Pray tell what you think "...preserve the Union" means if it doesn't mean drafting large armies, invading heretofore sovereign states, bringing devastation on their populations, and forcing them to remain as vassals to a centralized national government?
Both sides resorted to conscription, and areas of dissent in the South were brutally suppressed on a scale exceeding anything in the North. But it comes down to this; desertion was not nearly the problem among the Union troops that it became for the South. Most of the Union rank and file supported their own cause.
The Confederacy wasn't around long enough, and certainly not at all in peacetime, for its own issues of Central Government vs. States Rights to be sorted out, but certainly the separatist impulses of the member States seriously impaired the overall Confederate war effort.
Birdwatcher
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
