And FDR interred Japanese and German recently-heritaged Americans in WWII too. It was a time of war, so what's your point?
... touted the removal of slaves to South America for servitude (before he expediently declared emancipation in CSA states but not Union states),
Freed slave repatriation had been planned and discussed for years before the Civil War.
You do realize that it was James Monroe who was instrumental in setting up the nation of Liberia (capital is Monrovia coincidentally) to repatriate freed slaves 40 years before Lincoln was President. (Oh, I see you didn't know that).
Pretty smart for Lincoln to discuss repatriation of freed slaves with the British in advance of the Emancipation Proclamation rather than just freeing them with no action plan thereafter.
You just resent that he freed "your property" knowing he could eventually finish the job in the North after the war. It was a strategically brilliant way to foment insurrection in the South, and it worked.
Your side lost, and in the end that's all that really matters.
... approved the rape and pillage of southern towns and farms by bloodthirsty generals and and consorted with banking and railroad cabals to further decimate the south.
Show me where Lincoln ever approved rape and pillage. That might have been US Grant to some extent since what you describe happened during Reconstruction (to the degree it happened at all) and it was the "cabals" that had no interest in reconciliation with the South -- which is why they were instrumental in offing Lincoln in the first place.
As far as railroads were concerned Union Pacific and Southern Pacific drove the "golden spike" in 1869 when the two companies met their rails -- four years after Lincoln's murder, and it forged a national healing as America expanded West.
I'll bet you still try to pass Confederate $10 bills at the gas station these days too.
Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason because there was no treason under the law and the precepts of the Constitution, which clearly stated that states rights were preeminent in determining whether or not to abide by the Union.
Show me where in the US Constitution that states are allowed to secede from the Union as a legitimate matter of asserting States-rights.
JD wasn't tried for treason, because he couldn't be, but rather because the Nation's post-war healing was far more important than exacting a terminal revenge. He was of more value to keep alive where he could be derided to the day he died for the loss of 400,000 brave Americans.
For all his military genius and accomplishments, Robert E. Lee was reduced to the profession of insurance salesman, and his son became a hotelier, not a military man. US Grant didn't call on his former foe for military advice.
Lincoln was only a hero to slaves when it became important to secure the blood and treasure of foreign interests to help him achieve victory.
What "blood and treasure of foreign interests?" It was the South that traded cotton and farm provisions with the Brits, and it was Lincoln's blockade of such trade that contributed greatly to the defeat of the South through trade strangulation. It was all downhill for the CSA after Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
Of course the Union remembers the atrocity that was Andersonville. It was almost like Patton arriving at Buchenwald. Little wonder that Sherman felt compelled to torch Atlanta.
Very few of those who died fighting for the CSA were slaveholders, most, like my people, were cotton farmers who tended their own crops and were fierce, independent descendents of Scottish, Irish and English emigrants.
Yeah most of your relatives probably came over as indentured servants (i.e., slaves) yourselves in the 1600's and early 1700's. The first black slaves were owned by blacks in Virginia as early as 1640. Anyone who had the money and the property that needed plowing and cotton needing picking owned slaves.
None of your lily white sharecropper relatives did anything to protest the slavers in the South that did own slaves so don't go around patting yourselves on the back. If they'd had the money, your ancestors would have owned slaves too out of necessity. It's just the way thing were done back then. Poverty likely had your ancestors listening to their better angels - because they couldn't afford to do differently.
There is much more to be learned from history than what was/is written by the victors.
The main reason they don't usually have the losers of wars write the the history accounts is because they seldom if ever have their facts straight.
It's also one of the main reasons the losers lose the wars in the first place.
By the way, I one lived in Richmond as I attended and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, and worked and lived in Fairfax for a time as well. I love Virginia and applaud the work of Gov. McDonnell. Varina, VA, named after Mrs. Davis is ~ 5 miles east of Richmond down US Rt 5. I know history, and of the CSA prison (dungeon) in Richmond, and I will not whitewash it.
Still I am no less charmed by what VA is today or has been in US History from the founding of Jamestown to the capital of CSA, and to the train station which still stands that JD made his vain attempt to escape from by rail.
I just won't whitewash it or rhapsodize about the good ol' boys sent to die as pawns of a brazen attempt at British recolonization.
FReegards!
