Everyone has their own perspective to history. Some perspectives are broader than others.
You talk about skeletons and having a broader perspective in family history, one of my wifes cousins married his 18 year old, 2nd stepmother after his father, and her husband, died. Try figuring that one out. The father and son were the the same name except naturally one was senior and one junior, except that fact didn't reflect in records. However it was only on the marriage licenses and census records that the ages were revealed. We don't know who the actual father of the child born 9 months later was. But he became the progenertor of an entire "new" family taking the mothers 3rd marriages husbands surname. We still regularly meet with decendents of that "New" family, but don't talk about "family history".
But when you really get into the details there really wasn't anything "Wrong" with what happened in that family. It is simply the preception of wrong or immoral conduct that is the stigma. And that is much of what is wrong with the study of Civil War history. It is the stigma of the preception of wrong or immoral conduct, on both side of the issue, that makes people defensive of certain positions.
But one fact can not contridict another fact, either both facts are true and correct and somehow fit together, or one is not a true fact. It is like a jigsaw puzzle, each fact is a piece of the puzzle. But you will never complete the whole picture if you throw away the pieces which you do not think are a part of that puzzle. All the pieces have a place in the whole picture. And lets not forget that there are probably more than ONE picture mixed up in that box of puzzle pieces.
It is like standing on top of a mountain you have to look at all points of the compass to get the whole panorama before you. If you only look in one direction you will not get the full beauty of the scenery. It is like you don't understand the importance of Fort Sumter until you look at it from Fort Moultrie.