Reading civil war history

Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, made a comment to an interviewer recently calling Robert E. Lee an honorable man and suggesting the Civil War could have been avoided by a greater willingness to compromise. To those who disagreed he advised taking a history course. No doubt there are history courses that prop up Kelly's beliefs. The general history that is believed down south where I live now is one of confederate pride shown by flying the flag and making monuments to nearly every confederate military man. There is a battlefield near me that does a re-enactment of the battle every year honoring the confederate dead. There is no mention of who they fought or that dozens of black soldiers were slaughtered even as they lay wounded on that same battlefield. I have been reading up on the history of slavery and race relations in the south since moving here. I have some suggestions for reading material for John Kelly. One is The Half Has Never Been Told : slavery and the making of American capitalism. It's by Edward Baptist, history professor at Cornell, who grew up in Durham, NC. In his thoroughly researched book he left no doubt in my mind that the aspirations of the southern politician/slaveholders was to advance their slave holding culture throughout the United States. The labor slaves provided was so lucrative it is not too much to say that it was the economic engine driving the whole country. Cotton was King. Slavery was designed to get the most labor out of slaves to derive ever increasing profits. Cotton picking was brutal work and slaves were driven workers. As states were added to the Union pressure increased to keep the new states open to slavery. There is no doubt the southern political machine desired to expand slavery into all the land of the United States. The war between the states was already in the works when Lincoln was elected. The Civil War was the response to his election. Secession was an afterthought. The south believed it had no choice for it's agenda to be accomplished. Here in the south there is still talk about the great "lost cause" and the war for states rights and the honorable generals like Lee who fought for their principles. Principles that were based on the brutal subjugation of the black race whose lives were stolen from Africa, and continued to be stolen at every slave auction. Hardly, an honorable enterprise.