Replies

FLT-bird: "Davis was not the one who sent a heavily armed flotilla to another country’s territorial waters."

Lincoln was not the one who threatened & launched war over a resupply mission to Union troops in a Union fort:

Confederate demands for Union surrender: that's war.
Confederate firing on Union ships (i.e., Harriet Lane): that's war.
Confederate firing on Fort Sumter: that's war.
Union resupplying Union troops in a Union fort: not war.

FLT-bird: "Davis is not the one who fired first at Pensacola."

The only Union firing at Fort Barrancas came in response to secessionists' unlawful attempts to seize the fort by force.
Union troops there attacked no one.

FLT-bird: "The original 7 seceding states would have been more than happy to go their own way without ever firing any shots.
They tried to do just that."

No they didn't, far from it, from Day One Confederates continuously provoked war by seizing Union property, threatening Union officials, firing on Union ships and demanding Union surrenders.
In short, Confederates were cruisin' for a bruisin'.

FLT-bird: "It was Lincoln who insisted on war."

Total rubbish.

FLT-bird: "Virginia had voted to remain in.
They could have voted to leave earlier but they chose to stay....in a union based on consent rather than force."

Exactly right, Virginians believed they could not secede until their condition of "injury or oppression" was met.
That's why Davis needed war at Fort Sumter, to convert Virginia and with it the entire Upper South.

For that exact reason Lincoln didn't want war, but simply could not abandon Union troops in Fort Sumter without some attempt to resupply them.

FLT-bird: "I already outlined the EXTENSIVE LENGTHS to which the address of Robert Barnwell Rhett which was attached to South Carolina’s Declaration and which was sent out along with it, explained the economic grievances the Southern states had..."

Right: Rhett's "Address of the people of South Carolina, assembled in Convention, to the people of the Slaveholding States of the United States"
And you pretend it had nothing to do with slavery?

Rhett used the word "tariff" exactly twice, both times in passing, i.e., "There was then no tariff -- no negro fanaticism."
Rhett does use the word "tax" 23 times, nearly all in relation to the Founders' "no taxation without representation".
He claims that even though Southern Democrats ruled in Washington, DC, since 1800, now they would be in the minority, thus suddenly deprived of representation, and everybody knows that when Democrats lose political power they go berserk, smash things & hurt people.
It's in the nature of being a Democrat.
In Rhett's mind it was: rule or ruin, my way or F.U. USA.
By contrast, Rhett used words like slave, abolition & institution some 45 times, explicitly explaining the threat to them represented by Northern States.

Important to remember that South Carolina's secession produced three principle documents:

Ordnance or Secession, which provides no reasons or "wherefores".
Reasons for Secession, which explains the threat to slavery as perceived by South Carolinians.
Rhett's address to other Slave-holding states, which expands the reasons to include taxes as well as slavery.
Taxes Rhett claims were paid by Southerners to benefit the North.
Rhett's claim is false.

Despite Rhett's address, Upper South states (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee & Arkansas) refused to secede when the reasons were only about slavery or taxes.
For them secession needed a war of "oppression or injury", so that is what Jefferson Davis gave them at Fort Sumter.

FLT-bird: "Next you try to claim Georgia only talks “Briefly” about matters other than slavery?
ROTFLMAO!
They went on for quite some time about it laying out the specifics of various subsidies to Northern interests were paid by the appropriations laid on mostly Southern owned imports AND how this exploitative economic policy was tied to the slavery issue"

Right, slavery, which Georgia mentioned or referred to 40 times in their 3,300 word document -- in all but three of the 14 paragraphs.
Complaints about "bounties" for "fishing smacks" are restricted just one paragraph.
The Georgia Reasons for Secession document does not mention tariffs or taxes.

FLT-bird: "slavery was being used as what we would today call a wedge issue to unite Northerners to vote in a block to economically exploit the Southern states.
(Rhett went on about this at considerable length as well)."

But slavery was not a "wedge issue" until people like Rhett made it one by supporting slavery where it wasn't wanted and then splitting apart their national Democrat party over the issue of slavery.
So many Northern Democrats normally sympathetic to slavery in the South came to believe that voting Democrat would re-impose slavery in their own states.

