I am a southerner, born, bred and likely to die so. The greatest thing I can say about the Civil War is "THANK GOD WE LOST" because the historical difference a southern victory would have made is not worth thinking about but at best, we would be as you describe, at worst a terrible state more dreadful.

In your "copious free time" read some of Harry Turtledove's Great War series for a fairly serious fictional treatment of this very subject.

I have letters and other documents from my relatives that fought on both sides of the war. The Southerners fought for their State, but so did many of the Northerners. True some of my relatives from the North wrote about preserving the Union, but many of those relatives also wrote about serving the state, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois. My relatives from Alabama and Texas wrote about defending Alabama and Texas.
Robert E. Lee had a huge internal moral battle, before deciding to fight not for the South, but for Virginia. Loyalty to the State was strong and had a Constitutional basis.
The Civil War was the transforming point where the United States reaching adolescence, matured into a nation, rather than a confederation of States.
The soldiers on both sides were honorable. The primary issue was not slavery, but the rights of the State.

Rich,

That used to be my view. However, one has to ask a simple question for which there is only one answer the rights of the States to do what?

Steven...does it matter?

What I mean is this: Of the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy, what percentage actually owned slaves? I'd assert that the number was somewhat low. Given that, what were those non-slave-owning soldiers fighting for?

I mean, call me silly, but I have a hard time believing that very many people would be willing to fight and die for a cause that offers them no benefit.

I also have to ask if the Union would really have ended, had the CSA won. Isn't it likely that, had the US simply said, "Okay, you have the right to secede...we're going home," that the US would have continued, though as a smaller entity?

It's a lot more complicated than I'd like to get into in comment sections--though, I DO want to point out that the Slavery issue removed any potential moral superiority the South may have claimed with their legitimate defense of States rights-but I have to take exception with this:

"The were citizens of the United States of America until such a time as their states illegally withdrew from that entity and took up arms against "their nation"."

- - -At the time, people generally regarded themselves as "Virginians first, Americans second". We can't really conceive of that now, which has a lot to do with the effect of the Civil War.

it hard for me to not see slavery as the greatest crime that this country has ever committed, in a collective sense.

I think what we did to the natives (think trail of tears and countless treaties) would rank with slavery. Might even be greater.

I believe legalized abortion is the greatest crime committed by the United States.

"...until such a time as their states illegally withdrew..."

And therein lies the crux of the matter. The states did not illegally withdraw. They had the right to. The Civil War changed the nature of the country in that critical way, through martial victory.

In the balance, I believe it is for the best that the north won, and that slavery was an abomination for which the gone by conquest sovereignity of the states was a flimsy and shameful shield, but the states that left the union did have the right to leave.

Jay,

On what basis could they legally withdraw?

And I can envision no scanerio in which the South winning would have resulted in a positive outcome.

Jon,

I do understand the differing view of state citizenshp v. US citizenship. And these are typical arguments.

Here's the question though: why did the states see the need to leave?

I don't see the south winning as a positive thing either, and a legitimate reason for the northern conquest was to eliminate a danger to national security in the form of a nearly as large nation on their southern border.

Show me where it was illegal for states to leave.

The federal government derived its existance and powers as an association of the states. Powers not expressly granted to the federal government are reserved to the states. (And the people.) Preventing a state from leaving is not an enumerated power of the federal government.

Sadly, the war was nearly inevitable as a result of failure to address both slavery and the issue of leaving some details vague or unstated enough to get everyone to go along with the formation of the republic. Addressing them at the embryonic stage would have been abortively suicidal.

The Civil War more or less finished the argument of how strong the federal government should be, and how far the rights of the states could be limited.

I have no problem preferring that the north won at the same time I mourn the direction it took, and is still taking, the country.

Anyway, the states had the right to secede because they didn't NOT have the right to secede, and because prior to the Civil War, the country was still a collection of sovereign states joined together for some common purposes, but with substantial rights and responsibilities of their own. Since then, states are increasingly mere geographic and administrative regions of an all-powerful federal government that conquered and subsumed them in war and beyond.

There can be no serious doubt that the underlying reason for the Civil War was to preserve the institution of slavery. I once spent an afternoon reading the Mississippi Congressional record of the seccession debate and there was little if any high-brow debate about "states rights" (and, btw, states don't have rights under the US Consitiution, they have powers and duties). Rather the debate was entirely focused on slavery and the word "nigger" was used frequently.

Having said that, I am convinced that the Southern states had the better of the argument as to whther a state could withdraw from the Union or whther, having once joined, it was irrevokably bound to it. The south likely would have won its argument before a neutral court. Instead they lost it on the battlefield.

To call Confederate troops traitors, I think, mistakenly applies modern considerations to a historic situation. During the antebellum period, Americans, both North and South, generally thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states first -- those states having joined togther in a Union. When one's state withdrew from the Union, one's loyalty was to the place of one's citizenship, the state, and not to the Union one's state had joined.

This is why men like Lee, who favored union and generally opposed slavery, nevertheless followed their states into secession. It wasn't from motives of treason but out of obligations of loyalty, as those obligations were felt at the time.

An imperfect anology would be to consider if Britian were to withdraw from the EU. Suppose the EU sought to prevent that withdrawl by force. Could Englishmen who fought for Britian be described as traitors? No. Might they be viewed as traitors in 150 years were a true united European state to evolve? Perhaps.

The Southern cause was misguided the Northern victory welcome. But to label those men who fought for the south as traitors displays a profound lack of understanding of the thinking and loyalties of the time.

Well, under the EU the member states haven't surrendered their status as soverign states. This is different than the federal structure that existed after 1789 in the US.

Granted, the citizenship in the states was quite a bit more important. Still, the issue for me is ultimately how should we view those events NOW, not so much as how they viewed the issue then.

Get it up boy! She will be happy!

ding ding, look at my thing!

This will get yours up again, dude!