Only if you have a negative picture of labor unions. I point out that the sections of the country that became the places in which Unionization was concentrated are the same places in the country that still vote Liberal progressive today. (Democrat now, Republican in the late 19th century.)
Now of course labor unions didn't exist in the 1860s and were a later phenomena, mostly created by the abuses put upon the work force from New York and other progressive cities, but their geographic location and their demographic roughly coincides to today's modern Democrat Union centers.
Or take school prayer or the pledge of allegiance.
Another consequence of the badly written, not legitimately ratified and badly abused 14th amendment.
For some people, these are unfair to atheists.
"Unfair" is meaningless in this context. The country was founded as a Christian nation, and those who don't like it really have no legitimate recourse in the same manner that it was founded as a slave nation, and those who didn't like it had no legitimate recourse. (Other than amendment.)
Whether protectionism is progressive or not could be the subject of much debate.
The Democrat party has been quite protectionist for most of my life. It is only with the advent of Chinese influence on major corporations and players in Washington that the Democrats have seemingly backed away from protectionism and are now reflecting corporate interests above that of their Unionized rank and file. Nowadays it's seeming that the rank and file Republicans have adopted a more protectionist attitude.
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.
Modern Democrats don't grasp the effects of their vote in the larger picture. They didn't grasp it back then either.
Party of wealth and privilege? Wealthy merchants in the big cities wanted to keep their commercial connections with Southern planters.
There was certainly that aspect of it at first. Hence the Corwin Amendment. As time went on and they realized they would be cut out of the money flow, their concerns turned more to keeping their own interests afloat at the expense of the Southern states.
Your own materialistic view of history ought to make it clear to you why they wouldn't want to disrupt things.
Absolutely. So long as they thought they could keep their cash flow going, they wanted things to remain as they were. (Hence the Corwin Amendment.) When it became clear to them that they were going to lose in the financial game, they then needed government to rescue them from the free market.
And where were the wealthiest counties in the country -- in terms of average income of free white people?
Was just reading some excerpts from another thread yesterday that asserted the Southerners had the higher average incomes during that period.
You are apparently saying that Republicans in the mid 19th century were the same as progressives today.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Margret Sanger. Susan B. Anthony. Jane Addams. Louis Brandeis. Florence Kelley. Roger Baldwin. And so forth. Virtually everyone in the progressive movement was a Republican and from the North, usually big cities. Brandeis actually changed party affiliation from Republican to Democrat after he was appointed by Wilson, so you can see the change starting right there. Jane Addams father was a staunch Republican and friend of Lincoln.
It wasn't about securing equal rights, dignity and respect for African-Americans,
Not until Liberal Republicans realized it was politically advantageous for them to do so.
but it very much was about slavery.
Only insofar as it could be used as propaganda to get the political power they wanted. The Corwin amendment proves they didn't really care about slavery.
And by the middle of the war, slavery was very much the issue.
Yes, because it had become politically popular. Had it not turned out to be, it would have been left by the wayside. Part of the reason it had become politically popular is because Lincoln tended to arrest people who didn't toe the official government line.
Some people adopt the party line in an effort to be popular and maintain connections to power, and some do it out of fear. We are seeing the same effect with Vaccinations nowadays. It has become "unpatriotic" to oppose vaccination or mask mandates.