I am into genealogy and have traced many families back to the 1600's. Not one owned slaves. I have over 10,000 names in my FTM. My ancestors were just trying to make a living on land that was not very good for that. A lot of my ancestors lived in the same county and I have seen the land around there. They worked from can do until can't do and most had large families to support. The ones from that era did fight for the South but it was not about slavery.
I agree, all of my ancestors who fought in that war (both on my fathers and mothers side) fought for the South as best we can figure, (though there is a rummer that a cousin was listed among some Yankee cavalry. Only a few actually owned slaves. I've been trying to point out the hypocrisy of both sides on this debate. In the first place most Yankees were not fight'n to end slavery, and most Rebs were not so much fight'n to keep it as fight'n for the right to secede. Did Carolina and the other cotton state, including my home state of Louisiana secede on account of the slavery issue? Yes probably. But Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee didn't secede until Lincoln threatened to invade those states that already had gone out. What they were fight'n for was a voluntary non-compulsory form democracy. And on that issue I'm with them.
Frankly sometimes I think perhaps we shouldn't have listened to the Yankees when they told us to secede from GB. After all, we would have had to get rid of the slave earlier, and I for one would mind being forced to obey one man who claims authority from God Almighty less, than from 10 neighbors who claim authority on the grounds that there are 10 of em and one of me.