Enough loyal Union men came forward to preserve the Union. Their opinion mattered. Yours does not.
Walt
Might makes right? Appeals to force do not decide the LEGALITY of the issue - which is what Grier wrote in the Prize Cases. If might made right, men in white coats dragging you off to an asylum would make it justified and legal? 623,000 men were slaughtered to preserve a union that wan't destroyed when the states seceded. Waging a war on innocent men, women and children - black and white - raping, looting, destroying crops and homes, blockading your own ports, refusing to exchange prisioners and intentionally refusing to abide by the established rules of war, and subjecting innocents to starvation are not acts of friendship. They are the hallmarks of a dictator.