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Our cause was just & we whipped up your ancestors real good.

Wrong and wrong. Your cause was unjust because it NEVER professed itself to be a war of liberation for the slaves. Abolition was only incident to its conduct as a "war measure" and thus cannot redeem the true purpose of its conduct, a coerced union with economic interests at mind. Nor can it redeem the unjust way the war was fought including, among other things, upon civilians and noncombattants with full sanction from the yankee command's highest levels. A moral end is rendered unjust by a sinful means and a moral end that is only incident and secondary to the direct and primary end cannot supplant that primary end.

As for whipping us "real good," I need only point out that your side lost over 100,000 more men than ours did. Often in war, the side that loses the most men also loses the battle - especially when those losses are so huge as to dwarf those of the competition as yankee losses did. Only by having a larger population and an army twice our size did you succeed in winning the war, and then only after four long bloody years in which we consistently held of and repulsed larger forces than our own. Yankeeland got its pyrrhic victory in the end but that's about it.

Only by having a larger population and an army twice our size did you succeed in winning the war

I'm currently in the middle of General Grants memoirs, and toward the beginning of it he addressed the fact that there are two main myths re why the Union won the war.

One is that the North could afford to lose more men than the South could. He said that just was not the case. I assume at some point in the book he'll prove that but so far i haven't seen it. I assume it means it was skill and strategy, not attrition numbers that won the war. He does tell a good deal about the mistakes that were made by other Union generals and oh if they'd just listened to his advice.

The other myth was that General Lee was a superior general revered by his men as godlike and feared by union men for the same reason. General Grant says poo-poo to that. He served with General Lee in the Mex-Am war and knew that Lee was just a man. Therefore, he was never intimidated by him. Oh the part he writes about Appomattox was delectable. He says how he told Gen Lee, "I remember you...", and Gen Lee replied back "oh, yes, I remember you too..". But Grant says he didn't believe that Lee really remembered him but that he was just being polite pretending to remember him. He didn't think Lee remembered him because he was so junior to Lee and didn't really do anything memorable at the time.

I put this out there for those who may not have read the memoirs. They are terrific. Grant speaks like a regular guy. Ocassionally he speaks highly of himself but it doesn't come off as boastful, just that he knows his strengths, and sometimes he's very self deprecating. He "dishes" a lot about people which is just too good, and sometime complains about being left out of the loop.

"...your side lost over 100,000 more men than ours did. Often in war, the side that loses the most men also loses the battle - especially when those losses are so huge as to dwarf those of the competition as yankee losses did."

Check the losses on a percentage of population, the south took a much bigger hit. As far as who won - who's territory was occupied after the conflict - the side that holds the ground after the fight - wins. What was left of dixie after the fighting was over was a shambles. The 2 times the south 'invaded' the north went poorly for Lee (Antitem & Gettysburg). Hood did a real good job defending Atlanta as well, now didn't he?
If you can't finish what you start - it's best not to start the fight. Braveery and gallantry were on display - big time - by the soldiers in the fight(s). It's just too bad so many good young men had to die for a 'lost cause'.