That's on you. I didn't say that, but I will point out that it's as close to "free" as it was possible to get in that era.
And that using slave labor is a legitimate way to become wealthy.
It is an immoral way to become wealthy, but it was a legal way to become wealthy in that era.
I guess you wouldn't have any problem losing your job to a slave, convict or illegal immigrant.
You are trying to make it about me. It is not about me. I didn't say the northerners who hated slavery didn't have a valid gripe. What I said is they weren't motivated by concern for slaves as modern historians would have us believe.
You also oversimplify Northern racial attitudes. Some Northern states had Black Codes (as Southern states had Slave or Black Codes).
It is not remarkable to discover that Southern states were racist. What is not known among most people nowadays is how very racist were the Northern states. It undermines the illusion that they were good people doing the lord's work in stamping out slavery. They weren't. They were just ordinary people for their time, doing what the powers in Washington DC ordered them to do.
...but others had no problem with the Black family down the road.
Very small minority of the population at that time.
You didn't? It looks like you just said exactly that: that free labor is labor you don't have to pay for. For you, slavery is freedom, I guess.
It is an immoral way to become wealthy, but it was a legal way to become wealthy in that era.
Society has decided some ways of getting wealthy are immoral. If it can't forbid such ways, it tries to disadvantage them. It can decide that pornography or escort services or human trafficking or gambling aren't good ways to make money. They may be legal, but the fact that they are considered to be immoral means that they can't claim to be on the same level of legitimacy as other, more respectable ways of earing a living.
I didn't say the northerners who hated slavery didn't have a valid gripe. What I said is they weren't motivated by concern for slaves as modern historians would have us believe. ... What is not known among most people nowadays is how very racist were the Northern states.
You are about fifty years behind the times. Current historians are very critical of Northern racial attitudes, Lincoln, and the early Republican Party. So are journalists. You persist in identifying today's progressives with the mid-19th century Republicans, when most of today's progressives, apart from occasionally appealing to popular images of Lincoln, aren't fans of Lincoln or his party or his policies.
Once people understand that virtually everybody was racist back then, it's not hard to buy into the idea that Northerners were even more anti-Black than Southerners, as Dickens did at the time. The truth is more complicated than that. Replacing one myth with another isn't much of an improvement.
Societal disapproval does not equal force of law. To eradicate something, you must make it illegal. There was not sufficient support in the populace to do this in 1861, and if we are being honest, there was not sufficient support in the populace to do it in 1865 either, but Washington DC cheated, as they are wont to do.
Not different from what the government today does with smoking. One can argue about whether the policies are right, but it is a possible middle way between an outright ban and complete acceptance that is more tolerable than either of those alternatives. One could also draw a parallel to "fat acceptance" today as well. Government action against the overweight has been limited so far, but already there are people saying that being overweight shouldn't be viewed as a negative and shouldn't have social liabilities, and they might want to use the government to enforce their own view, barring discrimination against the fat in the same way that slaveowners wanted to ban "discrimination" against slaveowners. Or take school prayer or the pledge of allegiance. For some people, these are unfair to atheists. Others argue that the country shouldn't treat atheism and religious faith as being morally equal. In their view, a level field would encourage atheism. Bottom line: governments that don't want to prohibit things outright do take steps to encourage worthwhile behavior and discourage what they consider to be harmful behavior.
It's an easy comparison to make. Where were the hearts of progressivism in 1860? In the big cities, especially in Northern big cities like Boston and New York. What is the ideology of Progressivism in the 1860s? Protectionist. Societal upheaval. Big government control. Disapproval of the existing social morality. Party of wealth and privilege. Same as today.
Whether protectionism is progressive or not could be the subject of much debate. I don't think the farmers and shopkeepers of the North who voted Republican would see their votes as being in favor of "big government control" or social disruption or opposed to existing social morality. If anything, the Whig-Republican tradition was more moralistic and moralizing than the Democrat one and more inclined to hold people to strict moral standards. Democrats, then and now, wanted looser moral standards.
Party of wealth and privilege? Wealthy merchants in the big cities wanted to keep their commercial connections with Southern planters. Most of them weren't Republicans in 1860. Your own materialistic view of history ought to make it clear to you why they wouldn't want to disrupt things. It was more those who aspired to better their condition who voted Republican, not those who already had it made and had much to lose.
And where were the wealthiest counties in the country -- in terms of average income of free white people? In Mississippi. Southern politicians had a lot of trouble figuring out if they were a ruling class privileged by God or if they were scorned, neglected and abused by the free states, but we don't have to accept their victimization narratives or assume that the Southern states in 1860 (or today) were as poor and victimized as they might have been in the 1890s or the 1930s.
You are apparently saying that Republicans in the mid 19th century were the same as progressives today. But when Republicans in 1920s supported the same policies as they did in Lincoln's day -- protectionism, government encouragement of industry -- they were seen as conservative or reactionary by liberals, progressives and Democrats. If you're stuck in some tribal hatred of New Yorkers or New Englanders or big cities of course you aren't going to see any difference between the Northeasterners of 1860 and 1920 and 2020, but most people may not be hampered by such prejudices.
I don't think it really matters if they were worse, and there is some evidence to indicate they were
Not enough evidence to justify the charge or the degree of certainty some people feel about it. There was always friction between various ethnic groups in the North. There had been at least one anti-Catholic riot. But generalizations always oversimplify complicated human relationships. People who are quick to tell us about every slaveowner who felt affection for a slave don't go looking for cases where Northern Whites may have respected or cooperated or worked with African-Americans. Indeed, it's in nature of distant, yet not hostile relationships, that they don't make much of mark on history.
The claim that the civil war was about slavery goes down as the biggest con-job in American history
It wasn't about securing equal rights, dignity and respect for African-Americans, but it very much was about slavery. To say that there was only one reason for a war would be foolish, but in the big picture, it was slavery (or free labor) that had estranged the North and the South. And by the middle of the war, slavery was very much the issue.