That was that terrible (and avoidable) war that started mass killing on an industrial scale. That war would be the equivalent of the U.S. losing approximately 10 million today. There were whole towns, especially in the South, where there were no men left. Worse it killed Southern civilization, as [b]G.K. Chesterton[/b] said
[i]“The American Civil War was a real war between two civilizations. It will affect the whole history of the world. There were great and good men, on both sides..yet it was the Southern culture that was destroyed. And it was the Northern that ultimately imposed not a unity but merely a uniformity......This is rather specially the Age of America; but inevitably,and unfortunately, rather the America of the Northern merchants and industrialists....there is a virtue lacking in the age, for want of which it will certainly suffer and possibly fail. It might be expressed in many ways; but as short a way of stating it as any I know is to say that, at this moment, America and the whole world is crying out for the spirit of the Old South.”[/i]