No need to whitewash history. Simply, good guys won, bad guys lost.
The Union, the US, went on to secure liberty across the globe on many different occassions.
I am of the belief that the voluntary union formed in 1776
was effectively dissolved in 1860 by the secession of South Carolina
(and the subsequent states who followed suit).
Lincoln, out of brute force, brought forth a new nation,
dedicated to the proposition that all men should bow down
and the states should tremble with fear at the power of the federal government.
This is not your founding father's Oldsmobile.