ForeverFree's remarks about the saving of the Union being the primary reason for Northerners to fight, and for Lincoln and Washington to be elevated to near mythical positions in the national psyche is very pertinent to how the South receives this same national message, or is expected to receive it. In many ways, they, too, were fighting for a union - each side believed their interpretation of the Constitution, which is what binds together an incredible array of diverse thought, race, creeds and origins, was the correct one. That was worth fighting about.
For that, perhaps we should go back further to a recurring theme in that national psyche, the seeds of which were planted before there was a thought of a union to preserve, put forth in Winthrop's City on the Hill sermon. This was repeated in Lincoln's inaugural address as 'the last best hope' of the world, and again in Reagan's city on the hill reference in his 1989 farewell speech. All refer to Matthew 5:14 - Ye are the light of the world, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. From the belief the Massachusetts colony was a beacon of hope to the world to present-day 'exceptionalism', that has been a cornerstone belief. This core belief brought about various national destiny ideology and thought - Manifest Destiny all the way to the Truman Doctrine.
This is the basis for how history has been, and still mostly is, taught in this country. Washington's character and personality shaped the course of the presidency and the nation as Lincoln's personality and character shaped the course of the nation during the Civil War, which threatened to undo all the knitting together and bonding of almost a century. The CW was fought by the sons and grandsons of the people who fought the Revolution against monarchy. For the 18th and 19th centuries, every nation had a king or queen or emperor - except the United States. Many more separate kingdoms, principalities and ethnic areas were coming together to try the 'American Experiment', to shed traditional methods of government that no longer worked very well in a rapidly changing world. To Lincoln, this was a phenomenon that was a direct result of America's success and if it failed here, it failed everywhere. There was considerably more attached to the outcome of the Civil War than only the survival of the Union.
After the war, the government was somewhat restructured, renovated and altered, including the Constitution. Reconstruction happened rather heavily in the defeated South but it also happened in the North. What was really affected by the Civil War was the West. Mostly unorganized or barely organized territories, strong disputes with Native populations, a veritable flood of settlers and others westward to these territories and to states which had entered the Union just before or during the war - Nevada's motto is "Battle Born". These territories/states had a distant yet very strong influence on the war, and on Reconstruction. Acts were passed while the Southern states were absent in Congress - the Homestead Act, Railroad Act, etc. These were a series of legislation that tied the states together in ways they had never been connected before. Though many areas and regions of the United States have tried or wanted to separate, it is no longer a matter of simply seceding. So, the Union was saved - evidently forever.
How this all gets processed in whether or not the South should be re-educated about its history, or the North re-educated, seems to be a rather moot point for that portion of the nation that is west of the Mississippi. North and South is a little odd to the West. For a very long time in our history it didn't much matter which way regional views went, but now society, technology and politics has brought the nation together in a way it has never been together. This is where the new growing pains start to take place. Now it's not just Southern history, Northern history, black history, Indian history and the question being how each section processes its own story. It's how the entire nation processes these separate yet collective histories. It's in progress, and will be for quite some time.