A terrible, terrible tragedy.

[Rhydderch Hael]

No, actually. I know next to nothing about the American Civil War.

But just off the top of my head, I would imagine that, in the most tense political atmosphere your nation has ever faced, after a brutal war that many saw as a murderous reconquest, it might have seemed slightly impolitic to just hang southern leaders from the highest tree. An example of at least moderate tolerance does go a long way towards reconstructing the fiction that democracy has been restored.

I suggest you read up on the Reconstruction, and then tell me that the Radical Republicans wanted to avoid seeming a little impolitic in the eyes of the South.

Try again. Look deeper.

Though the decision on secession was decided by military and economic means, that was simply the way the hammer fell. Legal recourse was not an option because there is no clause, in overt legal terms or in the abstract philosophy of its writing, in the Constitution that expressly prohibits the right to revolt or even secede from the Union. That matter was decided on a battlefield, not the capitol(s). A clear-cut example of "might makes right", but that still does not satisfy sublime adherence to the word of law.

Pragmatically, this is the way of the world. Ideally, there's still this nagging suspicion that "might makes right"— really ain't right. Do the ends justify the means? No simple answer to that.

I don't have the easy answer, right or wrong. I bear the supreme disadvantage of not have been involved in any way (seeing as the whole mess ended over a hundred years after I was born). Ending slavery = good thing. Forceful assertion of centralized authority = not so chipper.