Your sophistry won’t work here were people have some knowledge.
The Southern states were never conquered and forced into an illegitimate union. They were the principal reason there was one and they understood that the union was to be perpetual.
" Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring; there shallow draughts intoxicate the brian. and drinking largely sobers us again."
It isn't sophistry. It's math and economics. It is a paper trail to the cause of the war. Believing a Northern coalition that was about to lose a huge pile of money decided to start a war over the milk of human kindness, now that's sophistry!
The Southern states were never conquered and forced into an illegitimate union.
Are you implying the United Kingdom was somehow an Illegitimate Union?
No, the Southern states weren't conquered into it, (the first time around.) they were led into it without knowing they wouldn't be allowed to leave it, and then the North slammed the door down on them like a trap.
The very fact that it is coercive in sustaining participation, implies to me that it is in fact an illegitimate Union. The Communists also created a Union that required forced participation by people who didn't want to be in it.
"The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", which is closer than ever to what we are slowly becoming.