@the_doc, I can agree with much of that and wouldn't even think of arguing with your superior knowledge (well, maybe a bit), but here's what I want to know - why is this still so important? Why do we still fight it after all these years and all the melding of cultures, and many wars fought together since, and victories won, and hard times and good times gone together - why does it still have a visceral hold on us?
The "Team" effect. Those who have relatives that fought on one side of the conflict or the other will natural believe their's was the side of right. People who grew up in regions will also develop affinity for "their" land and it's history and sacrifice.
Few will look at the whole conflict objectively and without modern anachronistic bias. People will chose up teams mostly for emotional reasons, and then they will defend those they regard as their team.
For me it was a slow transition from the Union "Team" to the Confederate "Team" but time, philosophy and evidence convinced me that what I had previously learned was either wrong or misleading.
I was also faced with the fact that one of the options I considered for dealing with a modern super State which is out of control, was gaining independence from it, but it always came back to "Well the Civil War pretty much ended that possibility, didn't it?"
So i'm thinking "must I be chained to those insane fools in Massachusetts and California, and must I fall into the Abyss with them because of their madness?"
"Hmmm.... let me rethink this Civil War business and see if this secession idea can be rehabilitated with a suitable philosophical argument. "
"We just need to strip of that slavery component of it and see what we have. "