I found this article to be fascinating on a number of levels, but primarily how narrative forms our perception of history and the lessons we take from it. Also interesting to see how narratives change over time based on a number of factors.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...il-war/277022/

150 Years of Misunderstanding

World War II undercut this anti-war stance. Nazism was an evil that had to be fought. So, too, was slavery, which revisionists--many of them white Southerners--had cast as a relatively benign institution, and dismissed it as a genuine source of sectional conflict. Historians who came of age during the Civil Rights Movement placed slavery and emancipation at the center of the Civil War. This trend is now reflected in textbooks and popular culture. The Civil War today is generally seen as a necessary and ennobling sacrifice, redeemed by the liberation of four million slaves.