history books for the past 100 years or so have been written by Democrats This may be, but why is it, then, that when I was growing up through our infamous public edjerkashun system, it was always inferred that the North was right and Lincoln (patron saint of the Republican Party) should be celebrated? Yeah, I attended schools in northern states, but this just seems very odd if the "Orwellian" 'Rats truly controlled the textbooks.
Southern edjerkated FReepers chime in here.
It is too simplistics to think of the Civil War as between North v. South. Plenty of Democrats in the North, known as Copperheads, supported the Confederacy -- the New York City draft rioters, the Democrat candidates for governors of Illinois and Ohio who were paid Confederate agents, etc. In the South, the blacks (don't they count?) were pro-Union as were the "Billy Yanks in the Hills". For decades after the war, these hillbillies of Apallachia and the Ozarks remained staunch Republicans, as did the blacks.
And without Abraham Lincoln, we would not be living in the UNITED States of America, so all patriots should indeed celebrate him.
See
http://www.republicanbasics.com/