[MissAmericanPie]

Could be, slavery was very ingrained in the south, but the question still remains, what did the average southerner think he was fighting for? Wasn't slavery begining to be a fading proposition in the South as well, with a growing number of freed slaves?

It's interesting that the North might have not put up a fuss if the South had left the union, but the South was demanding too much territory. The Northern and Southern cultures at the time were very different also, they had little in common. Kind of like how little in common the red, "fly over" areas have with the blue areas in the 2000 election.

[Non-Sequitur]

Could be, slavery was very ingrained in the south, but the question still remains, what did the average southerner think he was fighting for? Wasn't slavery begining to be a fading proposition in the South as well, with a growing number of freed slaves?

What were they fighting for? Well, about a third of them were fighting because they were conscripted. Others were fighting because their state launched a rebellion and they went along with their political leadership. I'm sure that some were fighting because they flat out hated Yankees. Regardless of what the individual was fighting for, the rebellion was started because the southern leadership believed the election of Lincoln represented a threat to their institution of slavery.