I actually will concede that Lincoln was not all about freeing the slaves, as outlined in your article. But the South did go through great means to protect their institution. You assert that they were only fighting for independence and the right to their "property," as if said "property" wasn't human beings, which they were using to generate those wonderful profits.  You make it seem that they were only arguing over machines that the North sought to confiscate. They were hiding behind semantics to protect their racism, where, if we are to read the words of folks like Alexander Stephens, they did not have any trouble hiding it until the 'revolution' started moving away from them. (see previous commentary above).

You then say..

The soldiers of the Confederacy fought and gave their lives for the exact same reasons as did their grandfather who fought King George and imperial England.  The sons of the Confederacy did so with less ultimate success on the battlefield than did their ancestors during the Revolution, however, and so the effort ended in defeat.  But it does not follow that the cause was not worth fighting for.  The South was right! 

Well, except the King of England did not see their subjects as less-than equal and less than human. Plus, if you read the "reasons for succession from the Union" staements from several of the states it's pretty obvious:

Southern concerns included not only economic loss but also fears of racial equality.^{[45] [46] [47] [48]} The Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession^{[49] [50]} said that the non-slave-holding states were "proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color", and that the African race "were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race". Alabama secessionist E. S. Dargan warned that whites and free blacks could not live together; if slaves were emancipated and remained in the South, "we ourselves would become the executioners of our own slaves. To this extent would the policy of our Northern enemies drive us; and thus would we not only be reduced to poverty, but what is still worse, we should be driven to crime, to the commission of sin.

So in other words, if all men were indeed to be created equal, the southerners would become poor, but they'd have no choice but to become savage killers. (This of course, from the superior race).

This however, raises my eyebrows:

Every time I look at modern Atlanta, or almost any other big Southern city today, I see what a quarter million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.  It is factories, pollution, crime, a breakdown in community and morals - a loud ugly world where people are strangers to one another, money and materialism is the god all worship, and family is everywhere besieged.  The Northern vision of the future won out in 1865 over the Southern way of life.  That is a tragedy.  The wrong side won.

As a person who lived in Atlanta for six years, I'm actually a little alarmed at this statement. Do you think the South, had they won, would have sought equality among all men? Wasn't the war fought because of protection of godless money and materialism (tariffs)? Was the pre-Civil War south a "moral society"? Hard to believe, unless of course, one believes that the slaves weren't men and just property.

So again, my statement remains. It's extremely difficult to argue that slavery wasn't one of  the central causes, (along with tariffs) for the Civil War. The two issues cannot be divorced.

...a group of people that never paid attention in their history classes... and the people that think Herbie Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence.

I write this letter in the hopes that the few of you not brainwashed may yet retain the ability to think for yourselves. The proud grandson of a Confederate soldier here is South Carolina, I write to set the official record straight and to defend my heritage. You have been lied to. Not all is as it seems. Let me explain.

Maybe to the people who never really paid attention, know that slavery is inherently evil, and jumped to the conclusion that slavery was the main cause.
From what I recall, it was taught that slavery kept things at a simmer for a while, it was a big issue. Protective Tariffs got things to a boil.

What did you mean by:

Their "property" was protected by the Constitution.

South Carolina got impatient that the North had a different understanding of the agreement in which South Carolina willfully gave the Federal Government control of Fort Sumter.