I like your takes. The Old South and rebellion should not be celebrated by Ole Miss or anyone else. Anyone who argues that there were noble reasons for secession is either racist or not being honest with themselves. See below.
First, as far as writing history goes, grant did not own slaves. He lived and worked on a farm with slaves owned by a relative. He had no power to free them. The farm never made any money, and Grant was a poor man.
Not wealthy but not poor by most standards of the day. It was extremely rare that a poor guy makes it to the rank of general in the military in those days, not to mention he was commissioned at West Point. He never tried to free them (slaves
Why did Lincoln "need" to bring a moral imperative to the war if it just made everyone mad? Apparently, not everyone had the same reaction. There were PLENTY of abolitionists in the North that were very satisfied with this shift.
International support was overwhelmingly tilted to the south. Many European countries (Britian) were in support of the South (for economic reasons ((textiles)) but when Lincoln changed the supposed reason for the war to one of moral authority it effectively ended any chance of Britian getting involved on part of the South.
Do you really think that there would have been a Civil War w/o the institution of slavery? Absolutely not. But with slavery the war was almost unavoidable. And I am not aware of any history book censoring that went on after the Civil War. There was certainly no effort to stop dozens of authors from celebrating the antebellum south.
The differences between the North and South were evident since the settlement of the US. It became more severe when the Southern States paid off their war debt from the revolution and the Northern state didn't, thus putting additional financial burden on Southern states.
Would there have been a war? Impossible to know for sure but talk of secession had been ongoing for decades prior to 1861.
Sherman called it total war. He believed that it was nonsense to be in a state of war, which is horrible, and not maximize your chances of victory by destroying food supplies, railroads etc. that were the lifeline of the Rebel Army. I am glad he did what he did. Those who were holding human beings against their will, savagely beating and raping them, and separating families at livestock style auctions deserved no better.
Way to legitimize the unjustified terror on civilians:no:, I am sure you were fine with the autricities committed in Vietnam too, right?
Finally, how does the mercy shown the Confederate officers after the war prove anything about anything?
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