The North was just as hypocritical about African Americaqns as the South! Draft riots and antiblack sentiment was rife in the North. More African-Americans died under union reconstruction than on Southern plantations! There is plenty of hypocracy to go around. Many of the yeoman Southern fighters could care less about slavery and were fighting for individual rights against yankee encroachment and for their property and land.
Of course, there were slave states that fought for the North. Many other Northerners supported slavery and anti-war feelings.
So what? Slavery was wrong and a good many Northerners died to stop it.
Reconstruction all the way to abolishing Jim Crow laws had many failures, but gradually the South matured to generally allow freedom to live in peace and pursue prosperity.
Yes, there still is hypocracy and bigotry and discrimination. But that does not justify ignoring basic human decency and shame over some of our public symbols.
What individual rights by Southern fighters caused 258,000 of them to die in a losing cause?
What encroachment by Northerners happened before the Civil War?
What property, other than slaves, and land was at risk of being lost to Northeners?
Really? How many more? Round numbers are fine as long as there are sources to back them up.
Pure fantasy, at best a modern anachronism.
In fact, there was no "hypocrisy" on either side.
Confederates were clear that they wanted Africans as slaves, no "hypocrisy" in that.
Northerners were also clear, they wanted no slaves in western territories or even, via the SCOTUS Dred Scott decision, in their own states.
Most Northerners had no objections to slavery in the South where it was legal, until Confederates started & declared war on the Union.
Then the advantages of abolition in Confederate states quickly became obvious.
As for freed-blacks, in 1860, the US had about 400,000 total, half in the South (i.e., Maryland 83,000 & Virginia 58,000) half in the North (i.e., PA 56,000 & NY 49,000).
But several states (North & South) were hostile to freed-blacks and had very few.
Florida, Mississippi & Texas each had fewer than 1,000 freed blacks, while Illinois, Michigan & California each had fewer than 10,000.
Yes, the huge cotton trade made some Northern cities like New York effectively outposts for the Confederacy, opposed to the draft and blaming blacks for war.
But "hypocrisy" was never the real issue.
2nd Amendment: "Many of the yeoman Southern fighters could care less about slavery and were fighting for individual rights against yankee encroachment and for their property and land."
It's important to understand exactly how that worked because the truth of it is not so simple.
So the bottom line is that most Confederate soldiers (and all of their leaders) came from families and neighbors who owned slaves and were fully committed to their "peculiar institution."
Southerners who lived in mostly slave-free regions more often served the Union army.
** 1864 illustration of October 1862, when over 40 Southern Unionists hanged by slave-holding Confederates in Gainesville, Northern Texas: