"The Civil War's Dirty Secret: It Was Always About Slavery," by Christopher Dickey at the "Daily Beast"

The Lost Cause view of the Confederacy and the Civil War is rejected emphatically in this article by Christopher Dickey at the Daily Beast.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/10/the-civil-war-s-dirty-secret-it-was-always-about-slavery.html

The article concludes:

But there are times, and maybe today is one of those times, when one looks at the great questions of race and rights in the United States and realizes the spirit of the fire-eaters—their rationalization of racism, their contempt for the federal government, their penchant for violence, their self-deluding vision of their place in the world, and their desire to impose their values on the majority—all that, I am afraid, lives on.