[billbears]

As my grandfather has said before and his grandfather before him (who fought bravely for the right side), “Southern by birth, union by force”

[Dixie Yooper]

Since I am only a 4th generation American who’s great grandparents immigrated here in the 1880’s, I have taken no sides in the war of attrition. From what I learned in my history lessons in Michigan back in the 60’s was that the main suffering the South was experiencing back before the war from the high tariff’s and trade barriers with certain European countries enforced by the increasingly powerful federal government, which was not the idea of the founding fathers. Looking at the amount of suffering experienced after the war compared to before, I am not so sure the South made the right decision. The only hope for victory you ever had was McClellan defeating Lincoln in the presidential election halfway through the war, which would have brought a peace treaty and would have resulted in the southern states independence. Ya’all were too independent from each other to create a real nation that would have held together, so who knows what that result would have brought.