We have any number of alleged American posters who seem to hate their own country even more than you do.
Bulwyf: "...but I’ve read a lot on the subject, and while I know we can all agree both sides did wrong, the underlying premise was not what people thought it was."
The "underlying premise" is absolutely not what our Lost Cause mythologizers claim it was.
If you buy into their nonsense it only means you never read any real history of the period.
Bulwyf: "There was a huge loss of American life over really not much at all. "
Well... of course, as a non-American you'd have no appreciation for the value of preserving the Union intact and freeing its four million slaves.
Most of us consider those to have been a pretty big deal.
Bulwyf: "The war was about centralizing power in DC.
It doesn’t take an IQ over 35 to see that."
I'd say it takes an IQ of 35 to claim such a thing, nobody said that at the time.
Bulwyf: "Also, I’m not implying your IQ is low, I’m sure it’s not, I’m just saying that even a person not gifted with above average intelligence can see what the war was about."
I'd say your IQ is in the same category as our notorious ("Impeach 45") Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Bulwyf: "I know this is long ago history, but look what it led to today."
The same people who brought us nullification, secession & Civil War -- Democrats! -- today give us liberalism, progressivism, socialism & whatever-it-takesism to defeat the US Constitution and the Free Republic based on it.
I don’t hate America, quite the opposite actually.
God made all men free and that’s how it should be regardless of where one lives. White, black, Arab, Chinese, the list goes on of slaves. The only ones doing slavery today are the Muslims. Coincidentally, they were the same ones doing it then.
The point I was trying to make is the behemoth of DC was burn under Lincoln. Both sides did their thing, although you could argue the union treated their prisoners a lot worse. It’s irrevelant. The main point being today. Look where we are today.