More Words, Deeper Hole

There's also the fact that the Civil War was fought over not just the defense of slavery, but the expansion of slavery into the new territories. It's not like that issue would have gone away if Gettysburg had gone differently. The South winning the War could just as well be the beginning of a period of violence culminating in the collapse of an economically unstable CSA, America as a fragmented country becomes globally less influential, segue into mmcirvin's last sentence above.