FLT-bird: "Then you claim that Southern concerns were satisfied in 1846!"

No I simply quoted what they said:

"the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people..."

FLT-bird: "It was devoted to the sectional dispute between the regions and how the slavery issue was used to try to unite the North against the South in order to vote as a block for its own enrichment at the South’s expense."

But the North never "voted as a block" until Southern Fire Eaters like Rhett split apart their national Democrat party, making a vote for Northern Democrat Douglas a wasted vote.
Even Northern Republicans didn't vote against slavery in the South, but only in territories which didn't want it.
As for "enrichment at the South's expense", that is pure unadulterated nonsense.

FLT-bird quoting: "The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity."

Right, the questions forced on them by aggressive slave-power promoters like Rhett.

FLT-bird: "On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the 'infamous Morrill bill.' "

Which had been defeated by Democrats in 1860 and would be again in 1861 had Dems remained united in the November elections.
But Fire Eaters like Rhett & Toombs made certain that didn't happen.

FLT-bird: "Next you dishonestly try to claim that Texas somehow blamed Lee for the failure to provide adequate border security when of course it was the federal government that was required to do so and which consistently refused to provide adequate troops and resources as had been required by Texas’ accession treaty with the United States."

Of course Texans would blame Lee, since Lee was the finest officer the Union army had, in command of the largest contingent of Union troops anywhere -- Texas.
And Lee failed in Texas.
Just as he later failed in West Virginia, in North Carolina and in Virginia.
A truly remarkable record!

FLT-bird: "Then you dishonestly try to claim that the South got its 'fair share' of federal appropriations.
Even Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian admitted it had not gotten its fair share.
20% is hardly a fair share to a region that was paying the bulk of the tariff."

Of course the South got its fair share and we know this for certain because Southerners ruled in Washington, DC, and made certain their interests were addressed.
How could that not be when Southern Democrats ruled the majority party the vast majority of time between 1800 and 1861??
So claims otherwise are just stuff & nonsense.

For actual Federal spending by region, see this link which summarizes data from John van Deusen’s 1928 book, "Economic bases of Disunion in South Carolina".
If you exclude pensions, the numbers are almost exactly 50% each to slave & non-slave states.
And this despite non-slave states outnumbering slave-states in white population about two-to-one.

FLT-bird: "South Carolinians in particular were convinced of the general truth of Rhett’s and Hammond’s much publicized figures upon Southern tribute to Northern interests.” (Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, Ordeal of the Union, Volume 2, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950, p. 332)"

Sure, it was a propaganda campaign to make old Joseph Goebbels proud, but it was all a Big Lie.
The true numbers show that by 1860 any previous imbalances had been long since corrected.

FLT-bird: "Texas also complains that the Northern states did nothing about those who had openly financed John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry...
You can claim that’s 'about' slavery.
Its really about if not state sponsored terrorism then at least state excused terrorism sponsored by their citizens."

More false propaganda.
In fact, the Federal government sent its best officers (RE Lee, T Jackson) to command the troops which put down Brown's rebellion, captured Brown & company, then tried & hanged them for treason.
As for the "secret six" who backed Brown, most fled the country, one was arrested, one checked himself into an insane asylum and only one, Higginson, remained free.
During the Civil War, Higginson commanded a black regiment of Union soldiers.

FLT-bird: "Plainly it was not “about” slavery."

In what way were any of Brown's actions "not about slavery"??

FLT-bird: "No, it is your PC Revisionist lie to claim it is.
Slavery could have been much better protected within the US as Lincoln and several others openly said.
Slavery could have been enshrined in the constitution effectively forever had the Southern states simply agreed to return.
They did not."

We've already reviewed the first four "Reasons for secession" documents and established they are almost exclusively about slavery.
So you trotted out a fifth document by Rhett, which does mention taxes and compares the US to Britain in 1776.
But even Rhett devoted twice the attention to slavery (45 mentions) that he did to taxes (23 mentions).
And Rhett says nothing about the Morrill Tariff.

So even when all gussied up with a lot of hokum talk about "despotism" and "plunder and oppression", Rhett's number one concern, by a factor of two to one, was still slavery.

FLT-bird: "a complete fantasy on your part.
Not only did Lincoln 'not oppose' the Corwin Amendment, he orchestrated it."

