The prisoner exchange program during the Civil War was not terminated because the South refused to trade black prisoners. It was terminated because the strategy under Grant was to dent ANY resupply to the Confederacy, because attrition naturally favors the army with the greatest supply of men and material. For this, Grant was willing to let his men die in wretched circumstances in places like Andersonville, where treatment grew even worse after the exchanges ended. To characterize this this as the result of Southern obstinacy and hatred for black prisoners does not describe the situation and smacks of as much revisionism as does the concept that the war was fought over state's rights and had nothing to do with slavery.

Lee was no angel, but he was certainly a better general than anyone the Union could muster to oppose him. He was also a man who opposed secession, but could not bear to see his state leave the Union and be invaded without taking up arms to defend it. He was a great battlefield leader, but was consumed by the need to break the Army of the Potomac and force a ceasefire. Always lacking the forces to capitalize on victories, such as those at Manassas, Fredricksburg, and Chancellorsville, Lee simply lacked the power to defeat AND pursue and crush a beaten army. His ill-chosen frontal attack at Gettysburg was the product of this frustration and need.

Slavery taints the action of all of those who fought for the South, but it does not make them evil or excessively cruel. And we shouldn't need that sort of justification to say that the South was essentially and basically wrong in its actions, and that, thanks largely to the obstinacy and vision of Lincoln, it was rightly defeated.