It's a human right if you ask me for a people to govern themselves. Seeing as nearly the entirety of Southerners wanted to secede I'd say that's basis enough to want to govern themselves. And when the Confederates seceded they asked the Union troops to peacefully leave the forts in Southern lands - most of them did actually and had the garrison at Fort Sumter done so, 600,000+ dead could have been avoided - they did not just start attacking the Union without any point or reason. Also, there are plenty of people who believe that Sherman's destruction of civilian targets was a good thing and to those people, I say stop breathing. I used to have family in Georgia before Sherman's march. And I repeat myself, if you believe that the actions of Sherman were the right actions then I can not believe I breathe in the odorous filth with which you pollute the air. Sorry Mods but rainbow sparkles are good but just don't cut it.
The second half of your post makes zero sense. It's hard to argue with a fanatic so I'm just going to stop.
The Confederates were the aggressors by, you know, seceding in the first place. And no, it's not your constitutional right to rebel without the Union doing anything about it. Again, most people did not support the murder and destruction of the south, they supported the quelling of the rebellion and the preservation of the Union.
You know, given that they'd just fought a war for it, it's pretty damn hypocritical of the first 'Americans' to put together a government that prohibits secessio... wait... it didn't.
'You cannot leave this union, even if most people want to, or we'll burn down your homes, murder and rape your wives, and salt your bloody fields.'
Sounds about right. Preservation at all costs.
And, are you really implying that if the south had won, the south's economy would not be in ruins? Both of our countries would be shitholes today, and neither side would be happy. I wouldn't be surprised if we would have been living under foreign rule by the end of world war one, or even before that.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your message-exchange with the alternate timeline in which the Confederacy did win. Given that neither of us have experienced a Confederate victory in the war, I dare say we cannot judge what may have happened after.
Yes, it was hypocritical, but there's no way you can say that it was a realistic goal to make it so that people could revolt whenever they wanted and the Union couldn't do anything about it or they would be branded as tyrants. There have been hardly any instances in history where a revolt sprung up and the ruling state didn't do anything about it. It just goes against the nature of a state to let a whole half of a nation devolve into rebellion and lawlessness and just say "Durr, oh well the founding fathers said we should let them revolt, so I guess we'll just let them do whatever they want and bring both of our nations into the dust". And anyway, the confederacy hardly asked nicely. There had been decades of unofficial war in Slave and non-slave states (ie John Brown's war), so the time for negotiations was long gone.
Also, you keep conveniently breezing over my point about how most people did not support the harsh treatment of the south. Yes, the Union army did some fucked up things, but people do fucked up things in times of war, and there's nothing we can do about that. This is basically how defeated rebels have been treated in literally every single instance in history. Yes, it shouldn't have been like that, but there's nothing we can do about it now.
I know there's no way of knowing for sure what would have happened if the Confederacy had won, but I'm pretty certain that it would not have turned out well for both sides. Maybe we wouldn't be in the shitter, but we definitely wouldn't be as powerful as the 50 States of the Union are today.
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