Yes, so a mixture of both. Interesting. Seems like that war, more than even the first world wars, is hard to get down to the truth of it all.
WWI I don’t find as confusing, given its origins. Now, the methods of fighting and the ultimate resolution are more maddening to study...
The trouble with you and I getting a clear eyed view of 1861-1865 conflict is that we are too close to the action and all of the folks writing histories that we’ve read had their own agendas and axes to grind. As with many other things, a foreign source might be helpful. If you can locate a college level US History textbook published in the UK by a UK academic, you will probably get a decent and fairly objective account of events. And the older the textbook, the better.