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You have to ask why Lincoln didn’t emancipate slaves until two years into the conflict. The answer will be that practical matters prevented him from doing so. Strategy and the Constitution and the like. And then you will have destroyed the idea that it was ALL about slavery. For how could it be all about slavery if he had gone so far to make war on a whole section of the country without addressing the slavery issue.

The war was about succession and union, which in turn was about slavery. That’s the trick. It was about slavery all along, but slavery once removed. It wasn’t about slavery directly until two years in. To argue otherwise is to ignore most everything Lincoln said.

And then you will have destroyed the idea that it was ALL about slavery. For how could it be all about slavery if he had gone so far to make war on a whole section of the country without addressing the slavery issue.

But there are two sides to the issue and you're looking at only one side. On the one side there's Lincoln and the Union, and for him it never was about slavery and he said so on many occasions. On the other hand you have the confederacy, and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting the fact that for them the single most important reason for going to war was to defend slavery.

In short Napolitano is wrong. The war was about slavery, he's just looking at it from the wrong side.

The fact that Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation" didn't apply to the "border states" like Maryland pretty much puts the whole idea of slavery as the driving purpose of the Civil War to rest.

Even the famed orator and former slave Frederick Douglass acknowledged as much in his infamous "Independence Day" speech in Rochester in the early 1850s. His basic premise was that Independence Day didn't mean a damn thing to free black men in Union states.

“The war was about succession and union, which in turn was about slavery. That’s the trick. It was about slavery all along, but slavery once removed. It wasn’t about slavery directly until two years in. To argue otherwise is to ignore most everything Lincoln said.”

I beg to differ

If the Federal Government tried to ban Firearms and the States pulled from the Union- Would Firearm be the main reason or the Straw the broke the camels back?

Lincoln didn't like or care about Blacks! They became a tool and would remain enslaved IF the South rejoined the Union.

Lincoln didn't invade the South to Free slaves no more than Hitler used gas to clean people!
In August, 1862, Lincoln convened a White House conference with black leaders and said to them: “Why should people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between any
other two races. Whether it is right or wrong, I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while we suffer from your presence. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated.”