Yes, i know the source is liberal, but it is a good read and subject apart from the rest.
Yes. She's starting out from where she is now and trying to figure out how the war affected the way we live today. I'm pretty sure we would have gotten hospitals and ambulances somehow by now, civil war or no Civil War, but it's not bad to be reminded of the historical connections.
People are certainly free to disagree with her. She may be wrong or naive, but it is "history from the bottom up" (not in a Marxist way, though) and a bit fresher than the standard line about how we freed the slaves and all became slaves that gets regurgitated over and over again.