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'm going to insert my History Geekiness here. Cavet: I'm not an Americanist, but I've studied quite a bit here and there. Sorry that this is so long winded.

The way American's view our Civil War has been shaped by the history of Reconstruction. Reconstruction is the period after the war when the politicians had to decide what came next. Originally, the radical folks had their say, passing the 14th and 15th Amendments and several other laws designed to protect blacks. As the Southern States were readmitted to voting rights and Congress, they allied with the moderates to roll back as much of the civil rights legislation as possible.

Meanwhile, Southerners basically waged a culture war to make things as much like they were before the war as possible. Ku Klux Klan was about using intimidation to "keep blacks in their place." New laws were enacted to erode the new rights granted the ex-slaves (Jim Crow). The share cropper system was employed to keep blacks poor and the segregated school system helped keep them ignorant. In the North the old radicals died or burnt out and the Republican Party turned to protecting business interests and making money, basically abandoning the freedpeople to whatever fate the ex-owners had in store for them.

The Southern historians used the North's preoccupation with issues of industrialization to seize control of the debate around the turn of the last century. They floated arguments that reconstruction failed because it was too harsh. A lot of Southerners were angry about losing the war and raised their children believing that the war was just and the confederacy sacred. The Northerners just weren't very intense about the whole thing since they won. Southerners spent more than a century refighting the war from their armchairs. Northerners deified Lincoln and then went on with their lives.

Basically, the South won the academic propaganda war, until a conjunction of the civil Rights movements and a Marxist inspired interest in economic history and the down trodden combined. A bunch of books and papers were published arguing that the Southerners were wrong, slavery was wrong, and Reconstruction wasn't harsh enough since the blacks were still being wildly oppressed. Textbooks published in Northern States reflect this, while my friends who taught in the South say they were asked by Administrators to make it look like the South won. One of my friends got in trouble for mentioning the black regiments while teaching in Texas.

Northerners and West coasters in general tend to think Lincoln was a hero but just don't think about it that much. We tend to be more focused on modern race relations.