<P> The name "War of Northern Aggression" has been used to indicate the Union side as the belligerent party in the war . Though sometimes used only jokingly today, the name arose in the 1950s during the Jim Crow era, when it was coined by segregationists who tried to equate contemporary efforts to end segregation with 19th century efforts to abolish slavery . This name has been criticized by historians such as James M. McPherson, as the Confederacy "took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority", and as "the Confederacy started the war by firing on the American flag". </P> <P> Given that in the free states non-Yankee groups--Germans, Dutch - Americans, New York Irish and southern - leaning settlers in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois--showed majority opposition to waging the Civil War, other Confederate symphathizers have used the name "War of Yankee Aggression" or "Great War of Yankee Aggression" to indicate the Civil War as a Yankee war, not a Northern war per se . </P> <P> Conversely, the "War of Southern Aggression" has been used by those who maintain that the Confederacy was the belligerent party . They maintain the thought that the Confederacy started the war when they initiated combat at Fort Sumter . </P> <P> Other names for the conflict include "The Confederate War", "Mr. Lincoln's War", and "Mr. Davis's War". In 1892, a D.C. society of war - era nurses took on the name National Association of Army Nurses of the Late War . More euphemistic terms are "The Late Unpleasantness", or "The Recent Unpleasantness". Other postwar names in the South included "The War of the Sections" and "The Brothers' War", these especially in the border states . </P>

When was the term civil war first used