I’ve read the trilogies of both Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton.
I’ve also read Charles Adams’ “Shall Cromwell Have A Statue” in which Charles Adams discusses whether Robert E Lee was a traitor and whether secession was un-Constitutional.
Adams says that if we call Lee a traitor then we have to do the same to George Washington and the rebels of 1776. Parliament and King George had denounced them all as guilty of treason. Adams says that Lee was loyal to Virginia, which Lee believed to be where his primary loyalty belonged.
Adams then discusses Virginia’s secession. Adams writes that the original states that ratified the Constitution all believed in their right of secession- an idea that Adams believes was hopelessly outdated 70 years into the Constitution but consistent with the logic of those who ratified the document. His conclusion is that both sides were correct, they just came at the Constitution from two different views. The seceding states looked at it from an originalist viewpoint, Lincoln from a nationalist view that had developed over time.
Charles Francis Adams Jr, the author of the piece, was the President of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American Historical Society. He was the grandson of John Quincy Adams, the great grandson of John Adams. In the Civil War he was an officer in the Union Army and fought with distinction during the Gettysburg campaign.
One of the biggest pretenses is to equate Secession with the Revolution.
How stupid do you think we are?
The Revolution occurred because we had NO representation in Parliament. There was no treason because colonists inherited colonialism and that the King was never selected in an election, we never consented to being a subject.
Southern (slaver) outrage was launched even though the South had controlled the federal government for seventy years excepting JQ Adams. When they lost it (total control) they acted like hysterical women and typical Demons complaining of a “tyranny” which was impossible in 1861 since the size of the federal government was tiny.
The whole insurrection was based on the Big Lie. The “Russian collusion” of the day and some still fall for it.
Lincoln repeatedly said that he would not have ended slavery unless the Constitution was amended to allow it.
You can trace the explosion in size of the federal government to the requirements to fight an insurrection.
It is also FALSE that the constitution allowed a Conditional Ratification. It was designed to create a “more perfect union” not one that could be unraveled at the whim of a state.