“Why would the South “go to war” to preserve slavery when Lincoln specifically said many times he had no desire to end slavery. He said it before he was elected and after he was elected” Read the Secession Documents of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas. That should answer your question.
(Lee) “freed his wife’s inherited slaves a decade before the Civil War.” Wrong. G.W.P. Custis, Mary Lee’s father, died in 1858. He named R.E. Lee as the estates executor.
As such, Lee was authorized to free the Custis slaves at his discretion, but no later than 5 years after Custis’s death. Lee freed the last of the Custis slaves in December 1862. Hardly 10 years before the Civil War.
When asked when he waited till the 25th Amendment was passed in Dec 1865 to free his slave, Grant said “good help is hard to find.”
The Union Army was given instructions that the first Confederate soldiers to be shot were black soldiers fighting alongside whites, of which there were many. Yankee history books ignore this well-established fact.