It is amazing how you and others that follow your post think that every word uttered in this article by Willaims is simply a truth. It is laced with opinion. The opinions of Willaims that the war was not about upholding slavery and was not a Civil war are what are disgraceful. The Confederate democrats sought to uphold slavery and to usurp the power delegated by the Constitution for their own anti-freedom purposes.
I went through Mr William’s article and extracted those parts which could fairly be categorized as opinion -
Opinion 1 - “One would have to be stupid to think that blacks were fighting in order to preserve slavery.”
Opinion 2 - “What’s untaught in most history classes is that it is relatively recent that we Americans think of ourselves as citizens of United States. For most of our history, we thought of ourselves as citizens of Virginia, citizens of New York and citizens of whatever state in which we resided.”
Opinion 3 - “Blacks have fought in all of our wars both before and after slavery, in hopes of better treatment afterwards.”
Opinion 4 - “Denying the role, and thereby cheapening the memory, of the Confederacy’s slaves and freemen who fought in a failed war of independence is part of the agenda to cover up Abraham Lincoln’s unconstitutional acts to prevent Southern secession. Did states have a right to secede?”
The rest of the article consists of historical citations to prove his point, which they in fact do. The opinions he rendered are IMO strictly asides and are not called upon in any way to buttress his argument. Even then, only opinion 4 could be deemed at all “controversal”. I therefore, with all due respect, disagree with your post.