Another View of the Southern Population

When we think of the Civil War, we generally see it as an ideological conflict between North and South. Oversimplifying the conflict, we tend to forget the economic and political motives that sparked the conflict. Similarly, we generally tend to see the war as free northern, hardworking men fighting southern plantation owners. However, this is an inaccurate reflection, as we can see when we read Eric Foner's A Short History of Reconstruction.
The book shows that the actual fighting on the side of the Confederacy happened by the lower, southern class, mostly small independent farmers. These farmers often did not even own slaves since they did not have the economic means to do so. Nevertheless, they found themselves defending an upper class Southern institution. Given that they had never really benefited from slavery, they started to question this ideology and threatened the upper class by demanding greater political and economic self-determination.
I found it refreshing that the author of the book made a point to stress this fact since that is often something the general public seems to forget.