It was only bloody and protracted because the North wouldn't let them be. Had they the decency of George III and realize that these states no longer wanted to be part of their government, they could have stopped sending men into the meat grinder at any time.
The war was bloody? Well what do you expect when you invade someone's home?
And once they surrendered they attempted to keep the same people who led the rebellion in power and enacted laws meant to keep the newly freed slaves in a position as closely resembling slavery as possible.
And yet no criticism for the fact that the Union would have kept them in ACTUAL SLAVERY had the South just stopped fighting earlier?
You need to put your moral contempt on those people who thought the issue was negotiable. That Union was going to leave slavery intact. They didn't care about slavery, they cared about stopping Independence, and nothing else.
It took King George seven years to come to that conclusion. The Confederacy could have realized that they weren't going to win their war in a lot less time than that and halted the "meat grinder" even sooner.
The war was bloody? Well what do you expect when you invade someone's home?
You constantly ignore the fact that it was the Confederacy who chose to start the conflict. So if you want to complain about "invasions" then you need to accept that the South kicked the hornets nest and have nobody but themselves to blame for getting stung.
And yet no criticism for the fact that the Union would have kept them in ACTUAL SLAVERY had the South just stopped fighting earlier?
Since slavery was not the reason why the North was fighting then no.
You need to put your moral contempt on those people who thought the issue was negotiable. That Union was going to leave slavery intact. They didn't care about slavery, they cared about stopping Independence, and nothing else.
Slavery died as a result of the war, though it was not the primary goal of the Union's fight. But it was dead; the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment saw to that. So the South should be criticized for attempting to continue it through other means.