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Actually if read carefully the better and more comprehensive mainstream (liberal) US history treatments such as S. E. Morrison et. al, "Growth of the American Republic reveal much of the same information. The primary motivation of the Republicans and pro-war Democrats was maintenance of the Union not abolition, secession probably existed as a theoretical right, the union was originally a union of largely sovereign states which voluntarily turned over certain powers to the national government voluntarily and these powers theoretically could be reclaimed by the states. Eve the sorry performance of the New Deal was spelled out in the Morrison text. It is just stated in several places with no interpretative information and the reader is left to connect the dots himself. Admittedly something most college undergrads won't have time or inclination for.

The point I am making is that many of these supposedly taboo topics could be raised and discussed in relative amity at the college level thirty years ago. The profs were overwhelmingly pro-dem but I can't say I encountered much PC in US history. Courses on the USSR and China were another matter.

Yes, you certainly are right. The "mainstream" texts when I went to school---and I learned from Morrison and COmmager, too---were left, but not ridiculous. They celebrated American victories in war, gave the Founders their due, and barely touched on social history, which now dominates every aspect of history texts. Thus the obsession with ethnic/gender "balance", which soon will be further balanced by homosexual inclusion.

Secession probably existed as a theoretical right, the union was originally a union of largely sovereign states which voluntarily turned over certain powers to the national government voluntarily and these powers theoretically could be reclaimed by the states.

Just about anything can be right in theory or a right in theory. Theories tend to multiply and swarm around the available facts. In 1860 plenty of Americans, from the President, President-elect, and Attorney General on down assumed that unilateral secession at will was unconstitutional. Given the disagreement it would have been for the best had the Supreme Court ruled on the question, or had the states appealed to Congress for deacession, but the rush to form a new country was too great.