I agree with you, Bryan. You simply cannot discuss the Civil War without acknowledging how important the issue of slavery was. As I'm sure you know, if you look even further back in our history, slavery has always been a major issue for us. You can go back at least to the Missouri Compromise in 1820 to see that. In actuality, you can go even further than that. As you so succinctly said, it was the issue of slavery (among other things) that played a key role in the fragmentation of the country. Hindsight always being 20/20, it is easy to see now that the country had been on a path toward war for over forty years before those fateful shots were fired at Fort Sumter.

You also made a good point about recent emigrants and their lack of "blood ties to the land." Arkansas was a relatively young state at that time, and it was very sparsely settled. Furthermore, people tended to move into areas that were similar to places they had moved from in other states. For example, if they lived in the mountains of Tennessee, they often moved to the mountains in Arkansas. So you kind of had this perpetuation of lifestyle that existed throughout the state. I'm sure it was probably the same in other states as well. The result of this was that not only did you have a sort of geographic isolation, but in many ways there was a kind of cultural and economic isolation as well. And as we already discussed, it was these factors, in part, which led to people being unable to live harmoniously with one another. And that unfortunately led to the deadliest conflict that this nation has ever seen.

On a lighter note, I like your "chewing gum for the brain" line. That's pretty good. You don't have that copyrighted, do you? ;)