Whether you intend it, or even realize it, this idea of "right and wrong" permeates every discussion of the War you engage in on this forum
Are you actually suggesting that notions of "right and wrong" did not permeate every discussion of the War among those folks who were actually engaged in it?
Both sides believed they were right, that being the tragedy of the thing.
You dismiss the Rebel soldiers as "useful idiots of the Rich Planters".
Where did I do this?
Although the question of 'dying to preserve the rich man's slaves' did often crop up as an issue across the South, especially after the application of the Confederate Draft Laws in '62.
There were many personal reasons on both side why a guy on either side would choose repeatedly to brave a storm of Minie balls and the awful consequences thereof.
I did suggest that if one accepts the notion that the Union soldier was merely Lincoln's stooge, this certainly applies in spades to the Southern soldier re: the uniformly wealthy Planter CLass leadership.
In fact if slavery was a poison that blighted everything it touched, the same might be said of the whole Southern Planter class. Look at the effect they had on the collective Antebellum South.
Birdwatcher