I personnally have lost a lot of respect for "professional" historians and when I hear one I now wonder what their objectives are. Recently I was going to watch a much advertised TV special on the 150 anniversary of the War and the very first "historian" to introduct the programs first words were "the Civil War was about slaver-" at that point I changed channels to watch looney tunes. It was more educational.
The American Civil War was the destruction of the pure Republic form of our Constitutional Government. The very idea that today we question rights that were granted to us under the Constitution and have to ask our governmental leaders for permission to exercise these rights. That these rights are not universal, because of restriction which have since been placed upon them after 1865. And that we fear that government because of what they can do against you, should tell even the most ignorant of us what that war was truely all about. POWER.