Was it the story of a wealthy family who lost everything , and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together ? <| sep |> The war was not started over slavery . Check out the book 1861 by Adam Goodheart . It details various events and cultural changes leading up to the Civil War . The South seceded after Lincoln was elected precisely because it was feared Lincoln and the Republicans would try to repeal slavery even though all his rhetoric was about containing it and not abolishing it . His party was antislavery , and there is some evidence he was personally antislavery , though , again rhetorically he seemed willing to compromise . Lincoln ' s initial willingness to engage in war seems to have been based on the principle that secession was unconstitutional . So , I would agree that from the North ' s and Lincoln ' s point of view , slavery in itself was not the cause for the fight . On the other hand , in the South ' s seceding , slavery was very much at the core . As for monuments , in my mind , it depends on the individual monuments and the symbolism intended by their display . Clearly , many , if not most Confederate soldiers were living at a subsistence level , themselves , and did not own slaves . And , every individual goes into a fight for his or her own reasons . Some are documented most are not . But , a statue in a town square mourning the loss of locals due to war is quite different from flying the stars and bars in counterprotest to a Black Lives Matter rally . In my opinion , as with most things in life . it all depends .