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The north's economy was also dependent on slave-grown cotton. Northern states abolished slavery within their borders, (but sold rather than freed most of their slaves, mostly to reduce their states' black populations; and their effort still shows today: https://www2.census.gov/geo/img/maps-data/maps/black.jpg) but they were still armpit deep in slavery. Northern textile interests got rich processing Southern, slave-grown cotton in their mills. New England maritime interests got rich shipping Southern, slave-grown cotton to Europe. Northern banks got rich financing the purchase of plantations and slaves, and northern insurance companies got rich insuring slaves. 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.

Lincoln sold the war to the north on "preserving the union", not "freeing slaves." Read his proclamation calling for volunteers to invade the South. Not a word, nary a syllable about slaves, slavery or freeing. A preserved union would keep the cotton flowing northward unimpeded, you see.... The war didn't become "about" slavery until well into the fighting.

You're an American? Fine. I don't care what you are. It's none of your business what I consider myself to be. This nation is no longer great, and hasn't been for a long time, and the South is not merely a point on a compass. Far from it, it is region, a separate and unique culture, long known as a nation within a nation and it pre-dates most of the rest of the USA. That is something I don't expect you to understand. In fact, the South is where America began, and I don't expect you'll like that much.

Sure, go ahead and speak for your flippin' ancestors who came South to kill, maim and steal... who invaded the Southern states, made war on war on women, children, the elderly, servants and other noncombatants, burned homes, barns, farms, crops in the field, and entire towns, shot pet dogs just for spite, killed livestock and threw the carcasses in streams and wells to contaminate the water and sicken the population (when there was no medicine, because that great humanitarian, A. Lincoln, had included medicine in the blockade -- makes you proud to be an American, don't it?), stabled horses in church sanctuaries to show contempt for the religion of Southerners (and for God), and dug up fresh corpses looking for valuables to steal.

Here's a partial list of Southern towns destroyed by the army from the north, most of them by burning... Notice how many occurred in fall and winter, forcing civilians to face cold, sometimes freezing, temperatures without food and shelter.

Osceola, Missouri, burned to the ground, September 24, 1861
Dayton, Missouri, burned, January 1 to 3, 1862
Columbus, Missouri, burned, reported on January 13, 1862
Bentonville, Arkansas, partly burned, February 23, 1862
Winton, North Carolina, burned, reported on February 21, 1862
Bluffton, South Carolina, burned, reported June 6, 1863
Bledsoe's Landing, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862
Hamblin's, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862
Donaldsonville, Louisiana, partly burned, August 10, 1862

And then there was the sack and pillage of Athens, Alabama, on June 30, 1862, by Colonel Turchin's men, who committed rapes and other atrocities on the inhabitants. Turchin was subsequently court-martialed and put out of the military. What happened next? Turchin was rewarded by lincoln, returned to the military and promoted to Brigadier General.

Athens, Alabama, partly burned, August 30, 1862
Randolph, Tennessee, burned, September 26, 1862
Elm Grove and Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, October 18, 1862
Napoleon, Arkansas, partly burned, January 17, 1863
Mound City, Arkansas, partly burned, January 13, 1863
Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, February 21, 1863
Eunice, Arkansas, burned, June 14, 1863
Gaines Landing, Arkansas, burned, June 15, 1863
Sibley, Missouri, burned June 28, 1863
Hernando, Mississippi, partly burned, April 21, 1863
Austin, Mississippi, burned, May 23, 1863
Columbus, Tennessee, burned, reported February 10, 1864
Meridian, Mississippi, destroyed, February 3 to March 6, 1864

"For 5 days 10,000 men worked hard and with a will...with axes, crowbars, sledges, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work as well done. Meridian, with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists." -- w.t.sherman

