an icepick through the keyhole

I certainly agree that slavery was a vastly important topic to the people of the time and about its importance to the agriculture that dominated the southern economy. It's also true that the majority of those in political power were tied directly to the wealthy southern landowners, and hence slave owners. I think that the prpensity of the American culture to shorten things into small, easily digestable and concise "news bytes" is a crying shame that does injustice to topics that cannot truthfully be shortened into such forms. Your inital cited article contained what the modern publicicly educated student knows about the Civil War: "The Civil War was a fight over slavery." I find that to be horribly limited and functionally flawed. Like you and I both agree: Slavery was a centralized factor but unless people bother to stand up against that as a simple answer our entire knowledge of history will quickly shorten to one or two word summations. What was World War II about? Nazis. What was World War I about? Who knows/cares.

I too find it to be of particular interest that the landowners and politicos for the most part wanted to keep slavery around but they knew they would have a hard time sellign that to the armies to fight for. It wouldn't shock me to learn that the politicians used the banner of States Rights to generate morale for the armies of the South. Even Robert E. Lee admitted that his loyalty was to the State of Virginia and that was why he sided with the South. Of coruse, it wouldn't be the first time that politicians used a patriotic carrot on a stick to avert the population's attention from the true cause(s) of the war.