Let me inform you as to the existence of the Corwin Amendment. This Amendment (which would guarantee permanent slavery) was pushed by Lincoln and the Republicans.
It passed the house and Senate by the required 2/3rds margin, and was ratified by 5 Northern states.
So to make it clear, the North was handing *SLAVERY* to the South on a silver platter. The only string attached was that the South would have to remain in the Union.
So with the North GIVING AWAY slavery, and with the South REFUSING TO ACCEPT IT it kinda proves the war was *NOT* about slavery to either the North or the South.
I'm sorry if this undercuts your view of the goodness of human nature, but it is factually true.
Yes, the North was going to sell out the slaves to keep the Southern states.
Abraham Lincoln campaigned on an anti slavery platform and the very party he represented, the Republican Party, was formed to get rid of slavery. Those in the South so wanted slavery, that they complained before Lincoln was ever elected, that if he were to be elected, they would secede.
“During the campaign for president in 1860, some secessionists threatened disunion should Lincoln (who opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories) be elected, including William L. Yancey. Yancey toured the North calling for secession as Stephen A. Douglas toured the South calling for union if Lincoln was elected.[38] To the secessionists the Republican intent was clear: to contain slavery within its present bounds and, eventually, to eliminate it entirely. A Lincoln victory presented them with a momentous choice (as they saw it), even before his inauguration – “the Union without slavery, or slavery without the Union”.[39]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America
Lincoln campaigned against slavery and won the national vote, November 3, 1860.
The first state, South Carolina, seceded Dec. 20, 1860.
The initial version of the Corwin Amendment was already in progress after the election, but before Lincoln ever took office. It was President Buchanan who was a fan of it, but the work of the Committee of Thirty-Three in the US House continued to work on it until Jan. 14, 1861, when it was proposed to be a Constitutional Amendment, but Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had already joined South Carolina in seceding from the Union, making its passage with those states irrelevant.
“Lincoln, along with other Republicans, supported the final amendment because he believed it didn't change anything already in the Constitution, as he mentioned in his First Inaugural Address:”
“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of any particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
To be fair, the Corwin Amendment would have cemented slavery in the existing states, but would not have protected it in any new states, leaving then current slave states a permanent minority.
Back you your assertion, the argument that secession was not simply from slavery, is completely bogus, on its face. This was the only “States’ right” issue that bedeviled the South. In fact, the CSA said SLAVERY WAS THE ONLY ISSUE IN ITS CORNERSTONE SPEECH:
The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.
The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Alexander H. Stephens, speech to The Savannah Theatre. (March 21, 1861)
(which would guarantee permanent slavery)
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said”
the amendment only restricts the actions of the Congress of the United States. It does not prevent any state in the Union from taking action to end slavery in that state. Nor does it restrict the Congress of the United States from prohibiting slavery in any territory of the United States. So the amendment does not guarantee “permanent slavery” within the United States.