That fantasy is all yours.
Lincoln "orchestrated" nothing regarding Corwin's amendment.

FLT-bird: "Whether he personally thought it changed anything or not was irrelevant.
It would have expressly enshrined slavery in the constitution and protected it."

In Lincoln's mind, as he said, slavery was already protected in the Constitution, so Corwin changed nothing.

FLT-bird: "Slavery would have been expressly protected and this protection would have been irrevocable without the consent of the slaveholding states."

Just as it was in 1860.

FLT-bird: "Yet they turned that down.
Why?
Because it wasn’t “about” slavery.
Not for them..."

Sure, I "get" your argument that slavery was "just the excuse, not the real reason" for declarations of secession.
But you have problems with that argument, including:

If slavery was "just the excuse" that makes all the "Reasons for Secession" documents a Big Lie, because they said slavery was the main, if not the only, reason.
No doubt some Southerners also had other reasons, but those "other reasons" were not felt strongly enough by anything close to a majority needed to pass declarations of secession.
Only perceived threats against slavery were strong enough motivators to convince majorities to support secession.
Once secession was a fait accompli Confederate leadership had no interest in reconciliation, slavery or no slavery.
At that point it became an question of their survival, pure & simple.
They were not going to reunite short of military defeat and Unconditional Surrender.

FLT-bird: "and certainly not for the Northern states who were only too willing to offer up that bargaining chip right from the start."

All Northerners understood that slavery was the price of Union in 1787.
Without slavery there could have been no United States in 1788 or 1860.
So Northerners gave up nothing in 1861 by offering to make slavery more explicit.
But once Jefferson Davis launched & declared his Civil War against the United States, the military advantages of emancipation became clear, and with them the moral imperative for abolition became, for the first time, doable.

Lincoln was not the one who threatened & launched war over a resupply mission to Union troops in a Union fort:

Confederate demands for Union surrender: that’s war.
Confederate firing on Union ships (i.e., Harriet Lane): that’s war.
Confederate firing on Fort Sumter: that’s war.
Union resupplying Union troops in a Union fort: not war.

It was not merely a “supply mission” as you call it. It was a heavily armed flotilla of several warships and hundreds of troops. Nevermind the fact that the federals fired first at Ft Pickens in Pensacola in January of that year.

Sending a fleet of warships into another country’s territorial waters with hostile intent - that’s war.

The only Union firing at Fort Barrancas came in response to secessionists’ unlawful attempts to seize the fort by force.
Union troops there attacked no one.

The fort sat on sovereign Florida territory and was being illegally held by federal troops....and they are the ones who fired first.

No they didn’t, far from it, from Day One Confederates continuously provoked war by seizing Union property, threatening Union officials, firing on Union ships and demanding Union surrenders.
In short, Confederates were cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

Again false. Federal troops illegally occupied installations on territory that belonged to the sovereign states.

Total rubbish.

Nope. Unvarnished truth. You just can’t handle it.

Exactly right, Virginians believed they could not secede until their condition of “injury or oppression” was met.
That’s why Davis needed war at Fort Sumter, to convert Virginia and with it the entire Upper South.

For that exact reason Lincoln didn’t want war, but simply could not abandon Union troops in Fort Sumter without some attempt to resupply them.

No, its not that they believed they could not. It is that they chose not to. They could any time they wanted to. Lincoln deliberately provoked war and did so without the consent of Congress.

“Lincoln and the First Shot” (in Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John Denson), John Denson painstakingly shows how Lincoln maneuvered the Confederates into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. As the Providence Daily Post wrote on April 13, 1861, “Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor” by reprovisioning Fort Sumter. On the day before that the Jersey City American Statesman wrote that “This unarmed vessel, it is well understood, is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South.” Lincoln’s personal secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, clearly stated after the war that Lincoln successfully duped the Confederates into firing on Fort Sumter. And as Shelby Foote wrote in The Civil War, “Lincoln had maneuvered [the Confederates] into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war.”

And you pretend it had nothing to do with slavery?

I didn’t say it had “nothing to do with” slavery. You said it was “all about” slavery. That is false.

