It was the destruction of the South that led, in part, to the modern United States with its top-heavy federal government and lack of the very representation that the US was supposedly founded to provide. Once Southern states were defeated, there was nothing to stop the mercantilist North from creating a version of democracy that included many of the worst of Europe's class-conscious and authoritarian system.
This was just what Jefferson feared: The end of the Civil War marked the beginning of this sort of system in the US.
Read on:
http://thedailybell.com/news-analysis/36609/Simon-Black-Speaks-of-Freedoms-Lost-Post-Civil-War/