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Good points, and I don't disagree. My point was more that I could understand how a Southern farmer or tradesman or schoolboy of the era could have got caught up in the passions and interests of the moment, believed in the secessionist cause, and gone off to fight for it. He probably wouldn't have been much different from soldiers in any age. Today, though, knowing what we know, we can't take such expressions as "Southern rights" or "state's rights" at face value, but must ask about all the meanings they may have had and why people came to fight for them, and this means looking at things in a very different way than the Confederates themselves did. Too often in these arguments everything about Lincoln and the Unionist cause is dismissed while Confederate alibis and rationalizations are accepted without question.

BTW, have you seen this: "No Gettysburg - An Alternative History." I hardly know what to make of it, though it's clear that the author spent a lot of time on it. He captures the expansionist, imperialist and militarist tendencies that were present in the Confederacy underneath the libertarian rhetoric and Jeffersonian veneer, but he overestimates the degree of social stability that the Confederacy, or for that matter the US, would have had, if the war had gone differently. He supposes that, contrary to many neo-confederates, slavery would not have been abolished by the victorious CSA on the end of the war, but underestimates the costs of letting slavery live on for generations.

A time-waster to be sure, but some may be interested.

[Ditto]

BTW, have you seen this: "No Gettysburg - An Alternative History."

Thanks for the link. I think that guy has way too much time on his hands.