Rhett used the word “tariff” exactly twice, both times in passing, i.e., “There was then no tariff — no negro fanaticism.”

Rhett does use the word “tax” 23 times, nearly all in relation to the Founders’ “no taxation without representation”.
He claims that even though Southern Democrats ruled in Washington, DC, since 1800, now they would be in the minority, thus suddenly deprived of representation, and everybody knows that when Democrats lose political power they go berserk, smash things & hurt people.
It’s in the nature of being a Democrat.

In Rhett’s mind it was: rule or ruin, my way or F.U. USA.

By contrast, Rhett used words like slave, abolition & institution some 45 times, explicitly explaining the threat to them represented by Northern States.

Rhett went on at length explaining how the Northern states saw fit to use their larger population and thus more representation in Washington DC to levy tariffs on the South that were very harmful to the Southern economy in order to serve their own interests AND that the Southern states did not have enough votes to prevent this exploitation. He explained how this was exactly the same as the situation the 13 colonies found themselves in when they seceded from the British Empire in 1776. But of course you knew that and were trying to obfuscate.

Important to remember that South Carolina’s secession produced three principle documents:

Ordnance or Secession, which provides no reasons or “wherefores”.
Reasons for Secession, which explains the threat to slavery as perceived by South Carolinians.
Rhett’s address to other Slave-holding states, which expands the reasons to include taxes as well as slavery.
Taxes Rhett claims were paid by Southerners to benefit the North.
Rhett’s claim is false.

South Carolina laid out the legal case for saying the Northern states violated the compact. That alone was sufficient. Even though it was not unconstitutional they attached Rhett’s Address in which he accurately laid out the economic exploitation of the Southern states by the Northern states via the tariff and via grossly unequal federal expenditures.

Right, slavery, which Georgia mentioned or referred to 40 times in their 3,300 word document — in all but three of the 14 paragraphs.
Complaints about “bounties” for “fishing smacks” are restricted just one paragraph.
The Georgia Reasons for Secession document does not mention tariffs or taxes.

Georgia laid out the legal case for accurately saying the Northern states violated the compact - namely, their refusal to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. It also went on to talk about the grossly unequal expenditures and partisan sectional legislation which served to enrich the Northern states at the Southern states’ expense even though this was not unconstitutional.

But slavery was not a “wedge issue” until people like Rhett made it one by supporting slavery where it wasn’t wanted and then splitting apart their national Democrat party over the issue of slavery.
So many Northern Democrats normally sympathetic to slavery in the South came to believe that voting Democrat would re-impose slavery in their own states.

This is an outright lie. Rhett didn’t make slavery a wedge issue. Northern politicians and business interests did in order to unite Northern votes for a sectional party which would favor ruinously high protective tariffs to be levied on goods owned by Southern importers. It had the added benefit of raising more federal money the Northern states could then continue lavishing on themselves for more “public works” and corporate subsidies.

No I simply quoted what they said:

“the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people...”

and you conveniently left out the next part where it explains how Northern protectionists then started using the slavery issue as a wedge issue to try to build enough political support to jack the tariffs back up again.

But the North never “voted as a block” until Southern Fire Eaters like Rhett split apart their national Democrat party, making a vote for Northern Democrat Douglas a wasted vote.
Even Northern Republicans didn’t vote against slavery in the South, but only in territories which didn’t want it.
As for “enrichment at the South’s expense”, that is pure unadulterated nonsense.

They voted as a block for a high protective tariff. That was the central plank of the Republican party platform in 1860. The northern states had been enriching themselves at the Southern states’ expense since the beginning. The only debate was would they do so in a more modest way which had been the case after the Tariff of Abominations was repealed following the Nullification Crisis, or would they go for super high tariffs again and really dig their paws deeply into Southern wallets again. They opted for the latter. The Southern states had seen this before and had had enough.

Right, the questions forced on them by aggressive slave-power promoters like Rhett.

Nope! It was pushed by Northern Protectionists like Abe Lincoln.

Which had been defeated by Democrats in 1860 and would be again in 1861 had Dems remained united in the November elections.
But Fire Eaters like Rhett & Toombs made certain that didn’t happen.

