http://www.amazon.com/South-Right-James-Ronald-Kennedy/dp/1565540247
Much of Civil War history is untrue because like most history, it is written by the victor. The story we hear is that hundreds of thousands of Southern men went to war over an issue that only affected six percent of the population. Read this book and learn the truth: there was no shining Northern force fighting a moral battle for the sake of ending slavery; there was no oppressive Southern force fighting to preserve it; and after the South declared its independence, the Union ruthlessly invaded, leaving Southerners no choice but to defend themselves.
The history of the war of the rebellion is documented by the histories of surviving parties of both sides.
Southern partisans are embarassed by the cause for which they fought, and so seek to divert attention away from slavery, with falsehood. Jeff Davis wrote two volumes of fiction on the subject of the war.
Facts are, the south began their insurrection to further, extend, and protect the institution of human slavery. The US government suppressed the insurrection, at great cost.
As Lincoln said:
“ Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”