No, the Civil War is NOT Over. In fact, the South is slowly winning.

[KingCharlemagne]

125. LOL. Touche! I suppose I meant that your typical Iowa farm boy did not rush off

to enlist because he opposed the Southern plantation economy. He probably rushed off to enlist because a) all of his friends were enlisting, b) life in an Iowa corn field is boring as all fuck and c) he had a sentimental attachment to the idea of the 'Union' and perhaps a mild moral aversion to slavery. By the same token, the son of the Virginia Tidewater plantation owner did not rush off to enlist because he opposed Northern industrialism. Said Johhny Reb probably rushed to enlist because a) all of his friends were enlisting, b) life on a Tidewater plantation was boring as all fuck and c) he had the foolish notion that his state was under attack and perhaps a sentimental attachment to the institution of slavery.

That said, slavery was the sine qua non (without this, nothing) of the Civil War. No other casus belli could stir up regional hatred to the level of sedition. (Every Confederate state's Bill of Secession explicitly mentions the preservation of slavery and, in a few cases, its expansion, as a reason for secession.)

As for 'hegemonic pressures that motivate people to do things that go against their own interests,' please remember that Lincoln in his 1862 Winter Address to Congress called the U.S. "the last best hope of Earth." He did not utter those words lightly or cynically in those days. He and many Unionists believed sincerely that the decadent aristocracies and monarchies of Europe represented a dead end and that only a system of popular sovereignty held any hope for mankind's future. Surely you are not saying that those who enlisted on the Union side did so against their best interests? When the stakes were to lose the 'last best hope on Earth' and revert back to some inbred European hereditary dynastic system, a decision to enlist in the Union armies was most certainly in behalf of one's best interests.

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm