Brandon was shocked to find the teachers and textbooks refer to this as The War of Northern Aggression, and jimthedog was suprised to learn that you hadn't heard it before.

I've heard this before, but similar to your Rocky and Bullwinkle comment, thought it was of more historical usage than in currently published elementary school textbooks. I should have inserted the word" still" into the sentence so it read that I was shocked the teachers and books still used that term.

Im just finished Carl Sandburg's voluminous biography of Abe Lincoln. It's quite apparent that Lincoln played the semantic card by emphasizing the "civil" (not peaceable, but brotherly) nature of the war to quelch the argument that the states had actually seceeded. In fact, in all his letters and discourse, he was careful to keep them "states in rebellion" and not a confederacy. He wouldn't even negotiate with them following typical foreign affiars procedures because it might lend credence to their philosophical stand if the President sat at a bargaining table like he would with another nation.