Here's what Webb wrote in Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America that got my attention --

The Civil War, we are taught, was about slavery, an institution that at the same time both nurtured and corrupted the South. The Union, we are now told, was on the side of God and the angels, its soldiers dedicated to eliminating this dark stain on the human spirit. The Union Army, we are reminded again and again even in these modern times, marched to a "Battle Hymn", one that still inundates political and patriotic ceremonies.

As He died to make men holy,
Let us die to make men free,
His truth is marching on...

By implication, the soldiers of the Confederacy were with the forces of darkness and evil, fighting to preserve a system that denigrated the human spirit and made mules out of men.

The greatest disservice on this count has been the attempt by these revisionist politicians and academics to defame the entire Confederate Army in a move that can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy. Often cloaked in the argument over public display of the Confederate battle flag, the syllogism goes something like this:

Slavery was evil.
The soldiers of the Confederacy fought for a system that wished to preserve it.
Therefore they were evil as well, and any attempt to honor their service is a veiled effort to glorify the cause of slavery....

[This effort] dishonors hundreds of thousands of men who can defend themselves only through the voices of their descendants.

I don't know about anyone else, but folks, Webb's last sentence hit me right square between the eyes.