I was hoping you'd show up; the nitwitticisms were getting pretty thick around here. A bump for your admirable and, in my opinion, entirely truthful remarks. We hear a lot about the Kumbayah Left, but the Kumbayah Right really makes me sick.
I agree with a number of previous posters that the best single work on the subject is The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. As someone observed above, it's great history and a work of art.
For the events leading up to the war, David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis provides a judicious overview.
For the common soldier's experience, Bell I. Wiley's Life of Johnny Reb and Life of Billy Yank are still a good place to start. Gerald Linderman's Embattled Courage is an absorbing study of Civil War combat.
Some of my favorite campaign books are The Gettysburg Campaign, by Edwin Coddington; Embrace an Angry Wind (on Hood's disastrous Tennessee Campaign), by Wiley Sword; Chancellorsville by Stephen Sears; Gordon C. Rhea's three volumes (so far) on Grant's Overland Campaign; and Larry J. Daniel's Shiloh, among many others.
There are good biographies of Robert E. Lee (by Douglas Southall Freeman and Emory M. Thomas), Stonewall Jackson (by Burke Davis, Frank Vandiver, and James I. Robertson), Jefferson Davis (by William C. Davis), and Ulysses S. Grant (by Lloyd Lewis [first volume] and Bruce Catton [volumes two and three]). Don't miss Lee's Lieutenant's, also by Freeman.
I'll add one novel to those already suggested: Long Remember, by Mackinlay Kantor, which looks at the battle of Gettysurg from the civilian point of view.
Finally, a book to avoid: William McFeely's Grant, which is riddled with errors and left-wing pap.