To the victor belong the spoils-and the history books. I'm looking for any books that deal with the Civil War from more of a southern perspective, or at least an objective viewpoint. Most of what I have read, or listened to online, has been simply "the war was fought to end slavery". I don't think it was that simple. I can't see poor white southerners fighting to the death so some rich landowners could sip sweet tea while making big bucks through their slaves! Anybody out there that could recommend a book dealing with the likely complex issues that led to this wholesale slaughter of young Americans by their fellow citizens?
As I've written about this before, this deals with the centrality and inseperability of slavery to the underlying cause of the war while this deals with how the institution of slavery had social ramifications for Southern white non-slaveowners . Finally, this is an extensive reading list I assembled on the 'Lost Cause' ideology and related matters.
/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov has provided you some excellent reading, so I won't tread the same ground. I would, however, like to address a portion of your comment in some detail.
I don't think it was that simple. I can't see poor white southerners fighting to the death so some rich landowners could sip sweet tea while making big bucks through their slaves!
So basically, you reject reputable scholarship because it doesn't agree with your presuppositions? This is a really dangerous way to approach history and will lead to all kinds of misunderstandings. It's really important to leave your own opinions on how things should work at the door and try to figure out how people at the time felt. Want to know why poor whites were willing to fight to defend slavery? Read the letters and diaries of Confederate soldiers, or the books and articles based on those sources. The soldiers who fought that war were highly literate and left a wealth of information to us, so there's no need to rely on uninformed speculation.