It is the union army during the civil war that remains the only thing about the US I could be almost patriotic about. Almost. I mean an army of "rebels" that sought to maintain their position as slavers and grow that system across the country? It's like the most despicable thing to rise up for and they fought tooth and nail for it. They would raid northern cities and take black people, born free on that soil, and consider them "contraband" and remove them to the south as slaves. With that as the enemy it's so simple to be the hero.

It was also a real inflection point at which the US could have made a massive shift in its makeup as a country, the possibility and will was there, but it was failed by the worst aspects of this country that sought to just forgive and forget what the south had done and move along to colonizing the west.

Of course the US was never salvageable as it is a settler colonial institution from the get but damn, that was one of those points where a less shitty version was possible.