Washington, North Carolina, sacked and burned, April 20, 1864
Hallowell's Landing, Alabama, burned, reported May 14, 1864
Newtown, Virginia, ordered to be burned, ordered May 30, 1864
Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia, burned, June 12, 1864
Rome, Georgia, partly burned, November 11, 1864
Atlanta, Georgia, burned, November 15, 1864
Camden Point, Missouri, burned, July 14, 1864
Kendal's Grist-Mill, Arkansas, burned, September 3, 1864
Shenandoah Valley, devastated, reported October 1, 1864 by sheridan
Griswoldville, Georgia, burned, November 21, 1864
Somerville, Alabama, burned, January 17, 1865
McPhersonville, South Carolina, burned, January 30, 1865
Barnwell, South Carolina, burned, reported February 9, 1865
Columbia, South Carolina, burned, reported February 17, 1865
Winnsborough, South Carolina, pillaged and partly burned, February 21, 1865
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, burned, April 4, 1865

Here's something else for you to be proud of:

SOURCE: Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, United States Government, Series I, Volume XXXIX, Part III, p. 494

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Hdqrs. Military Division of the Mississippi, In the Field, Rome, Ga., October 29, 1864 Brigadier-General Watkins, Calhoun, Ga.:

Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Resaca to Kingston?

W.T. Sherman, Major-General, Commanding.

(Don't worry about their guilt or innocence in firing on trains. Just murder them and burn their families out of their homes....)

http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moawar;cc=moawar;q1=Adairsville;rgn=full%20text;idno=waro0079;didno=waro0079;view=image;seq=0496

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Calhoun, October 30, 1864

Major-General Sherman: My men killed some of those fellows two or three days since, and I had their houses burned. Watkins is not here, but I will carry out your instructions thoroughly and leave the country east of the road uninhabitable, if necessary.

E.M. McCook, Brigadier-General

http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moawar;cc=moawar;q1=Watkins;rgn=full%20text;idno=waro0079;didno=waro0079;view=image;seq=0513

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Confederate symbols, particularly the flag, not only represent the courage and valor, grit, determination, endurance and nobility of the Confederate soldier, who fought against that barbarous enemy, but the unimaginable suffering and death they experienced, not only on the battlefield, but in the north's POW camps. At Hellmira, (Elmira NY) Confederate POWS were fed potato peels and had to drink water befouled with sewage. One doctor there bragged that he had killed more Rebs than any union soldier by withholding medicine and blankets (which there was plenty of). The yanks built "observation decks" above the camp and charged townspeople 15c to sit there and watch the suffering of Confederate POWS in a land of plenty. Some townspeople were moved to donate bankets and such to the care of the soldiers, but camp officials refused to distribute them. Hellmira's death rate was about the same as Andersonville's in the South, where there was no donations to withhold, little food for either guards or prisoners.

There was no deliberate torture at Andersonville. It was so horrific because there was no food, no medicine (again, thanks to Lincoln's blockade), and the union refused prisoner exchanges. The north had plenty of food, blankets and medicine but deliberately withheld them from Confederate POWS. All the POW camps were overcrowded, though the union could have built more accommodations. At Camp Douglas, overflow prisoners slept in tents during the Chicago winter, as at Hellmira. Well, they spent the night in the tents; but sleep? Guards fired guns through the tents and barracks throughout the night to create sleep deprivation. They made prisoners sit bare-bottomed on blocks of ice. Made them sit astride a narrow rail raised high in the air, with weights on their ankles, for hours, and when they were taken down, they couldn't walk.

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

The USA was born in treason and rebellion. Confederacy -- slavery for 4 years. Under the US flag -- slavery for 89 years... this in a country founded on "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with ... liberty."

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; and for confining more red people to concentration camps artfully known as "reservations" in conditions worse than plantation slavery; the same government that imprisoned Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII.

This is my bottom line, and I don't care what you think of it:

There was NO justification for the union army's presence in the seceded states and no justification for a union soldier so much as kicking a Southern dog. Regardless of how much or how little destruction Sherman and his rapacious men did, regardless the efforts of every Confederacy-bashing "historian" to santitize Sherman, Sheridan, Butler, etc., and downplay the destruction wrought upon the South by the union army, it was ALL too much because the union army should not have been down here to begin with.

Nothing -- not secession, not "preserving the union," not ending slavery, not anything -- justified the union's barbaric war on the South.