It depends on your point of view regarding good and bad. The long and short of it is, confederates were fighting to leave the union And maintain slavery, the union fought to quell the separatist movement and remove slavery. The union won.
@Richard65 Many Republicans now reference the virtues of slavery and view the Confederacy with fondness. They also want to change how history is taught so white children don’t feel guilty.
The flag of the Confederacy is welcome in Republican circles, and Civil War generals are praised as being true American heroes as evinced by their names on streets, schools, and military bases.
Republicans also claim the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.
So, to MAGA and Republicans “the South” were the good guys.
@Quimliqer It's also true that although slavery was indeed abolished as a result of the war, the Yankees connived in and helped to implement racist policies in the former confederate states. It is, of course, impossible to know what would have happened had the confederacy won.
@MartinII The Confederacy would have had to something about de jure slavery because other countries would have stopped taking its cotton. Given how vile the Jim Crow South was, I think if they had won it would have been much different by 1900 than their having lost.
@Bumbles I'm from Lancashire, Northern England. We were known as Cottonopolis in the 19th Century, because our damp climate meant the cotton didn't snap. We were the centre of the European cotton industry. During the Civil War, Lincoln requested that Lancashire mills did not purchase cotton from the South. At the time, Lancashire industry relied heavily on those imports. Despite starvation conditions and huge family strife if they did this, Lancashire cotton weavers agreed, and boycotted American cotton. Though most all of them relied on that cotton to put food on the table and feed their children. The city of Manchester has a statue of Lincoln in Lincoln Square in the city centre to commemorate that. The good guys.
@MartinII And keep in mind that realistically the South and very little chance of winning the war .The logistics were simply too stacked in favor of the North.The only reason that the South lasted as long as it did was that they had several brilliant commanders -most notably Robert E .Lee- where the North started out with some real dunderheads for Generals untill they realized they had to step up their game.Lee was actually wavering between fighting for the South or the North;I have always thought that Lee would have ultimately helped out his countrymen more by fighting for the Union.
The long and short of it is, confederates were fighting to leave the union And maintain slavery, the union fought to quell the separatist movement and remove slavery. The union won.
This is the narrative taught in American schools. Slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. The nation was split between the north and the south just as the nation is now split between the right and the left. Back then, the north won and subjugated the south. Now, the right won and the left is in retreat. There is no moral high ground.
