That is the best essay about the Unnecessary War I ever read. Every war has winners and losers. The Republicans who wanted to centralize the government and trash the 9th and 10th Amendments won this one. They could not have pulled it off without the War. It would have been as difficult as re-writing the Old Testament.

Not that all politicians or even most of them were bad men. In the mid 19th Century, it was common for elected officials to have the guts to stand up for principles. Something sorely lacking nowadays.