In the North it was “The Civil War”, to the Southern media and politicians it was “The War for Southern Independence”, to the those in the South who did the killing, the dying and the mourning, it was “The War Against Northern Aggression”.
C'mon, that sounds an awful lot more like something wiseacres and malcontents thought up much, much later.
Didn't it sound a little comical the first time you heard it?
Google finds it used exactly once during the war, by a Northern General as something he wanted to refute.
It looks like the phrase really got started in the 1950s and took off in recent decades. Source
Nowadays, somebody's going to accuse somebody like me of saying Confederate soldiers were stupid if I point out that "War of Northern Aggression" was pretty highfalootin' for use in the trenches and encampments, but ordinary folks, North or South, would have felt pretentious talking that way.
I can't say that nobody ever said, "This is a war of Northern agression," but that wasn't what soldiers commonly called the war.
I’ve heard it all my life and “The War for Southern Independence” was used extensively by politicians and newspapers, “Ive also heard and seen in print “The War Against Northern Aggression” all my life and it probably didn’t come into use until after the war. Some of it’s origins are attributed to the fact that the “Cause” hadn’t attracted great numbers of enlistments, enough to fight a war until President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South. It has always been known in the South that for many of those who participated it was not political. And yes I did make the statement with a degree of tounge in cheek, the same way I often ask a newcomer from the North if he’s a yankee or a damn yankee, this is part of our history and with it came great suffering and hardship of our people. The women of the South were bitter and held grudges for generations beyond the years when the vetrans of both armies would sit together and share stories. There were atrocities commited against the civilan populations, an example would be the shelling of the civilan population of Vicksburg as well as the shelling of yellow flag marked military hospitals in Vicksburg. I’ve not commented on slavery, secession, then or now, but only something that may offer a little insight into how this Southerner views the history of the war and the aftermath. Many of us had ancestors who served in this conflict and while most came home all didn’t and none including the civilans were unscathed.