Is a thread being treated as the entire bolt of cloth?

Does the modern study of the Civil War have to revolve around slavery? A few years ago I was attending a program that took us to the scene of the Battle of the Crater. Here it was, a summer sunset near that depression where so many men, of both sides, gave their lives for their definition of country, and two “history experts” launch into a diatribe about the vile Southern soldier fighting to maintain slavery. To hear those two published historians disrespect the Southern soldier on a battlefield where so many of them bled out was disgusting. Really, of all the places! I get that slavery was an embarrassing chapter in our country history. I get that from the modern eyes the Southern soldier seems an agent for slavery, but that’s the point, from a modern eye. None of us lived during that time. Who are we to judge? With an early 19th Century cultural upbringing and/or economic necessity could those two historians honestly say they would not have been the very slave owner/confederate soldier they were gashing while standing on that sacred soil. As a teacher I think it is imperative the slavery story be taught with all the zeal it deserves. I also think we have no right to judge, we have no right to disrespect them on their soil and we need to keep the various issues of the Civil War where they belong. Antietam is about the soldiers fighting and dying in the bloodiest battle in our history then it’s the story of the Emancipation Proclamation and it should be presented in that order. Why am I rambling about this three years later? Two reasons: The Gettysburg Visitor Center video and upcoming class I’ll be taking. The Gettysburg Visitor Center is a beautiful site with some excellent history. It also has a video, the one the visitor sees before viewing the Cyclorama, which makes slavery the seminal aspect of the war and, by inference, the seminal reason for Gettysburg. Agreed ending slavery was the most significant result of the war. However I am not kin to making Gettysburg about slavery. It was about soldiers giving their full measure. It was about generals leading their ‘boys’ across rocky fields and slopes. It was about the town forever changed and an address by a president. The video did not celebrate the afore mentioned except as a back drop to the slavery story. Sad. The second reason I’m writing this now is the content I have to read in preparation for an upcoming class on American history. Of the 18 some readings 10 of them have slavery as their major theme. Slavery’s introduction, slavery’s spread, slavery and the Civil War, Reconstruction for the African American and Civil Rights makes up the majority of the class reading. Even though I am very excited to read the material and attend the lectures I am a bit sad that the history of our country is being painted by its relationship with slavery, not slavery as a thread in our history.