re: Robert E. Lee has been misrepresented by regressive "historians"

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It's not speculation. The South's major fear was that the election of a Republican administration would prevent the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Once that happened, the South feared, the representatives of these newly minted free states would go to Congress, get together with their northern counterparts, and eventually legislate slavery out of existence.

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That wasn't just a fear. Everyone knew that the western states/territories would end up under union control, just as they knew this would happen after they seceded from the union. It was inevitable.

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Many expansionist minded Democrats, including President James K. Polk, had long-term plans to expand the borders of the United States into Mexico and Cuba to continue the growth and life expectancy of slavery.

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Again, what the united states wanted to do with the west is separate from what southerners could hope to do after secession. BOTH parties wanted to advance in south America, not just slave owning confederates. Once the south left, that dream died. The only thing left was to stave off the north long enough to make the tap out. The north still had all the means in the world to take the west and south America, and the resource thin agricultural government of the south had zero hope in hell of creating a slave economy paradise out of south America or the west BOTH places where the industrialist north and the abolitionists had interest in preventing that from happening.

Not only is this a stupid plan, it's a stretch you made only after I pointed out that the south could have kept slaves and remained in the union. We have dozens of very simple to understand issues that existed between the north and the south that can explain the reason for secession. We don't have to invent a science fiction-like narrative involving a long-term slave colony in south America to explain why southerners largely supported secession. These issues, I might add, still exist between different groups today.

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hey were thinking long term, as I have already stated

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You are making it seem like the long-term plans of JD and other southern leaders were the reason for the secession when it is very likely that those plans were the result of having economically closed off the rest of the US west and north. There was only a few viable location left for the confederacy, and that was south and some slivers of Mexico. Would JD have the confederacy seize areas of interest and under the control of the union for a long term hold? Of course not.

You are creating a complex narrative to avoid admitting a simple truth, that the south seceded for many political and economic reasons and lincoln was the personification of those issues.

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We know that all of the states had supplementary reasons for wanting to leave the union that preserving slavery WOULD NOT HAVE CHANGED. But we know slavery was their primary reason.

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Talking in circles now. they left to preserve slavery, then they left to expand slavery west, then they left to expand it south. Can we get all of these explanation out of the way in one reply so we can address them all?

The south left because the deck was slowly being stacked against them, politically and economically. Slavery was part of that, but not all of it. They could have kept slavery under Lincoln, but left the union in a fricking hurry (even starting a shooting war) despite that fact. They did so without having any solid plan or capability to expand in any of the cardinal directions you mentioned in your replies. That's right, they literally attacked lincoln's army before they made any serious attempts to expand anywhere else. That's how serious they were about expansion.