IF the war was all about slavery being so abhorrent to the North ,then the very first act of Lincoln should have been a Proclamation denouncing slavery in all States and calling on the respective legislatures to abolish slavery.
It has long been clear to me that the war was State rights vs. Federal control of all.The Southern politicians' choosing to make slavery the pre-eminent issue was a mistake.They ought to have done a better job of demonstrating it was one of several disputed areas of gov't authority.It is also noted by a lifetime of observation that the higher the population density the more people clamor for and accept central authority to direct their lives. Possibly it is just not good for humans to become so distant from the realization of how plants and animals are the source of food and so much more.City residents seem easier to form into mobs and rioters maybe because gossip and lies travel so fast there.
I note had not the "leaders" of both national gov'ts conscripted the men to fight ,the war would have been mighty different. Lincoln was as bad as any abusive slaveowner in the way he forced the northern men into uniform,and ignored limits on presidential authority.
Equally undeniable is the FACT that Southerners seceded not over some broad issue of states rights, but over slavery. They started a shooting war over what they thought some non-abolitionist might do to abolish slavery.
> IF the war was all about slavery being so abhorrent to the North
Errrr. The war wasn't about slavery being abhorent in the north. It was about ending slavery being abhorrent in the south.
Lincoln was fully on record denouncing slavery. Read the Cooper Union speech. But before he even got into office southern states were seceding. The crisis of the union disintegrating was far more important than a statement of moral indignation. Lincoln was also caught, in those early days, in a balancing act of trying to keep the loyal slave states from joining the confederacy.
I'll let Frederick Douglass give his opinion on the matter:
His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful co-operation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. link