And I'm well aware of that. That does not carry over to the motivations of most other people who partook in the fighting. The Civil War was about more than just Abraham Lincoln.
Now, if you want to argue a different scenario, feel free to make one. But don't try and make me sell a scenario where freeing the slaves during the middle of the war would've ended hostilities. Because it would not have.
Do you think burning half of Georgia to the ground might be an example of "an increase in federal power"?
You keep leaving out the calculus of what the rest of the country was enduring at the time. We're in a middle of a war against ourselves, and General Sherman went about war with the intent to end it. Though it did cripple the South's efforts, it also embittered Southerners against the North. But that's beside my point.
My point was this: during a civil war, you'd be hard-pressed to find a scenario where federal power would NOT increase. The validity of such an increase in power would be dependent upon the origins of said civil war; most would probably argue that were the American Civil War just about naked federal oppression of the states and its denizens, I would be more inclined to agree with you. But you cannot remove the calculus of slavery from the equation, the effect it had on all Americans, and how it formed the very roots - economic, social, and political - of the Civil War. It's impossible, because those roots stem back decades before Fort Sumter.
It's better to spend your time debunking the supposed 'necessity' of, say, the Wilson Administration increasing federal dominion over the nation during World War I. Or the 'necessity' of the New Deal and its supposed 'economic reforms'. Or the 'necessity' of the Porkulus Bill.
You drank the liberal historical kool aid. Try to expand your mind.
Just don't sit there and tell me that I can pretend to remove the issue of slavery from the equation. Because that issue went far beyond just freeing them during the war; it had its hand in interstate politics, the Southern economy, and societal debate long before the Civil War ever began. For me to truly try and remove the issue of slavery from the Civil War, I'd have to envision how things would've gone without the Missouri Compromise. And before that, the Wilmot Proviso. And before that, Nat Turner's Rebellion. And even before that, the Missouri Compromise...and so on.
You see my point? It's too big of a facet of the Civil War to just blithely remove like some historical revisionist. Because without that issue, most of the background for the Civil War loses all meaning, relevance, context, etcetera etcetera...
Ok, what you are saying is it was about slavery. So every southerner was a pro slavery bigot willing to die to keep another in chains. Which is it, you can't have it both ways. I guess the North "won" but the "USA" lost, the Republic was turned over to arrogant Northern self-Righteous /expletive deleted/ and we haven't really looked back since.
With friends like you who needs enemies.
Wilson started out OK but jumped the shark when he went to NJ.