In the United States of America, the successful insurgency of the 1770s in British colonies in America, which featured organized armies fighting battles, came to be known as the American Revolution. The unsuccessful insurgency of the 1860s by southern U.S. states against the federal government backed by Northern states, which also featured organized armies fighting battles, came to be known as the American Civil War. While hostilities were still ongoing, most Confederates preferred to call the conflict the Second American Revolution or something very similar, and had the Confederacy triumphed the war would likely have come to be known as a Revolution and/or a War of Independence. In the United States, and in American-dominated sources, the term 'the civil war' usually means the American Civil War, with other civil wars noted or inferred from context.