The US made a war against the "White Separatism" (Confederate States of America), in order to protect the US Constitution and citizen rights. Well, there was a

The US made a war against the "White Separatism" (Confederate States of America), in order to protect the US Constitution and citizen rights. Well, there was a bit more to it than that. If it had just been a matter of the Constitution being flaunted, and citizens being denied their rights... we might have just had a prolonged crisis, with a long period of generalized instability and violence towards minorities (kind of like we seem to be entering, in the present day). But unfortunately the CSA had to go out of their way to initiate an all-out armed provocation with the Union, which basically forced the latter's hand, by that point. You know, this little ruckus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter In any case all this post-facto niceness about "protecting the Constitution" and all is -- just that. Invented after the fact, to help the nation recover from what was (at the time) one of the most devastating armed conflicts the planet had hitherto known.