About eightscore years ago, America was less about the Dream and more about the Bloodfest of the Century.

Or as we call it today, the Civil War. 

Less than 100 years into countryhood, the United States ditched unity to go at each other's throats. And it turns out, it wasn't just the bloodfest of the century. The Civil War remains the deadliest and most destructive of all of America's wars, with 2% of the population being wiped out: that'd be a hefty 6 to 7 million people today.

Oof. Yeah, it wasn't pretty.

Being a downright ugly affair, you can imagine that civil war is anything but civil. It took countless uncivil simmerings to get to a deeply personal war that pitted brother against brother in a knockdown drag-out fight to protect very different ways of life.

The Civil War was also the first modern war on the continent (and, perhaps, the globe), and the only conflict in U.S. history fought entirely on the nation's soil.

One and done, guys. Take the fighting outside the country next time.

And it battles for the top spot with the Vietnam War as America's most misunderstood conflict. It's been remembered as a Northern crusade—and struggle—to preserve the Union, emancipate slaves, and end the institution of slavery for good.

But the truth is, the road to war—and the set of issues that underscored the hostilities—was never that simple. Lincoln himself, "The Great Emancipator," actually had pretty moderate views on slavery (you've still won our hearts, Abe, plus historians' hearts, too), but the Southern states didn't see it that way. At all.

Besides Southern desire to protect slave labor, the balance between federal power and state power was constantly difficult to strike, and perpetually inciting tensions in the years (and years and years) before the war broke out.

Really, northern and southern states just weren't that compatible. From the beginning.

In one of many side-splitting episodes of NBC's sitcom The Office, Dunder Mifflin regional manager Michael Scott remarks, "Abraham Lincoln once said that if you're a racist, I will attack you with the North. And those are the principles that I carry with me in the workplace."

If you've seen the show, then you know that this is laughable, mainly because Michael is prone to making insensitive—and doltish—comments about pretty much every non-white person he encounters.

But that's not the only reason it's silly. First of all, Lincoln would never have said such a thing. No nineteenth-century politician—and, really, no one at all during this period—called other folks "racist" and certainly wouldn't have used the word to justify a full-scale war. But semantics aside, race had little, if anything, to do with Lincoln's decision to rally Northern troops to crush the South. In fact, the enslavement of millions of Black men, women, and children was not a motivating factor for Union forces.

Well...not exactly.

It's a widely-held misconception that the struggle for emancipation incited half of the nation to war. It might be the simplest and most idealistic way of thinking about such a terribly violent and destructive period in American history. It only seems fitting that a union founded on the notion that "all men are created equal" would go to war to purge an institution justified by inequality. But that's just not true. Such moral reasoning did not pave the road to war.

So, then, slavery had nothing at all to do with the American Civil War, right?

Well...not exactly.

For decades, historians have disagreed as to whether slavery was the single most important factor that led to the outbreak of the Civil War, or whether it had no bearing whatsoever on the conflict (eh, we wouldn't go that far). By breaking down the sorts of questions that scholars have asked over the years, we can see why such a debate survives. Had slavery never existed in the United States, would there have been a Civil War?

If we can say unequivocally "no," then why—or how—did slavery matter? To what degree did slavery actually cause the American Civil War? What aspects of the institution—ideological, political, economic, religious, diplomatic, social, or racial—incited each side to wage war? What other factors may have contributed to the 1861 secession crisis, and then to the first shots fired at Fort Sumter?

Clearly, the road to war that we're talking about here is complex: long, winding, and full of forks. And that's why we've dedicated an entire guide to help you navigate it. So, buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.