Joel, I may be too late with this reply to help you much, but I hope that my reading lists in the lectures helped you to some extent. Conrad Russell’s book on the Civil Wars is the best starting point for getting a balanced view for what you’re talking about. Some the other “classic” authors who wrote about the Civil War, such as Lawrence Stone and Christopher Hill, were Marxists and not the best people to consult for the nuance you’re trying to detect.
