My feeling is you cannot leave out the subject of slavery from the war, because slavery did affect the final outcome. Slavery was the South's albatross, economically, politically and militarily. It was used to terrorize, demonize, and subjugate the South by the Republicans, Democrats, Whigs and North-Easterners in general. Slavery and its evils, and the subject of slavery, helped bring down the South and all Southerners suffered.

No, the cause for Southerners to go to war was not to protect somebody else's property, or defend the slave culture, it was to make right a dysfunctional union, uphold the Constitution and fight against an out of control Federal government. Who'd die for slavery?

David Upton