320,000 Northern white men died to free the slaves. 258,000 Southern white men died for being slavers.

It's a pretty high price any way you want to look at it.

The other way to look at it is that hundreds of thousands of Southern white men demanded a blood price of half a million lives to relinquish a right to chattel slavery that most of them could merely aspire to execute --- that such was the depth the depravity undergirding slavery reached.

As I said, the usual price for freedom is blood.

That's maybe a good song lyric but not especially useful as an argument here.

There are plenty of historical examples. For just American wars, we have the American Revolution, the Civil War, WW2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War.

WW1 is a notable exception.

For the values of 'song' that include 'famous speeches by Mussolini/Schrute'.

I thought that was the wheels of history, not the price of freedom, but point taken!

I believe it was Marcus Aurelius who wrote 'It is not little details that a man making a dumb joke should fear'.

The Union wasn't just executing southerners for being slavers, they were putting down a treasonous rebellion.