It had passed the House in the Spring of the previous year. All that was needed was a little log rolling to pick off a vote or two in the Senate. That could easily be achieved by throwing in a sweetener like high tariffs on Hemp grown in one state or similar back room deals. That’s the way it always works in Washington DC. They were going to get it past the Senate and with a Pennsylvanian like Buchanan in the White House followed by Lincoln it was sure to get the president’s signature and become law. Everybody knew that.

Of course Texans would blame Lee, since Lee was the finest officer the Union army had, in command of the largest contingent of Union troops anywhere — Texas.
And Lee failed in Texas.
Just as he later failed in West Virginia, in North Carolina and in Virginia.
A truly remarkable record!

Yawn. A weak attempt to blame Lee due to your personal bitterness. The Federal government simply did not provide enough troops or resources as they had agreed to do when Texas joined the US. Texans understood the Northern states acting through the federal government were to blame and furthermore that they had failed to provide the promised border security out of spite,

For actual Federal spending by region, see this link which summarizes data from John van Deusen’s 1928 book, “Economic bases of Disunion in South Carolina”.
If you exclude pensions, the numbers are almost exactly 50% each to slave & non-slave states.
And this despite non-slave states outnumbering slave-states in white population about two-to-one.

This is complete BS. The Southern states never had the population or representation of the Northern states. To claim they ran things despite being in the minority is patently absurd.

.” In a pamphlet published in 1850, Muscoe Russell Garnett of Virginia wrote:
The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791, to June 30, 1845, after deducting the drawbacks on foreign merchandise exported, was $927,050,097. Of this sum the slaveholding States paid $711,200,000, and the free States only $215,850,097. Had the same amount been paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would have paid only $394,707,917, and the North $532,342,180. Therefore, the slaveholding States paid $316,492,083 more than their just share, and the free States as much less.

South Carolina Senator James Hammond had declared that the South paid about $50,000,000 and the North perhaps $20,000,000 of the $70,000,000 raised annually by duties. In expenditure of the national revenues, Hammond thought the North got about $50,000,000 a year, and the South only $20,000,000.

Sure, it was a propaganda campaign to make old Joseph Goebbels proud, but it was all a Big Lie.
The true numbers show that by 1860 any previous imbalances had been long since corrected.

Complete BS. All the commentators at the time, as well as several Northern Newspapers, foreign commentators and Charles Adams all say otherwise. On your side you have one 1928 book.

More false propaganda.
In fact, the Federal government sent its best officers (RE Lee, T Jackson) to command the troops which put down Brown’s rebellion, captured Brown & company, then tried & hanged them for treason.
As for the “secret six” who backed Brown, most fled the country, one was arrested, one checked himself into an insane asylum and only one, Higginson, remained free.
During the Civil War, Higginson commanded a black regiment of Union soldiers.

You neglected to mention 3 only briefly fled to Canada. Northern sympathizers prevented the arrest of one who had been apprehended by federal marshals by mob violence and got a sympathetic judge to issue a writ demanding his surrender. Another remained and was never arrested. So of the 6, none were arrested and that was due to the support of locals in Massachusetts as well as sympathetic local officials. Texas was absolutely right to say that Northerners sympathize with financial backers of terrorism directed against the South.

In what way were any of Brown’s actions “not about slavery”??

I was talking about the refusal of the Southern states to accept the Corwin Amendment and the subsequent war Lincoln started. Had it been “about” slavery, the Corwin amendment would have sufficed.

We’ve already reviewed the first four “Reasons for secession” documents and established they are almost exclusively about slavery.
So you trotted out a fifth document by Rhett, which does mention taxes and compares the US to Britain in 1776.
But even Rhett devoted twice the attention to slavery (45 mentions) that he did to taxes (23 mentions).
And Rhett says nothing about the Morrill Tariff.

So even when all gussied up with a lot of hokum talk about “despotism” and “plunder and oppression”, Rhett’s number one concern, by a factor of two to one, was still slavery.

We’ve already reviewed the 4 declarations of secession and reasons provided by the 4 states which issued them and determined that refusal to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the constitution provided the legal basis for saying the Northern states had violated the compact. We have furthermore seen how 3 of those 4 had extensive economic grievances relating to tariffs and grossly unequal federal government expenditures while Texas added inadequate border security and supporting terrorism against Southerners to the list of abuses committed by the Northern states.

