I guess your scholarly view only appears in books and links noted, but the other non-literate and uneducated folks just talk about it at the dinner table.
No, the War of Secession was the most literate war, in terms of the education of its participants, ever fought at that time, and these people left literally thousands of journals, diaries and and letters. Several books too.
What you suggest is that the average Confederate soldier was unaware of or did not care about the wording of the Constitution which he was fighting to uphold.
Likewise you suggest that the Union men who died in droves in near-suicidal frontal assaults under Grant really had no idea for what they were fighting, even though they overwhelmingly voted to re-elect Lincoln in '64 at the bloody peak of that war.
Overwhelmingly, as preserved in their own words, at the time, the Northern soldier felt the Union was worth shedding blood to preserve, as Lincoln himself plainly stated from the very beginning.
Did the average Confederate soldier own slaves? No, of course not, but the prospect of freed slaves in their midst (more than a quarter of the Southern population, actual majorities in South Carolina and Mississippi) was a catastrophe that haunted the South.
Taxation without representation was a root cause of our Revolutionary War,
as clearly stated by the participants at the time. Yet no one seems to have a problem with that.
Southerners at the time state clearly that the slavery/imposed abolition issue was what pushed 'em over the edge? Naah... it was just "politicians" saying that.....
BTW.... about THE most dangerous thing to be during that period was a pro-Union man from the South. Dissent was NOT tolerated, persecution was general.
Birdwatcher
