cut from the rest of my comment to highlight my initial point

My initial comment was essentially just this. IMO a lot of this historical confusion occurs due to people thinking "if the civil war caused slavery then the union must have been motivated by abolitionism. It's wrong but it's a pretty common assumption so the questions are intertwined

That's a very different question than the one answered by "the Civil War is about slavery"

it's not. When we say "the war is about slavery" as a simple narrative that creates a problem: it takes 2 to tango and thus we have to have a reason the union is fighting. the implication of the simple narrative is a abolitionist crusade which is where the "second opinion" problems come in with teeth.

Presenting ten year olds with the complexities and varieties of Union thought towards the commencement and prosecution of the Civil War will do nothing but cause a lot of kids to hate history.

so part of the problem is my comment was never initially aimed "at 10 year olds but I mean you could say this too with slavery's complexities. i'm talking about broad narratives (see linked post above). Also the clear thrust of the badhistory post zukhov linked to was opinions from texts during some time around high school reading.

Nah, the actual reason

which i debated in my last comment in some degree in pointing out that the use in the 1890s (soldier's peace) conveyed a quite different message than 1950. the privileging of a "soldier's peace" has implications over the relative weight placed on say black experiences but i would be wrong to just dismiss the soldiers peace on that ground given the immense tole of the war.

anyways the "heritage and hate" claim i made was more that a broad way to reconcile some different interpretations are that they are nonexclusive. We could go down this road and it involves history over 20 years but given the political messiness of all this it is probably better not to.