Next you desperately try to do a simple word count to claim Rhett’s #1 concern was slavery which is of course patently false. Here is another statement demonstrating this to be so:

“The great object of free governments is liberty. The great test of liberty in modern times, is to be free in the imposition of taxes, and the expenditure of taxes.... For a people to be free in the imposition and payment of taxes, they must lay them through their representatives.” Consequently, because they were being taxed without corresponding representation, the Southern States had been reduced to the condition of colonies of the North and thus were no longer free. The solution was determined by John Cunningham to exist only in independence:

The legislation of this Union has impoverished them [the Southern States] by taxation and by a diversion of the proceeds of our labor and trade to enriching Northern Cities and States. These results are not only sufficient reasons why we would prosper better out of the union but are of themselves sufficient causes of our secession. Upon the mere score of commercial prosperity, we should insist upon disunion. Let Charleston be relieved from her present constrained vassalage in trade to the North, and be made a free port and my life on it, she will at once expand into a great and controlling city.

That fantasy is all yours.
Lincoln “orchestrated” nothing regarding Corwin’s amendment.

False Propaganda on your part. Read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s nauseating hagiography of Lincoln which was the basis for an equally sycophantic film a few years ago. She praises Lincoln for orchestrating it. Others have noted that he was pulling the strings on this as well.

In Lincoln’s mind, as he said, slavery was already protected in the Constitution, so Corwin changed nothing.

WHat the Corwin Amendment did do was demonstrate conclusively that the Northern states were quite willing to protect slavery effectively forever in the Constitution and that the original 7 seceding states were obviously not motivated by fears over the protection of slavery because they indicated no willingness to return upon being offered the Corwin Amendment.

If slavery was “just the excuse” that makes all the “Reasons for Secession” documents a Big Lie, because they said slavery was the main, if not the only, reason.

It doesn’t make them a lie. The Northern states really had violated the compact by refusing to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. It wasn’t the original 7 seceding states’ primary motivation but it was clearly true and provided them the legal basis for saying the other side broke the agreement. This happens in business all the time. One side breaks a clause in the contract allowing the other side to claim breach and walk away even if that breach was not their primary motivation for walking away from the contract.

No doubt some Southerners also had other reasons, but those “other reasons” were not felt strongly enough by anything close to a majority needed to pass declarations of secession.
Only perceived threats against slavery were strong enough motivators to convince majorities to support secession.

Was it? Or was it the excuse they had been looking for to do what they wanted to do anyway since they saw a huge hike in the tariff coming and the northern population continuing to grow at a faster pace due to immigration? I think it was the latter. Slavery was something most white Southerners did not participate in.

Once secession was a fait accompli Confederate leadership had no interest in reconciliation, slavery or no slavery.
At that point it became an question of their survival, pure & simple.
They were not going to reunite short of military defeat and Unconditional Surrender.

They simply did not want to remain in given that they felt they had been economically exploited and could look forward to nothing but even more egregious economic exploitation.

So Northerners gave up nothing in 1861 by offering to make slavery more explicit.
But once Jefferson Davis launched & declared his Civil War against the United States, the military advantages of emancipation became clear, and with them the moral imperative for abolition became, for the first time, doable.

Obviously slavery and protection of it was not the price of holding the union together in 1860. The Northern states tried to pay with that coin and it was rejected.

Oh and of course it was Lincoln who launched the war and for the same reason the Southern states wanted out - he and his corporate fatcat supporters needed their cash cow ie the Southern States to finance their huge tariffs and infrastructure projects and corporate subsidies. It was a war for empire and money. Foreign observers saw that quite clearly.

“For the contest on the part of the North is now undisguisedly for empire. The question of slavery is thrown to the winds. There is hardly any concession in its favor that the South could ask which the North would refuse provided only that the seceding states re-enter the Union.....Away with the pretence on the North to dignify its cause with the name of freedom to the slave!” London Quarterly Review 1862

“The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.” London Times, November 7, 1861

Oh and let us not forget that at the same time and shortly thereafter the Federal government was busy ethnically cleansing and committing genocide against the Plains Indians to gobble up their land and resources. So much for moral imperatives.