Anyone who doubts the real reasons for the war merely needs to read the Confederate Constitution and the “articles of secession” from the various states that rebelled. By artificially imposing a false sense of geographic unity, the nation actually entrenched the racial division that haunts us to this day. By comparison, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has its flaws, but it acknowledged the reasons for, and ramifications of, apartheid.
Thousands of formerly enslaved people put flowers on Union soldiers’ graves on May 1, 1865. For well over a century after the Civil War, the significance of the day was buried.