octopus:
It’s irrational virtue signaling. Irrational in the sense that they assign motives to these people that fought in the Civil War haphazardly. Without any sense of how a poor person fighting a war would think. They’ll link lengthy statements about why some of the states seceded and think that each and every soldier was willing to do die for some rich land owner’s right to own slaves. The truth is more complex than that.
It’s not like the Union soldiers were all motivated by the noble intention of emancipation. Men had to be conscripted in the north and that got ugly. New York City wasn’t the most loyal of regions. But by condemning the South and its soldiers one can signal to others that you think the right things even if it’s intellectually inconsistent with the support of the American Revolution and ignores that it’s disingenuous to distill complex histories into a pithy sound bite.
I’m glad the South lost for practical reasons. A United United States was going to be more viable and powerful than a large group of perpetually fighting mini nations like Europe of the time. Continuing to demonize the South to this day is counterproductive.
Demonization will occur until there is unconditional understanding by “all” that they were in the wrong and on the losing side. It’s 150 years later and there are way too many who still idolize the concept of a confederacy. They would prefer the US be like the EU.