[BroJoeK]

central_va: "Can/could 5 million whites, over half women and children ever pose and extensional threat to 30+ million northerners?"

Sure, if those 30+ million were not determined to defend themselves.
As it was, Confederates outright claimed & invaded two Union states, Missouri & Kentucky.
Confederate forces also invaded Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma & New Mexico.
Confederate guerillas operated in California, Colorado & Vermont among others.
Confederate navy captured or sank hundreds of Union ships.

If those are not "existential threats", then nothing is.

central_va: "You sir are a ridiculous a$$.
You have a cartoon mind."

Nonsense.
In the Civil War's first 12 months more battles were fought in Union states than Confederate and more Confederate soldiers died in the Union than in the Confederacy.

[Uncle Sham]

The South Left the union.They didn’t need the North and decided that their futures were for THEM to determine. The North refused to let them go. The North, by provocation, saw fit to end the lives of 750,000 young men in the prime of their lives to FORCE itself upon the South. This is equivalent to rape and enforces the truth that the North had been raping the South financially for quite a while before the war. Having the good ole South around must have been a really good thing for the North and a bad habit that it couldn’t give up.