“And please, don’t give me that crap about the Civil War not being about preservation of slavery.”
Well, it’s not usually said that way. It’s usually, “Slavery was not the cause of The War Between the States.”
Of course there is some truth in both those statements even if imprecisely stated. Over the years I’ve tried to correct the fuzziness of such statements and put it into context that is part history lesson.
The War Between the States was not STARTED with the intent of freeing the slaves. It simply wasn’t. As Lincoln clearly stated before and during the war, the goal was to preserve the union. This is important because way too many people today believe the north took up some grand crusade to free slaves. They did not. Period. That was a final outcome, to be sure. But Lincoln nor Congress ever expressed a goal of making war with the Confederacy as being to free slaves. Not in the beginning.
it was to preserve the union and the question of whether a state had a right to secede. Lincoln early on saw that we could not put the union back together the way it was. Slaves were voting with their feet and became contraband of war. They were being used by the south in support of their war effort. This eventually evolved into the realization that for the union to come back together slavery had to go. It truly became a second American revolution.
OK, so that was the Union motivation and I don't see anything to dispute there. So now what was the South's motivation?