The Civil War was about the future, not the past. The South was kinda fucked anyway - land rich agricultural barons were an endangered species everywhere at that point.
The point was to bring slavery to the West. Not just for the free labor, but because slaves suppress the wages of everyone. The sons of the south getting mowed down in the trenches were fighting for those barons whose prosperity was dependent on their poverty. African slaves meant there was always readily identifiable people worse off than you.
