the States popularized a new name that quickly gained currency in the South Yet even the majority of former Confederates who wrote about the war in later years in books memoirs and letters used the term Civil War which is commonly used and accepted to this day All of those who comment on this page have almost certainly seen not just Rebellion but War of the Rebellion used by Northern writers during or not long after the conclusion of the war Davis also mentions Lincoln s War or War of Northern Aggression as apparently more recent terms used by Confederate veterans descendants In any event I agree with He suggests two possibilities I favor just using the common and neutral term American Civil War in the lede and text especially given Davis s statements that people who fought on both sides used the term in later years and it is the commonly used and accepted term today and putting all the alternative names into a footnote His other suggestion is ok with me as well