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Nellie Wilkerson: "Northern states abolished slavery within their borders, (but sold rather than freed most of their slaves, mostly to reduce their states' black populations..."

There are no statistics to support such claims.
Here's what we do know:

In 1860 African-Americans totaled about 14% of the US population (4.4 million of 31 million).
Of those, about 500,000 (10%) were freed-blacks.
Of those freed-blacks about half lived in the North, and nearly all of the rest in Border States & Upper South.
Very few lived in the Deep South.
If the pro-Confederate claim that Northern freed-blacks suffered lives as bad, or worse, than Southern slaves can be verified, it's by counting the numbers of Northern freed-blacks who voluntarily returned to slavery in the South.
Let's see, yes, I do have that number right here, handy.
Here it is, that number was exactly: zero.

Nellie Wilkerson: "If the north had really wanted to end slavery, they didn't have to send an army to kill Southerners.
All they had to do was quit buying the cotton.
They didn't."

In 1860 "the North" didn't want to end slavery, regardless of what Fire Eater secessionists claimed.
What Northerners did want was to prevent slavery's expansion into Western territories and even (via Dred-Scott) into their own states.
That's why they voted for "Ape" Lincoln's "Black Republicans".
But it was enough to convince Deep South slave-holders to declare secession, form a confederacy and start Civil War against the United States.

Nellie Wilkerson: "The war didn't become "about" slavery until well into the fighting."

For slave-holding secessionists it was always and only about protecting slavery.
But for Unionists, North and South, it was primarily about preserving the Union.
In that effort, freeing the Confederacy's slaves had an obvious strategic benefit.

Yes, there were some Northern abolitionists for whom slavery was always the major evil.
But they were a minority.
What the majority cared about was preserving the Union against a Confederacy which provoked, started and formally declared war on the United States, while supporting military actions in Union states like Maryland and Missouri.

Nellie Wilkerson: "In fact, the South is where America began, and I don't expect you'll like that much."

Actually, the moment of creation of the United States can well be said to be in the Continental Congress, in Philadelphia in 1775, when Massachusetts's leader John Adams nominated and recommended Virginian George Washington to be Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.

Nellie Wilkerson: "Here's a partial list of Southern towns destroyed by the army from the north, most of them by burning..."

What serious historians say is that there was some destruction by both sides, but very few war crimes of the type seen in, for example, the Second World War.
They also say there was great exaggeration of damages in the South after the war, claims which are not supported by contemporary reports.

But we should also mention, there was one crime committed consistently by Confederates, whenever in Northern states or territories, which has no Norther equivalent in the South: Confederates rounded up and sent back for sale in the South any Northern freed-blacks they could grab.

Nellie Wilkerson: "Whatever "sins" the South committed, the same and worse are racked up under the StarznStripes... "

My best judgment is that the sins of one side roughly equated to sins of the other, and that by comparison with any other war you'd care to mention, both sides were quite civilized, gentlemanly and Christian soldiers.

Nellie Wilkerson: "The USA was born in treason and rebellion."

No, not really.
The United States was born from the effort to extend normal rights of Englishmen to those Englishmen who happened to live in North America.
The fact that the English king & parliament reacted poorly, first rejecting colonists, then declaring them "in rebellion" and launching war against them -- that does not negate the fact that what Americans wanted was better union, not separation, from Great Britain.

Nellie Wilkerson: "Under the US flag -- slavery for 89 years... "

It's extremely important to understand that in 1787 slavery was a precondition for Union, that had our Founders rejected slavery in their Constitution, there would have been no United States, period.
Instead, there would have been at least two separate countries, North & South, and more likely, several including the independent nations of Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, etc.

Only by accepting slavery could the essential compromise be reached creating a United States of America.

Nellie Wilkerson: "Remove all items that honor the US government because of its official policy of killing off the buffalo to genocide red people -- the Plains Indians -- by starvation and take their land for white settlers..."

Today's US Indian population, full blooded plus partial (not including Senator Pocahontas) is about five million.
Estimates of North America's Indian populations before Columbus in 1492 range in the low millions.
Of those huge numbers died from European diseases, and the numbers killed in combat with the United States are estimated as:

From the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894)

"The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number.
They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians.
The actual number of killed and wounded Indians must be very much higher than the given...
Fifty percent additional would be a safe estimate..."[34]

Nellie Wilkerson: "This is my bottom line, and I don't care what you think of it:
...Nothing -- not secession, not "preserving the union," not ending slavery, not anything -- justified the union's barbaric war on the South."

You've forgotten, haven't you?

After the Confederacy provoked war by dozens of forceful seizures of major Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc., threatening Union officials, fired on Union ships (December 1860 through April 1861).
After the Confederacy started war by military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861).
After the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States (May 6, 1861).
After Confederates attacked Union forces in Union states like Missouri & Maryland.

Then the Union had no choice except to defeat the military power which represented an existential threat to the United States.

Brilliant essay Joe. I'm going to book mark it. I told Nellie many of those who claimed Sherman burned down their great-grand daddys house were no where near Sherman's line of march. I challenged her on the claim of Northern states wanting to rid themselves of their black populations and that's when she stopped posting to me. As I see it the North went to war to preserve the Union and won. The South went to war to preserve slavery and lost everything. Thanks again for a great post.