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[Honeycombe8]

85. Have you seen PBS' series "The Civil War" by Ken Burns?

It has nine parts and should be required watching for every American. It is the most thorough account of the Civil War I've heard of.

As for your question, whether we should've remained "one" or been separated, I've wondered that, myself. It COULD have ended up North United States and South United States, right?

But for the rest of your post, the Civil War was not ONLY about slavery. Slavery was the match to the fire, but it was a disagreement over the power of the federal government to tell the states what to do. Slavery, property rights, taxes, education, etc..

As far as shooting the "losers" of the war...what a heartless thing to say. The southerners were countrymen, and sometimes relatives, of the northerners. The southerners died in huge numbers, suffering terribly before death, because of the south's poverty during the war and inability to care for the troops while losing. Soldiers near the end of the war fought barefoot and starving.

Also remember that most people in the south did not own slaves. Like now, even though your country goes to war, many are disconnected from it, living in rural areas, minding their own business. The troops were drafted.

If you took the property and money from the southerners who owned slaves...well, a lot of them lost everything in the war. As for the rest, if you took their property and money, do you also take the property and money from those in the north that the southerners did business with? Those southerners travelled frequently to the north, buying goods and services, and the north bought farm products and items made with cotton and other farm products from the south, and sold them for a profit. So the north profited from the low prices resulting from slavery.

At the end of the war, many parts of the south were decimated. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died in that war, I believe. The area paid a high price for trying to secede. But they were never truly the enemy. They were all Americans.

Ken Burns' The Civil War is a spectacular and riveting account of the war, if you ever get a chance to see it. (Yet another reason for the existence of PBS.)