My family was split.
GGGrandfather left the South 8 years prior the war for mid-West. Many others already there as settlers.
Many others of course stayed behind in the South.
We had hundreds on the Southern side and about half as many on the Union side (I’m from that group). Some battles had cousins /uncles/nephews shooting at each other.
GGUncle was Reb paroled at Appomattox by Lee. He had to move West and North to Union relatives farms to avoid persecution under Reconstruction. After 1875 he went back.
My father heard tales of hardship under Reconstruction which came from grandparents, but they were nominally Northerners by then, and only heard about those things second hand from their parents.
The history is written by the victors of course. They justify their acts. But reality will come out. That’s happening now.
There are many cross currents in all of this, but it still defines whether the nation will continue to exist. Maybe the Original Sin will never be assuaged, and it all collapses.
If so, those who pursued force and intimidation to keep the marriage going will have no one to blame but themselves: relationships are consensual, or a disaster.
That was one thing that the Lee haters miss: he pointed out that he could not remain in a Union that was not by popular choice. It meant that the principle of a union based on free association had been broken. Lincoln said that made him a traitor, but I don’t think Grant ever agreed. They were two men of the same fabric, doing what they had to do. It was their relationship that ended the war. And unfortunately lesser men then either of them went on to impose draconian, un-democratic rules on their alleged co-nationals.
My screen name mass55th is from the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment...the second black regiment authorized in the north during the war. Like her sister regiment, the 54th, they spent most of their service time in and around Charleston, South Carolina. I heavily researched both units, along with the white officers and enlisted men. Several of the blacks who served in both units had been slaves, and had to lie to take the oath once they received the same pay as the white enlisted men. Their letters tell how hard it was to swear they had been free men at the time they enlisted. I tracked down descendants of of the officers and enlisted men in both units, and they were kind enough to share whatever information they had. I met a lot of great people over the years.
Friends of mine who at the time lived on James Island, just across the bridge from Charleston were into Civil War preservation. They actually started The South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust. It had a different name in the beginning, and they eventually turned the Trust over to another group who renamed it, and expanded their preservation efforts to Revolutionary War sites. My friends were specifically interested in preserving Union and Confederate sites that had never been officially recognized or protected. The Trust is redoing their website and is currently under construction, but some of the sites my friends were able to get permanent protection for were the Confederate Forts Lamar and Pringle on James Island, the Union Swamp Angel Battery, and approximately three other Confederate Batteries on James Island.
When the war ended, the 55th was sent to Old Fort Jackson in Savannah, Georgia. From there, they were assigned to Columbia, S.C. until the unit was mustered out.