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As best as I can tell, about a quarter to a third of all white families in the South owned slaves at any given moment. There were local variations of course, depending on the strength and nature of the local plantation economy, but the importance of slavery in the South ought not to be minimized.

That is a massive overestimate. Even most PC Revisionists claim 20% to 25% and I doubt it was that high. They do this by taking the total number of slave owners (5.63% of the White population) and then just extrapolating an average family size. Of course, they don't account for the fact that there could be multiple slave owners in one family (that would reduce the number of families which owned slaves so it would be inconvenient for them). The large majority of White Southern families did not own any slaves.

My grandparent were all immigrants early in the last century with no connection to the US Civil War. The closest that any recent relative came to combat was an Irish grandfather who seems to have been involved in the Irish Civil War, a great uncle who died while in the British Army on the Somme in WW I, and an uncle who was in the US Merchant Marine on the North Atlantic run during WW II. My father was in the US Navy during the Korean War. I also had a great uncle who was in Rural Solidarity in Poland and was apparently murdered by the communist secret police.

I had family in WWII. My mom's two older brothers were drafted. My dad was just 14 when the war ended so he was too young. He was drafted during the Korean War but as a medical student they gave him a deferment until he finished med school and then he did his 2 years in the army as a doctor.

Rockingham: "As best as I can tell, about a quarter to a third of all white families in the South owned slaves at any given moment.
There were local variations of course, depending on the strength and nature of the local plantation economy, but the importance of slavery in the South ought not to be minimized."

FLT-bird: "That is a massive overestimate.
Even most PC Revisionists claim 20% to 25% and I doubt it was that high.
They do this by taking the total number of slave owners (5.63% of the White population) and then just extrapolating an average family size.
Of course, they don't account for the fact that there could be multiple slave owners in one family (that would reduce the number of families which owned slaves so it would be inconvenient for them).
The large majority of White Southern families did not own any slaves."

Seriously, almost any % number you want to chose can be justifiably argued, depending on how you define and who you count, or don't count.
The 1860 census numbers are well known and not disputed.
But how those numbers get interpreted can often reveal a person's biases and loyalties.

Here are the actual 1860 census numbers by region showing household sizes and % of slave ownerships:

Average % of Households Holding Slaves, by Region -- 1860 Census

Region	Free population	Enslaved population	Freedmen (free Blacks)	Free Households	Free people per household	% households owning slaves	Avg. enslaved per slaveholding household
Free States / Territories	18,810,000	0	226,000	3,610,000	5.21	0.0%	—
Border States	2,710,000	430,000	129,000	490,000	5.56	15.9%	5.55
Upper South	2,930,000	1,210,000	96,000	530,000	5.50	25.3%	8.95
Deep (Lower) South	2,660,000	2,310,000	36,000	490,000	5.37	36.7%	12.74
TOTAL (U.S.)	27,110,000	3,950,000	487,000	5,120,000	≈ 5.3	≈26% of Southern households	≈10

The first thing to point out here is that regional averages hide the extremes:

49% of Mississippi households owned slaves
3% of Delaware households owned slaves.

So, no single number can encompass the entire slaveholding South.

Likewise, it's entirely fair to say that overall ~75% of Southern households did not own slaves, but that number ranged from 97% in Delaware to only ~50% in Mississippi.

Methodologically:

The 1860 census counted households, not nuclear families.
Households did not include slaves but did include anyone living there, related or not.
In the South, households were typically all related, while in the North, households could include borders or hired hands.
Yes, the claim that some households included multiple slaveholders is true, but it's just as true that some slaveholders owned slaves in multiple households.
But both cases were rare, and so the overall averages remain valid.

Finally, especially in Deep Cotton South states, it's utterly disingenuous to suggest that slavery was not intimately woven into the fabric of the "Southern way of life" in 1860.
So virtually everyone who joined the Confederate army or participated in Confederate government was embedded in the South's "Peculiar Institution".

And yes, there were many white Southerners who strongly opposed slavery and the CSA -- they formed majorities in places like

Western Virginia,
Eastern Kentucky,
Western North Carolina,
Eastern Tennessee,
Northern Alabama,
Northern Arkansas and the
Texas Hill Country.

Such people were often abused and subject to massacres by loyal Confederates.