You seem to be arguing that unless someone is a "trained historian" their works are invalid. I guess somebody should have told us about this sooner. That way we could really cut down on the volume of books being printed. Take for example, Winston Churchill. He was not a "trained historian". Therefore we have to exclude his four volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples."

I don't believe he is saying that at all, just that you need to be aware of who is writing the work and read it with a critical eye based on the strength of their research. There are several authors, Gordon Rhea and Peter Cozzens come to mind, who are not professional historians, but have written well researched, well regarded books. As for Winston Churchill, I haven't read his history, but I would subject it to the same scrutiny regarding sources as I would anyone else.

As for the Kennedy Brothers, I have read "The South Was Right" and found it extremely lacking. They seem to rely primarily on postwar accounts, Confederate Veteran Magazine and "The Grey Book" and contemporary accounts are often distorted or taken out of context. One quote that I found particularly annoying was the oft cited one about Lincoln supposedly saying "Let the South go! Then where will we get our revenue?" The footnote says that the quote is from Raphael Semmes "Memoirs of Service Afloat." Sure enough, it is there on p. 59 of my 1st edition of Semmes book, but he spins it out of thin air - no cite or attribute of who supposedly heard it. That is anecdote, not evidence. BTW, if someone has additional info about the Semmes quote, I would be interested to hear it.

"As for Charles Dew I confess to simply brushing through his book at Books-A-Million and saw all I needed to see."

This is interesting. What do you mean by "saw all I needed to see?" I confess that I have not read Dew's book either, but I did read a lengthy abridgment of it in the form of an article in North & South Magazine. The article corroborated what I had already read in the speech from the commissioner from Georgia to the Missouri Convention in March of 1861 as published in the "Journal and Proceedings of the Missouri Convention." These were primary documents in the official records of the various states and demonstrate that slavery was the primary reason for secession.