[Idabilly]

“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.”

[devere]

“Lincoln didn’t like or care about Blacks”

More nonsense!

Actually what Lincoln said in the famous 1858 debate was:

“I agree with Judge Douglas he(the negro) is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”

And Lincoln also said,

“This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”

Is that clear enough for you?