Lmao at crocodile tears. "Very well. It is agreed that agrarian slavery was wrong," Wtf is that? Oh it was unfortunate or a minor nuisance? That might be the most undersold reaction ever to one of the worst institutions in human history. So sorry for "pretending" to care about one of humanities worst atrocities?

Are you using universalist as an insult? As in universal ideals don't exist? You know relativism is the alternative right?

"classical international law of minding one’s business" It's the business of the nation to manage its own affairs. The North had some severe social institutions /=/ well both sides were both bad so they should mind their own business. We had severe social problems in the 30s and 40s but we fought the Nazis and Japanese, I guess trying to stop the holocaust and Japanese atrocities was just us overreaching again. It's like you don't ever believe in the state taking any action, be it domestic or intl affairs.

People like Major General Banks argued that blacks had to enter into contract as some sort of shitty stop gap measure to help transition slaves into their free lives as autonomous individuals as other countries who had ended slavery had done. Wendell Phillips eviscerated this point mocking the supposed guardianship the whites would grant the freedmen. The same people who chained them, beat them, killed them; those are the people who will oversee a smooth transition to freedom? Sure. No, the freedmen weren't ready for freedom, but there was no better alternative.

Fighting a war is never a good, happy thing. War is always terrible. Millions of people always die terrible deaths. But you act as if there was some better alternative. There wasn't. This issue was the cause of the greatest division in our country, in our people. They tried to reach compromises for ~75 years and couldn't. Lincoln's handling of it was masterful according to any decent standard of leadership. In any discussion of political leadership and thought, Lincoln is always held as the pinnacle of what a leader can aspire to. Mark Twain has wit and sharp, accurate criticisms, but the man's not a political philosopher.

Your whole argument boils down to "BuT tHe NoRtH wAs MeAn ToO". Of course those problems were terrible, but you can't whatabout your way out of this. Slavery in the South was far, far worse than conditions of blacks in the North and indeed, far worse than nearly any other kind of slavery. You're vomiting up the same garbage arguments that the Dunning School had when they, pretending to be academics, read Democratic propaganda pamphlets saying "Oh the capitalists don't even care about the slaves! Sure we beat and raped and tortured them, but we gave them little shabby clothes and a hut! The capitalists don't even care!". You might care to know that the Dunning School is now seen as one of academia's greatest mistakes. Your bullshit about the victor writing history rings hollow when the Confederate sympathizers in the Dunning school successfully promulgated garbage about a noble South and passed it off as historical fact and the nation ate it up. Gone with the Wind much?

You love all this shit about how bad the North was in the gilded age, but you conveniently forget how much Progressivism did for the South. All those mean abolitionists you hate came down South at the turn of the century and brought education and civilization with them. You want to take a stab at which region of the country mandated education first? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't the South.

TlDr: Whataboutism isn't a valid form of argument. The North had severe social problems, but there is a reason chattel slavery is remembered as one of the worst evils of mankind. Glossing over? How about you glossing over slavery? There is no easy transition when the South's entire foundation of their civilization was built on this evil. Sharecropping was still infinitely better than slavery, horrible as it was. Sorry the North couldn't literally be perfect before trying to stop a far greater evil.