Let's take a couple more recent examples then circle back to the Civil War. If I take your interpretation, which is a single side of a complex multi-dimensional conflict that involved millions of participants, and apply it to more recent conflicts: the American soldiers who fought in the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq were totally just trying to dominate the middle eastern man. In fact, they owned cars and stood to gain from having access to cheap oil. Many people texted about it, saying we should keep the oil and bomb the whole lot. Sermons about the risks of Islam, etc were spoken, in Christian churches.

And if you choose to discard all the other sides of the die, that's all there is to the story. Those words were spoken at various times. People earnestly meant them on some level. But it's not the whole picture. It's a flat, 2D perspective. It's jingoistic in the opposite extreme.

But what we do know from the so-called "War on Terror" (itself a propagandistic title), is that elites went so far as to even make up stories about fake nuclear weapons in order to drum up support for that war. We actually caught them in this blatant lie, for once. None of those people, of course, have gone to jail for it, but I digress. If you think that every war in history isn't similarly manipulated to drum up popular support, you don't know the first thing about war or propaganda.

But we also know, from a certain perspective, that in the wake of 9/11, there was some popular sentiment to do something in retaliation for the innocent lives lost. Nevermind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was pitched as an extension of the War on Terror. And having been swept up in that, I can tell you, I didn't disagree with it at first either. The war was supported on both sides of the political aisle.

As for the Civil War, can you find damning documents if you look for them? Of course. But that doesn't tell you the whole story. My own brother was drafted into the War on Terror, not because he wanted to, but because he was a member of the National Guard. Similarly, in the South and the North and most wars in history: young men don't get a choice, they get drafted. If they don't go to war, and are fully capable, they get arrested or executed. Desertion is also punishable by death. But there's also softer influences. Your own brother is going to war, your cousins, your neighbors and best friends. Why wouldn't you go with them, to have their back? They would have yours, wouldn't they? Reciprocation is another extremely important influence in human psychology.

We actually have recordings of Civil War veterans taken from the early 20th century, when they were still alive: https://youtu.be/swifvJEOF6s?t=160

"I didn't feel much interest in it, because I felt kindly towards the darkers, and they were kindly towards me, and towards my family."

"Now, attending school, in Spring of '61, when news came war was declared...there was a rally among 75-100 boys at school. Well right then, about half of our pupils, boys around 18, quit school...I wanted to go too! But my father said I was too young, but if the war lasted long enough, you may have an opportunity."

"Well, so I rested. War began. And I heard about it. And I heard about at Williamsburg, some of my classmates fell in the battle there, and I grieved about it because the boys I had been brought up with. They were a little older than I, and I felt sorry they were killed."

"Then in 1862, General Lee began to need more men, naturally. Although the biggest battles had not come yet...I a boy, of 16 1/2 years old, joined a cavalry company."

"It was a great curse on this country that we had slavery, and I thank God that I did not bring up my boys and girls under a system of slavery which I was brought up under."

You can see in Howell's own retrospective about it. He was convinced it was about state's rights. He saw Virginia as his homeland moreso than even the U.S.A. In the 1860s, most men around the world would have done the same for wherever they resided, whatever tribe they belonged to, whatever monarch was in power and whatever cause was presented.

But that instinct that men have to fight for their tribe, well that has been tapped successfully by elites for millenia.