"Most of the history of the "the war was over slavery" was a smear campaign by the Republicans."

If I may.......I would state that the history of the war, was the history of the Victors. But who was the Victor? It obviously wasn't those that fought to protect Constitutional Rights (ie. the Confederacy). It wasn't the men the North that went to war to restore the Union. No.....there was another faction of the North that went to war "to abolish slavery" and crush all those associated with the evil blight of the nation. They would stop at nothing. Those people were the RADICAL Republicans.

The Radical Republicans were the zealots, that supported immediate emancipation of all slaves and granting of full and equal rights to them. They also wanted the complete dismantling of the plantation system with the property divided and granted to the former slaves, without any compensation I might add. The Radical Republicans foisted "reconstruction" and all it's injustices on the South. Even Andrew Johnson wasn't spared when he tried to mitigate some of the more extreme measures imposed on the former Confederacy by the zealots of the North. The Radical Republicans had instigated war to eliminate slavery and punish all the evildoers associated with that heinous institution. They succeeded!