It’s interesting.
Initially I only heard this revisionist history from Communists. That was where I first heard the “Civil War was not about slavery” revision.
Communists had a vested interest in pushing the view that Americans, Capitalist racists, would never fight to free people in slavery because it was a moral right.
It was only later that I heard it from non-Communists and learned it came from Southern Revisionists.
It is still in the Democrat’s interest to deny and hide that Americans did this out out devotion to morality and God.
That’s why they don’t want the Civil War taught because it would contradict their worldview of white privilege, evil racist conservatives and America is only about greed and racism.
I think you have a very idealistic, but inaccurate, view of the matter. Abolitionists were a despised, very small minority, and rightly so. They were genocidal fanatics. “Union” and trumped outrage of Sumter were the themes that were used to sell Lincoln’s war. The “revisionism” in the history of the war is mainly Northern, an attempt to whitewash an unlawful war, the dictatorship of Lincoln, and Northern war crimes.
Obviously, no one wants slavery, but that was not “the cause” of the war.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours,
A. Lincoln.