re: LeVar Burton shocked to discover he's descended from a Confederate soldier

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But, do people really believe...
1) war was over solely slavery
2)hundreds of thousands of men in a nation of what 20-30 million would take up arms over slavery?

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The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic

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In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

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The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

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Southern Secession was thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.

The Civil War was fought to preserve Southern Secession.

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Expansion of slavery more so than slavery itself was the simmering point. Balance of power in Congress.

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Most of the Southern leaders understood that slavery was doomed in the United States once the statute prohibiting slavery in the Territories was enacted. Every state admitted to the Union would weaken resistance to the abolition of slavery.

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Most northerners didn't give a damn about what the South was doing.

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And after the war, didn't several northern states pass legislation to keep black people out of their state?

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like the Don Cheadle one

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Not attacking, merely clarifying.

The "States' Rights" sections of the various Articles of Secession focus, almost exclusively, on two things: (1) the non-delegated right of states to make their own laws regarding slavery [Non-Delegation and Tenth Amendment], and (2) the failure of the "non-slaveholding States" to uphold the Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause [Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3] and Extradition Clause [Article IV, Section 2, Clause 2]. In other words, the "States Rights" sections of the Articles of Secession were about slavery also.

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