You will know precisely how true your own statement is if you simply reverse it and say, "Average poor Southerners served the Confederate Army to protect the wealth and institutions of slave holders".
As virtually every pro-Confederate here adamantly insists, that is simply not the case.
Average poor Southerners, who didn't own slaves, served the Confederate Army to protect their families and homes against "damn-Yankee" invaders.
Likewise, average Union soldiers and their officers had no interest in, what was your term for it? "New England Power Brokers".
They did, at first wish to preserve the Union and in the end to abolish slavery, issues having nothing to do with high finance or even basic economics, but simply the right & wrong of it.
So the only real question is whether Lincoln himself was driven by those nasty "New England Power Brokers", since Lincoln was at first almost the only member of his administration who wanted to defend Fort Sumter?
The answer is: aside from your alleged quote, "what about my tariff?", which even if true could mean almost anything, depending on context -- there's no evidence of it.
What the evidence does suggest is that Lincoln wanted to preserve Fort Sumter as a "bargaining chip" to be traded for something of value, such as the state of Virginia remaining in the Union.
DiogenesLamp: "The monster of Crony Capitalism opened it's eye in 1861, and has had us under it's baleful influence ever since."
Total rubbish.
The US has been capitalistic ever since the Pilgrims, after 1620, figured out (the hard way) that socialism doesn't work.
US government officials have depended on financiers (i.e., Haym Salomon) and wealthy citizens (i.e., George Washington) from Day One of the republic.
That some of these associations may have been corrupt or "crony capitalism" can be assumed, but not that they all were, or that all were harmful.
Scandals in US history are noteworthy in that they illustrate the exceptions, not the rule.
So there's no objective evidence, none, that either politicians or businessmen were more or less corrupt after 1860 than they were before.
But DiogenesLamp insane fixation the alleged evils of such ill-defined "classes" of people as "New England Power Brokers" suggests his Marxist education was more influential than anything true he ever learned about US history.
Of that, I am absolutely certain. But they did not need to know for what cause they were fighting so long as they obeyed the orders they were given from their chain of command. That would be Lincoln, the man solely responsible for deciding whether or not there would be a war, and whether and for how long it would continue.
"Pawns" is an appropriate designation for his soldiers who fought and died to bring Independent States back under the control of Washington D.C. and it's Congress of Wolves, eager to once more divvy up the Wool from the shorn Southern Sheep.
So the only real question is whether Lincoln himself was driven by those nasty "New England Power Brokers", since Lincoln was at first almost the only member of his administration who wanted to defend Fort Sumter?
The answer is: aside from your alleged quote, "what about my tariff?", which even if true could mean almost anything, depending on context -- there's no evidence of it.
Other than the fact he launched a war over a D@mned fort he no longer had any legitimate use for? Other than the fact that he immediately threw up that Economic Blockade which had no obvious military purpose?
What the evidence does suggest is that Lincoln wanted to preserve Fort Sumter as a "bargaining chip" to be traded for something of value, such as the state of Virginia remaining in the Union.
Which i've already pointed out to you is corrupt regarding either possible outcome.
You can't make a "deal" on an issue of principle. If the states had a right to leave, Lincoln was violating that principle. If the states had no right to leave, Lincoln was also violating *THAT* principle.
So there's no objective evidence, none, that either politicians or businessmen were more or less corrupt after 1860 than they were before.
Dude, the "Gilded Age" is well known for being pretty much the most corrupt period in US History. I would say that only now, with the Chicago Mafia in charge (wasn't Lincoln from that same general area? ) have we finally matched the corruption levels that existed in that 1870 time period.